An answering machine! They were closed for the night!
How could I phone those security men?
I had the address. If you had the address you could get the phone number. Frantically, I demanded directory service. I identified myself as a Fed and pleaded for the phone number. I kept my eye on the viewer.
The security man came back. “Yeah,” he said to the Countess Krak, “your chief said you just stepped out. But maybe I ought to go up with you. Those five young guys looked pretty crazy.”
“What sort of a threat is this place under?” said the Countess Krak in her altered voice.
“A foul fiend dressed as a flower seller with brass heels,” said the security guard. “We’re supposed to shoot on sight. But we’ll be on the lookout for anyone else that’s suspicious. Our company is known for its efficiency.”
“Good for you,” said the Countess Krak. “With a menace like that around, I wouldn’t think of distracting you. I may be a while. These pot users don’t never answer straight.”
“Ain’t that a fact,” said the security guard. “But if I hear anything that sounds strange, I’ll be up.”
She went in. She got in the elevator. She went up. She got out into a hall.
Another security guard!
He was standing outside the door. “You can’t go in there,” he said.
She flashed her ID. “Your man down at the door verified me. Step in and call him if you don’t believe it.”
“They’re raising hell in there,” he said. “Sex orgy. But all right. I’ll call.” He shifted his riot gun and opened the door.
A blast of sound came out. Neo Punk Rock! Passionate cries!
The guard went in. Krak followed. They entered a hall. The living room beyond, was visible through another door.
Directory service gave me the number I needed. I dialed it urgently. If only I could get that phone to ring before the guard made his call, I would be victorious and the Countess Krak dead!
The guard picked his way through the living room. And the picking had to be careful.
The floor was carpeted with writhing, entwined bodies. Cries and groans punctuated the shattering Neo Punk Rock.
The guard’s expression was diffident as he stepped over and amongst the writhing bodies.
The phone sat unringing on the table.
My finger was flying on the dial.
The Countess Krak was looking into her pocket. I could not see what the security man was doing. She was getting something out.
I connected with the number!
The Countess Krak was reaching for the inner door. She pitched something into the living room, remained in the hall and closed the door on the scene.
I heard the phone ring in there!
I was in time. He had not yet placed his call.
My phone went live. The Neo Punk Rock was pouring through it with the cries and yells. “Eagle Eye Security,” came the voice.
“This is a Fed. For Gods’ sakes, that policewoman . . .”
WHONK!
The sound came through my phone.
A streak of blue appeared around the cracks of the inner door she had closed on the scene.
A BLUEFLASH!
“Hello!” I screamed into the phone.
Only Neo Punk Rock came back. “WHEEEEEEEOOOOOOO!”
PART FIFTY-TWO
Chapter 5
The Countess Krak opened the living room door.
The record player was stuck in the last groove, just scratching.
She counted the bodies on the floor, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
The security man was collapsed across the phone taboret, the instrument fallen from his drooping hand. A twinge of fear gripped me. She had heard that phone ring!
She walked over to it. She plucked the instrument from the floor. She put it to her ear!
“Who is this?” she said.
I went into total shock!
I was in direct communication with the Countess Krak!
She was talking to me!
Oh, Gods, my blood pressure went out of my head and splattered all over the ceiling.
I was on the verge of discovery by the deadly Countess Krak!
“Who is this?” she repeated. “I can hear you breathing.”
Jesus! I quickly held my breath!
Could she hear my heart beating, too?
Maybe she could trace the call! She was posing as a policewoman. Maybe she would arrest me for vice!
Believe me, it was real terror. I had her on the viewer. She had me on the phone!
I was suddenly terrified that I might start babbling.
A brilliant idea hit me! I should put down the phone and hang up.
I couldn’t unlock my arm muscles.
With the violent concentration that comes sometimes in threats to life, I made my muscles work.
I got the instrument down on the cradle and, with superhuman effort, unlocked my fingers.
I sank back, staring at the viewer with glazed eyes. She had almost had me!
What would she do now that she knew I was in New York? What would she do when she realized that it was I who was hounding her?
SHE WOULD KILL ME!
My hands began to shake. The corpse of the yellow-man she had killed back on Voltar was where the viewer should have been. He was staring at me with sightless eyes. He said . . . No, it was Torpedo. He was saying . . .
“Wait a minute, Gris,” I said. “This is no time to go crazy.”
“Who is this?” I said.
“This is Officer Gris of the Voltar Coordinated Information Apparatus, on duty as Section Chief of Section 451, Blito-P3. How are things going?”
“Terrible,” I said. “How is Lombar Hisst these days?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” I said. “Has hunting been good in the Blike Mountains?”
“Only passable. Now that I have become Heller . . .”
“SHUT UP!” I screamed.
It didn’t do any good. Another voice was in the room!
“What in the name of Christ are you shouting about now, Inkswitch?” It was Adora. “You shouldn’t be watching TV programs with violence in them if they’re going to make you scream.”
Usually I hated it when she burst in on me. This time it was welcome. They were home.
She shut the door.
What little sanity I could rally mustered to my aid.
I watched the viewer.
The Countess Krak was searching the apartment, opening cabinets—looking for letters? Papers? Oh, was I glad to have never had anything to do with these women directly! She had apparently found nothing to tell her what she wanted to know.
Then I noticed something absolutely horrible. The gloves! She had drawn on a pair of Zanco SURGICAL GLOVES! She was giving the cuffs a tentative tug as she approached the mass of entwined bodies. Was she going to cut them to pieces? Oh, the poor, helpless victims, lying there unconscious in the pitiless stare of this archfiend! I hushed my breathing. She was speaking.
“My goodness,” she muttered, “these primitives certainly can get tangled up on the subject of sex.”
She didn’t seem to know how to go about straightening them up. Finally she plowed in. She grabbed a Hispanic’s ankles and dragged him out and propped him against the wall. Then she got a black by the wrists and dragged him over to the row she was making. She kept at it in an orderly way.
She got the head of Dolores out from between the legs of Toots Switch and propped the two of them in the line.
“Ugh,” she said, looking down at the last body left on the rug, Maizie Spread. “You primitives don’t even bathe!” She dragged Maizie over and added her to the line. She stared at the three women she had now propped up at the end. “Oh, dear, how I wronged Jettero! He’d never even touch such carrion!”
She reached out to get a chair. There was something on it and she started to toss it aside. Then she looked at it again.
It was a peculiarly shaped pillow with straps
on it. She whipped her gaze over to Maizie Spread slumped against the wall.
“Why, you crooked slut!” she said. “You weren’t even pregnant!”
And sure enough, the stomach of Maizie Spread was flat as a table top!
“Well, we’ll soon find out,” said the Countess Krak, “who put you up to this!”
She reached into the case she carried. She was pulling something out.
THE HYPNOHELMET!
Oh, Gods, I was done for, for sure.
What did these girls know?
Oh, if only I had suspected this, I could have placed myself within two miles and, due to the relay breaker switch in my skull, that hypnohelmet would not have worked! But it was too late now to try to go rushing the miles and miles from where I was to the Bronx. On the other hand, I was quite sure that it would have taken far more nerve than I could muster to come any closer to the dangerous Countess Krak!
She switched it on. She went to the first young man in the line and plopped it indifferently upon his lolling head. I was amazed. I had not realized a hypnohelmet would work through the unconsciousness of blueflash. Apparently it made no difference. She plugged in the microphone.
“You will recall nothing of having seen or heard a policewoman this evening. You will forget everything connected to my visit. You will not awake until I snap my fingers three times.”
She lifted it off him and banged it onto the head of the black. She said exactly the same thing. She kept this up until she had completed all five of the young men.
She had gotten to Dolores now and she sat down on a chair before the lolling Mexican girl. Something was dribbling from the poor thing’s mouth. “Ugh,” said the Countess and, taking a Zanco surgical pad, wiped the girl’s face. Krak tossed the folded material contemptuously against the girl’s bare stomach. “Too stupid to even get it in the right place. But we’ll see if you’re more informed about other things.”
She put the helmet securely upon the black-haired head.
“Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep,” the Countess said into her microphone. “You will now tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help your Gods.
“When did you first hear the name Wister?”
Muffled words came in a dull monotone. “In the press. On TV when he was racing.”
“Have you ever met Wister?”
“No.”
“Who put you up to this lawsuit business and these lies?”
“I was hired by Dingaling, Chase and Ambo. They came to my town and said they were soliciting business and could forge papers and I would be rich if I did what they told me to do.”
“What were you?”
“I was just a local whore.”
“Who pays you?”
“Dingaling, Chase and Ambo.”
“Do you know anyone else connected with this forgery and swindle who is paying you or giving orders?”
“No.”
“You will now do exactly as I tell you. You will go, first thing tomorrow morning, to Dingaling, Chase and Ambo and tell them they must let you confess to the court that this is a swindle, that you swore falsely and that they must dismiss the suits and charges they put on Wister. And you will threaten to expose them to the Bar Association if they do not, and if they do not you will in fact move heavens and hells to expose them. Is this understood?”
“Yes.”
“You will forget I have been here and will not be able to recall that these are my suggestions. You will believe they are your ideas.
“You will not awaken until you hear me snap my fingers three times.”
Rapidly, she went to Toots Switch and then to Maizie Spread and got the same answers and said the same things. The only difference was to the last one, Maizie Spread. To her she added, “You will take that blasted pillow and hold it up and say you were not pregnant and that you lied.”
Out of the corner of her eye, as she finished talking to Maizie, she saw the security guard was stirring. He was fumbling around for his gun.
The Countess plopped the helmet on his head. “Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep. When you awake you will decide to do something about this orgy. You will tell your partners downstairs, if they ask you, that a policewoman came and talked to one of the boys about a pot bill, but you did not notice which one. You will have no recollection of what I looked like. You will not recall answering the phone. You will not awaken until I snap my fingers three times.”
She turned the hypnohelmet off and put it away.
She looked around. She picked up the wad she had dropped on Dolores.
She went to the outer door, opened it and looked out. Then she removed and dropped the surgical gloves in an ashtray, added the wad and touched a match to it. They went up in smoke.
She snapped her fingers three times loudly.
The Countess flinched with disgust as the cries of the three girls soared eagerly into the passionate snarls of the five young men. Bodies began to thud. The record started up.
The security man stood, looked at the gathering pile of bodies on the rug.
“Move over!” he ordered the Hispanic youth. “I got to do something about this!” And he began to unbuckle his pants.
“I’ll never understand these primitives,” said the Countess Krak. “You tell them the simplest things and they still manage to get them wrong!”
She stepped out of the apartment and closed the door behind her.
She made her way down to the front entrance. “Any sign of the flower seller with the brass heels?” she said.
“We’re lucky so far,” said the guard. “Did it all go all right?”
“Just fine,” said the Countess Krak. “I was able to put paid on it.”
She walked down the broken sidewalk and along the badly lit street. She came to a dark blot of shadow. (Bleep), I couldn’t make the vehicle out!
The sound of a door sliding. No light. The door slid shut.
The rustle of clothes. She must be undressing. The rustle of more clothes. Was she dressing? It was all happening very fast.
A click. On went the light.
The cop was untied!
She was lying there on the narrow bunk.
Not a sign of rope or restraint.
The policewoman had a beatific smile on her face, looking up, not even noticing the Countess Krak.
The car started up. It got into motion.
The cop reached out for her clothing and began to dress.
By the time the policewoman was fully clothed, the car had stopped again.
The woman reached out for the handle and slid the side door back and open. The lighted front of the building of the Bronx Division Metropolitan Police Vice Squad was in view across the street.
The woman was humming a little song to herself as she got out and walked toward her office.
Krak closed the door. The vehicle began to roll.
The Countess looked down. The Eyes and Ears of Voltar envelope was lying on the floor. The item that was Unit B was in it.
“Bang-Bang,” the Countess called. “Didn’t you take the black patch?”
“Well, no, I didn’t,” was Bang-Bang’s reply from up front. “I don’t entirely trust gadgets from the toy store.”
“And that woman from the Vice Squad followed you?”
“Yes.”
“But what could you have said to her?”
Bang-Bang’s reply was muffled. “Nothing much.”
“Bang-Bang, have you been up to something?”
“Me, Miss Joy?”
PART FIFTY-TWO
Chapter 6
Whenever the treacherously optimistic thought occurs to you that things can’t get any worse, watch out!
The next morning I slept late, recovering from the excessive drain of adrenaline precipitated by the shock of actually being spoken to by the Countess Krak.
I was counting on being able to review the viewer by means of recorded strips. But when I rose around 1:00 PM, I made a dreadful discovery:
I was entirely out of recording strips. Unless I kept my face continually glued to the viewer, I would miss data vitally necessary to trapping this criminal in the midst of her blood-spattered deeds.