“We won’t need you—if you have something important you’d like to attend to,” Max said to the guard.
“I’m your guard—I have to stay here and guard,” the guard replied.
Max motioned to Hymie and they withdrew to a corner of the cell. “Did you hear that?” he said, lowering his voice. “That guard is guarding us.”
“I heard,” Hymie replied.
“I just don’t want you to say, later, that I’m keeping things from you,” Max said. “I always tell my leader everything. A leader without all the facts is like a fisherman without a worm.”
“I understand, Max. Thanks.”
“Unless, of course, the fisherman happened to bring along some bread crusts,” Max said. “If fish are very hungry, they’ll sometimes bite on bread crusts.”
“I know, Max.”
“Bread crusts aren’t much help to a leader without the facts, though,” Max said. “Try figuring out what step to take next when all you’ve got is a handful of dry bread.”
“Max . . . I understand.”
“Unless it’s the leader’s day off and he’s gone fishing,” Max said. “In that case, the fact he needs is whether or not the fish are hungry enough to bite on bread crusts. But if he had the bread crusts, he wouldn’t need the facts. All he’d have to do—”
“Max! I know! I know!”
“Hymie,” Max scolded, “if you’re going to be a leader, you’ll have to learn to control your temper. Your followers won’t respect you if you blow up like that over nothing. A leader is always cool, calm and collected. Remember that.”
“I will, Max.”
“All right, now—where was I? Oh, yes—I’d just congratulated you.”
“Max . . . somehow, I think I must have missed that part,” Hymie said.
“You’re not paying attention, Hymie. I congratulated you for saving the day—temporarily, at least.”
“I did?” Hymie said, puzzled. “What did I do, Max?”
“Do? You didn’t do anything. But, fortunately, that was enough. Just being there was all that was required. You threw a monkey wrench into Means’ and Ways’ plan. They’ve lost control over Number One. And it’s all because you were there.”
“Max, I didn’t do a thing,” Hymie said.
“You didn’t have to. All you had to do was walk into that laboratory. The instant Number One saw you, the flame was rekindled, Hymie. You heard that poetry, didn’t you? Number One is in love!”
“Not with me, Max,” Hymie said. “The last time I saw Number One, she told me to take a walk.”
“She meant she wanted you to take her for a walk, Hymie. A lovers stroll—haven’t you ever heard of that?”
“That’s not what she meant, Max. She told me where to go.”
“Oh? Where did she tell you to walk to, Hymie?”
“Off the end of a pier.”
“Well, in the meantime, she’s thought it over, and she’s sorry. She realizes now what a catch you are, Hymie. You’re dependable. And, besides, you’ve gone up in the world. You’re in charge of a case. That makes you an executive. Face it, Hymie—she loves you.”
“Max, it’s very hard to believe. She said some pretty nasty things to me.”
“But, you told me yourself that she’s fickle. Now, she’s just fickling the other way.”
“I know it sounds—”
Wayne Ways and Melvin Means had suddenly appeared at the cell door.
“What’d you do to that computer!” Ways said angrily, shaking a fist at Max.
“Still acting up, is she?” Max smiled.
“Poetry! That’s all we can get out of her!” Means said. “Want to hear the latest? It goes:
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways:
One, Two, Three, Four,
Five, Six, Seven—
“Sounds like a computer, all right,” Max nodded. “But if you think you’re going to get me to do anything about it, you’re like a fisherman without a worm.”
“We’ll torture you!” Ways threatened.
“A fat lot of good that will do,” Max said smugly. “The reason Number One is acting up is because she’s in love with Hymie. They were once steadies, you know. Unfortunately, there was a little misunderstanding, and they broke up. Hymie was hurt, of course. He thought she was just using him as a convenience until Mr. Right came along. And Number One thought Hymie ought to be the one to apologize, even though she’d started the whole thing by telling him to go jump off a pier. But then, today, when they saw each other again, they realized what a great mistake the parting had been.”
“Thanks,” Means said. “That’s what we wanted to know—what was causing all that love poetry. Now that we know, we can cure it. We’ll just feed her anti-love information. Before long, she’ll hate everybody—even her ex-robotfriend.”
Ways and Means departed.
“Well, Hymie,” Max said disgustedly, “you booted it again.”
“What did I do, Max?”
“You had a clear responsibility to shut me up, Hymie, and you muffed it. How you got to be an executive, I’ll never know.”
Again, Max motioned to Hymie, and they withdrew to a corner of the cell.
“We have to get out of here,” Max said, whispering. “Now—how do we do it?”
“I don’t know, Max.”
“Hymie, I figured out the problem. It’s your duty, as the leader, to come up with the solution. Do I have to do it all myself?”
“Do you have a suggestion, Max?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. First, I think we ought to overpower the guard.”
“But we’ll still be locked in the cell, Max.”
“Mmmmmm . . . you’re right. All right, first, we have to escape from the cell . . .
then,
we have to overpower the guard. How’s that?”
“Fine, Max. How do we escape?”
“Wouldn’t you like to do the thinking from here on out, Hymie? It’s your turn, you know.”
“It’s too bad we didn’t pick up some escape devices from Research and Development before we left,” Hymie said.
“Yes. Good old R & D is always— Wait a minute! I may have some left over from my last case,” Max said, digging a hand into his pocket. He brought out a small metal spoon.
“What’s that?” Hymie asked.
“It’s a small metal spoon,” Max replied.
“I mean what is it really?”
“Really, it’s a small metal spoon,” Max replied. “I don’t know what it’s doing in my pocket—it belongs in my sandbox.”
“Could we use it in some way, Max?”
“Well . . . if the guard is a sand-boxer himself, and he doesn’t have a small metal spoon, I suppose we could try bribing him.”
Hymie shook his head. “I don’t think so, Max.”
“If we could get him to take us to the machine shop, we could make it into a key,” Max suggested.
“I doubt it, Max.”
“Hold the spoon,” Max said. “I’ll see what else I can find.”
He dug into his pocket again. This time, he came up with a metal item about the size of an aspirin tablet. “This will do it,” he said. “This is used for underwater demolition. This one little explosive will blow up a body of water the size of Lake Ontario. My last case was at the bottom of the Pacific. The mission was to destroy a KAOS secret underwater nuclear power installation.”
“Did you do it, Max?”
“Would I still have the explosive if I’d done it?”
“What happened?”
“It’s dark at the bottom of the Pacific,” Max replied. “I couldn’t find the explosive. At the time, I had a slight headache—from thinking about carrying around an explosive the size of an aspirin tablet that could blow up a body of water the size of Lake Ontario—and so, I was also carrying some aspirin tablets. Well, as it happened, the explosive got mixed up with the aspirin tablets. And, my light wouldn’t work—”
“What was the matter with it, Max?”
“How do I know? I used up a whole box of matches, trying to strike a light. Defective workmanship, I suppose.”
“Maybe it was because you were at the bottom of the Pacific,” Hymie suggested.
“Hymie, above or below sea level, matches should still work. Anyway,” he said, “that was another case. It’s just lucky I didn’t use this explosive to blow up that nuclear power installation. If I had, I wouldn’t have it with me now. And this explosive, Hymie, is going to get us out of here.”
“It probably would, Max,” Hymie said. “But I think we’d regret it.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Max, if it’s powerful enough to blow up a body of water the size of Lake Ontario, what do you suppose it will do to this cell—and everybody in it?”
“That’s a very good point, Hymie. We better crawl under that bunk, so we won’t get hurt.”
“That won’t help, Max. Think about it.”
Max thought about it, then put the explosive back into his pocket. “I guess we’re stuck with the spoon,” he said.
“That won’t be much help, either, Max.”
“Never say die,” Max said. “I saw a Jimmy Cagney picture once where he rattled on the cell bars with a spoon. It made an awful racket.”
“Did it get him out of the cell, Max?”
“No, but it got me out of the theater,” Max replied. “And maybe the same thing would work in this instance. I’ll rattle the spoon on the bars. The noise may drive the guard away. And once the guard is gone, we can use the spoon to start digging our way out.”
“Max—”
But Max was determined. He began rattling the spoon on the bars, making a terrible racket.
“Hey!” the guard said, coming to the cell door. “That’s a terrible racket. You’re giving me a headache.”
“Sorry about that,” Max said sympathetically. “I know exactly how that is.” He dug into his pocket. “Here. Here’s an aspirin.”
“Thanks,” the guard replied, taking the tablet and swallowing it.
Max began rattling the spoon on the bars again.
The guard drew his gun and pointed it at Max. “Do that once more, and you get it right between the eyes!” he warned.
Glowering, Max put the spoon away. The guard returned to his post.
“Max! Do you know what you gave that guard!” Hymie said.
“Yes—a very nasty look!” Max replied. “He could have been polite about asking me to stop, he didn’t have to threaten me.”
“That aspirin, I mean. That was the explosive!”
“Oh-oh,” He called through the bars. “Guard! I want you to know that you don’t have to worry about us trying to make a jailbreak. So, don’t make any sudden moves. If you hear or see anything unusual, don’t panic. Ask questions first. Whatever you do, don’t jump up or run.”
“Quiet!” the guard yelled back.
“Leave him alone, Max,” Hymie said. “You might upset him.”
“Maybe we better get under that bunk, anyway, Hymie—just in case.”
“There’s nothing but cotton padding on that bunk, Max. What good would that do?”
“Don’t forget—I’ll be holding my spoon over us, too.”
A
S SOON
as 99 had had breakfast that morning, she strolled out to where the horse and cow were standing, grazing, assuming that Max and Hymie would make contact with her there. But morning passed and they did not appear. 99 took a half-hour off for lunch, then returned to the corral. She noticed now that all of the hired hands were clean-shaven. That started her wondering. Was it possible that Max and Hymie, obeying their bedside computers, had taken off their false mustaches? If so, they might have been recognized. They might now, in fact, be in the clutches of Ways and Means!
Beginning to worry, 99 strolled to the pool, mingled with the other guests, and began asking sly questions.
“Well . . . any clues to anything?” she inquired of a middle-aged man, settling down beside him in the next deck chair.
“My dear, clues to anything you might choose,” he beamed. “Nothing is impossible in this place. First vacation I’ve enjoyed in years. I’m thinking of moving my office out here.”
“Business and pleasure don’t mix,” 99 reminded him.
“I’ve always enjoyed working,” the man said. “And now I enjoy vacationing. So, it’ll be mixing pleasure with pleasure.”
“But won’t it get boring, enjoying yourself all the time?” 99 asked.
“No, no, no. There’s always something new and interesting going on here at the Leg Up. Why, only this morning, several gentlemen jumped into the pool fully clothed, turned the rim on that drain at the bottom, then disappeared through a secret opening in the side of the pool. You don’t see much of that back home in Milford, Connecticut.”
“Oh?”
“No. You have to drive all the way to Bridgeport. It gets pretty wild in Bridgeport sometimes.”
99 leaned a little forward, lowering her voice. “These men who jumped into the pool—were they clean-shaven?” she asked.
“All but two of them,” the man replied.
“Could you describe them?”
“Had handlebar mustaches.”
“Was there anything else about them that you noticed?” 99 asked.
“Well . . . one of them wasn’t as dumb-looking as the other.”
99 smiled. “Thank you.”
She got up, dived into the pool fully clothed, turned the rim on the drain, then disappeared through a secret opening.
“Same old stuff,” the man grumbled. “Who was it said there’s always something new and interesting going on here?”
Finding herself in a corridor, 99 sized up the situation, then proceeded toward the closed door at the far end of the corridor. Approaching a nozzle that was protruding from the wall, she identified it as a mind-destroying laser beam, and ducked under it. A moment later, she came to a second nozzle. Chalked over it, she saw the words: Out of Order. Recognizing the nozzle as a napalm spray, 99 knew that there would be no point to putting an Out of Order sign on it if it were really out of order, so the sign was probably a trick. She ducked under the spray and proceeded. The sign over the trapdoor did not fool her either. She soon reached the closed door at the end of the corridor.
Opening the door, 99 spotted Ways and Means, with their backs to her, feeding information into a machine that looked a great deal like a refrigerator that had broken out in a rash of gauges, buttons, dials and levers, and which, consequently, she assumed must be Number One. Ways and Means appeared to be quite perturbed. As a result, they did not see her as she slipped quietly across the laboratory toward one of the side doors. Nor did they notice when she passed through the doorway and entered the smaller corridor that led to the cells.
A few seconds later, 99 came upon the guard who was doing sentry duty near the cell which held Max and Hymie. She immediately dropped the man with one quick, sharp karate blow, then, as he fell, hurried to the bars of the cell.