American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (40 page)

“Filthy pictures, signore? Cellar Christians, kneeling, praying, singing psalms, kissing cross? Very naughty. Very smutty, signore. Entertain your friends . . . Excite the ladies.”

“No,” Foyle brushed the pornography aside. “I’m looking for Angelo Poggi.”

Y’ang-Yeovil signalled microscopically. His crew on the stairs began photographing and recording the interview without ceasing its pimping and whoring. The Secret Speech of the Intelligence Tong of the Inner Planets Armed Forces wigwagged around Foyle and Robin in a hail of tiny tics, sniffs, gestures, attitudes, motions. It was the ancient Chinese sign language of eyelids, eyebrows, fingertips, and infinitesimal body motions.

“Signore?” Y’ang-Yeovil wheezed.

“Angelo Poggi?”

“Si, signore. I am Angelo Poggi.”

“Chef ’s assistant off the ‘Vorga’?” Expecting the same start of terror manifested by Forrest and Orel, which he at last understood, Foyle shot out a hand and grabbed Y’ang-Yeovil’s elbow. “Yes?”

“Si, signore,” Y’ang-Yeovil replied tranquilly. “How can I serve your worship?”

“Maybe this one can come through,” Foyle murmured to Robin. “He’s not scared. Maybe he knows a way around the Block. I want information from you, Poggi.”

“Of what nature, signore, and at what price?”

“I want to buy all you’ve got. Anything you’ve got. Name your price.”

“But signore! I am a man full of years and experience. I am not to be bought in wholesale lots. I must be paid item by item. Make your selection and I will name the price. What do you want?”

“You were aboard ‘Vorga’ on September 16, 2436?”

“The cost of that item is Cr 10.”

Foyle smiled mirthlessly and paid.

“I was, signore.”

“I want to know about a ship you passed out near the asteroid belt. The wreck of the ‘Nomad.’ You passed her on September 16. ‘Nomad’ signalled for help and ‘Vorga’ passed her by. Who gave that order?”

“Ah, signore!”

“Who gave you that order, and why?”

“Why do you ask, signore?”

“Never mind why I ask. Name the price and talk.”

“I must know why a question is asked before I answer, signore.” Y’ang-Yeovil smiled greasily. “And I will pay for my caution by cutting the price. Why are you interested in ‘Vorga’ and ‘Nomad’ and this shocking abandonment in space? Were you, perhaps, the unfortunate who was so cruelly treated?”

“He’s not Italian! His accent’s perfect, but the speech pattern’s all wrong. No Italian would frame sentences like that.”

Foyle stiffened in alarm. Y’ang-Yeovil’s eyes, sharpened to detect and deduce from minutiae, caught the change in attitude. He realized at once that he had slipped somehow. He signalled to his crew urgently.

A white-hot brawl broke out on the Spanish Stairs. In an instant, Foyle and Robin were caught up in a screaming, struggling mob. The crews of the Intelligence Tong were past masters of this OP-I maneuver, designed to outwit a jaunting world. Their split-second timing could knock any man off balance and strip him for identification. Their success was based on the simple fact that between unexpected assault and defensive response there must always be a recognition lag. Within the space of that lag, the Intelligence Tong guaranteed to prevent any man from saving himself.

In three-fifths of a second Foyle was battered, kneed, hammered across the forehead, dropped to the steps and spreadeagled. The mask was plucked from his face, portions of his clothes torn away, and he was ripe and helpless for the rape of the identification cameras. Then, for the first time in the history of the tong, their schedule was interrupted.

A man appeared, straddling Foyle’s body . . . a huge man with a hideously tattooed face and clothes that smoked and flamed. The apparition was so appalling that the crew stopped dead and stared. A howl went up from the crowd on the Stairs at the dreadful spectacle.

“The Burning Man! Look! The Burning Man!”

“But
that’s
Foyle,” Y’ang-Yeovil whispered.

For perhaps a quarter of a minute the apparition stood, silent, burning, staring with blind eyes. Then it disappeared. The man spread-eagled on the ground disappeared too. He turned into a lightning blur of action that whipped through the crew, locating and destroying cameras, recorders, all identification apparatus. Then the blur seized the girl in the Renaissance gown and vanished.

The Spanish Stairs came to life again, painfully, as though struggling out of a nightmare. The bewildered Intelligence crew clustered around Y’ang-Yeovil.

“What in God’s name was that, Yeo?”

“I think it was our man. Gully Foyle. You saw that tattooed face.”

“And the burning clothes!”

“Looked like a witch at the stake.”

“But if that burning man was Foyle, who in hell were we wasting our time on?”

“I don’t know. Does the Commando Brigade have an Intelligence service they haven’t bothered to mention to us?”

“Why the Commandos, Yeo?”

“You saw the way he accelerated, didn’t you? He destroyed every record we made.”

“I still can’t believe my eyes.”

“Oh, you can believe what you didn’t see, all right. That was top secret Commando technique. They take their men apart and rewire and regear them. I’ll have to check with Mars HQ and find out whether Commando Brigade’s running a parallel investigation.”

“Does the army tell the navy?”

“They’ll tell Intelligence,” Y’ang-Yeovil said angrily. “This case is critical enough without jurisdictional hassels. And another thing: there was no need to manhandle that girl in the maneuver. It was undisciplined and unnecessary.” Y’ang-Yeovil paused, for once unaware of the significant glances passing around him. “I must find out who she is,” he added dreamily.

“If she’s been regeared too, it’ll be real interesting, Yeo,” a bland voice, markedly devoid of implication, said. “Boy Meets Commando.”

Y’ang-Yeovil flushed. “All right,” he blurted. “I’m transparent.”

“Just repetitious, Yeo. All your romances start the same way. ‘There’s no need to manhandle that girl . . .’ And then— Dolly Quaker, Jean Webster, Gwynn Roget, Marion—”

“No names, please!” a shocked voice interrupted. “Does Romeo tell Juliet?”

“You’re all going on latrine assignment tomorrow,” Y’angYeovil said. “I’m damned if I’ll stand for this salacious insubordination. No, not tomorrow; but as soon as this case is closed.” His hawk face darkened. “My God, what a mess! Will you ever forget Foyle standing there like a burning brand? But where is he? What’s he up to? What’s it all mean?”

Presteign of Presteign’s mansion in Central Park was ablaze for the New Year. Charming antique electric bulbs with zigzag filaments and pointed tips shed yellow light. The jaunte-proof maze had been removed and the great door was open for the special occasion. The interior of the house was protected from the gaze of the crowd outside by a jeweled screen just inside the door.

The sightseers buzzed and exclaimed as the famous and near-famous of clan and sept arrived by car, by coach, by litter, by every form of luxurious transportation. Presteign of Presteign himself stood before the door, iron gray, handsome, smiling his basilisk smile, and welcomed society to his open house. Hardly had a celebrity stepped through the door and disappeared behind the screen when another, even more famous, came clattering up in a vehicle even more fabulous.

The Colas arrived in a band wagon. The Esso family (six sons, three daughters) was magnificent in a glass-topped Greyhound bus. But Greyhound arrived (in an Edison electric runabout) hard on their heels and there was much laughter and chaffing at the door. But when Edison of Westinghouse dismounted from his Esso-fueled gasoline buggy, completing the circle, the laughter on the steps turned into a roar.

Just as the crowd of guests turned to enter Presteign’s home, a distant commotion attracted their attention. It was a rumble, a fierce chatter of pneumatic punches, and an outrageous metallic bellowing. It approached rapidly. The outer fringe of sightseers opened a broad lane. A heavy truck rumbled down the lane. Six men were tumbling baulks of timber out the back of the truck. Following them came a crew of twenty arranging the baulks neatly in rows.

Presteign and his guests watched with amazement. A giant machine, bellowing and pounding, approached, crawling over the ties. Behind it were deposited parallel rails of welded steel. Crews with sledges and pneumatic punches spiked the rails to the timber ties. The track was laid to Presteign’s door in a sweeping arc and then curved away. The bellowing engine and crews disappeared into the darkness.

“Good God!” Presteign was distinctly heard to say. Guests poured out of the house to watch.

A shrill whistle sounded in the distance. Down the track came a man on a white horse, carrying a large red flag. Behind him panted a steam locomotive drawing a single observation car. The train stopped before Presteign’s door. A conductor swung down from the car followed by a Pullman porter. The porter arranged steps. A lady and gentleman in evening clothes descended.

“Shan’t be long,” the gentleman told the conductor. “Come back for me in an hour.”

“Good God!” Presteign exclaimed again.

The train puffed off. The couple mounted the steps.

“Good evening, Presteign,” the gentleman said. “Terribly sorry about that horse messing up your grounds, but the old New York franchise still insists on the red flag in front of trains.”

“Fourmyle!” the guests shouted.

“Fourmyle of Ceres!” the sightseers cheered.

Presteign’s party was now an assured success.

Inside the vast velvet and plush reception hall, Presteign examined Fourmyle curiously. Foyle endured the keen iron-gray gaze with equanimity, meanwhile nodding and smiling to the enthusiastic admirers he had acquired from Canberra to New York, with whom Robin Wednesbury was chatting.

“Control,”
he thought.
“Blood, bowels and brain. He grilled me in his office for one hour after that crazy attempt I made on ‘Vorga.’ Will he recognize me?
Your face is familiar, Presteign,” Fourmyle said. “Have we met before?”

“I have not had the honor of meeting a Fourmyle until tonight,” Presteign answered ambiguously. Foyle had trained himself to read men, but Presteign’s hard, handsome face was inscrutable. Standing face to face, the one detached and compelled, the other reserved and indomitable, they looked like a pair of brazen statues at white heat on the verge of running molten.

“I’m told that you boast of being an upstart, Fourmyle.”

“Yes. I’ve patterned myself after the first Presteign.”

“Indeed?”

“You will remember that he boasted of starting the family fortune in the plasma blackmarket during the third World War.”

“It was the second war, Fourmyle. But the hypocrites of our clan never acknowledge him. The name was Payne then.”

“I hadn’t known.”

“And what was your unhappy name before you changed it to Fourmyle?”

“It was Presteign.”

“Indeed?” The basilisk smile acknowledged the hit. “You claim a relationship with our clan?”

“I will claim it in time.”

“Of what degree?”

“Let’s say . . . a blood relationship.”

“How interesting. I detect a certain fascination for blood in you, Fourmyle.”

“No doubt a family weakness, Presteign.”

“You’re pleased to be cynical,” Presteign said, not without cynicism, “but you speak the truth. We have always had a fatal weakness for blood and money. It is our vice. I admit it.”

“And I share it.”

“A passion for blood and money?”

“Indeed I do. Most passionately.”

“Without mercy, without forgiveness, without hypocrisy?”

“Without mercy, without forgiveness, without hypocrisy.”

“Fourmyle, you are a young man after my own heart. If you do not claim a relationship with our clan I shall be forced to adopt you.”

“You’re too late, Presteign. I’ve already adopted you.”

Presteign took Foyle’s arm. “You must be presented to my daughter, Lady Olivia. Will you allow me?”

They crossed the reception hall. Foyle hesitated, wondering whether he should call Robin to his side for impending emergencies, but he was too triumphant.
He doesn’t know. He’ll never know.
Then doubt came:
But I’ll never know if he does know. He’s crucible steel. He could teach me a thing or two about control.

Acquaintances hailed Fourmyle.

“Wonderful deception you worked in Shanghai.”

“Marvelous carnival in Rome, wasn’t it? Did you hear about the burning man who appeared on the Spanish Stairs?”

“We looked for you in London.”

“What a heavenly entrance that was,” Harry SherwinWilliams called. “Outdid us all, Fourmyle. Made us look like a pack of damned pikers.”

“You forget yourself, Harry,” Presteign said coldly. “You know I permit no profanity in my home.”

“Sorry, Presteign. Where’s the circus now, Fourmyle?”

“I don’t know,” Foyle said. “Just a moment.”

A crowd gathered, grinning in anticipation of the latest Fourmyle folly. He took out a platinum watch and snapped open the case. The face of a valet appeared on the dial.

“Ahhh . . . whatever your name is . . . Where are we staying just now?”

The answer was tiny and tinny. “You gave orders to make New York your permanent residence, Fourmyle.”

“Oh? Did I? And?”

“We bought St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fourmyle.”

“And where is that?”

“Old St. Patrick’s, Fourmyle. On Fifth Avenue and what was formerly 50th Street. We’ve pitched the camp inside.”

“Thank you.” Fourmyle closed the platinum Hunter. “My address is Old St. Patrick’s, New York. There’s one thing to be said for the outlawed religions . . . At least they built churches big enough to house a circus.”

Olivia Presteign was seated on a dais, surrounded by admirers paying court to this beautiful albino daughter of Presteign. She was strangely and wonderfully blind, for she could see in the infrared only, from 7,500 angstroms to one millimeter wavelengths, far below the normal visible spectrum. She saw heat waves, magnetic fields, radio waves; she saw her admirers in a strange light of organic emanations against a background of red radiation.