33

He was looking for Doc Savage to tell him Nobody agreed with me, but Monk what had happened.

said, “It’s good to be ignorant, because igno-Savage was in a large room, an enor-rance is bliss.”

mous room that was a state dining room or a Presently it began to get a little lighter ballroom or possibly both. He was throwing outside, but this light didn’t scare anyone. It small stuff—vases, statuettes, light chairs—was the dawn. It came to us quite slowly and at the ceiling fixture trying to put out the illu-normally, as daylight should come. The mination in the room.

clouds weren’t as thick in the sky as I had Savage said: “Watch out! Keep away thought. They were cumulous, a thin layer of from the windows!”

cotton-ball clouds.

Ham Brooks said: “Why—”

Savage said: “I guess it’s safe to look Three bullets came in, giving him an for tracks.”

answer. They dug holes in a picture, walls, If he meant footprints, there weren’t and in our peace of mind. There was very any. At least none I could see, and I heard little of the latter left. I listened closely to the Monk and Ham telling each other there didn’t sound of the weapon outdoors, and I figured seem to be a trace—other than the widely about three years spent during the war listen-spaced prints, a little like those of a hard-ing to guns whack made me an authority, so I pushed jackrabbit, that old Spatny had made said: “A rifle, a .30-06 caliber and probably a leaving the house. We trailed him through a model M1.”

neatly trimmed woods to a black-topped Monk Mayfair said, “Shorter barrel, I road, and that was the end of his trail. There think from the sharper sound. More likely a were no signs of a struggle. The black-top carbine. Those short guns always talk like a hadn’t retained a trail—the sun of the last few short man, too big for their britches.”

days had melted the snow off the road, as it He was probably right at that.

had off the sidewalks that turkey-tracked the The phony moonlight went away. It just estate.

died out. Not instantly—the process of going Miss Fenisong had missed out on our took a second or two; it was like when you visitation from the queer light and the black throw a bucket of water in the air; a few no-such-things. I told her about it. She was drops are always late reaching the ground.

so beautiful that I got to thinking about her Then it was dark.

and Gross, and I said most of the last part of it through my teeth.

She listened without a word, then IT seemed to be over for the time be-asked, “How did Albert die?”

ing. We picked out different windows and did I told her that. Maybe my tone partly plenty of cautious looking and listening, but conveyed that it was going to be hard for me outdoors it had become a normal night again.

to shed tears about Gross not being one of Miss Fenisong awakened. She didn’t us any longer.

have much to say—we had doused all the

“Albert was my half-brother,” she said.

lights in the house in order to see out into the

“Huh?”

night better, and apparently she thought at

“My mother was first married in first that she was alone in the mansion, be-Czechoslovakia, and separated from her cause she began trying to stumble around.

husband, leaving her baby—Albert—with her Savage told her, “Better sit and rest, Miss husband when he got custody of the child in Fenisong.”

court. She came to the United States, mar-She did that.

ried again to a man named Fenisong, and I I broke out into cool sweat and had a was her child by the second marriage.”

couple of chills, a reaction from what had I was so pleased I couldn’t have hit the happened. It was the worst when I thought of floor with my hat. I wasn’t even able to keep how the old giant had yelled out there in the my feet on the floor; it was almost the same night when that impossible patch of black-thing as a while ago, when I had been so ness had overtaken him. I said: “Nobody is scared.

going to tell me that was straight stuff, not

“Savage!” I yelled. “Come here!”

anything that fantastic. It’s a gag of some sort. It’s got to be.”