Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 by Various (distant reading TXT) 📖

e checked himself sharply. There were shuffling footsteps in the hall outside. A timid tap on the door. Jamison opened it, while Bell dropped one hand inconspicuously to a weapon inside his shapeless clothing.

The toothless and filthy old man who kept the hotel beamed in at them.

"Senores," he cackled. "Vdes son de Porvenir, no es verdad?"

Jamison hiccoughed, as one who has been out and been drunken ought to do.[245]

"No, viejo," he rumbled tipsily, "somos de la estancia del Señor Rubio. Vaya."

The old man seemed to mourn that they did not come from the sheep ranches about Porvenir Bay. But he produced a bottle with a shaking hand, still beaming.

"Tengo muchos amigos en Porvenir," he chirped amiably. "Y questa botella—"

"Démela," rumbled Jamison. He reached out his hand.

"No mas que poquito!" said the old man, beaming but anxious as Jamison tilted it to his lips. "Es visky de gentes...."

He beamed upon Bell, and Bell swallowed a spoonful and seemed to swallow vastly more. He lay back lazily while Jamison in the part of a tipsy sheepherder bullied the old man amiably and eventually chased him out.

"You're amused?" asked Jamison sardonically, when there were no more sounds outside. "Because I said you didn't want to meet the young senorita who loved you when she saw you downstairs? Well, Bell, if you used your brain you didn't swallow any of that stuff."

Bell started up. Jamison caught him by the shoulder.

"I'm not sure," he said sharply. "Of course not. But it's damned funny for a Spanish hotel keeper to give something for nothing, even when he seemed just to want to gossip about his friends. Here. Drink this water. It looks vile enough to take the place of mustard...."

ext morning the hotel keeper beamed upon them both as they went out of the place. A slatternly, dark haired girl who leaned on his shoulder smiled invitingly at Bell. And Bell, in his character of a loutish sheepman from one of the ranches that dot the shores of the Strait, grinned awkwardly back. But he went on with Jamison.

"We separate," said Jamison under his breath. "We want to find where The Master lives, mostly, and then we want to find the laboratory where his stuff is mixed. We don't want to do any killing until that's settled. After all, the Trade has something to say!"

Bell codded indifferently and began to wander idly about the streets, turning here and there as if moved by nothing more than the vaguest curiosity. But gradually he was working through the sections in which the larger buildings stood. Concrete structures, astonishingly modern, dotted the business section. But none of them had the air that would surround a place where a man with power of life or death would be. In a town the size of Punta Arenas there would be unmistakable evidences about The Master's residence, even if it were only that those who passed it did so hurriedly and with a twinge of fear.

here were prosperous men in plenty on the streets, mingled with deserting sailors, stockmen and farmers from the villages along the Strait, and even a few grimy men who looked like miners. But there is a lignite mine not far from the city, and a narrow gauge railroad running to it. Of the prosperous-seeming men, however, Bell picked out one here and there toward whom all passersby adopted a manner of cringing respect. Bell lounged against a pole and studied them thoughtfully. Men with an air of amused and careless scorn which only men with unlimited power may adopt. He saw one grossly fat man with hard and cruel eyes. The uniformed policemen drove all traffic abjectly out of the way of his carriage, and stood with lifted hat until he had passed. The fat man gave no faintest sign of acknowledgment.

"I wonder," said Bell slowly, and very grimly, "if that's The Master?"

And then a passerby dodged quickly past his shoulder, brushing against him, and waited humbly in the street. Bell turned. A party of men were tak[246]ing up nearly all the sidewalk. There were half a dozen of them in all. And nearly in the middle was the bulky, immaculate, pigmented Ribiera.

Bell stiffened. But to move, beyond clearing the way, would be to attract attention. He backed clumsily off the curbing as if making way....

And Ribiera looked at his face.

ell's hand drifted near his hidden weapon. But Ribiera looked neither surprised nor alarmed. He halted and chuckled.

"Ah, the Senhor Bell!"

Bell said nothing, looking as stupid as possible, merely because there was nothing else to do.

"Ah, do not deny my acquaintance!" said Ribiera. He laughed. "I advise you to go and look at the view, over the harbor. Good day, Senhor Bell."

Laughing, he went off along the street. And Bell felt a cold horror creeping over him as he realized what Ribiera might mean. Ribiera had entirely too much against him to greet him only, in a town where even the dogs dared not bark without The Master's express command. He had guards with him, men who would have shot Bell down at a nod from Ribiera.

Bell burst into a mad run for the waterfront. When the bay spread out before his eyes he saw what Ribiera meant, and something seemed to snap in his brain.

The plane in which he and Jamison and Paula had escaped in was floating out in the harbor. It was unmistakable. A larger, bulkier seaplane floated beside it. The buzzing in the air the night before.... The arrival of the plane had been telephoned from Cape Virgins. Through a glass, perhaps, even its alighting had been watched. And a big seaplane had gone out to bring it back. Footprints in the sand would lead toward the lighthouse. There would be plenty of men to storm that, if necessary, to take the three fugitives. But they would have found only Paula. It was quite possible that the plane had only been sent for after Bell and Jamison had been seen to land in Punta Arenas. And Paula in The Master's hands would explain Ribiera's amusement perfectly.

ell found Jamison looking unhurriedly for him. And Jamison glanced at his utterly white face and said softly:

"We want to get where we can't be seen, to talk. There's the devil to pay."

"No use hiding," said Bell. His lips seemed stiff. "Paula—"

"Hide anyway," snapped Jamison. He fairly thrust Bell into an alleyway between two houses and thrust two rounded objects beneath his loose fitting coat. "Two grenades. I have two more. The boat we came in is taken—"

"So is the plane," said Bell emotionlessly.

"And there is a sign, in English, posted where we tied it up. The sign says, 'The Senores Bell and Jamison may recover their boat on application to The Master, and may also receive news of a late traveling companion from him."

"We're known," Bell told him—and amazingly found it possible to smile faintly—"Ribiera met me on the street and spoke to me and laughed and went on."

Jamison stared. Bell's manner was almost entirely normal again. Then Jamison shrugged.

"The sense of what you're saying," he observed wryly, "is that we're licked. Let us,