Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 Part 39

He stood up and laughed. Quite a genuine laugh.

"Paula," he said comfortably, "get on the plane. In the cabin. Jamison and I are going to strip The Master."

Paula stared. The Master looked at him blankly. Jamison frowned bewilderedly, but stood up grimly to obey.

"But Senor," said The Master in gentle dignity, "merely to humiliate me--"

"Not for that," said Bell. He laughed again. "But all the time I've been hearing about the stuff, I've noticed that n.o.body thought of it as a drug. It was a poison. People were poisoned. They did not become addicts. But you--you are the only addict to your drug."

He turned to Jamison, his eyes gleaming.

"Jamison," he said softly, "did you ever know of a drug addict who could bear to think of ever being without a supply of his drug--_right on his person_?"

Jamison literally jumped.

"By G.o.d! No!"

The Master was quick. He was swarming up the plane-wing tip before Jamison reached him, and he kicked frenziedly when Jamison plucked him off. But then it was wholly, entirely, utterly horrible that the little white haired man, whose face and manner had seemed so cherubic and so bland, should shriek in so complete a blind panic as they forced his fingers open and took a fountain pen away from him.

"This is it," said Bell in a deep satisfaction. "This is his point of weakness."

The Master was ghastly to look at, now. Jamison held him gently enough, considering everything, but The Master looked at that fountain pen as one might look at Paradise.

"I--I swear," he gasped. "I--swear I will give you the formula!"

"You might lie," said Jamison grimly.

"I swear it!" panted The Master in agony. "It--If the formula is known it--can be duplicated! It--the excretion can be hastened! It can all be forced from the body! Simply! So simply! If only you know! I will tell you how it is done! The medicine is the cacodylate of--"

Bell was leaning forward, now, like a runner breasting the tape at the end of a long and exhausting race.

"I'll trade," he said softly. "Half the contents of the pen for the formula. The other half we'll need for a.n.a.lysis. Half the stuff in the pen for the formula for freeing your slaves!"

The Master sobbed.

"A--a pencil!" he gasped. "I swear--"

Jamison gave him a pencil and a notebook. He wrote, his hinds shaking.

Jamison read inscrutably.

"It doesn't mean anything to me," he said soberly, "but you can read it. It's legible."

Bell smiled faintly. With steady finger he took his own fountain pen from his pocket. He emptied it of ink, and put a scrupulous half of a milky liquid from The Master's pen into it. He pa.s.sed it over.

"Your medicine," said Bell quietly, "may taste somewhat of ink, but it will not be poisonous. Now, what do we do with you? I give you your choice. If we take you with us, you will be held very secretly as a prisoner until the truth of the information you have given us can be proven. And if your slaves have all been freed, then I suppose you will be tried...."

The Master was drawn and haggard. He looked very, very old and beaten.

"I--I would prefer," he said dully, "that you did not tell where I am, and that you go away and leave me here. I--I may have some subjects who will search for me, and--they may discover me here.... But I am beaten, Senor. You know that you have won."

Bell swung up on the wing of the plane. He explored about in the cabin. He came back.

"There are emergency supplies," he said coldly. "We will leave them with you, with such things as may be useful to allow you to hope as long as possible. I do not think you will ever be found here."

"I--prefer it, Senor," said The Master dully. "I--I will catch fish...."

Jamison helped put the packages ash.o.r.e. The Master s.h.i.+vered. Bell stripped off his coat and put it on top of the heap of packages. The Master did not stir. Bell laid a revolver on top of his coat. He went out to the plane and started the motors. The Master watched apathetically as the big seaplane pulled clumsily out of the little cove. The rumble of the engines became a mighty roar. It started forward with a rush, skimmed the water for two hundred yards or so, and suddenly lifted clear to go floating away through the air toward the north.

Paula was the only one who looked back.

"He's crying," she said uncomfortably.

"It isn't fear," said Bell quietly. "It's grief at the loss of his ambition. It may not seem so to you two, but I believe he meant all that stuff he told me. He was probably really aiming, in his own way, for an improved world for men to live in."

The plane roared on. Presently Bell said shortly:

"That stuff he has won't last indefinitely. I'm glad I left him that revolver."

Jamison stirred suddenly. He dug down in his pocket and fished out a cigar.

"Since I feel that I may live long enough to finish smoking this," he observed dryly, "I think I'll light it. I haven't felt that I had twenty minutes of life ahead of me for a long time, now. A sense of economy made me smoke cigarettes. It wouldn't be so much waste if you left half a cigarette behind you when you were killed."

The tight little cabin began to reek of the tobacco. Paula pressed close to Bell.

"But--Charles," she asked hopefully, "is--is it really all right, now?"

"I think so," said Bell, frowning. "Our job's over, anyhow. We go up the Chilean coast and find that navy boat. We turn our stuff over to them. They'll take over the task of seeing that every doctor, everywhere in South America, knows how to get The Master's poison out of the system of anybody who's affected. Some of them won't be reached, but most of them will. I looked at his formula. Standard drugs, all of them. There won't be any trouble getting the news spread. The Master's slaves will nearly go crazy with joy. And," he added grimly, "I'm going to see to it that the Rio police take back what they said about us. I think we'll have enough pull to demand that much!"

He was silent for a moment or so, thinking.

"I do think, Jamison," he said presently, "we did a pretty good job."

Jamison grunted.

"If--if it's really over," said Paula hopefully, "Charles--"

"What?"

"You--will be able to think about me sometimes," asked Paula wistfully, "instead of about The Master always?"