And then, on unsteady feet, he was being led away. Behind him he heard
the music once again, heard the rising hum of voices.
Someone set his hat on his head, was holding his coat. The cold air of
the night struck his face and the doors sighed closed behind him.
"I'd take it easy going down the step, sir," counseled the doorman.
An aero-taxi driver held open the door of the cab and saluted.
"Where to, sir?"
Wilson stumbled in and stammered out his address. The taxi droned into
the traffic lane.
Hands twitching, Wilson fumbled with the key, took minutes to open the
door into his apartment. Finally the lock clicked and he pushed open the
door. His questing finger found the wall switch. Light flooded the room.
Wilson heaved a sigh of relief. He felt safe here. This place belonged
to him. It was his home, his retreat....
A low laugh, hardly more than a chuckle, sounded behind him. He whirled
and for a moment, blinking in the light, he saw nothing. Then something
stirred by one of the windows, gray and vague, like a sheet of moving
fog.
As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened,
took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, a
face that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fire
of anger in the eyes.
"Manning!" shrieked Wilson. "Manning!" He wheeled and sprinted for the
door, but the gray figure moved, too ... incredibly fast, as if it were
wind-blown vapor, and barred his path to the door.
"Why are you running away?" Manning's voice mocked. "Certainly you
aren't afraid of me."
"Look," Wilson whimpered, "I didn't think of what it meant. I just was
tired of working the way Page made me work. Tired of the little salary I
got. I wanted money. I was hungry for money."
"So you sold us out," said Manning.
"No," cried Wilson, "I didn't think of it that way. I didn't stop to
think."
"Think now, then," said Manning gravely. "Think of this. No matter where
you are, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, I'll always be
watching you, I'll never let you rest. I'll never give you a minute's
peace."
"Please," pleaded Wilson. "Please, go away and leave me. I'll give you
back the money ... there's some of it left."
"You sold out for twenty thousand," said Manning. "You could have gotten
twenty million. Chambers would have paid that much to know what you
could tell him, because it was worth twenty billion."
Wilson's breath was coming in panting gasps. He dropped his coat and
backed away. The back of his knees collided with a chair and he folded
up, sat down heavily, still staring at the gray mistiness that was a
man.
"Think of that, Wilson," Manning went on sneeringly. "You could have
been a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. You could have had all the
fine things these other people have. But you only got twenty thousand."
"What can I do?" begged Wilson.
The misty face split in a sardonic grin.
"I don't believe there's anything left for you to do."
Before Wilson's eyes the face dissolved, lost its lines, seemed to melt
away. Only streaming, swirling mist, then a slight refraction in the air
and then nothing.
Slowly Wilson rose to his feet, reached for the bottle of whiskey on the
table. His hand shook so that the liquor splashed. When he raised the
glass to his mouth, his still-shaking hand poured half the drink over
his white shirt front.
_CHAPTER NINE_
Ludwig Stutsman pressed his thin, straight lips together. "So that's the
setup," he said.
Across the desk Spencer Chambers studied the man. Stutsman was like a
wolf, lean and cruel and vicious. He even looked like a wolf, with his
long, thin face, his small, beady eyes, the thin, bloodless lips. But he
was the kind of man who didn't always wait for instructions, but went
ahead and used his own judgment. And in a ruthless sort of way, his
judgment was always right.
"Only as a last resort," cautioned Chambers, "do I want you to use the
extreme measures you are so fond of using. If they should prove
necessary, we can always use them. But not yet. I want to settle this
thing in the quietest way possible. Page and Manning are two men who
can't simply disappear. There'd be a hunt, an investigation, an ugly
situation."
"I understand," agreed Stutsman. "If something should happen to their
notes, if somebody could find them. Perhaps you. If you found them on
your desk one morning."
The two men measured one another with their eyes, more like enemies
than men working for the same ends.
"Not my desk," snapped Chambers, "Craven's. So that Craven could
discover this new energy. Whatever Craven discovers belongs to
Interplanetary."
Chambers rose from his chair and walked to the window, looked out. After
a moment's time, he turned and walked back again, sat down in his chair.
Leaning back, he matched his fingertips, his teeth flashing in a grin
under his mustache.
"I don't know anything about what's going on," he said. "I don't even
know someone has discovered material energy. That's up to Craven. He has
to find it. Both you and Craven work alone. I know nothing about either
of you."