I didn"t answer and he began to wail.
That caused Miles and Belle to pay attention to him. Once Miles had me in the chair he had turned to Belle and had said bitterly, "Now you"ve done it! Have you gone crazy?"
Belle answered, "Keep your nerve, Chubby. We"re going to settle him once and for all."
"What? If you think I"m going to help in a murder-"
"Stuff it! That would be the logical thing to do... but you don"t have the guts for it. Fortunately it"s not necessary with that stuff in him."
"What do you mean?"
"He"s our boy now. He"ll do what I tell him to. He won"t make any more trouble."
"But... good G.o.d, Belle, you can"t keep him doped up forever. Once he comes out of it-"
"Quit talking like a lawyer. I know what this stuff will do; you don"t. When he comes out of it he"ll do whatever I"ve told him to do. I"ll tell him never to sue us; he"ll never sue us. I tell him to quit sticking his nose into our business; okay, he"ll leave us alone. I tell him to go to Timbuktu; he"ll go there. I tell him to forget all this; he"ll forget... but he"ll do it just the same."
I listened, understanding her but not in the least interested. If somebody had shouted, "The house is on fire!" I would have understood that, too, and I still would not have been interested.
"I don"t believe it."
"You don"t, eh?" She looked at him oddly. "You ought to."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Skip it, skip it. This stuff works, Chubby. But first we"ve got to-"
It was then that Pete started wailing. You don"t hear a cat wail very often; you could go a lifetime and not hear it. They don"t do it when fighting, no mailer how badly they are hurt; they never do it out of simple displeasure. A cat does it only in ultimate distress, when the situation is utterly unbearable but beyond its capacity and there is nothing left to do but keen.
It puts one in mind of a banshee. Also it is hardly to be endured; it hits a nerve-racking frequency.
Miles turned and said, "That confounded cat! We"ve got to get it out of here."
Belle said, "Kill it."
"Huh? You"re always too drastic, Belle. Why, Dan would raise more Cain about that worthless animal than he would if we had stripped him completely. Here-" He turned and picked up Pete"s travel bag.
"I"ll kill it!" Belle said savagely. "I"ve wanted to kill that d.a.m.ned cat for months." She looked around for a weapon and found one, a poker from the fireplace set; she ran over and grabbed it.
Miles picked up Pete and tried to put him into the bag.
"Tried" is the word. Pete isn"t anxious to be picked up by anyone but me or Ricky, and even I would not pick him up while he was wailing, without very careful negotiation; an emotionally disturbed cat is as touchy as mercury fulminate. But even if he were not upset, Pete certainly would never permit himself without protest to be picked up by the scruff of the neck.
Pete got him with claws in the forearm and teeth in the fleshy part of Miles"s left thumb. Miles yelped and dropped him.
Belle shrilled, "Stand clear, Chubby!" and swung at him with the poker.
Belle"s intentions were sufficiently forthright and she had the strength and the weapon. But she wasn"t skilled with her weapon, whereas Pete is very skilled with his. He ducked under that roundhouse swipe and hit her four ways, two paws for each of her legs.
Belle screamed and dropped the poker.
I didn"t see much of the rest of it. I was still looking straight ahead and could see most of the living room, but I couldn"t see anything outside that angle because no one told me to look in any other direction. So I followed the rest of it mostly by sound, except once when they doubled back across my cone of vision, two people chasing a cat-then with unbelievable suddenness, two people being chased by a cat. Aside from that one short scene I was aware of the battle by the sounds of crashes, running, shouts, curses, and screams.
But I don"t think they ever laid a glove on him.
The worst thing that happened to me that night was that in Pete"s finest hour, his greatest battle and greatest victory, I not only did not see all the details, but I was totally unable to appreciate any of it. I saw and I heard but I had no feeling about it; at his supreme Moment of Truth I was numb.
I recall it now and conjure up emotion I could not feel then. But it"s not the same thing; I"m forever deprived, like a narcolept on a honeymoon.
The crashes and curses ceased abruptly, and shortly Miles and Belle came back into the living room. Belle said between gasps, "Who left that censorable screen door unhooked?"
"You did. Shut up about it. It"s gone now." Miles had blood on his face as well as his hands; he dabbed at the fresh scratches on his face and did them no good. At some point he must have tripped and gone down, for his clothes looked it and his coat was split up the back.
"I will like h.e.l.l shut up. Have you got a gun in the house?"
"Huh?"
"I"m going to shoot that d.a.m.ned cat." Belle was in even worse shape than Miles; she had more skin where Pete could get at it-legs, bare arms and shoulders. It was clear that she would not be wearing strapless dresses again soon, and unless she got expert attention promptly she was likely to have scars. She looked like a harpy after a no-holds-barred row with her sisters.
Miles said, "Sit down!"
She answered him briefly and, by implication, negatively. "I"m going to kill that cat."
"Then don"t sit down. Go wash yourself. I"ll help you with iodine and stuff and you can help me. But forget that cat; we"re well rid of it."
Belle answered rather incoherently, but Miles understood her. "You too," he answered, "in spades. Look here, Belle, if I did have a gun-I"m not saying that I have-and you went out there and started shooting, whether you got the cat or not you would have the police here inside of ten minutes, snooping around and asking questions. Do you want that with him on our hands?" He jerked a thumb in my direction. "And if you go outside the house tonight without a gun that beast will probably kill you." He scowled even more deeply. "There ought to be a law against keeping an animal like that. He"s a public danger. Listen to him."
We could all hear Pete prowling around the house. He was not wailing now; he was voicing his war cry-inviting them to choose weapons and come outside, singly or in bunches.
Belle listened to it and shuddered. Miles said, "Don"t worry; he can"t get in. I not only hooked the screen you left open, I locked the door."
"I did not leave it open!"
"Have it your own way." Miles went around checking the window fastenings. Presently Belle left the room and so did he. Sometime while they were gone Pete shut up. I don"t know how long they were gone; time didn"t mean anything to me.
Belle came back first. Her make-up and hairdo were perfect; she had put on a long-sleeved, high-necked dress and had replaced the ruined stockings. Except for Band-Aid strips on her face, the results of battle did not show. Had it not been for the grim look on her phiz I would have considered her, under other circ.u.mstances, a delectable sight.
She came straight toward me and told me to stand up, so I did. She went through me quickly and expertly, not forgetting watch pocket, shirt pockets, and the diagonal one on the left inside of the jacket which most suits do not have. The take was not much; my wallet with a small amount of cash, ID cards, driver"s license, and such, keys, small change, a nasal inhaler against the smog, minor miscellaneous junk, and the envelope containing the certified check which she herself had bought and had sent to me. She turned it over, read the closed endors.e.m.e.nt I had made on it, and looked puzzled.
"What"s this, Dan? Buying a slug of insurance?"
"No." I would have told her the rest, but answering the last question asked of me was the best I could do.
She frowned and put it with the rest of the contents of my pockets. Then she caught sight of Pete"s bag and apparently recalled the flap in it I used for a brief case, for she picked it up and opened the flap.
At once she found the quadruplicate sets of the dozen and a half forms I had signed for Mutual a.s.surance Company. She sat down and started to read them. I stood where she had left me, a tailor"s dummy waiting to be put away.
Presently Miles came in wearing bathrobe and slippers and quite a large amount of gauze and adhesive tape. He looked like a fourth-rate middleweight whose manager has let him be outmatched. He was wearing one bandage like a scalp lock, fore and aft on his bald head; Pete must have got to him while he was down.
Belle glanced up, waved him to silence, and indicated the stack of papers she was through with. He sat down and started to read. He caught up with her and finished the last one reading over her shoulder.
She said, "This puts a different complexion on things."
"An understatement. This commitment order is for December fourth-that"s tomorrow. Belle, he"s as hot as noon in Mojave; we"ve got to get him out of here!" He glanced at a clock. "They"ll be looking for him in the morning."
"Miles, you always get chicken when the pressure is on. This is a break, maybe the best break we could hope for."
"How do you figure?"
"This zombie soup, good as it is, has one shortcoming. Suppose you dose somebody with it and load him up with what you want him to do. Okay, so he does it. He carries out your orders; he has to. Know anything about hypnosis?"
"Not much."
"Do you know anything but law, Chubby? You haven"t any curiosity. A posthypnotic command-which is what this amounts to-may conflict, in fact it"s almost certain to conflict, with what the subject really wants to do. Eventually that may land him in the hands of a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is any good, he"s likely to find out what the trouble is. It is just possible that Dan here might go to one and get unstuck from whatever orders I give him. If he did, he could make plenty of trouble."
"d.a.m.n it, you told me this drug was sure-fire."
"Good G.o.d, Chubby, you have to take chances with everything in life. That"s what makes it fun. Let me think."
After a bit she said, "The simplest thing and the safest is to let him go ahead with this sleep jump he is all set to take. He wouldn"t be any more out of our hair if he was dead-and we don"t have to take any risk. Instead of having to give him a bunch of complicated orders and then praying that he won"t come unstuck, all we have to do is order him to go ahead with the cold sleep, then sober him up and get him out of here... or get him out of here and then sober him." She turned to me. "Dan, when are you going to take the Sleep?"
"I"m not."
"Huh? What"s all this?" She gestured at the papers from my bag.
"Papers for cold sleep. Contracts with Mutual a.s.surance."
"He"s nutty," Miles commented.
"Mmm... of course he is. I keep forgetting that they can"t really think when they"re under it. They can hear and talk and answer questions... but it has to be just the right questions. They can"t think." She came up close and looked me in the eyes. "Dan, I want you to tell me all about this cold-sleep deal. Start at the beginning and tell it all the way through. You"ve got all the papers here to do it; apparently you signed them just today. Now you say you aren"t going to do it. Tell me all about it, because I want to know why you were going to do it and now you say you aren"t."
So I told her. Put that way, I could answer. It took a long time to tell as I did just what she said and told it all the way through in detail.
"So you sat there in that drive-in and decided not to? You decided to come out here and make trouble for us instead?"
"Yes." I was about to go on, tell about the trip out, tell her what I had said to Pete and what he had said to me, tell her how I had stopped at a drugstore and taken care of my Hired Girl stock, how I had driven to Miles"s house, how Pete had not wanted to wait in the car, how-But she did not give me a chance. She said, "You"ve changed your mind again, Dan. You want to take the cold sleep. You"re going to take the cold sleep. You won"t let anything in the world stand in the way of your taking the cold sleep. Understand me? What are you going to do?"
"I"m going to take the cold sleep. I want to take..." I started to sway. I had been standing like a flagpole for more than an hour, I would guess, without moving any muscle, because no one had told me to. I started collapsing slowly toward her.
She jumped back and said sharply, "Sit down!"
So I sat down.
Belle turned to Miles. "That does it. I"ll hammer away at it until I"m sure he can"t miss."
Miles looked at the clock. "He said that doctor wanted him there at noon."
"Plenty of time. But we had better drive him there ourselves, just to be-No, d.a.m.n it!"
"What"s the trouble?"
"The time is too short. I gave him enough soup for a hone, because I wanted it to hit him fast-before he hit me. By noon he"d be sober enough to convince most people. But not a doctor."
"Maybe it"ll just be perfunctory. His physical examination is already here and signed."
"You heard what he said the doctor told him. The doctor"s going to check him to see if he"s had anything to drink. That means he"ll test his reflexes and take his reaction time and peer in his eyes and-oh, all the things we don"t want done. The things we don"t dare let a doctor do. Miles, it won"t work."
"How about the next day? Call "em up and tell them there has been a slight delay?"
"Shut up and let me think."
Presently she started looking over the papers I had brought with me. Then she left the room, returned immediately with a jeweler"s loop, which she screwed into her right eye like a monocle, and proceeded to examine each paper with great care. Miles asked her what she was doing, but she brushed his question aside.
Presently she took the loop out of her eye and said, "Thank goodness they all have to use the same government forms. Chubby, get me the yellow-pages phone book."
"What for?"
"Get it, get it. I want to check the exact phrasing of a firm name-oh, I know what it is but I want to be sure."
Grumbling, Miles fetched it. She thumbed through it, then said, "Yes, "Master Insurance Company of California"... and there"s room enough on each of them. I wish it could be "Motors" instead of "Master"; that would be a cinch-but I don"t have any connections at "Motors Insurance," and besides, I"m not sure they even handle hibernation; I think they"re just autos and trucks." She looked up. "Chubby, you"re going to have to drive me out to the plant right away."
"Huh?"
"Unless you know of some quicker way to get an electric typewriter with executive type face and carbon ribbon. No, you go out by yourself and fetch it back; I"ve got telephoning to do."
He frowned. "I"m beginning to see what you plan to do. But, Belle, this is crazy. This is fantastically dangerous."
She laughed. "That"s what you think. I told you I had good connections before we ever teamed up. Could you have swung the Mannix deal alone?"
"Well... I don"t know."
"I know. And maybe you don"t know that Master Insurance is part of the Mannix group."
"Well, no, I didn"t. And I don"t see what difference it makes."
"It means my connections are still good. See here, Chubby, the firm I used to work for used to help Mannix Enterprises with their tax losses... until my boss left the country. How do you think we got such a good deal without being able to guarantee that Danny boy went with the deal? I know all about Mannix. Now hurry up and get that typewriter and I"ll let you watch an artist at work. Watch out for that cat."
Miles grumbled but started to leave, then returned. "Belle? Didn"t Dan park right in front of the house?"
"Why?"
"His car isn"t there now." He looked worried.
"Well, he probably parked around the corner. It"s unimportant. Go get that typewriter. Hurry!"
He left again. I could have told them where I had parked but, since they did not ask me, I did not think about it. I did not think at all.
Belle went elsewhere in the house and left me alone. Sometime around daylight Miles got back, looking haggard and carrying our heavy typewriter. Then I was left alone again.