Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

toward the source of the voice. He hit the chair without slowing, grappled crazily.

“I’ve got him!” He wrestled awkwardly, fantastically, seemingly in an insane tumbling without opponent.

Patricia was on her feet. She grasped an antique bronze candle-holder and darted toward the now fallen chair and to where Ross was wrestling desperately on the floor. Crowley was attempting to shout, but was largely smothered.

Patricia held the candlestick at the ready, trying to find an opening, trying to locate the invisible Crowley’s head.

Frederick Braun staggered to his own feet, bewildered, shaking.

A voice from the door said flatly, “OK, that’s it.” Then, sharper, “I said cut it out. You all right, Mr. Crowley?”

It was Larry. His thin black automatic was held almost negligently in his right hand. He ran his eyes up and down Patricia, taking in the candlestick weapon. His ordinarily empty face registered a flicker of amused approval.

Patricia gasped, “Oh, no,” dropped her bludgeon and sank into a chair, her head in her hands.

Ross, his face in dismay, came slowly to his feet. The redhead stared at the gunman, momentarily considering further attack. Larry, ignoring both Braun and Patricia, swung the gun to cover him exclusively. “I wouldn’t,” he said emptily.

Of a sudden, Ross’ head jerked backward. His nose flattened, crushingly, and then spurted blood. He reeled back, his head flinging this way and that, bruises and cuts appeared magically.

Crowley’s voice raged, “You asked for it, wise guy. How do you like these apples?”

The saturnine Larry chuckled sourly. “Hey, take it easy, chief. You’ll kill the guy.”

Ross had crumpled to the floor. There were still sounds of blows. Crowley raged, “You’re lucky I’m not wearing shoes, I’d break every rib in your body!”

Patricia was staring in hopeless horror. She said sharply, “Don, remember you need Ross! You need all of us! Without all of us there can be no more serum.”

The blows stopped.

“There will be no more serum anyway,” Braun said shakily. The thin little man still stood before his chair having moved not at all since the action began.

Crowley’s heavy breathing could be heard but he managed a snarl. “That’s what you think, Doc.”

Braun said, “By Caesar, I absolutely refuse to.⁠ ⁠…”

Crowley interrupted ominously. “You know, Doc, that’s where this particular common man has it all over you eggheads. You spend so much time reading, you don’t take in the action shows on TV. Now what you’re thinking is that even if we were going to twist your arm a little, you’d stick to your guns. But suppose, like, it was Pat we was working on, while you had to sit and watch.”

The elderly man’s brave front collapsed and his thin shoulders slumped.

Crowley barked a laugh.

Patricia by now, was bent over the unconscious Ross crying even as she tried to help him.

Crowley said to the silent, all but disinterested Larry, “Have these three put in separate rooms in that section they used for the violent wing when the place was a nuthouse. Have a good guard and see they don’t talk back and forth.”

“You’re the boss,” Larry said languidly.

Crowley was thorough. For that they had to give him credit. They were kept divided, each in a different room-cell and with at least two burly, efficient guards on constant watch. They were fed on army-type trays and their utensils checked carefully. There was no communication allowed⁠—even with the guard.

The second day, Crowley took measures to see their disappearance raised no alarm at either their place of employment or at their residences. This raised few problems since all were single and all had already taken off both from the job and from their homes in order to carry out their experiment. Crowley forced them to write further notes and letters finding excuses for extending their supposed vacations. He also had Larry return to the hotel suite, pay their bill, pack their things and bring them to the Catskill estate which had become their prison.

He had them make up lists of materials and equipment they would need for further manufacture of the serum upon which they had stumbled, and sent off men to acquire the things.

And on three occasions during the following weeks he had them brought from their cells and spent an hour or so with them at lunch or dinner. Crowley evidently needed an audience beyond that of his henchmen. The release of his basic character, formerly repressed, was progressing geometrically and there seemed to be an urgency to crow, to brag, to boast.

On the third of these occasions he was already seated at the table when they were ushered into the dining room. Crowley dismissed the guards with a wave of his hand as though they were liveried servants.

All had eaten but there were liqueurs and coffee, cigars and cigarettes on the broad table.

Ross sank into a chair and growled, “Well, what hath the great man wrought by now?”

Crowley grinned at him, poured coffee and then a dollop of Napoleon brandy into it. He gestured with a hand. “Help yourselves, folks. How you feeling? You been getting all the books you wanted? You look kind of peaked, Pat.”

“Miss O’Gara to you, you ape with delusions of grandeur,” she snapped. “When are you going to let us out of those prison cells?”

Crowley wasn’t provoked. The strong can afford to laugh at the malcontented weak. “That’s one of the things you never know,” he said easily. “You sure you want out? Something the Doc said the other day had a lotta fact in it. The fewer people know about this secret of mine, the better off I’ll be and the better off I am, the better off the whole country is going to be and I gotta think about that. I got responsibilities.”

“A combination of Engine Charley and Louis XIV, eh?” Ross muttered, running his beefy hand back over his crew cut. It was a relief to get out of his room and talk with the others, but he didn’t want Crowley to see that.

“What’s that?” the other was impatient of conversation