Chapter VII

It was eight o'clock Thursday evening when Stan stepped out of a faintly glowing circle of black light in a small alley off the Rue Pigalle in Paris. He calmly lit a cigarette and walked down the street to a small cafe.

It was bigger on the inside than it looked from the street. A long, low-ceilinged room with a tiny platform and a small band, almost hidden by the cigarette smoke, at the far end. Tanner and Reynolds, one of Stan's lieutenants, were seated at a small table along the side, earnestly talking to a frightened little man with an old-fashioned walrus moustache.

Stan squeezed in next to the little man and introduced himself. He ordered wine, then said: "You know the arrangements?"

The little man looked stubborn. "I'm not sure I like it."

"We're not asking much--and we'll pay well."

The little man made a show of licking his lips and nervously twisting his moustache.

"I don't get you, guv'nor. You want to give me a hundred thousand francs just to deliver a package to the souvenir stand at the top of the Eiffel Tower?"

"You're to give the girl a hundred francs," Stan cut in smoothly. "And ask her if she'll hold it for a Monsieur Lorenz."

The little man's eyelids drooped suggestively. "You're up to no good and a hundred thousand francs doesn't seem to me to cover it."

Stan moved in closer, threateningly. The little man thrust out his chin and glared at him.

"Just you watch your step, guv'nor! All I 'ave to do is 'oller 'elp and fifty people will be on your neck. And what's to keep me from talking about this anyways?"

"I could kill you right while you sit there," Stan said quietly. "I could do it and you wouldn't make a sound and nobody would know you were dead until ten minutes after we left."

The little man's eyes showed white and he nervously twisted a heavy ring on his finger. "You wouldn't dare, guv'nor. A bloke like you wouldn't dare!"

"You'll do exactly as we say," Stan interrupted coldly. "And if we wanted you to, you'd do it for exactly nothing." He smiled grimly. "Your real name is William Clark. You're in this country without a visa or a passport. You jumped ship from a British freighter during the war. Your wife died shortly after you signed up for your last voyage and there was some talk about it. But you disappeared and they never found you again or heard from you and the case was dropped."

He paused. "Do you want me to go on?"

* * * * *

The little man's eyes were wide and beads of sweat were dripping off the ends of his moustache.

"Why now, you wouldn't turn in an old man, would you, guv'nor? I've been clean ever since I been over 'ere! I 'aven't done a thing!"

Stan stared at him coldly. "Will you or won't you? You know the woman who runs the stand. It shouldn't be difficult."

The little man pretended to think about it for a moment.

"Why now, it doesn't seem like much," he mumbled. "Just a suitcase and you say all you want me to do is leave it with the woman?"

He had him, Stan thought.

"Be careful how you handle the suitcase and under no circumstances drop it--you'd be damned sorry if you did."

The little man drained his glass of wine. "When do I get my quid?"

"When we deliver the suitcase. Tomorrow."

The little man shivered and stood up.

"All right, I'll do it." He sidled past Tanner and stopped at the edge of the table. "Your eyes, guv'nor," he said suddenly, looking at Stan. "I swear to the Almighty, they're 'angman's eyes!"

Hangman's eyes.

Somewhere, someplace, Stan mused, he had thought that about somebody else. About Fred Tanner.

But he couldn't remember where it had been, or when.

Tanner fumbled in his wallet and gave the heavy man sitting next to him, a bill. "Reynolds, order up some more wine and see if they have any sandwiches, will you?" After Reynolds had left, he turned to Stan. "How many will this make?"

Stan ticked them off on his fingers.

"One in Chicago's Palmolive building, one in the Woolworth building on Manhattan Island, one in a dressing room of the Old Howard in Boston. Glasgow, Tokyo, Moscow, London, Rome and 41 others. And now Paris. They're all covered. Fifty ape cities--none of them long for this world."

Tanner nodded thoughtfully. "Mr. Ainsworth will be very pleased. Very pleased indeed."

Reynolds was back with a wine bottle in a small wicker basket and a plate of tired looking sandwiches. Stan drank the wine and ate the sandwiches without actually tasting them at all.

The cities were dirty, filthy ghettoes of brick and stone and the people were only apes, he mused. But somehow....

* * * * *

William Clark lived in a small, stuccoed rooming house in a suburb midway between Paris and Versailles. It looked old even for a rooming house in France, Stan thought. There was a mustiness and an age you could sense even from the outside. The ivy that climbed the walls was dead, the stucco was chipped in spots, and the curtains he could see through the windows looked yellowed and limp.

He climbed the front steps and worked the heavy knocker, then stood back waiting for the concierge to show up.

She didn't.

He tried the knocker again and then the door knob. There was a sudden snapping sound, the door creaked open, and he stepped in.

Dust--billows of it--rose from the hall rug. Dust that almost choked him before it settled once more on an ancient window seat and clung to the moldering drapes.

He turned to Tanner and felt a shock of surprise. Tanner was cradling his heat gun in his hands, ready for instant action. His face was grim.

"What kind of a man would you say Clark was, Martin?"

"Offhand, kind of a tidy little man and...."

"Not the type who would be living in an ancient rooming house?"

"That's right--he wasn't the type."

"Where did Clark say he lived?"

"Second floor--end of the hall."

"Let's go!"

Stan hesitated a moment. He was supposed to be in charge of the operation, yet Tanner was taking over. For a very good reason--Tanner knew something that he didn't. He followed Tanner up the stairs, his feet sending out little puffs of dust from the stair treads. Clark's room was closed and he knocked lightly on the door.

There was no answer.

He tried the knob.

Locked.

"Reynolds--break it down."

The big man hunched his shoulders and drove for the door. The panel burst like it had been made from paper and he stumbled to the center of the room before he could stop himself.

"That was a foolish thing to have him do, Martin."

"Why?"

"You didn't know what to expect--it could have been a trap."

Stan's voice chilled. "You've been acting like a cat on a hot griddle ever since we walked in. Just what were you expecting?"

Tanner didn't answer. He sauntered into the room. "Well, where's Clark?"

That was a good question, Stan thought. Just where was Clark? He glanced around the room. The average rooming house cell, the kind so many people on this planet seemed to live in. A bureau and an unmade bed, the blankets rumpled and twisted....

* * * * *

There was a linen runner on top of the bureau and on top of that was a glass, neatly wrapped in cellophane. He walked over and barely touched it, intent on moving the glass to get a better look at a photograph behind it.

The cellophane cracked and crumbled at his touch.

The photograph behind it wasn't important, Stan thought. A photo of a ship on which Clark had been a crew member.

What was important was the cellophane that had crumbled at his touch and the dusty linen runner which hung in tattered shreds where it overlapped the top of the bureau.

As if the weight of the cloth had become too much for the strength of the linen thread.

Old.

Incredibly old.

Tanner was standing by the window, looking out. When he moved back, his arm touched the curtain. The curtain collapsed and powdered, sifting down to the dusty carpet.

Stan watched it with intense curiosity, then moved over to the bed. The bed clothes were rumpled but they weren't lying flat. They were bunched in spots--as if somebody might still be underneath them.

He held his heat gun in one hand and flicked the blankets aside with the other. Like the curtains, they ripped and powdered.

Beneath the blankets was a skeleton--a few tattered pieces of cloth lying inside the gaunt bones. "I see you've found Clark," Tanner said.

"Clark?"

Stan could feel the sweat pop out on his forehead. Nobody on Thusca had ever told him that a man could die and the flesh on his bones shrivel to dust all in one evening. He bent over the bed. The skeleton was that of a man, a very old man, whose bones had started to calcify at the joints. There was nothing about it to link it with William Clark.

The little man with the walrus moustache had been middle-aged. He hadn't been old, he certainly hadn't been senile to the point where his joints were hardening.

Then he saw the ring on one of the finger bones. He touched it gingerly and rubbed away the green verdigris. The same ring he had seen Clark toy with at the tavern.

But the age! The incredible age!

He turned to Tanner, questioning. The narrow-eyed, dapperly dressed man was standing at one side of the window, his heat gun cocked. He was staring steadily through the glass and didn't bother to turn around. His voice was hard.

"You want to know what it's all about, don't you, Martin? Well, come on over and take a look for yourself."

"What about me?" a frightened voice suddenly rattled. "When's somebody going to tell me what's going on?"

Reynolds. They had forgotten all about him, Stan thought. Now the big man was shaking with fear, fear of the unknown. Stan wrinkled his nose. The ape was sweating and you could smell him clear across the room.

Tanner laughed easily. "I'll give _you_ a full explanation later on, Reynolds. But right now we're in trouble!"