Ten From Infinity Part 31

Brent Taber stood in the shelter of a doorway on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and watched an entrance across the street. He had been there for over an hour.

Another hour pa.s.sed and Taber s.h.i.+fted from one aching foot to the other as a man in a blue suit emerged from the entrance and moved off down the street.

When the man had turned a corner, Taber crossed over and looked up at the brownstone. It was a perfect place to hide--one of the many rooming houses in the city where, if you paid your rent and kept your peace, no one cared who you were or where you came from.

Not even, Taber reflected, if you had been born in a laboratory and had come from someplace among the stars.

He climbed the steps of the brownstone and tried the k.n.o.b. The door opened. He went inside and found himself in a drab, dark hall furnished with an umbrella stand, a worn carpet, and a table spread with mail.

There was a bell on the table. He tapped it and, after a lazy length of time, a shapeless woman came through a door on the right and regarded him with no great show of cordiality.

"Nothing vacant, mister. Everything I've got is rented."

"I wasn't looking for a room. I'm just doing a little checking."

"My license is okay," the woman said belligerently. "The place is clean and orderly."

"That's not what I'm checking about. There's been some counterfeit money pa.s.sed in this neighborhood and we're trying to trace it down."

The woman had a p.r.o.nounced mustache that quivered at this news.

"Counterfeit! My roomers are honest."

"I'm sure they are. But some people carry counterfeit money without knowing it. Do they all pay in cash?"

"Only two of them."

"Men or women?"

"One girl--Katy Wynn."

"Where does she work?"

"Down in Wall Street."

"Not much chance we're interested. This money has been turning up around Times Square."

"The other's a man--quiet, no trouble, pays his rent right on the dot every week. John Dennis his name is and he doesn't look like no counterfeiter."

Taber took a forward step. "What's his room number?"

"Six--on the second floor. But he isn't in now. He just went out."

"Okay. Maybe I'll be back. As I said, we don't suspect anybody. We're just checking for sources."

Taber turned toward the door. The woman vanished back into her own quarters as Taber snapped the lock. He stood in the vestibule for a minute or two, studying some cards he took from his pocket, and when she did not reappear, he opened the door, went back in, and climbed the stairs.

The door to number six was not locked. Taber went inside. The window was small and gave on an areaway. He could see nothing until he turned on the light. Even then, he could see nothing of interest--the room was ordinary in every sense.

But as Brent Taber checked it out, some unusual aspects became apparent.

There were two pieces of luggage in the closet. One, an oversized suitcase, stood on end.

And jammed neatly down behind it was the body of Les King. His throat had been cut.

Brent Taber stared down into the closet for what seemed like an interminable time. His eyes were bleak and his mouth was grim and stiff as he pa.s.sed a slow hand along his jaw.

He took a long, backward step and closed his eyes for a moment as though hoping the whole improbable mess would go away. But it was still there when he opened them again.

He turned, went downstairs, and took the receiver off the phone on the wall by the front door.

The shapeless landlady came out again. She scowled at Taber. "What are you doing here?"

He regarded her with a kind of affectionate weariness. "Have you got a dime, lady?"

Gaping, she pawed into her ap.r.o.n pocket and handed him a coin.

"Thanks much." He dialed. "Is Captain Abrams there?"

There was a wait, during which Brent Taber asked the oddly bemused landlady: "Are you afraid of the dead?"

But before she could decide whether she was or not, Taber turned to the phone. "Captain?.... That's right, Brent Taber ... No, right, here in Manhattan. There's been a little trouble. You'd better come over personally."

He turned to the landlady. "What's the address here, sister?"

And later, with the landlady back in her lair, Brent Taber sat down on the stairs to wait; sat there with surprise at the feeling of relief that filled his mind. He had no feeling of triumph about it; no sense of a job well done. But there was no great guilt at having failed, either.

Mostly, he thought, it was the simplification that had come about. There had been so many confusing and bewildering complications in the affair; improbability piled on the impossible; the ridiculous coupled with the incredible.

But now, with one stroke of a knife, it had been simplified and brought into terms everyone could understand; into terms Captain Abrams of the New York Police Department would grasp in an instant.

A killer was on the loose.

One of Senator Crane's priceless gifts was a sense of timing. Much of his success had sprung from the instinctive knowledge of when to act. He had a sense of the dramatic which never deserted him. As a result, he had been known to turn in an instant from one subject to another--to dodge defeats and score triumphs with bewildering agility.

His preoccupation on this particular day was with a home-state issue--the location of a government plant. After he obtained the floor, he counted the house and noted that only a bare quorum was present.

Gradually, the members of the Senate of the United States would drift to their seats. So Crane began reading letters which tended to support his state's claim to the new plant and the benefits that would accrue therefrom.

Crane droned on. The Vice-President of the United States looked down on the top of Senator Crane's ma.s.sive head and became fruitfully preoccupied with thoughts of his own.

Then, quite suddenly, the line of Crane's exposition changed. The Vice-President wasn't quite sure at what precise point this had come about. He wasn't aware of the change until some very strange words penetrated:

" ... so, therefore, it has become starkly apparent that the American people have been denied the information which would have made them aware of their own deadly danger. Invasion from s.p.a.ce is now imminent."

The Vice-President tensed. Had the stupid idiot gone mad? Or had he, the Vice-President, been in a fog when vital, top-secret information had been made public?

He banged the gavel down hard, for want of a better gesture, and was grateful when a tall, dignified man with a look of deepest concern on his face rose from behind his desk out on the floor.