“Because the watcher is on the West Coast. We can’t reach him. If he’s watching, he can see every move we make, hear every word we say.”
“Who is it?”
*
“Greg Manning or Russ Page,” said Stutsman. “You’ve heard of them?”
“Sure. I heard of them.”
“They have a new kind of television,” said Stutsman. “They can see and hear everything that’s happening on Earth, perhaps in all the Solar System. But I don’t think they’re watching us now. Craven has a machine that can detect their televisor. It registers certain field effects they use. They weren’t watching when I left Craven’s laboratory just a few minutes ago. They may have picked me up since, but I don’t think so.”
“So Craven has made a detector,” said Greg calmly. “He can tell when we’re watching now.”
“He’s a clever cuss,” agreed Russ.
“Take a look at that machine now,” urged Scorio. “See if they’re watching. You shouldn’t have come here. You should have let me know and I would have met you some place. I can’t have people knowing where my hideout is.”
“Quiet down,” snapped Stutsman. “I haven’t got the machine. It weighs half a ton.”
Scorio sank deeper into his chair, worried. “Do you want to take a chance and talk business?”
“Certainly. That’s why I’m here. This is the proposition. Manning and Page are working in a laboratory out on the West Coast, in the mountains. I’ll give you the exact location later. They have some papers we want. We wouldn’t mind if something happened to the laboratory. It might, for example blow up. But we want the papers first.”
*
Scorio said nothing. His face was quiet and cunning.
“Give me the papers,” said Stutsman, “and I’ll see that you get to any planet you want to. And I’ll give you two hundred thousand in Interplanetary Credit certificates. Give me proof that the laboratory blew up or melted down or something else happened to it and I’ll boost the figure to five hundred thousand.”
Scorio did not move a muscle as he asked: “Why don’t you have some of your own mob do this job?”
“Because I can’t be connected with it in any way,” said Stutsman. “If you slip up and something happens, I won’t be able to do a thing for you. That’s why the price is high.”
The gangster’s eyes slitted. “If the papers are worth that much to you, why wouldn’t they be worth as much to me?”
“They wouldn’t be worth a dime to you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you couldn’t read them,” said Stutsman.
“I can read,” retorted the gangster.
“Not the kind of language on those papers. There aren’t more than two dozen people in the Solar System who could read it, perhaps a dozen who could understand it, maybe half a dozen who could follow the directions in the papers.” He leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at the gangster. “And there are only two people in the System who could write it.”
“What the hell kind of a language is it that only two dozen people could read?”
“It isn’t a language, really. It’s mathematics.”
“Oh, arithmetic.”
“No,” Stutsman said. “Mathematics. You see? You don’t even know the difference between the two, so what good would the papers do you?”
Scorio nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Chapter Eleven
The Paris-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic ship that rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lights of eastern Europe.
Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. There was nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and the other occupants of the ship ... alone in the dark world that surrounded them.
But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides the pilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the three stodgy traveling men who were his fellow passengers.
Wilson’s hair ruffled at the base of his skull, tingling with an unknown fear that left him shaken.
A voice whispered in his ear: “Harry Wilson. So you are running away!”
Just a tiny voice that seemed hardly a voice at all, it seemed at once to come from far away and yet from very near. The voice, with an edge of coldness on it, was one he never would forget.
He cowered in his seat, whimpering.
The voice came again: “Didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t run away? That no matter where you went, I’d find you?”
“Go away,” Wilson whispered huskily. “Leave me alone. Haven’t you hounded me enough?”
“No,” answered the voice, “not enough. Not yet. You sold us out. You warned Chambers about our energy and now Chambers is sending men to kill us. But they won’t succeed, Wilson.”
“You can’t hurt me,” said Wilson defiantly. “You can’t do anything but talk to me. You’re trying to drive me mad, but you can’t. I won’t let you. I’m not going to pay any more attention to you.”
The whisper chuckled.
“You can’t,” argued Wilson wildly. “All you can do is talk to me. You’ve never done anything but that. You drove me out of New York and out of London and now you’re driving me out of Paris. But Berlin is as far as I will go. I won’t listen to you any more.”
“Wilson,” whispered the voice, “look inside your bag. The bag, Wilson, where you are carrying that money. That stack of credit certificates. Almost eleven thousand dollars, what is left of the twenty thousand Chambers paid you.”
With a wild cry Wilson clawed at his bag, snapped it open, pawed through it.
*
The credit certificates were gone!
“You took my money,” he shrieked. “You took everything I had. I haven’t got a cent. Nothing except a few dollars in my pocket.”
“You haven’t got that either, Wilson,” whispered the voice.
There was a sound of ripping cloth as something like a great, powerful hand flung aside Wilson’s coat, tore away the inside pocket. There was a brief flash of a wallet and a bundle of papers, which vanished.
The hostess was hurrying toward him.
“Is there something wrong?”
“They took ...” Wilson began and stopped.
What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across the world had robbed him?
The three traveling men were looking at him.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he stammered. “I really am. I fell asleep and dreamed.”
He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner of his seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, high in the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin ... stranded without money, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and the few personal effects in his bag.
Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The plane was entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, was no place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They