I took a sip of cognac and treated Hinkus to one too—we were both feeling under the weather. I don’t know how I looked, but Hinkus was quite green; from time to time he touched his head carefully. I left the physicist to his thoughts and started in on Hinkus again.
“All right, Finch—but how did you manage to track him down? You didn’t know beforehand what form he’d taken …”
Hinkus smiled, looking smug despite his greenish tinge.
“You aren’t the only ones who can track people down, Inspector,” he said. “First of all, Beelzebub may be a wizard, but he’s also a fool. He drags that trunk around with him wherever he goes. It’s the only one like it in the world. So all I had to do was ask around until I found out where the trunk had gone. Second, he’s got money to burn … Whatever he pulled out of his pocket, that’s what he paid. People like that are rare, as you yourself know. Wherever he’d been, they only talked about him. There’s no trick to it. Generally speaking, I find who I’m looking for … That Barnstoker turned out to be a mistake—I can’t deny it: the old man pulled the wool over my eyes. Those damned lollipops of his … And then, I go out into the lobby, he’s sitting there alone, thinking that no one was watching him, holding some kind of wooden doll in his hands. You guys should have seen what he was doing with it!… Yup, I messed up with that one, of course …”
“Not to mention that he was always with that woman …” I said thoughtfully.
“No,” said Hinkus. “The woman isn’t necessarily always with him, Chief. When there’s a job to be done, he gets her from somewhere … And anyway, she’s not a woman, she’s some sort of werewolf like him … No one knows where he stows her when she’s not around.”
And then I caught myself: there I was, a respectable, experienced police officer, no longer a young man, sitting discussing werewolves, wizards and sorcerers completely seriously with a partially insane criminal … I looked at Simone guiltily, but found that the physicist had disappeared, and that in his place, leaning against the doorway, stood the owner with his Winchester under his arm, and I remembered all the hints, all the little conversations about zombies, and his fat index finger wagging meaningfully in front of my face. I felt even more humiliated; I lit a cigarette and with deliberate severity turned to Hinkus.
“Enough. Have you ever seen the one-armed man before?”
“What one-armed man?”
“You were sitting next to him at the table.”
“Oh—the one wolfing down a lemon … No, that’s the first time I saw him. Why?”
“Nothing,” I said. “When was Champ supposed to arrive?”
“That evening. He didn’t come. Now I understand: it must have been the avalanche.”
“Then what were you thinking when you attacked me, you idiot?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Hinkus said wistfully. “Put yourself in my shoes, Chief. The police weren’t going to give me any breaks. I’m a wanted man, I’ve earned a life sentence. So I decided: grab the gun, break some heads if I have to, and make my way to the blockage … then I’d either find my own way through, or Champ would pick me up. Don’t think Champ’s sleeping on all this either. The police aren’t the only ones who have airplanes.”
“How many people is Champ bringing with him?”
“I don’t know. No less than three. But of course, they’re the best …”
“All right, get up,” I said, hauling myself to my feet with no small difficulty. “Let’s go, I’m locking you up.”
Hinkus got up, moaning and groaning. We went with the owner down the back stairs, so as not to meet anyone on the way. Nevertheless, we ran into Kaisa in the kitchen. Seeing me, she screamed and hid behind a plate.
“Don’t scream, you idiot,” the owner said strictly. “Get some hot water ready, bandages, iodine … This way, Peter, put him in the storage room.”
I inspected the storage room: it looked fine. The strong, reliable door locked from the outside with a padlock. There were no other ways out—not even a window.
“You’re going to sit here until the police arrive,” I told Hinkus as I left. “And don’t try to do anything, or I’ll shoot you on the spot.”
“There you go,” Hinkus whined. “The Finch is under lock and key, meanwhile that one walks around free, nothing sticks to him … It’s no good, chief. No justice … And I’m wounded, my head hurts …”
I didn’t get into it with him, I just locked the door and put the key in my pocket. I had accumulated quite a number of keys so far. A few more hours of this, I thought, and I’ll have to carry all the keys in the inn.
Afterwards we went to the office. Kaisa brought the water and bandages, and the owner began to straighten me out.
“What kind of weapons are there in the inn?” I asked him.
“The Winchester, two hunting shotguns. A pistol. We have weapons, but which of us are going to shoot them?”
“Right,” I said. “That’s a good question.”
Shotguns versus machine guns. Du Barnstoker against top-notch goons. Anyway, there wouldn’t be any shootouts, I know this “Champ”: he’d just throw some nasty piece of work out of the plane and pick us all off in an open field, like partridges …
“While you were upstairs,” the owner said, deftly washing my forehead off around the wound, “Moses came to see me. He put a sack of money on the table—a sack, Peter, I’m not exaggerating, and demanded that I put it immediately in the safe. He believes, you see, that in such a situation his property is in grave danger.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I may have made a slight mistake,” he confessed. “I slipped and told him that you had the keys to the safe.”
“Thanks, Alek,” I said bitterly. “Now he’ll start hunting police inspectors …”
We were quiet. The owner bandaged me up. It was painful, I was starting to feel nauseous from the pain. That jerk must have broken my collarbone. The radio receiver crackled and hissed out the local news. Not a word was said about the avalanche in Bottleneck. The owner stepped back to examine his handiwork.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
He picked up the basin and asked, busily:
“Who should I send you?”
“To hell with it,” I said. “I want to sleep. Take the Winchester, sit in the hall and shoot anyone who comes near that door. I need at least a short hour to sleep, otherwise I’m going to collapse. Damned ghouls. Stinking werewolves.”
“I don’t have any silver bullets,” the owner said shortly.
“Then use the lead ones, dammit! And quit it with your superstition! This gang is leading me around by the nose, and you’re helping them do it … Are there shutters on this window?”
The owner set down the basin, quietly went to the window and pulled the iron shutters closed.
“Good,” I said. “Excellent … Don’t turn on the light … And one more thing, Alek … Put someone … Simone or that girl … Brun … tell them to watch the sky. Explain that it’s a matter of life or death. The minute they see any kind of plane, they should sound the alarm …”
The owner nodded, took the basin and headed towards the door. On the threshold he stopped.
“Do you want my advice, Peter?” he said. “One last piece.”
“Well?”
“Give them the suitcase and let them go straight back to whatever hell they came from. Do you really not understand that it’s the only thing keeping them here?…”
“I understand,” I said. “I understand that very well. And that’s the exact reason that I’m going to sleep here on the hard chairs, resting my head on your damned safe, ready to shoot silver bullets into any son of a bitch who tries to take that suitcase away from me. If you see Moses, tell him that, word for word. Don’t water it down. And tell him that I’ve won prizes for accuracy with a .45. Now go away and leave me alone.”
15.
Maybe it wasn’t by the book. But I had no reason to exp
ect that help would come from anywhere, and the gangsters were liable to fly in at any minute. The only thing I could count on was that Beelzebub wasn’t the only problem Champ had to deal with right now. Having stumbled upon the blockage last night, he was probably confused, and in a hurry, which meant that he might easily have made some stupid mistake—like trying to commandeer a helicopter at the Mur airfield. I knew that the police had been following this felon for some time, which meant that I had some reason for hope there. Anyway, I could barely stand on my feet. That damned Finch had practically finished me off. I spread the newspaper and some kind of report out next to the safe, pulled the bureau in front of the door, and lay down, placing my Luger right beside me. I fell asleep instantly, and when I woke up, it was already past one o’clock.
There was a quiet but persistent knocking at the door.
“Who’s there?” I barked, frantically grabbing the handle of the Luger.
“It’s me,” came Simone’s voice. “Open the door, Inspector.”
“Is there a plane?”
“No. But we need to talk. Open the door. Now’s not the time to sleep.”
He was right. It wasn’t the time to sleep. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I got up—first to my hands and knees, then, supporting myself against the safe, onto my feet. My shoulder was hurting terribly. The bandage had slid down over my eyes; my chin was swollen. I turned the light on, pulled the bureau away from the door and turned the key. Then I stepped back, holding my Luger at the ready.
Simone looked unusually solemn and businesslike, although I could tell that he was trying to disguise some pent-up agitation.
“Jesus!” he said “It’s like a fortress in here. And for no reason: no one’s coming to attack you.”
“I don’t know that,” I said gloomily.
“Exactly. You don’t know anything in here,” Simone said. “While you’ve been dozing, Inspector, I’ve done your job for you.”
“Is that so?” I said sarcastically. “I suppose Moses is in handcuffs already, and his accomplice is in custody.”
Simone frowned. What had happened to the tiresome troublemaker who only yesterday had been running up and down the walls without a care in the world?
“There’s no need for that,” he said. “Moses isn’t guilty of anything. Things are quite a bit more complicated than you think, Inspector.”
“Just don’t talk to me about ghouls,” I asked, sitting down on the chair beside the safe.
Simone smiled.
“No ghouls. No mumbo-jumbo. Just solid science fiction. Moses is not a man, Inspector. In that regard, our inn owner was right. Moses and Luarvik are not of this world.”
“They came here from Venus,” I said knowingly.
“That I don’t know. Maybe from Venus, maybe from another solar system, maybe from a neighboring dimension … They haven’t said anything about that. The important part is that they aren’t human. Moses has been living on Earth for a while now, over a year. About six weeks ago he fell in with some gangsters. They blackmailed him, held him captive at gunpoint. He only barely managed to escape them and flee here. Luarvik is something like a pilot, he manages the transportation from there to here. They were supposed to leave yesterday at midnight. But at ten o’clock there was some kind of accident, a piece of their equipment blew up. That’s what caused the avalanche, and that’s why Luarvik had to walk here on his own two feet … They need help, Inspector. It’s our responsibility, really. If the gangsters get here before the police, they’ll kill them.”
“And us too,” I said.
“Possibly,” he agreed. “But that’s Earth business. If we allow visitors from another planet to be killed, that would be shameful.”
I looked at him sadly. No, I thought, at the end of the day there are just too many crazy people in this inn. And here’s one more nut.
“Let’s wrap this up. What do you want from me?”
“Give me the accumulator, Peter,” Simone said.
“What accumulator?”
“The one in the suitcase. The accumulator. It’s an energy source, for the two robots. Olaf isn’t dead. He’s not actually a living being. He’s a robot, and so is Mrs. Moses. These robots need energy in order to operate. Their power station was destroyed in the explosion, the source of their energy was cut off, and all the robots within a hundred kilometers were turned off, so to speak. A few were probably able to connect themselves to portable accumulator batteries. Moses connected Mrs. Moses to the battery himself … if you recall, I thought she was dead. But Olaf didn’t have time to hook himself up …”
“Aha,” I said. “He was unable to hook himself up. He fell, he was even good enough to wring his own neck. He must have wrenched it around a hundred and eighty degrees, by the way …”
“There’s no need for sarcasm,” Simone said. “It’s a quasi-agonic phenomenon. Their joints twist, their pseudo-muscles tense asymmetrically … I did not get a chance to tell you that Mrs. Moses also had a twisted neck when I burst in on her.”
“I see,” I said. “Quasi-muscles, pseudo-joints … You’re not a child, Simone, you need to grasp the fact that any crime can be explained away perfectly logically if you deploy enough fantasy and mystification. But reasonable people don’t believe in that kind of logic.”
“I expected you to raise this objection, Peter,” Simone said. “All of this is very easy to verify. Give them the accumulator, they’ll bring back Olaf in your presence. After all, you want Olaf to be alive again …”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said immediately.
“Why? You don’t believe it, they’re offering proof. What’s the problem?”
I cradled my poor, bandaged head.
What was the problem, really? Why was I listening to this nonsense? Give him a rifle and tell him to take up watch on the roof like a good citizen whose duty it was to uphold the law. Lock the Moseses in the basement. And Luarvik too. The basement was made of concrete, it would withstand a direct hit … Put the Barnstokers there too, and Kaisa. And then hunker down. As a last resort I could give them the Moseses. Champ wasn’t to be trifled with. That’s assuming, god willing, that he’d negotiate …
“Well, why are you being quiet?” Simone asked. “Nothing to say?”
But I did have something to say.
“I’m not a scientist,” I said slowly. “I’m a police officer. There are too many lies around this suitcase … Wait a second, don’t interrupt me. I didn’t interrupt you … I am ready to believe everything you say. Really. Let Olaf and the broad be robots. That makes it even worse. Mrs. Moses has already committed … that is to say, she’s been used to commit several crimes already. A terrible weapon like that in the hands of gangsters—no thank you. If I could, I would gladly deactivate Mrs. Moses too. And you’re suggesting that I, a police officer, return the murder weapon to these gangsters! Do you understand what you’re saying?”
Simone slapped his forehead. He was at a loss.
“Listen to me,” he said. “If gangsters fly in, we’re all done for. You lied about the carrier pigeons, right? There aren’t any police coming, are there? But if we help Moses and Luarvik escape, at least our consciences will be clean.”
“Your conscience will be clean,” I said. “But mine will be filthy. A police official would have directly helped criminals get away.”
“They aren’t criminals!” Simone said.
“They’re criminals!” I said. “They’re the real gangsters. You heard Hinkus’s confession. Moses was a member of Champ’s gang. Moses organized and executed several daring attacks, causing the government and many private individuals a huge amount of damage. To be totally frank, Moses has at least twenty-five years of hard labor coming to him, and I’m obligated to do everything I can to make sure he serves them.”
“Dammit,” Simone said. “Don’t you get it? They forced him! They blackmailed him into joining the band. He had no way out!”
“That’s up to the courts to decide,
” I said coldly.
Simone leaned back in his chair and looked at me through narrowed eyes.
“You’re turning out to be a real goon, Glebsky,” he said. “I would have never expected it.”
“Watch your mouth,” I said. “You’ve got your own affairs to take care of, anyway. What’s on the menu tonight? Sensual pleasures?”
Simone bit his lip.
“There’s your first contact,” he muttered. “There’s your meeting of two worlds.”
“Get off my case, Simone,” I said angrily. “And get out of here. You’re starting to annoy me.”
He stood up and walked to the door. His head was drooping, his shoulders slumped. On the threshold he paused and half-turned, saying,
“You’ll regret this, Glebsky. You’ll be ashamed. Very ashamed.”
“Perhaps,” I said dryly. “That’s my business … By the way, can you shoot a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Get a shotgun from the owner and go up on the roof. It’s possible that pretty soon we’ll all have to do a little shooting.”
He left without saying another word. I rubbed my swollen shoulder carefully. What a vacation. And as for how it would end, I still had no idea. What the hell, could they really be aliens? It all fits together so well … “You’ll be ashamed, Glebsky” … Who knows, maybe I would be. But what am I supposed to do? What difference did it make whether they were aliens or not? Where did it say that aliens are allowed to rob banks? Earthlings can’t, but aliens … oh well, that’s another matter. Okay. Then what am I supposed to do? The siege was about to start, and my troops were completely unreliable.