Читать книгу All the Colors of Darkness - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 8

CHAPTER 4

Jan Darzek’s only full-time employee was a former model named Jean Morris. She was a splendid ornament to his office, which she ran with ruthless competence, and on certain outside assignments her efficiency was deadly. Few people, male or female, could contemplate her superb figure and exquisite features and guess that behind her long lashes both of her large brown eyes were private.

She entered Darzek’s employment because she fell in love with him. She quickly learned that Jan Darzek was no mortal man, but an institution of weirdly developed talents, all directed at securing elusive bits of information and assembling them into comprehensive reports to clients. By that time she had transferred her love to the detective business and begun the intense cultivation of her own talents. They made a spectacularly successful team.

On the day of the Universal Trans opening, Darzek returned from lunch and found her puzzling over a telephone call. “From Berlin,” she said. “Supposedly from Ron Walker.”

“You don’t say.”

“It was a collect call.”

“It would be,” Darzek said with a grin. “If he calls back, don’t accept it.”

“I thought it was a gag. Or was that Ron’s twin brother that was here when I came in this morning?”

“Ron hasn’t got a twin brother, and it was a gag. This morning he was in New York. Now he’s in Berlin. In the meantime he’s been in London, Paris, and Rome. He’s traveling on a newspaper assignment. I met one of his buddies at lunch, and heard all about it.”

“Oh,” she said. “That transmitting business.”

“Right. Ron is doing a world tour by transmitter, sending back local color stuff on how the foreign populations are taking it. Naturally he’d like to give me a long personal report, with me paying the phone bill. If he calls again, tell the operator I just left for Siberia by transmitter.”

Twenty minutes later Darzek had a visitor, a businessman who had failed to control his exuberance on a trip to Paris the previous spring. There were complications.

“Paris?” Darzek said with a smile. “Last week I’d have told you I couldn’t spare the time. This week—I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

The businessman delivered himself of a deep sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll leave the whole thing in your hands. When you get back—will you be back by Friday?”

“I’ll go over tomorrow afternoon,” Darzek said. “I’ll see the young lady, and come right back. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

The businessman’s brows arched in surprise, then relaxed. “Ah. Universal Trans. I’d forgotten.”

“You’ll never forget it again,” Darzek said.

By Tuesday morning the police had decided to capitulate. Three blocks of Eighth Avenue were blocked off. The perspiring populace jammed the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. Universal Trans developed a sudden and thoroughly justified apprehension that the crowd might interfere with business, and opened a side entrance for paying passengers. When Jan Darzek arrived on the scene Tuesday afternoon it took him forty-five minutes to push his way from the Pennsylvania Station to the Universal Trans terminal, and he was restrained from giving up only by the fact that the swelling crowd behind him looked more formidable than the crowd in front.

Finally he reached the terminal, slipped into the side entrance with a feeling of intense relief, and was whisked by escalator to the mezzanine. He paused there for a few minutes to look down on the mob in the lobby below.

Confusion raged about one of the demonstration transmitters. An elderly lady had thrust her umbrella through ahead of her, and then balked at following it. She hauled frantically on the umbrella, two feet of which protruded at the far platform. The umbrella did not yield. The combined eloquence of six guards finally persuaded the lady to push her umbrella the rest of the way through and follow it.

Darzek watched her waddle away, a frown clouding his good-looking face. The temperature was ninety-five, there was no rain in sight, and—why an umbrella? Protection against the sun?

“Down, boy,” he told himself. “Who do you think you are? A detective?”

A moment later a high school girl changed her mind after curiously thrusting one arm into the transmitter. She hung helplessly, her forearm extending from the distant receiver. Her screams rang out shrilly above the din that filled the terminal. A guard finally shoved her through, and she scampered down the steps and darted furtively away. In the fracas the guard also stuck one arm through, and had to move on to the far platform. The crowd hooted.

“Strictly a one-way operation,” Darzek thought. “But one way at a time should be adequate for most travelers.”

The crowd seemed more amused than alarmed at the two mishaps. The lines kept moving, but Darzek noted that people approached the transmitter warily, tensed themselves as if for a plunge into a cold shower, and lurched through with eyes closed and hands held defensively in front of them.

Darzek tucked his briefcase under his arm and moved over to one of the lines at the ticket windows. Directly ahead of him a shapely blonde turned, surveyed Darzek’s sturdy six-foot frame and curly blond hair with analytical detachment, turned away. Darzek decided to ignore her.

In the next line a jovial, plump businessman was talking excitedly with a gaunt, unhappy-looking companion. “Tried it downstairs. Nothing to it. You don’t feel a thing. Like the ads said, it’s just like stepping from one room to another. Darnedest thing I ever saw. One step and there you are, clear across the room.”

The other chomped nervously on a cigar. “Across the room isn’t the same thing as here to Chicago.”

“Just the same. You can go clear to Singapore—if they have a terminal there—and it won’t take any longer than it does to go across the lobby. No more airplane flights for me. They’re safe, of course, but now and then a plane does crack up, and this is absolutely safe. That’s why they give you the insurance. They’re not going to give you fifty thousand dollars’ worth of free insurance if they aren’t certain that nothing can happen.”

“Humph!” the cigar chewer said. “They don’t do that because it’s safe. They do it because this is a new thing, and some people will naturally be afraid of it, and they want everyone to think it’s safe. Just tell me what would happen if that thing blew a fuse with half of you here and half of you in Chicago.”

“Say—I never thought of that! Let’s ask when we get to the window.”

Everyone seemed in need of reassurance, and the line moved slowly. The two businessmen reached their window, talked at some length with a patiently grinning ticket agent, and finally bought their tickets. Ahead of Darzek the blond woman was just reaching the window.

She swung a monstrosity of a handbag from her shoulder, opened it, and paused to study herself in a mirror while the ticket agent tapped a pencil irritably. Finally she snapped the bag shut, and regarded the ticket agent with the same analytical detachment she had turned upon Darzek. “I want to go to Honolulu,” she said.

“Certainly. Do you have some identification?”

“Identification.” It was difficult to tell whether she had asked a question or answered one.

“I need some kind of identification in order to make out your insurance certificate. With your ticket you receive fifty thousand dollars’ worth of insurance, effective from the time you enter the transmitting gate here in New York until you leave the receiving gate at Honolulu. Do you have some identification? Driver’s license, Internal Revenue ID—”

“Do the passengers wear life jackets?” the woman asked.

The ticket agent caught his breath. “No. No life jackets.”

“But are you sure it’s safe? There’s a lot of water between here and Honolulu, and I’d hate to fall in. I can’t even swim.”

The ticket agent drew on a thin reserve of patience. “It’s perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to you. Did you try the transmitter in the lobby?”

“Oh, gracious, no! I couldn’t get through that crowd.”

“You can watch from here. It’s like walking from one room to another. You walk through a door here, and out of a door at Honolulu, or wherever you’re going. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s Honolulu,” she said. “I told you I want to go to Honolulu. Don’t send me to China or somewhere.”

“You’d like to buy a ticket to Honolulu?”

“That’s what I keep telling you!”

“Your identification, please.”

“You’re sure it’s safe?”

“Miss, if you have any doubt at all, why don’t you go watch the lobby transmitters for a while?”

With evident reluctance she surrendered a driver’s license. “I do hope I don’t fall in the ocean. Salt water does terrible things to my hair.”

“This is your present address?”

“That’s right. I just don’t like the idea of going over all that water without an airplane, or boat, or something under me.”

The ticket agent wrote busily. Darzek turned his attention to the other windows. All of the agents looked harassed, and a couple of them were starting to snarl.

The blonde was rummaging in her handbag for her money. Since the operation took place directly under Darzek’s nose, he thoughtfully studied the handbag. It was a boxlike contraption of glistening black leather, artfully embossed with a complex network of designs that seemed reminiscent of ancient Mayan art. He couldn’t remember ever having seen anything quite like it. He wondered if it were Mexican.

She pushed her money through the window, and received in return her change, a ticket, an insurance certificate, and the Universal Trans pamphlet.

“This book,” the ticket agent said, “contains all you’ll need to know about transmitting. Report at Gate Ten, please.”

The woman carelessly stuffed everything into her handbag. “You’re sure—I mean, all that water—”

“Lady,” the ticket agent burst out, “you won’t even have a chance to wash your feet.”

The woman wheeled haughtily, to the accompaniment of guffaws from the line behind Darzek. Darzek stepped forward.

“Yes?” the ticket agent said wearily.

Darzek slid his driver’s license through the window. “This is my present address. Paris, please.”

The ticket agent wrote, accepted his money, made change. “Here you are. This book—”

“I know,” Darzek said. “I’ll read it after I get there.”

The ticket agent solemnly raised his grille and leaned out to grab Darzek’s hand. “Report at Gate Nine, please,” he said.

There were facilities for perhaps fifty transmitting gates on the mezzanine, with only a dozen in operation. Work was already going forward on the next section. Darzek saw Ted Arnold bustling about, waving his arms in eleven directions and sending men hurrying this way and that. Darzek moved among the waiting passengers with a feeling of exhilaration that only a long-frustrated Universal Trans stockholder could have understood. He found Gate Nine, and got in line.

Pretty young hostesses in smart costumes hurried about, answering questions, administering bright doses of courage at the slightest sign of faintheartedness. Darzek saw the blonde from the ticket line trying the patience of one of the hostesses. But the hostess was quickly crowded aside by male passengers, who met the crisis eagerly and enthusiastically, congregating around the blonde and reading whole paragraphs of the company’s pamphlet to her.

Darzek turned away with a grimace of disgust. There was such a thing as carrying even a good act too far, and the blonde’s had been less than tolerable to start with.

A hostess smiled up at him. “All set?”

Darzek nodded. “They seem to be moving slowly.”

“That’s because there are so few transmitters in operation. We rarely have two passengers in succession for the same destination, and the setting has to be changed every time. This is the European gate, with passengers for London, Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Madrid, Rome, and Athens. When each of those places has its own gate, the whole line will move right on through.”

She hurried off to bolster the courage of a plump woman who had reached the gate and showed signs of wavering. Darzek looked after her thoughtfully. Offhand he could think of at least two ways to solve that particular problem: they could sort out all the passengers for one place, and run them through; or they could schedule a time for each destination. He reminded himself that the company had only one day’s experience, and doubtless it would experiment until it found a satisfactory arrangement. And of course more transmitters would help.

Another hostess moved along the line with a speech about the extensive safety checks Universal Trans was applying, and a reminder to walk carefully when transmitting. Only that morning, she said, a man had sprained his ankle when he ran through a transmitter. She was followed by a third hostess who attributed the slow-moving lines to the fact that the passengers were too cautious, and asked everyone to please move through the transmitter quickly. The line edged forward.

The passenger gates seemed to be operating smoothly. Each gate was supervised by an attendant who sat in an elevated control booth. On a signal from the attendant the passenger surrendered his ticket, passed through a turnstile, and turned at a sharp angle into a narrow passageway. He quickly disappeared from the sight of those anxiously waiting in line, but Darzek noted that the gate attendant had an unobstructed view of the slanting passageway, and could watch the passenger until he stepped into the transmitter. The passageways were separated by tall partitions, which kept the passengers from wandering through the wrong transmitters.

Darzek had almost reached his gate when he heard a commotion in the next line. The blonde had been passed through Gate Ten, and then she decided she needed further instructions. The gate attendant and three hostesses pleaded with her as she stood her ground and tapped one expensively shod foot. From long training Darzek had already committed her features to memory. Now he began to study her critically. The mole on her left cheek—she should have that removed. Her long lashes were probably false. She wore more make-up than she needed, and her nervous mannerisms—the foot tapping, the way she repeatedly brushed her long hair back with her left hand, the way her right hand fidgeted with the clasp on her handbag—led Darzek to believe that a psychiatrist could have a very interesting interview with her. She was too obviously the helpless, the dumb blonde. It was an affectation, and she didn’t need it. Her face was really quite lovely, her figure lithe and well proportioned, and her white summer suit had a style and simplicity that only an expensive tailor could have imparted to it. Her appearance was striking enough to attract attention anywhere. Affectations were abominable in a woman who looked like that.

The high-pitched brittleness of her voice turned faces in her direction from the far end of the mezzanine. “Are you sure? I mean, all that water—”

Finally she turned and stepped out of sight into the passageway. There was a momentary lull while the gate attendant alternated anxious glances between his instrument board and the transmitter, and then the blonde was back.

“What do I do?” she asked. “Just keep on walking? There isn’t anything there but a wall at the end.”

The gate attendant threw up his hands. “Look, lady. You walk straight down there, and you’ll walk through the transmitter and come out in Honolulu. Do you want to make the trip or don’t you?”

“I don’t want to walk all the way.”

Darzek was staring at the blonde. “What the devil!” he muttered.

A hand touched his arm. “Paris, sir?” the hostess said. Darzek surrendered his ticket.

“Walk straight ahead, sir.”

Darzek turned for another look at the blonde.

“We’re waiting for you, sir.”

He shrugged. It was, after all, none of his business. He passed through the turnstile and strode down the passageway towards the blank wall at the end. Suddenly, instead of the wall, he saw an exit gate and a smiling attendant waiting for him. He was directed to a fast-moving customs line for passengers with light luggage, and a minute later he strolled out of Universal Trans’ Paris Terminal onto the Champs-Élysées.

* * * *

At the New York Terminal the blonde continued to argue. Waiting passengers set up a volley of blended derision and encouragement. The gate attendant put in a call for his supervisor, and that worthy individual took in the situation at a glance and invited the balky passenger back to a ticket window for a refund. Suddenly the blonde turned, walked down the passageway, and disappeared. The gate attendant sighed with relief and watched his instrument board.

Five minutes later he called his supervisor again. “I don’t get any acceptance light from Honolulu,” he said.

“Damn! How long has it been?”

“Over five minutes.”

The supervisor stroked his face thoughtfully. “Maybe your light is burned out. I’ll get someone down here from maintenance.”

“Sure. What about—” He gestured at the waiting passengers.

“We’ll have to shift them to the other lines. Get some hostesses over here.”

They distributed the Gate Ten passengers among the other gates, which took time and did not generate any customer good will. A technician arrived, checked the Gate Ten board, and pronounced it in proper working order. The supervisor swore violently, and hurried off to the staff transmitter for a fast trip to Honolulu.

Three minutes later he was back again, his face a noticeable shade whiter. “The dame never showed at Honolulu,” he said. “Her handbag came through, but she didn’t. They’re still waiting there. She must have ducked out.”

“She did not,” the gate attendant said stoutly. “She stepped through the transmitter. I was watching her.”

“Then where did she go?”

“How should I know?”

The supervisor was perspiring profusely. “I’d better get Arnold down here,” he said.

Ted Arnold interviewed the gate attendant, made a round trip to Honolulu, and summoned his staff for a hurried conference. He scattered his men in all directions, to Honolulu, to every Universal Trans terminal in operation, and nervously tabulated the results. Three hours later the chief engineer had to face up to the staggering truth.

On its second day of operation, Universal Trans had lost a passenger.