"She's coming with us," Malone said, pointing to Dorothea.
Boyd shrugged. "Malone," he said, "who do you think you are? The Pied
Piper of Hamelin?"
* * * * *
Malone wheeled and went ahead. Opening the door, he played his I-R
flashlight on the room inside and he, Boyd and Dorothea trailed in,
going through rooms piled with huge boxes. They went up an iron stairway
to the second floor, and so on up to the roof.
They moved across the roof quickly under the cold stars, to the wall of
the warehouse, which was two stories higher than the building they were
on. Of course, there were no windows in the warehouse wall facing them,
except on the top story.
But there was a single, heavy, fireproof emergency exit. It would have
taken power machinery or explosives to open that door from the outside
without a key, although from the inside it would open easily.
Fortunately, Malone had a key.
He took it out and stepped aside. "Give that lock the works," he
whispered to Boyd.
Boyd took a lubricant gun from his pocket and fired three silent shots
of special oil into the lock. Then he shot the hinges, and cracks around
the door.
They waited for a minute or two while the oil, forced in under pressure,
did its work. Then Malone fitted the key carefully into the lock and
turned it, slowly and delicately. The door swung open in silence. Malone
slipped inside, followed by Boyd and Dorothea Fueyo.
Infrared equipment went on again, and the eerie illumination spread over
their surroundings. Malone tapped Boyd on the shoulder and jerked his
thumb toward the back stairs. This was plainly no time for talk.
From the floor above, they could hear the murmur of youthful voices.
They started for the stairway. Fortunately, the building was of the
steel-and-concrete type; there were no wooden floors to creak and groan
beneath their feet.
At the bottom of the stairs, they paused. Voices came down the stairwell
clearly, even words being defined in the silence.
"... And quit harping on whose fault it was." Malone recognized Mike
Fueyo's voice. "That FBI guy was on to us and we had to pull out; you
know that. We always figured we'd have to pull out some day. So why not
now?"
"Yeah," another voice said. "But you didn't have to go and vanish right
under that Fed's nose. You been beating into our heads not to do that
sort of stuff ever since we first found out we could make this vanishing
bit. And then you go and do it in front of a Fed. Smart. Sure, you get a
big bang out of it, but is it smart? I ask you--"
"Yeah?" Mike said. "Listen, Silvo, they never would've got onto us if it
hadn't been for your stupid tricks. Slugging a cop on the dome. Cracking
up a car. You and your bug for speed!"
Malone blinked. Then it hadn't been Miguel Fueyo who'd hit Sergeant
Jukovsky, but Silvo. Malone tried to remember the list of Silent Spooks.
Silvo ... Envoz. That was it.
"You slugged the FBI guy, Mike," Silvo said. "And now you got us all on
the run. That's your fault, Mike. I want to see my old lady."
"I had to slug him," Mike said. "Listen, all Ramon's stuff was in that
Cadillac. What'd have happened if he'd found all that stuff?"
"So what happened anyway?" another voice--Ramon?--said. "He found your
stupid notebook, didn't he? He went yelling to the cops, didn't he?
We're running, ain't we? So what difference?"
"Shut up!" Mike roared.
"You ain't telling me to shut up!" (That was the third voice. Malone
thought; possibly Ramon Otravez.)
"Me either!" Silvo yelled. "You think you're a great big-shot, you think
you're king of the world!"
"Who figured out the Vanish?" Mike screamed. "You'd all be a bunch of
bums if I hadn't showed you that! And you know it! You'd all--"
"Don't give us that!" Silvo said. "We'd have been able to do it, same as
you. Like you said, anybody who's got talent could do it. There were
guys you tried to teach--"
"Sure," said a fourth voice. "Listen, Fueyo, you're so bright--so why
don't you try teaching it to somebody who don't have the talent?"
"Yeah!" said voice number five. "You think you could teach that flashy
sister of yours the Vanish?"
"You shut up about my sister, Phil!" Mike screamed.
"So what's so great about her?"
"She got that book back from the Fed," Mike said. "That's what. It's
enough!"