Mission: Earth "Fortune of Fear" (37 page)

"Oh, blast, blast those Russians!" said Heller. "The girls will be SO disappointed after all their hard work!"

"What girls?" said the Countess Krak, very alert.

"And there goes any chance I had with Miss Simmons!" said Heller. "Confound those Russians!"

The Countess Krak said, very loudly, "WHO is Miss Simmons?"

Heller came out of it. He looked at the Countess. "What?"

"I said, 'WHO is Miss Simmons?'"

"My teacher in Nature Appreciation. That's the class I have to personally attend each Sunday."

"Oh, is that what you have been doing Sundays? I notice that you use the words
'have
to attend.' However, I have been told personally by Izzy that you are going to the university just wonderfully and all without attending any classes whatever. Bang-Bang tells me that you are just doing splendidly in the ROTC, and yet you don't have to attend any drills or ROTC classes. Now, WHY, Jettero, do you
have
to attend the Sunday class of this Miss Simmons?"

Heller said, "She forced me into it."

The Countess Krak said, "Jettero, I can understand completely why she is infatuated with you, but I cannot for the life of me see why you are infatuated with her."

"I'M NOT!"

"Jettero, you need not be defensive. You are not being accused of anything. I just want to know why you are infatuated with her."

"I HATE the hussy!" said Heller.

"Oh," said the Countess Krak, "be very careful of hate. The poet says it is the closest neighbor of love."

"Oh, Gods, he didn't know Miss Simmons! Listen, that woman is working day and night to wreck my plans. She is not only going to fail me, she is tearing around demanding that others flunk me!"

"Jettero," said the Countess Krak, "maybe you had better tell me about this very exactly."

Heller told her about needing a diploma so people would listen to him and how Miss Simmons hated nuclear physicists and had forced him to take an optional on Nature Appreciation, which she herself taught. Then he drew a long breath and told her in detail about following her into Van Cortlandt Park, finishing off the attackers and taking Miss Simmons to the hospital. And how, in the new term, they had released her from the psychiatric ward so she could resume teaching.

The Countess Krak nodded gravely. "I understand it completely now. She walked into that park well knowing there were unscrupulous men about and lured you after her. She is the kind of woman who craves to be raped. Oh, I am afraid this has gone far enough, Jettero. I knew all the beautiful women on this planet would be after you and I now know that my worst fears have been realized. I could forgive that Miss America thing, but this has gone on and on right under my nose every Sunday."

"Please," begged Heller. "If I take you to the theater and buy you a dozen roses and get up first every morning for a week and get the room warm, will you, in return, stop talking about Miss Simmons?"

"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. She got up and went into the secretary boudoir.

She paced up and down. Then she suddenly sat on the edge of the couch and punched a button and had Mamie on the phone promptly.

"Mamie," she said, "it has happened. I've got to have your advice."

"Certainly, dearie. You just tell Mama Mamie."

"He is so disturbed that I am absolutely certain he has become infatuated with another woman and it may hold him on this planet. We are not married yet. I MUST get him away. What should I do?"

"Scratch her eyes out," said Mamie, promptly.

"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. "Well, thank you. I was just checking to see how it was done on this planet. How is business?"

"Just fine, dear. Now that my name is up in lights, we're playing to a full house every night. Don't you worry your pretty head about this place, dear. I've got these stage-door Johnnies shovelling out the diamonds like a rainstorm. That's a mighty cute sailor you got there. You just get that (bleepch) under your fingernails and rip away. And give her a kick in the slats for me. Never let a good man get away, dear. They're (bleeped) hard to find!"

I went into alarm. This was not coming out the way I had expected. And although I had always suspected that when women talked privately together they plotted things, I had never understood their conversation was that bloodthirsty.

Oh, I would have to watch this carefully.

And then I experienced a surge of hope. Maybe I could get the Countess Krak for murder!

She was on the phone again. She got the number of Empire University and asked for Miss Simmons.

Of course they didn't know which "Miss Simmons" amongst all their 18,005 students and 5,002 faculty. The young man said so with some asperity.

"This is a life-and-death matter about one of her students," said the Countess.

"Then she must be a teacher," said the young man's voice. "What does she teach?"

"Nature Appreciation," said Krak.

"Wait a minute, please." Then he came back on the line. "You must mean Jane Simmons, Ph.D., D.Ed., Teachers College. She teaches Nature Appreciation 101 and 104 also."

"Does she have a student named Jerome Terrance Wister?"

"Thank God for computers. Yes, ma'am. But it says here that she's recommending he be expelled."

"Dangerous stuff, hate," said the Countess.

"I beg pardon?"

"I said, what is her home address so I can advise the next of kin?"

"It's that bad, is it?" said the young man. And he gave it to her very promptly. It was in Morningside Heights.

The Countess Krak opened up the wardrobe. She looked over her clothes. She chose a scarlet suit with an enormous pearl button holding the jacket closed. She got out some red gloves and red Moroccan leather boots.

Murder. She obviously planned murder!

Over it all she draped a black sable short cape. That confirmed it. She looked just like an assassin pilot to me. Visions of her red heels stamping that yellow-man into the floor back at Spiteos swam around me. Frantically, I wondered what I could do.

The sickening realization that I was about to lose an ally made me feel faint. And I had so carefully prepared it all, too.

Then I realized I could call my friend Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty. I knew where the murder would occur. Maybe I could get her walked in on red-handed, with the corpse of Miss Simmons still quivering in its pools of mangled blood.

The Countess then got down a shopping case, a black plastic one, of a kind that had lately come in fashion. She grabbed several items off a shelf so quickly I could not see what they were. And then she did a thing which shot my alarm right up to fascinated horror.

She got down a hypnohelmet and put it in! Deoxygenated as I was from lack of air in that closet, dizzy from paint fumes and plagued with fleas, I did not gather in the first moments the full import of this action. Then I understood completely because it was exactly what I would do.

She was going to get Miss Simmons, under hypnosis, to write a suicide note and then she was going to stamp her into the rug!

My hair stood on end! The Countess Krak was going to commit murder and then get off scot-free! Only if she were caught in the act could the crime be detected! Here was a convicted murderess waltzing about New York, slaughtering at will! And only I knew about it!

I suddenly realized that I COULD act. That helmet she had wouldn't operate at all if I were within a mile or two of the place. The relay breaker switch in my head would make it inoperative. I didn't have to come close to Krak, only within a mile or so. And meanwhile I could call Grafferty and get him there, if not in time to save Simmons, at least in time to catch Krak in the act.

But that address was more than four miles away from where I was, near Rockecenter Plaza. I must hurry!

I rose up and thrust against the closet door.

IT DIDN'T OPEN!

I pounded on it.

The awful pounding that was going on in the apartment was drowning all my hammering from within the closet. I pounded louder. They pounded louder. I yelled. They started yelling at each other to be heard above the din.

I put my shoulder to the door and pushed with all my might. All I got was some wet paint on me. I realized they must have piled all the furniture against the door.

I was TRAPPED!

The nausea of claustrophobia gripped me. The only thing I hate worse than space is no space. I got all confused. The naked electric light bulb hanging there began to look like a sun trying to suck me in.

I covered up my eyes. I knew I would have to get a grip on myself. My world was coming to pieces but that didn't mean I had to come to pieces, too. Or did it?

Gradually I managed to choke back the screams rising in my throat until they were only faint yips. That was better.

Think! I must THINK!

I peered at her viewer. More time had gone by than I had thought. She was riding on a subway train. It made her seem magical. How had she gotten from the secretary's boudoir onto a subway train so quick? Then I remembered that the station was right in the basement of the Empire State Building.

I beat my head with my fist. That helped.

THE RADIO!

I had that radio in here! This time I remembered to push the top button.

Raht answered.

"Get on the phone at once," I said. "Call Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty and tell him there's going to be a woman murdered in Apartment 21, 352 Bogg Street, Morningside Heights, within the next hour. Tell him to be there!"

"Is this urgent?"

Oh, I could have killed him!"You slip up on this and I'll give your name to Madison as a client!"

"Who is going to murder whom?" said Raht. "How can you tell all the way out there in Africa?"

"Are you going to make that phone call or aren't you?" I seethed. "The assassin pilot is on the way right this minute! The murdered woman will be found stamped into the rug!"

"You seem a little overwrought, Officer Gris."

"Not as overwrought as you'll be if I put a Colt.44 Magnum through your worthless skull!"

"Oh, you're down near Rockecenter Plaza."

(Bleep) him! He'd been holding me on the line to be able to read the distance and direction meter on the radio top!"Repeat that message!" I screamed at him.

He repeated it all back very precisely, the way spies are trained to do.

"Now listen, you bulge-brained (bleepard), if police don't appear there to catch that murderer with the corpse within the hour, you'll be turning in your head."

"Oh, I'll take care of it, Officer Gris. I'm on my way."

I hunched down on the floor. I watched Krak's viewer with horrible fascination as she rode the subway to her appointment with doom. Hers.

There was every chance that I would soon be rid of thai vicious female, the murderous Countess Krak.

The neighborhood in Morningside Heights was not too bad. It was full of winter-dead trees and peopled with rather well-dressed but sullen kids, who watched the Countess Krak go by in total conviction that she was a truant officer in disguise and was about to blow the whistle on them all. And Krak's purposeful progress could not have done otherwise than give that impression. Gods, I thought, how they would have screamed and run had they known they watched a murderer on the brink of bloody slaughter. Even the streetwise kids of north Manhattan would not have been able to stomach what I was sure was about to occur.

The grim pound of her boots halted before an apartment house that bore the number 352. It was not a shabby apartment house: Miss Simmons must have some income of her own. There was no doorman, but the brass mailboxes shone. And there it was, right there on number 21, the nameplate:

Miss Jane Simmons

It meant she lived alone! Gods, wasn't anything going to stand between the Countess Krak and this awful crime? Ah, yes, there was. Police Inspector Grafferty would soon be on his way.

Unsuspecting of the trap I had set for her, the Countess Krak pushed the buzzer. I was torn between hoping

Miss Simmons, who must have been at the UN, had not yet returned home and savagely hoping that she was, so Grafferty could catch this Manco Devil in the very act of mangling.

The brass grate spoke up. "Yes?"

The Countess Krak said, "I am a fellow teacher, from Atalanta University, Manco, and I want to talk to you about a student of yours."

The voice came back, "It's about time somebody listened to me! Come right up!"

Oh, blind, blind Simmons! You just invited yourself to murder!

I punched the radio button.

"Go ahead," said Raht.

"Have you done your duty?" I said.

"Police Inspector Grafferty was quivering like a bloodhound. I talked it up as a private inside tip. He said he could smell the headlines already. Eager. I caught him at the Civic Center and he's just now locating squad cars. He won't fail you."

"Good," I said and clicked off. Oh, Countess Krak, you've been outsmarted for once and you won't even be able to trace it to me! Grafferty the glory hound was going to do this one himself! It's a long ways from the Civic Center to Morningside Heights, but the police drive over everybody.

The Countess Krak regarded the foyer door. It kept clicking and she didn't know you were supposed to push it when it clicked. It stopped clicking. She gave it a shove, a very impatient gesture. The lock was faulty. It swung right open.

She strode past a fountain and between two statues. She saw the elevator was in use and went up the stairs.

She turned down a carpeted hall and stopped before Apartment 21.

The door opened without her even knocking. Never was a woman so anxious to be done in. Simmons was already talking. No hello or who are you. She looked dishevelled and very wild of eye. She said, "You know what he did today? He sabotaged the UN bill! He's got to blow everything up, even women's rights! He's a frothing fiend! We teachers must gang together in a solid phalanx of fury and stop him, even before we blow up the UN! Nobody is safe with him on the loose. And the college thinks that just because I was in a psychiatric ward, they don't have to listen to me. They think I'm paranoid about him. And just to make matters worse, the New York Tactical Police Force is after me again."