46

DOC SAVAGE

what it was.” He shrugged, added, “Oh, well, was not much time to admire the decora-if you’re going to crack the egg.”

tions.

He picked up Augustino and used the It was the old giant this time. Spatny.

limp body as a shield in front of his own as He came in wearing a candy-striped dressing he stepped out. McCutcheon used a shield robe and carpet slippers lined with yellow fur.

also—Miss Fenisong and myself, which The robe was yellow and cream. He looked turned me as pale as either Mac.

big, gaunt, a frame for a skyscraper before I knew we were in a penthouse. They they build up the brick.

had those in Kansas City. We were in a re-

“Good evening, Fleur,” McGraff said to ception room with a floor tiled in shades of him. “Get your hands up.”

browns, cinnamon walls striped in alligator The old man smiled. It couldn’t have green—the same cinnamon-and-green strip-been a smile. He stepped back the way he ing was carried out in such of the furniture as had come. Like a flash of lightning, he van-was not glass or plastic. A wild modernism ished. . . . He’d had hold of me the night be-saved the brown-and-green theme from before when we found him at the gatehouse of ing awful, or made it worse than awful, ac-the place on Long Island, and I knew he was cording to your taste. The place had enough strong. But he was quick too, quicker than room to swing a cat, even with the cat on the was possible. He was there—then wasn’t.

end of a long rope.

Gone.

A man came through a door and The door he had retreated through spoiled our chances of enjoying the decora-slammed a shade before McGraff got there.

tive motif. I’d seen this man before, too. He’d walked through the Parkside-Regent lobby several times while I’d been waiting there McGRAFF thwarted, wanted to shoot yesterday afternoon. He was a large man, somebody—for a couple of ice-coated sec-hard the way a fist is hard in a glove.

onds he had me in mind. But that passed. He “Augustino!” he exclaimed. He got that bowed his head, took his upper lip between much out before he recognized the Macs. He his teeth, released it to ask, “Why didn’t I didn’t like recognizing them—he jerked to a shoot him?”

stop, wheeled, and his feet whetted the shin-We stood there. Spatny was alive, and ing shades of brown floor desperately. His Spatny was also named Fleur. Somehow it feet didn’t get traction. He fell down.

hadn’t occurred to me that Spatny was alive, McCutcheon went forward, was upon and for some reason or other it didn’t seem the man, had kicked him in face, temple, at all extraordinary now that he was.

back of neck and stomach, in very little time.

In a voice that was clear, surprised—I got hold of Miss Fenisong, started her and of

all

things,

slightly

reverent—

back for the elevator. She had the same idea McCutcheon said, “Countess!”

anyway. I took, I think, two steps—and stood A little old lady had appeared. She was stony still. There had been a click of a sound as thin as a string, not much taller than some like a needle breaking. I put out a hand and of the furniture, and looked excessively evil.

stopped the girl.

She had on a black lace gown—nightgown—“Good,” said McGraff. He looked at us, sheer as imagination, and a woolly white fur eyes far too bright, over the gun I had just wrap thrown about her shoulders. Her heard him cock. He added, “You will walk in cheeks were painted, her fingernails and her ahead of us.”

toenails. She could have been eighty, and I asked, “How many more are they?”

she wore more cosmetics than a Twelfth-

“Two. . . . Walk!”

Street hustler.

The next room was cream, cream “So you got here,” she said.

walls, cream rug, and the small things—The Macs said nothing. They were drapes, piping on the furniture—were butter afraid of her.

yellow. There was more glass and plastic “Where is poppa?” she asked.

than in the hall, but no chrome. A large yel-McGraff pointed at the door. He didn’t low-flamed fire burned in a fireplace that did speak.

not look like a fireplace at all, but rather like a “The laboratory,” she said. She place to store the silverware. And again there sounded satisfied. “That is good. I was afraid for poppa.”

NO LIGHT TO DIE BY