Chapter III

Ostby entered the Stalls through a back door. The building was built on a hill. At the front, the first floor was on the ground level. But the door Ostby entered opened into the sub-basement.

The card he had taken from Groves gained him ready admittance. He flashed it once again to the clerk seated at a desk in the inner office. The clerk nodded respectfully and Ostby went through into the main section of the sub-basement; the section housing the slaves.

The stench that struck his nostrils was nauseating. It stank of men too closely crowded, of unwashed bodies, and of inadequate sanitation.

The place was dimly lit.

Ostby waved back the "trusty" who came forward to meet him, and went alone along the stalls. At each gate he paused to look through the thick mesh wire at the hope-deadened specimens who lay apathetically on the uncleaned floor. Some of the prisoners were criminals of the state, but most of them were captive Earth people.

Ostby did not pause long at any compartment until he reached one in the corner of the huge room. He studied the creature seated in a wall-crook staring back at him. The slave's beard was an inch long and his features were hardly recognizable, yet something about him held Ostby's attention.

After a short minute Ostby said, "Detroit," in a low tone.

The prisoner did not move but his eyes glinted in the dim light as he opened them wider. His lips formed the sound, "Tigers," as he answered the code word.

"What have they done with Rohr?" Ostby asked.

"I'm afraid you're too late," the slave answered. "The guard took him away yesterday--through that door, over on the far side. If he's still alive, they're probably torturing him right now."

"I'll be back," Ostby said, and he walked rapidly toward the door the prisoner had indicated.

Once inside Ostby flashed his card at the guard sitting on a desk, paring his fingernails. "Where's the spy?" he asked briskly.

"Straight through," the guard answered. "Inspector Boorrls is working on him now."

In the back room Ostby closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it. The two men standing in the center of the room turned to look at him. He let the silence grow thin without speaking. It was with an effort that he kept his eyes from the figure that hung by its wrist tendons, on steel hooks suspended from the ceiling.

The taller of the two men shifted his feet uncomfortably, and wiped his right palm along the leg of his trousers. "What do you want?" he asked irritably.

Ostby drew his card from his pocket and showed it to them. "I'm direct from the Imperator," he said. "Which one of you is Boorrls?"

"I am," the tall man answered.

"Have you made him talk yet?"

"No. He's stubborn as all hell. But he'll talk soon or I'll kill him."

"That's what the Imperator was afraid of," Ostby said bleakly. "And that's why he sent me. Now get out while I try to save what you may have lost already with your stupidity."

For a moment the inspector seemed determined to bluff it out. "What did you say?" he asked pugnaciously.

"I said get out!" Ostby's voice did not rise, but there was no mistaking the threat behind it.

Boorrls broke easily. He was a bully. "C'mon, Jorg," he mumbled and the two men left the room.

* * * * *

The figure suspended on the hooks could not see Ostby. Where his eyes had been were now only bloody orifices. His stomach was cut to ribbons and the inside organs showed through. He was beyond the help of any doctor.

He seemed to have recognized Ostby's voice. His lips and tongue moved agonizingly as he strove to speak. When he finally succeeded his voice came from far back in his throat--hardly more than a whisper. "For God's sake," the voice croaked, "kill me! Please!"

Ostby repressed a shudder as he gently touched the tortured man's leg.

They had picked him, back on Earth, for this job because his was a sensitive organism, keyed with "high survival characteristics."

His nervous system was geared exceptionally high, and its acute reflexes with their delicate balance of intricate excitations made his response to stimuli proportionately more rapid than that of other men.

Yet this very sensitiveness of brain and nerve fiber made the brutal circumstances with which he was forced to cope all the more difficult to endure. It was ironical that the very qualities that made him the most fit for this dangerous kind of work, made him suffer the greatest under its harshness.

Ostby could remember how, even as a child, he had suffered through this keenness of emotional reaction. His empathy with any person or animal in distress always caused him pain nearly as great as that of the sufferer.

In later years he had developed a philosophy that helped carry him through most of those trying times. He had never exactly defined that philosophy but it encompassed the ability to recognize "the little things as little, and the big things as big; and to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming death."

This philosophy was never able to give him the shell of hardness which would have shielded him from most of the meanness of the world, but it had given him the strength to bear it.

Now the suffering of the wretched creature before him played along Ostby's nerves like a live flame.

"Everything will be over in a minute," he said softly. He opened his shirt front and exposed a mesh-weave vest fitted close against his skin. In the innumerable pockets of the vest he carried everything he owned on this world.

From one of the pockets he drew a hypodermic syringe with a plastic vial filled with light green liquid. He pushed the needle into the flesh of the hanging man's leg, and pressed the plunger home.

A moment later the suspended figure sighed once, long and gratefully, and was still. They would never be able to torture him again.

Ostby studied the mechanism that held the hooks, but could find no way to lower the body. Impatiently he pulled a chair over and stood on it. He probed the body's thin left forearm with his thumbs until he found the spot he sought.

Drawing a sharp scalpel from his vest he cut a thin slit through the flesh. When he felt the blade touch something solid he probed deeply into the cut and brought out a small, innocuous appearing capsule. The cut did not bleed and Ostby pressed its sides together. It appeared no different than many of the other cuts on the emaciated body.

He hesitated no longer than it took to pick the exact spot he wanted on his own forearm. If they had been unable to find the hiding place on Rohr, it should serve as well for him.

With almost surgical skill he cut a small slit in the flesh of his forearm. Probing with the scalpel until he had opened a small pocket, he placed the capsule in the opening and forced it down. From the vest he removed a flat carton and sprinkled sulpha powder into the cut. In a few days time it would heal and there would be no mark left of the hiding place. If he could only buy that few days' time!

Ostby stepped through into the outer office. Boorrls and his aide were nowhere about. That could be dangerous. His time was undoubtedly running short.

Ostby walked back to the stall of the prisoner he had conferred with earlier, at the same time motioning the trusty over to him. "Open this stall and let me in," he commanded.

"Lock it again and leave us alone," he said to the trusty as he entered. The trusty obeyed and left.

Ostby turned immediately to the prisoner. "This is it," he said. "We'll have to move fast." He took a flat tube from one of his vest pockets and tossed it over. "First, get rid of that beard. But be sure to leave a mustache and a chin beard like mine."

The slave applied the depilatory to his beard. "What about Rohr?" he asked.

"Dead," Ostby answered laconically as he removed his clothes.

Neither said anything more as the slave washed his face and wet his hair from a trough of dirty water. In the meantime Ostby dirtied his own face and hands. The slave stripped and they exchanged clothes.

"Rattle on the gate," Ostby said after they finished. "It's not very bright in here, and with that mustache and beard you should pass for me without any trouble. But don't give them more chance than necessary to spot the deception by wasting any time."

Five minutes later Ostby was alone--just another grimy slave curled up in his filthy sty. A perfect hideout. The last place they would look for him.

* * * * *

Sometime during the morning of the third day Ostby was awakened by the rattling of the wire gate of his stall. He rolled over on his side and looked out. The trusty who brought him his food twice a day was shaking the gate.

"On your feet," he said, "and make it snappy."

Ostby climbed erect without argument. He had no intention of directing attention to himself by making trouble. By now his black hair and beard were matted with dirt, his skin was soiled with many thicknesses of grime, and he stunk with the stench of the prison blocks.

A few minutes later a short man--approximately six feet tall, but short for these people--bustled importantly forward. He was dressed in lace-adorned dress which proclaimed him one of this world's aristocracy. The newcomer eyed Ostby disdainfully for a moment and then passed on without a word.

Later the self-important dandy returned with the trusty in tow. He stopped in front of Ostby's cage. "Bring him out here where I can get a better look at him," he ordered.

The trusty unlocked the gate and Ostby shuffled out.

"He's a filthy looking beast," the nobleman remarked, as he slowly circled Ostby. He evidenced only the interest of a man appraising an animal. "However, he seems to have a splendid body beneath those layers of dirt. I'll take him, but I suppose I'll find him rotten with disease when I have him cleaned up."

The trusty and one of the guards snapped a leg-iron around Ostby's left ankle while the nobleman went into the office to pay for his purchase. They led Ostby out to a waiting carriage and secured the other end of his leg-iron to a bolt set in the floor of the carriage. Two of the nobleman's liveried servants seated themselves on either side of Ostby. The nobleman sat across from them.

They drove for almost a half-hour before the carriage stopped in front of a low, one-storied stone building. No one spoke. The servants alighted, and one of them unlocked Ostby's leg-iron from its bolt in the floor.

"Step down," the nearest servant said.

Ostby obeyed and they walked, with Ostby again between them, toward the stone house. The nobleman remained in the carriage.

One of the servants opened the unlocked door of the stone house and the other shoved Ostby through the doorway. They closed the door behind him, and he stood in a dark room, blinded by the sudden change from bright sunlight. The first sight that met his eyes, as they adjusted to the dim light lurking under the drawn shades, was the familiar one of a fat man slumped in an easy chair!

"Welcome to my new abode," Siggen said.

The events of the past hour snapped into place in Ostby's mind in an instant and he evidenced no surprise as he smiled back at Siggen. He even debated with himself whether or not Siggen had done him a service by taking him from his foolproof hiding place so soon. But then he had another in mind that should serve as well if he had not underestimated his influence with the Duchess, Rinda.

"You pay your debts, I see," he said.

"Siggen's word is his bond," the fat man said. "I told you I would get you in and get you out. Our bargain is now complete."

"Your man put on a good act as a nobleman," Ostby said. "He fooled me as completely as he did the guards."

"It was no act," Siggen replied. "He is a nobleman. But he owed Siggen a favor."

"Good work," Ostby said. "Accept my thanks. Incidentally, I suppose you know by now that your man, Groves, was a secret agent?"

"No, I did not," Siggen answered. "I wondered why he never returned. I presume you took care of him?"

"Yes," Ostby replied.

"Good," Siggen said. "I almost missed knowing they had you. The reports were that the Berserker had been shot leaving the Stalls. But I sent a man to check on it and he reported that the man shot by the police was not you."

So poor Barbasiewiez had not gotten away, Ostby reflected sadly. And Rohr, too, was dead. That left him completely alone. But he had made some progress. He had the capsule. If the Duchess would hide him until he was ready for his next action he might still be able to close the "door." "Can you get me a carriage?" he asked Siggen.

* * * * *

"I think you'd be taking too big a chance if you went to the palace, even with the crowd there for the ball," the Duchess said.

Her anxiety made Ostby a bit uncomfortable. Their flirtation was no longer a game with her. He felt a bit guilty whenever he observed, by the thousand little signs she gave, that she was in love with him.

In ordinary times he might have loved her, also; but he was a man who never did things by halves. He had come to this world for one purpose, and he would not allow himself to be diverted from it--not even by a woman so fascinating as Rinda!

He looked at her now, beside him, with her rich brown hair done up in a pug on the back of her neck, and intertwined with a string of matched pearls; her soft skin, which the sun had turned to the shade of golden honey; and her red lips.

She returned the look, her blue eyes warm with love. She was a tall woman, well-formed, and she rested languidly against her cushions, but deep within Ostby could read the quiescent female vitality that rode her always.

"I'm afraid that I have no choice," he said gently. "It's something that I must do."

He was glad that she had never questioned him in the week he had been with her, since his escape from the Stalls. She knew only that he was doing something unlawful, and that the police wanted him badly.

But she was a temperamental woman, Ostby knew, and her moods were as sudden and mercurial as a tropic storm. Now he observed one of those sudden changes building up within her.

"I've decided not to let you go," she said. "It's too dangerous."

Ostby had had enough experience with her to know that temporizing was useless. It hurt him to be brutal, especially when he realized that her stubbornness was prompted by concern for him, but he could not let himself be detained now. "I must," he said, "and there's no use our arguing about it."

"I said you're not going," she repeated.

"If you wish, I'll return when I'm able," Ostby said, rising.

She, too, recognized the inflexible spirit in him, and passion flared up suddenly in her face. A flush of blood darkened the olive of her skin. She twisted in sudden fury and buried her teeth in the flesh of his wrist.

Ostby reached over with his free hand and dug his fingers deeply into the ridge of her jawbone.

"I'll kill you for that!" she gritted, releasing her grip.

Ostby knew they had gone too far now for any hope of reconciliation. He bent her arms behind her back and bound them tightly with the long sleeves of her gown.

The Duchess was relaxed now, making no attempt to resist him. Her face had gone hard and the skin was stretched tightly across her cheekbones.

She said nothing as he bound her feet and gagged her. But the venom in her eyes made him pause. This woman was not soft, he saw, and he knew he had made an enemy who would be ruthless. He did not look back as he left the room but he could feel her gaze following him--hating him, as only a frustrated woman can hate!