He grinned at her. "Tonight's the big night. This evening, just before
closing, I walk into.... Well, you don't have to know the name. Like I
said, it'll make the Brinks job look like peanuts. They lock up the
place and leave, see? O.K., about two o'clock in the morning, when the
city's dead, Larry and the boys drive up into an alley, behind. I go
around, one by one, and sock the four guards on the back of the head.
Then I open up for Larry and they take their time and clear the place
out. From then on, we got all the dough we need to start pyramiding it
up on the Stock Exchange and like that."
Patricia had drawn on rubber gloves, pulled a lab apron around her. She
began reaching for test tubes, measuring devices. She murmured softly,
"What keeps you from telling yourself you're nothing but a crook, Don?
When we first met you--it seems a terribly long time ago, back there in
Far Cry--you didn't seem to be such a bad egg."
"We didn't know, then, he was a cracked egg," Ross muttered. He looked
to where Crowley slouched, his eyes narrow as though considering his
chances of rushing the other. Crowley grinned and shook his head. "Don't
try it, Buster."
Crowley looked at Patricia. "You don't get it, sister. It's like
somebody or other said. The ends, uh, justify the means. That means...."
"I know what it means," Patricia said impatiently.
Dr. Braun, who rather hopelessly was also beginning to work at the
equipment their captor had provided, said reasonably, "Don, the greater
number of the thinkers of the world have rejected that maxim. If you
will, umah, analyze it, you will find that the end and the means are
one."
"Yeah, yeah, a lot of complicated egghead gas. What I'm saying, Pat, is
that what I'm eventually heading for is good for everybody. At least
it's good for all real hundred per cent Americans. Everybody's going to
go to college and guaranteed to come out with what you three got, a
doctor's degree. Everybody's going to get a guaranteed annual wage,
like, whether or not they can do any work. It's not a guy's fault if he
gets sick or unemployed or something. Everybody...."
"Shades of all the social-reformers who ever lived," Ross muttered.
"By Caesar," Braun said in despair, "I have an idea you'll get the vote
of every halfwit in the country."
Crowley came to his feet. "I don't like that kind of talk, Doc. Maybe
I'm just a country boy, but I know what the common man wants and what
I'm going to do is give it to him."
Patricia looked up from her work long enough to frown at him. "What
special are you going to get out of this, Don?"
That took him back for a moment and he scowled at her.
"Come, come," she said. "You've already admitted to we three just what
you think and are going to do. Now, how do you picture yourself, after
all this has been accomplished?"
His face suddenly broke into its grin, a somewhat sly element in it now.
"You know, when I get this all worked out, the folks are going to be
pretty thankful."
"I'll bet," Ross muttered. He, too, was working at his element of
compounding the serum.
"Yeah, they will, Buster," Crowley said truculently. "And they're going
to want to show it. You ever seen one of those movies like 'Ben Hur'
back in Roman days? Can you imagine everybody in the whole country
thinking you were the best guy ever lived? You know, like an Emperor."
"Like Caligula," Dr. Braun said softly.
"I don't know any of their names, but they really had it made. Snap your
fingers and there's a big banquet with the best floor show in the world.
Snap your fingers and here comes the sexiest dames in Hollywood. Snap
your fingers and some big entertainment like a chariot race, or
something. Once I put this over, the Common Man Party, that's the way
people are going to feel about me and want to treat me."
"And if they don't, you'll make them?" Ross said sarcastically.
"You're too smart for your own britches, egghead," Crowley snarled. He
looked at his watch. "Let's get this rolling. I got to get on down to
the city and start this caper going."
Ross handed a test tube to Dr. Braun and began stripping the gloves from
his hands. "That's my contribution," he said.
Patricia had already delivered hers. Dr. Braun combined them, then
heated the compound, adding a distillate of his own. He said, "When this
cools...."
Crowley crossed the room to the door and said something to the guard
there. He returned in a moment with an anthropoid ape in a cage. He sat
it on the table and looked at them.
"O.K.," he said to Braun, his voice dangerous. "Let's see you inject the
monk with this new batch of serum."
Braun raised his eyebrows.
The other watched him narrowly, saying nothing further.
Dr. Braun shrugged, located a hypodermic needle and prepared it. In a
matter of moments, the animal was injected.