No, I’d rig a drafting machine first, then use it to design Protean Pete. “How about that, Pete? We’re going to name the world’s first real robot after you.”
“Mrrrrarr?”
“Don’t be so suspicious; it’s an honor.” After breaking in on Frank, I could design Pete right at my drafting machine, really refine it, and quickly. I’d make it a killer, a triple-threat demon that would displace Frank before they ever got him into production. With any luck I’d run them broke and have them begging me to come back. Kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, would they?
There were lights on in Miles’ house and his car was at the curb. I parked in front of Miles’ car, said to Pete, “You’d better stay here, fellow, and protect the car. Holler ‘halt’ three times fast, then shoot to kill.”
“Nooo!”
“If you go inside you’ll have to stay in the bag.”
“Bleerrrt?”
“Don’t argue. If you want to come in, get in your bag.”
Pete jumped into the bag.
Miles let me in. Neither of us offered to shake hands. He led me into his living room and gestured at a chair.
Belle was there. I had not expected her, but I suppose it was not surprising. I looked at her and grinned. “Fancy meeting you here! Don’t tell me you came all the way from Mojave just to talk to little old me?” Oh, I’m a gallus-snapper when I get started; you should see me wear women’s hats at parties.
Belle frowned. “Don’t be funny, Dan. Say what you have to say, if anything, and get out.”
“Don’t hurry me. I think this is cozy... my former partner... my former fiancée. All we lack is my former business.”
Miles said placatingly, “Now, Dan, don’t take that attitude. We did it for your own good...and you can come back to work any time you want to. I’d be glad to have you back.”
“For my own good, eh? That sounds like what they told the horse thief when they hanged him. As for coming back—how about it, Belle? Can I come back?”
She bit her lip. “If Miles says so, of course.”
“It seems like only yesterday that it used to be: ‘If Dan says so, of course.’ But everything changes; that’s life. And I’m not coming back, kids; you can stop fretting. I just came here tonight to find out some things.”
Miles glanced at Belle. She answered, “Such as?”
“Well, first, which one of you cooked up the swindle? Or did you plan it together?”
Miles said slowly, “That’s an ugly word, Dan. I don’t like it.”
“Oh, come, come, let’s not be mealymouthed. If the word is ugly, the deed is ten times as ugly. I mean faking a yellow-dog contract, faking patent assignments—that one is a Federal offense, Miles; I think they pipe sunlight to you on alternate Wednesdays. I’m not sure, but no doubt the FBI can tell me. Tomorrow,” I added, seeing him flinch.
“Dan, you’re not going to be silly enough to try to make trouble about this?”
“Trouble? I’m going to hit you in all directions, civil and criminal, on all counts. You’ll be too busy to scratch...unless you agree to do one thing. But I didn’t mention your third peccadillo—theft of my notes and drawings of Flexible Frank...and the working model, too, although you may be able to make me pay for the materials for that, since I did bill them to the company.”
“Theft, nonsense!” snapped Belle. “You were working for the company.”
“Was I? I did most of it at night. And I never was an employee, Belle, as you both know. I simply drew living expenses against profits earned by my shares. What is the Mannix outfit going to say when I file a criminal complaint, charging that the things they were interested in buying—Hired Girl, Willie, and Frank—never did belong to the company but were stolen from me?”
“Nonsense,” Belle repeated grimly. “You were working for the company. You had a contract.”
I leaned back and laughed. “Look, kids, you don’t have to lie now; save it for the witness stand. There ain’t nobody here but just us chickens. What I really want to know is this: Who thought it up? I know how it was done. Belle, you used to bring in papers for me to sign. If more than one copy had to be signed, you would paper-clip the other copies to the first—for my convenience, of course; you were always the perfect secretary—and all I would see of the copies underneath would be the place to sign my name. Now I know that you slipped some jokers into some of those neat piles. So I know that you were the one who conducted the mechanics of the swindle; Miles could not have done it. Shucks, Miles can’t even type very well. But who worded those documents you horsed me into signing? You? I don’t think so...unless you’ve had legal training you never mentioned. How about it, Miles? Could a mere stenographer phrase that wonderful clause seven so perfectly? Or did it take a lawyer? You, I mean.”
Miles’ cigar had long since gone out. He took it from his mouth, looked at it, and said carefully, “Dan, old friend, if you think you’ll trap us into admissions, you’re crazy.”
“Oh, come off it; we’re alone. You’re both guilty either way. But I’d like to think that Delilah over there came to you with the whole thing wrapped up, complete, and then tempted you into a moment of weakness. But I know it’s not true. Unless Belle is a lawyer herself, you were both in it, accomplices before and after. You wrote the double talk; she typed it and tricked me into signing. Right?”
“Don’t answer, Miles!”
“Of course I won’t answer,” Miles agreed. “He may have a recorder hidden in that bag.”
“I should have had,” I agreed, “but I don’t.” I spread the top of the bag and Pete stuck his head out. “You getting it all, Pete? Careful what you say, folks; Pete has an elephant’s memory. No, I didn’t bring a recorder—I’m just good old lunkheaded Dan Davis who never thinks ahead. I go stumbling along, trusting my friends...the way I trusted you two. Is Belle a lawyer, Miles? Or did you yourself sit down in cold blood and plan how you could hog-tie me and rob me and make it look legal?”
“Miles!” interrupted Belle. “With his skill, he could make a recorder the size of a pack of cigarettes. It may not be in the bag. It may be on him.”
“That’s a good idea, Belle. Next time I’ll have one.”
“I’m aware of that, my dear,” Miles answered. “If he has, you are talking very loosely. Mind your tongue.”
Belle answered with a word I didn’t know she used. My eyebrows went up. “Snapping at each other? Trouble between thieves already?”
Miles’ temper was stretching thin, I was happy to see. He answered, “Mind your tongue, Dan...if you want to stay healthy.”
“Tsk, tsk! I’m younger than you are and I’ve had the judo course a lot more recently. And you wouldn’t shoot a man; you’d frame him with some sort of fake legal document. ‘Thieves,’ I said, and ‘thieves’ I meant. Thieves and liars, both of you.” I turned to Belle. “My old man taught me never to call a lady a liar, sugar face, but you aren’t a lady. You’re a liar...and a thief...and a tramp.”
Belle turned red and gave me a look in which all her beauty vanished and the underlying predatory animal was all that remained. “Miles!” she said shrilly. “Are you going to sit there and let him—”
“Quiet!” Miles ordered. “His rudeness is calculated. It’s intended to make us get excited and say things we’ll regret. Which you are almost doing. So keep quiet.” Belle shut up, but her face was still feral. Miles turned to me. “Dan, I’m a practical man always, I hope. I tried to make you see reason before you walked out of the firm. In the settlement I tried to make it such that you would take the inevitable gracefully.”
“Be raped quietly, you mean.”
“As you will. I still want a peaceful settlement. You couldn’t win any sort of suit, but as a lawyer I know that it is always better to stay out of court than to win. If possible. You mentioned a while ago that there was some one thing I could do that would placate you. Tell me what it is; perhaps we can reach terms.”
“Oh, that. I was coming
to it. You can’t do it, but perhaps you can arrange it. It’s simple. Get Belle to assign back to me the stock I assigned to her as an engagement present.”
“No!” said Belle. Miles said, “I told you to keep quiet.”
I looked at her and said, “Why not, my former dear? I’ve taken advice on this point, as the lawyers put it, and, since it was given in consideration of the fact that you promised to marry me, you are not only morally but legally bound to return it. It was not a ‘free gift,’ as I believe the expression is, but something handed over for an expected and contracted consideration which I never received, to wit, your somewhat lovely self. So how about coughing up, huh? Or have you changed your mind again and are now willing to marry me?”
She told me where and how I could expect to marry her.
Miles said tiredly, “Belle, you’re only making things worse. Don’t you understand that he is trying to get our goats?” He turned back to me. “Dan, if that is what you came over for, you may as well leave. I stipulate that if the circumstances had been as you alleged, you might have a point. But they were not. You transferred that stock to Belle for value received.”
“Huh? What value? Where’s the canceled check?”
“There didn’t need be any. For services to the company beyond her duties.”
I stared. “What a lovely theory! Look, Miles old boy, if it was for service to the company and not to me personally, then you must have known about it and would have been anxious to pay her the same amount—after all, we split the profits fifty-fifty even if I had...or thought I had...retained control. Don’t tell me you gave Belle a block of stock of the same size?”
Then I saw them glance at each other and I got a wild hunch. “Maybe you did! I’ll bet my little dumpling made you do it, or she wouldn’t play. Is that right? If so, you can bet your life she registered the transfer at once...and the dates will show that I transferred stock to her at the very time we got engaged—shucks, the engagement was in the Desert Herald—while you transferred stock to her when you put the skids under me and she jilted me—and it’s all a matter of record! Maybe a judge will believe me, Miles? What do you think?”
I had cracked them, I had cracked them! I could tell from the way their faces went blank that I had stumbled on the one circumstance they could never explain and one I was never meant to know. So I crowded them...and had another wild guess. Wild? No, logical. “How much stock, Belle? As much as you got out of me, just for being ‘engaged’? You did more for him; you should have gotten more.” I stopped suddenly. “Say... I thought it was odd that Belle came all the way over here just to talk to me, seeing how she hates that trip. Maybe you didn’t come all that way; maybe you were here all along. Are you two shacked up? Or should I say ‘engaged’? Or...are you already married?” I thought about it. “I’ll bet you are. Miles, you aren’t as starry-eyed as I am; I’ll bet my other shirt that you would never, never transfer stock to Belle simply on promise of marriage. But you might for a wedding present—provided you got back voting control of it. Don’t bother to answer; tomorrow I’m going to start digging for the facts. They’ll be on record too.”
Miles glanced at Belle and said, “Don’t waste your time. Meet Mrs. Gentry.”
“So? Congratulations, both of you. You deserve each other. Now about my stock. Since Mrs. Gentry obviously can’t marry me, then—”
“Don’t be silly, Dan. I’ve already offset your ridiculous theory. I did make a stock transfer to Belle just as you did. For the same reason, services to the firm. As you say, these things are matters of record. Belle and I were married just a week ago...but you will find the stock registered to her quite some time ago if you care to look it up. You can’t connect them. No, she received stock from both of us, because of her great value to the firm. Then after you jilted her and after you left the employ of the firm, we were married.”
It set me back. Miles was too smart to tell a lie I could check on so easily. But there was something about it that was not true, something more than I had as yet found out.
“When and where were you married?”
“Santa Barbara courthouse, last Thursday. Not that it is your business.”
“Perhaps not. When was the stock transfer?”
“I don’t know exactly. Look it up if you want to know.”
Damn it, it just did not ring true that he had handed stock over to Belle before he had her committed to him. That was the sort of sloppy stunt I pulled; it wasn’t in character for him. “I’m wondering something, Miles. If I put a detective to work on it, might I find that the two of you got married once before a little earlier than that? Maybe in Yuma? Or Las Vegas? Or maybe you ducked over to Reno that time you both went north for the tax hearings? Maybe it would turn out that there was such a marriage recorded, and maybe the date of the stock transfer and the dates my patents were assigned to the firm all made a pretty pattern. Huh?”
Miles did not crack; he did not even look at Belle. As for Belle, the hate in her face could not have been increased even by a lucky stab in the dark. Yet it seemed to fit and I decided to ride the hunch to the limit.
Miles simply said, “Dan, I’ve been patient with you and have tried to be conciliatory. All it’s got me is abuse. So I think it’s time you left. Or I’ll bloody well make a stab at throwing you out—you and your flea-bitten cat!”
“Olé!” I answered. “That’s the first manly thing you’ve said tonight. But don’t call Pete ‘flea-bitten.’ He understands English and he is likely to take a chunk out of you. Okay, ex-pal, I’ll get out...but I want to make a short curtain speech, very short. It’s probably the last word I’ll ever have to say to you. Okay?”
“Well...okay. Make it short.”
Belle said urgently, “Miles, I want to talk to you.”
He motioned her to be quiet without looking at her. “Go ahead. Be brief.”
I turned to Belle. “You probably won’t want to hear this, Belle. I suggest that you leave.”
She stayed, of course. I wanted to be sure she would. I looked back at him. “Miles, I’m not too angry with you. The things a man will do for a larcenous woman are beyond belief. If Samson and Mark Antony were vulnerable, why should I expect you to be immune? By rights, instead of being angry I should be grateful to you. I guess I am, a little. I do know I’m sorry for you.” I looked over at Belle. “You’ve got her now and she’s all your problem...and all it has cost me is a little money and temporarily my peace of mind. But what will she cost you? She cheated me, she even managed to persuade you, my trusted friend, to cheat me...what day will she team up with a new cat’s-paw and start cheating you? Next week? Next month? As long as next year? As surely as a dog returns to its vomit—”
“Miles!” Belle shrilled.
Miles said dangerously, “Get out!” and I knew he meant it. So I stood up.
“We were just going. I’m sorry for you, old fellow. Both of us made just one mistake originally, and it was as much my fault as yours. But you’ve got to pay for it alone. And that’s too bad...because it was such an innocent mistake.”
His curiosity got him. “What do you mean?”
“We should have wondered why a woman so smart and beautiful and competent and all-around high-powered was willing to come to work for us at clerk-typist’s wages. If we had taken her fingerprints the way the big firms do, and run a routine check, we might not have hired her...and you and I would still be partners.”
Pay dirt again! Miles looked suddenly at his wife and she looked—well, “cornered rat” is wrong; rats aren’t shaped like Belle.
And I couldn’t leave well enough alone; I just had to pick at it. I walked toward her, saying, “Well, Belle? If I took that highball glass sitting beside you and had the fingerprints on it checked, what would I find? Pictures in post offices? The big con? Or bigamy? Marrying suckers for their money, maybe? Is Miles legally your husband?” I reached down and picked up the glass.
Belle slapped it out of my hand.
&n
bsp; And Miles shouted at me.
And I had finally pushed my luck too far. I had been stupid to go into a cage of dangerous animals with no weapons, then I forgot the first tenet of the animal tamer; I turned my back. Miles shouted and I turned toward him. Belle reached for her purse...and I remember thinking that it was a hell of a time for her to be reaching for a cigarette.
Then I felt the stab of the needle.
I remember feeling just one thing as my knees got weak and I started slipping toward the carpet: utter astonishment that Belle would do such a thing to me. When it came right down to it, I still trusted her.
IV
I NEVER WAS completely unconscious. I got dizzy and vague as the drug hit me—it hits even quicker than morphine. But that was all. Miles yelled something at Belle and grabbed me around the chest as my knees folded. As he dragged me over and let me collapse into a chair, even the dizziness passed.
But while I was awake, part of me was dead. I know now what they used on me: the “zombie” drug, Uncle Sam’s answer to brainwashing. So far as I know, we never used it on a prisoner, but the boys whipped it up in the investigation of brainwashing and there it was, illegal but very effective. It’s the same stuff they now use in one-day psychoanalysis, but I believe it takes a court order to permit even a psychiatrist to use it.
God knows where Belle laid hands on it. But then God alone knows what other suckers she had on the string.
But I wasn’t wondering about that then; I wasn’t wondering about anything. I just lay slumped there, passive as a vegetable, hearing what went on, seeing anything in front of my eyes—but if Lady Godiva had strolled through without her horse I would not have shifted my eyes as she passed out of my vision.
Unless I was told to.
Pete jumped out of his bag, trotted over to where I slouched, and asked what was wrong. When I didn’t answer he started stropping my shins vigorously back and forth while still demanding an explanation. When still I did not respond he levitated to my knees, put his forepaws on my chest, looked me right in the face, and demanded to know what was wrong, right now and no nonsense.