Thin Edge Part 4

"I _thought_ this place smelled of something other than attar of roses," Morgan observed. "My nose tells me this is Thursday."

There was a hoa.r.s.e, humorless chuckle from the man in the next cell.

"'At's right. The smell of the disinfectant is strongest now. Sat.u.r.day mornin' it'll be different. You catch on fast, buddy."

"Oh, I'm a whiz," Morgan agreed. "But I thought the Welfare World took care of its poor, misled criminals better than this."

Again the chuckle. "You shoulda robbed a bank or killed somebody. Then theyda given you a nice rehabilitation sentence. Regular prison. Room of your own. Something real nice. Like a hotel. But this's different."

"Yeah," Morgan agreed. This was a political prison. This was the place where they put you when they didn't care what happened to you after the door was locked because there would be no going out.

Morgan knew where he was. It was a big, fortresslike building on top of one of the highest hills at the northern end of Manhattan Island--an old building that had once been a museum and was built like a medieval castle.

"What happens if you die in here?" he asked conversationally.

"Every Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day," the voice repeated.

"Um," said Harry Morgan.

"'Cept once in a while," the voice whispered. "Like a couple days ago.

When was it? Yeah. Monday that'd be. Guy they had in here for a week or so. Don't remember how long. Lose tracka time here. Yeah. Sure lose tracka time here."

There was a long pause, and Morgan, controlling the tenseness in his voice, said: "What about the guy Monday?"

"Oh. Him. Yeah, well, they took him out Monday."

Morgan waited again, got nothing further, and asked: "Dead?"

"'Course he was dead. They was tryin' to get somethin' out of him.

Somethin' about a cable. He jumped one of the guards, and they blackjacked him. Hit 'im too hard, I guess. Guard sure got h.e.l.l for that, too. Me, I'm lucky. They don't ask me no questions."

"What are you in for?" Morgan asked.

"Don't know. They never told me. I don't ask for fear they'll remember. They might start askin' questions."

Morgan considered. This could be a plant, but he didn't think so. The voice was too authentic, and there would be no purpose in his information. That meant that Jack Latrobe really was dead. They had killed him. An ice cold hardness surged along his nerves.

The door at the far end of the corridor clanged, and a brace of heavy footsteps clomped along the floor. Two men came abreast of the steel-barred door and stopped.

One of them, a well-dressed, husky-looking man in his middle forties, said: "O.K., Morgan. How did you do it?"

"I put on blue lipstick and kissed my elbows--both of 'em. Going widdershins, of course."

"What are you talking about?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The guy in your hotel suite. You killed him. You cut off both feet, one hand, and his head. How'd you do it?"

Morgan looked at the man. "Police?"

"Nunna your business. Answer the question."

"I use a cobweb I happened to have with me. Who was he?"

The cop's face was whitish. "You chop a guy up like that and then don't know who he is?"

"I can guess. I can guess that he was an agent for PMC 873 who was trespa.s.sing illegally. But I didn't kill him. I was in ... er ...

custody when it happened."

"Not gonna talk, huh?" the cop said in a hard voice. "O.K., you've had your chance. We'll be back."

"I don't think I'll wait," said Morgan.

"You'll wait. We got you on a murder charge now. You'll wait. Wise guy." He turned and walked away. The other man followed like a trained hound.

After the door clanged, the man in the next cell whispered: "Well, you're for it. They're gonna ask you questions."

Morgan said one obscene word and stood up. It was time to leave.

He had been searched thoroughly. They had left him only his clothes, nothing else. They had checked to make sure that there were no microminiaturized circuits on him. He was clean.

So they thought.

Carefully, he caught a thread in the lapel of his jacked and pulled it free. Except for a certain springiness, it looked like an ordinary silon thread. He looped it around one of the bars of his cell, high up. The ends he fastened to a couple of little decorative hooks in his belt--hooks covered with a sh.e.l.l of synthetic ruby.

Then he leaned back, putting his weight on the thread.

Slowly, like a knife moving through cold peanut b.u.t.ter, the thread sank into the steel bar, cutting through its one-inch thickness with increasing difficulty until it was half-way through. Then it seemed to slip the rest of the way through.

He repeated the procedure thrice more, making two cuts in each of two bars. Then he carefully removed the sections he had cut out. He put one of them on the floor of his cell and carried the other in his hand--three feet of one-inch steel makes a nice weapon if it becomes necessary.

Then he stepped through the hole he had made.

The man in the next cell widened his eyes as Harry Morgan walked by.

But Morgan could tell that he saw nothing. He had only heard. His eyes had been removed long before. It was the condition of the man that convinced Morgan with utter finality that he had told the truth.

VII

Mr. Edway Tarnhorst felt fear, but no real surprise when the shadow in the window of his suite in the Grand Central Hotel materialized into a human being. But he couldn't help asking one question.

"How did you get there?" His voice was husky. "We're eighty floors above the street."

"Try climbing asteroids for a while," said Commodore Sir Harry Morgan.