The Galaxy Builder

Chapter Two

He was standing—barely—supported by a man on either side who gripped his arms with hands like C-clamps. The ache in his head was approximately three feet in diameter, he estimated. He was back outside, he realized, smelling the fresh night air. Dimly, through a haze of pain, he saw a squat but mightily muscled man with bushy whiskers sitting on a broken gilt chair before him. The man was wrapped in badly cured furs. For some reason, O'Leary had the feeling the stubby Hercules had seated himself only a moment before. A small pink mouth opened amidst the whiskers, exposing chipped yellow teeth.

"Got any last words, traitor?" the pink mouth said. "Too bad if you do," the seated man continued after a momentary pause. "I'm Lord Trog. I got no time to listen to excuses." The beady red eyes which went with the whiskers seemed to O'Leary to be boring into him like hot pokers. Beyond the hacked-out clearing he stood in were some woods and, in the background, the pale silhouette of a ruined tower. He returned his attention to Lord Trog.

"You shoulda never of came out, hotshot," the gravelly voice went on. "Overconfidence, I guess."

"Where's Daphne?" O'Leary blurted. "I don't know who you are, or what you think you're doing, invading the palace grounds and grabbing me. When the palace guard grabs you, you'll wish you'd been a little more subtle."

"Yeah, well, about the palace guard, they took the year off, see? And I don't know no Daphne." The squat man paused to poke a grimy finger into what O'Leary assumed was an ear, buried somewhere within the nearly spherical mass of untrimmed, greasy-looking hair which enveloped the fellow's head.

"Sounds like a dame," Trog added indifferently. "Boys," he turned his attention to one of the men holding O'Leary's arms, "boys, you seen any strange dames around the place lately?"

"Seen no dames at all, Chief," the fellow replied. "No dames, no booze, no smokes, no card games—we don't get to have no fun at all. Never figgered I was ennerin a monastery when I joined up."

"That will do, Marv," the Chief grunted. His eyes flicked to the other man beside O'Leary.

"You, Omar? Any complaints? By the way, put Marv in irons at once, in the lower dungeon."

"Who, me, Chief?" Omar replied in tones of astonishment. "Why, no, sir, I'm perfectly content, just a loyal retainer glad to do his job. Do I really hafta stick old Marv down the hole? I mean, maybe he was just kidding, like."

The bearded man fumbled inside his furs, brought out a gray plastic object the size of a cigarette pack, and pressed a button on it as he brought it to his mouth.

"Top Dog to Pup One, over," he muttered. "Come in, Pup One. OK, skip the routine, but get the duty hit squad over here pronto. Over."

"Hey, boss, I was onney kidding around." Omar protested. "Me and Marv, we're nothing if not true-blue—" His protests were cut off abruptly as three louts in ragged blue knee-breeches and faded pink-and-yellow jackets with chapped elbows showing through the patches arrived on the scene, ominously clacking the actions of short-muzzled machine pistols.

"These here bums, Chief?" the foremost of the trio inquired, eyeing Marv and Omar dubiously. "Or this one?" He swiveled to cover Lafayette, who at once began mentally reviewing Professor Doktor Hans Josef Schimmerkopf's instructions for Focusing the Psychical Energies:

"... whilst at all times aware of the distinction between the outer, or objective Reality and the inner, concentrate on those as-yet-not-realized aspects of the Scene the outcome of which remains problematical; and by an Effort of Will, bring into Focus that eventuation most conducive to satisfaction ..." In spite of the old boy's pompous style, Lafayette reminded himself, his methods had worked well enough to transport him to Artesia in the first place, and to several less desirable alternate realities thereafter. But at the moment, all that was necessary was to divert the whiskery fellow—

"I'm Lord Trog and I'm the Chief Honcho around these here parts, just in case you don't know it, Al," the whiskery chieftain growled, squinting at O'Leary. "And I don't put up with no guys on my trusty guard staff which they ain't trusty. So—throw 'em away, fellows," he commanded the duty squad. "These here two miscreants," he clarified, with a nod at Marv and Omar.

"Don't bother to shoot 'em up much, just yet, but a stretch in the lower dungeon will do 'em a lotta good, discipline-wise." He waved a calloused hand in a negligent gesture. "Take 'em away."

Gosh, O'Leary thought confusedly, it worked, sort of! Maybe the old Psychic Energies are flowing again. That means ... well, I'm not exactly sure what it means, he conceded, but now that I've got Trog's mind off having me shot, the first thing I've got to do is find Daphne. She must have gone up those steps ...

"Where is the Countess?" O'Leary demanded sternly of Lord Trog, who, he thought, bore a considerable resemblance, under all that hair, to Yockabump, the court jester—and to Sprawnroyal of the Acme Novelty Company. The whiskers parted in a cavernous yawn.

"Back to that, huh?" His Lordship grunted. He looked about him as if suspicious of eavesdroppers.

"Level with me now, Bub, and maybe you can save yourself some trouble—and make a better-looking corpse, too: Are you really the fell necromancer Allegorus, like Marv and Omar said?"

"Where did they get that silly idea?" O'Leary demanded.

"Well, after all, ya did materialize outa thin air yonder in the Dread Tower, din't ya?"

"I came down the steps and they were waiting for me," Lafayette corrected. "Anyway, what's so dread about the Tower? It's just an old ruin." He smiled condescendingly. "I just ducked inside to get out of the weather, as it happens. So what?"

"You mean—you admit you were beyond the forbidden door, up inna top o' the Tower?" His Lordship drew a ragged circle in the air in front of him.

"A few steps up, was all," O'Leary explained. "You see, Daphne must have gone up there—unless Marv and Omar got her, too," he amended.

"If she did, pal, she's a goner. Too bad. We got a like critical shortage of dames here just now. What's she look like?"

Lafayette indicated Daphne's graceful contours with his hands. "Dark hair," he added. "Prettiest face in the known universe."

"Cheeze," Lord Trog mourned. "Wit' them statistics, she mighta qualified for my personal favor."

"I guess it's just as well she went up," O'Leary concluded. "What's up there that's so scary?"

"If you're really Allegorus, you already know," Trog reasoned. "And if you ain't, why should I give away any info?"

"It might weigh in your favor at your trial," O'Leary suggested. "What are you doing here in the palace gardens anyway?"

"Keepin' a eye on the Dread Tower, o' course, Al," Trog said as one stating the obvious. "And a good thing, it looks like, seein's you picked now to come out on one o' yer trouble-makin' raids."

"It appears," O'Leary said, feeling suddenly tired, "that you're in need of psychiatric attention, milord. Why don't you just go away quietly now, before your keepers find you; and I'll try to smooth things over with Her Majesty—as soon as you release Daphne unharmed, that is."

"Sounds like a square deal, Bub," Trog replied, showing his teeth in a wide grin. "Onney there's one little problem area: I ain't seen no Daphne, nor not even a Piggy-Lou."

"Stubborn, eh?" Lafayette said grimly. "You'll sing a different tune when you're clapped in irons with the royal PPS working you over with the latest in ballbearing joint-presses and the fully automated hydraulic rack, not to mention the computer-controlled foot-roasters."

"Sure, I heard all that old jazz before," Trog said indifferently. "But you're in a funny spot to be threatening me wit' the attentions of a Physical Persuasion Specialist, which I got a pretty good boy on my staff my own self. Now, cut the comedy and give me the straight dope: Do you admit you're Allegorus the Awful, or don't ya?"

"Maybe you'd better tell me a little more about this fellow you're so scared of," O'Leary suggested. "Then I'll tell you if I'm him or not."

"Me, I'm a reasonable guy," Trog said, indicating himself with a grimy thumb. "Maybe you just like to hear people talk about ya, huh? Got a little ego problem, eh? Well, I'll play along: Everybody knows he comes out every three hundred years or like that, stirs up a bunch of trouble and then goes back inna tower for another three centuries—an' nobody never sends in no eats or drinks, so he always comes out wit a appetite on him like three harvest hands; and he likes beans—hu-mern beans."

"Is that all?" O'Leary demanded sarcastically. "Sounds like a pretty dull fellow."

"Not when he gets wound up good, he ain't," Trog declared defensively.

"Anyway, I'm not him," O'Leary stated with finality. "And even if I were, what right do you and your gang of thugs have to interfere with the movements of a nobleman of the realm?"

"You was seen goin' into the Dread Tower, which nobody don't go in there except old Allegorus hisself!"

"I was merely taking shelter from the rain," Lafayette countered. "It was the only building in sight, so naturally—"

"Rain, huh? Well, Bub, you coulda picked a better alibi. All Aphasia's been in the like grip of a drought these last six years or more," Trog stated flatly, reaching down as he spoke to take a pinch of dust from the ground beside his chair. He rolled it between his gnarled fingers, letting it dribble away in a fine stream which spread and dissipated like smoke before it reached the ground. Lafayette looked down and saw dry mud caked on his elegant purple patent-leather court pumps, which were firmly planted in drifted dust. Not so much as a stunted green weed testified to the former existence of water here. Still, his shirt clung, sodden, to his back, though the air seemed noticeably warmer now.

"Oh, yeah?" he said in an attempt at a casual tone. "In that case, how'd I get soaked?"

"Marv and Omar figgered you'd fell in the well you must have inside the tower," Trog said. "Maybe that's why you come out—you was shook up from the misadventure which it coulda been fatal all alone in the dark and all."

"You referred to some place called Aphasia," O'Leary commented, "I thought Aphasia was a mental state." Then he added in a desperate attempt at rationality, "Well, maybe it is at that."

"Oh, I get it," Trog said, "ya poor slob, you're off your chump, huh? Well, Lord Trog ain't one to be too tough on a guy which he's afflicted of Allah. So relax, pal, and I'll leave my official leech have a look at your dome."

"I don't want any leech, official or otherwise, to look at my dome," Lafayette came back hotly. With an effort, he calmed himself. Nothing to get excited about, O'Leary, he told himself sternly.

Somehow, he explained to himself patiently, somehow, I've done it again—gotten myself involved in another of those ridiculous situations where everybody thinks I'm somebody else and nobody is who he seems to be. And it's not fair! This time I wasn't tinkering with gadgets swiped from the Probability Lab at Central, or practicing focusing the Psychic Energies, or meddling in Nicodeaus' lab, or anything else ...

"No spells, now, Bub!" the hoarse voice of Lord Trog broke into Lafayette's self-instructive reverie. "Nor no prayers, neither," he added. "Don't worry, you'll get a fair trial and a relatively painless demise. Nobody ain't never said Lord Trog don't give a fella a even break, even if it's a compound fracture o' the femur." The barbaric lord snickered at his own wit, and shifted in his chair, which creaked ominously under his weight.

I know that chair, O'Leary realized abruptly. It's one of the ones that used to be in the Great Hall, spaced between the mirrors! So these ruins really are the palace!

For the first time, O'Leary took a good look around at the scrub woods that seemed to have sprung up where the south gardens ought to have been. His eyes went to the ruined tower of chipped pink stone looming above the treetops, the only structure in sight. Broken cut-stone blocks and drifted rubble were scattered all about, glowing pale pink in the moonlight. It was the east tower, where Nicodaeus' old laboratory occupied the top story—all that was left of the palace, Lafayette realized with a sinking feeling. He stooped and picked up an egg-sized fragment of pink stone, polished flat on one side, and felt a pang of regret as he realized that it had once been a part of the radiant facade of the palace; he dropped it into his pocket, silently vowing revenge on the vandals.

"I'm wasting time," he told himself sternly. "The poor kid is probably alone, scared—or worse yet, not alone and scared."

"Daphne!" he said aloud, and took a step past Trog and toward the ruin.

"No, you don't, Al," the seated man barked. "Hey, Marv, Omar! Where in Tophet are them bums which they're pulling the duty tonight?"

"In the lower dungeon, Your Lordship," O'Leary supplied.

"So you really are Allegorus, eh?" Trog grumbled. "Wit' duh second sight and all—"

"One sight was enough," O'Leary countered. "What happened to the palace?" He stooped and picked up another crumbling chip of pink quartz, seeing at once that it was severely weathered. Whatever had happened, it appeared, had happened a long time ago. That being the case, he must be suffering from amnesia, and Daphne couldn't have been caught in the collapse of the great building.

"Still," he said aloud, "that's where she was last seen —or almost seen: it was pretty hazy. So that's where I've got to start."

"Nix, Bub," Trog came to his feet, an unwashed gnome less than five feet tall, wrapped in foul-smelling half-cured hides; but he had the arms of a weight lifter and oversize, scarred-knuckle fists, which he thrust under O'Leary's nose. "One more step and I'll summon the boys, which dey'll trow yuz inna lion pit."

"Nope, lower dungeon, remember?" Lafayette said, and delivered a sharp kick to the boss's left kneecap. "Anyway, I don't have time to be bum-rapped right now," he added as he pushed past Lord Trog, now hopping on one leg and holding the other knee in both hands. O'Leary ran across the expanse of rubble-littered weeds past the last of the trees. He had reached the cracked and tilted slabs of the former terrace when a boulder struck him on the side of the head and sent him spinning down into a coal-black fog.

He was back in the gray room, back in the same dumb dream, he saw, except that the angry fellow had calmed down and was sitting across the table from him, speaking reasonably—or almost so:

"... cut you in for a full share; I'm not greedy. Don't be a spoilsport." A serving-wench came up and put a full tankard before the fellow; as she turned away O'Leary realized it was Daphne, a drab cloth tied around her once-lustrous dark hair in place of the diamond-studded coronet. He jumped up, knocking over the table on the man in gray, who yelled and leaped clear. His limbs strangely heavy, Lafayette tried to clamber over the fallen table, but it seemed to grow and elaborate under him. Daphne was gone.

It seemed to Lafayette that he had been climbing for a very long time, an exhausting ascent of a vertical wall, in total darkness. He paused to catch his breath, wincing at the ache in his head, and tried again to remember just where it was he was going—and whence he had come. But the problem was too complex; with a groan, he gave it up and reached up for a new handhold on the cold, wet wall against which he clung like an exhausted fly. He dug in his fingertips for a better purchase; they merely slipped painfully; then his other hand, groping upward, encountered something different from the unyielding texture of the stone wall. Cloth, it felt like, and under it, tough stringy flesh, which recoiled at his touch.

"Come on, pal, gimme a break, OK?" an aggrieved voice which O'Leary had heard before broke the stillness. "How's about you just relax now, and leave me do the same."

"Marv," O'Leary said aloud and, remembering his precarious position clinging to the wall, made a wild grab and secured a firm grip on a spongy mass of whiskers.

"Cripes!" Marv's voice yelled. "Come on, lay off the rough stuff, which me and Omar handled you wit' kid gloves all the way, right?"

"Pray accept my apologies, gentlemen," Lafayette said. "I have no intention of savaging you. Actually, I came along simply to assist you in escaping the unjust punishment visited on you by your ungrateful master."

"Yeah, after all we done for him," Omar agreed. "Right, Marv? The kid's got something there. We din't do nothing but follow orders, and—by the way, kid, how do you figure on springing us outa here?"

During the exchange, Lafayette had gradually become aware that, rather than crawling up a rough, damp stone wall, he had been creeping across a rough, damp stone floor. He relaxed gratefully and worked on getting his pulse and respiration back down into a range more characteristic of a patient with a positive prognosis.

"There's the way we come in," Marv suggested without enthusiasm, "only I for one can't jump no forty feet straight up and hover long enough to undo a tricky latch onna trap door before I start back down."

"Before we go," Lafayette said, "suppose you gentlemen fill me in on some details, such as what happened to the palace and all the people in it, especially Daphne? Are you sure you didn't grab her just before you waylaid me? And who is this Trog fellow, anyway?"

"Geeze, kid, we musta conked ya a little hard at that; sounds like you don't know nothing."

"Precisely," O'Leary agreed. "Start with Daphne. Did she escape up the stairs, or what?"

"If she done," Omar said gloomily, "it's curtains for sure for the poor broad, which you said she was a looker, right, Al?"

"Why do you fellows keep calling me 'Al'?" O'Leary demanded.

"Meaning no disrespect, Yer Honor," Omar said hastily.

"Just meant to be friendly-like," Marv added reassuringly. " 'Allegorus' is too long fer a name, anyways. No offense," he added.

"Suppose I assure you, once and for all," O'Leary said, "and for the last time: I'm not this Allegorus person."

"Ya must be, Al," Marv said persuasively. "Otherwise how could you of aced old Trog inta letting ya in here to help us out?"

"Oh, I know a few tricks, I'll admit," Lafayette acknowledged. "Who is Trog, and where'd he come from? Does he have anything to do with the palace being in ruins?"

"Slow down, Al," Omar suggested. "You're getting ahead of us. Trog is just Trog, which Frodolkin hisself put him onna job guarding the Tower, they say."

"Which brings us to the question of who is Frodolkin?" Lafayette persisted.

"He's a shot which he's so big, nobody don't ever get to see him. He stays out at his fort, a few leagues west o' here, wit' a big army of, like, henchmen and cronies and guys like that," Marv contributed.

"What happened to the palace?" O'Leary demanded. "Was it destroyed by this Frodolkin?"

"Naw, nothin' like that," Omar replied. "I mean, according to tribal legend and all, this here bunch o' busted rock useta be some kind o' palace, like, maybe three hunnert years ago; then it fell into roon, like they say, all but the Dread Tower, and you got that sealed off pretty good, Al. Now you tell me one: What's so hot about that crummy Tower, ya wanna stay in it alia time, huh?"

"Yeah," Marv echoed. "What ya got in there, anyways?"

"Nothing much," Lafayette conceded. "It's just that apparently Daphne's in there. Three hundred years, did you say? That's ridiculous! It was perfectly all right less than an hour ago."

"Now," Marv said, "let's get back to how you're going to spring Omar and I. And we better get moving, which I got a idear His Lordship has got something on his mind, like that message he got from Frodolkin."

"What message?" Omar demanded. "I never heard nothing about no message."

"You know," Marv replied glumly. "The usual: about the sacrifice to the vampire-god and all. Like every year. Only this time ..."

"Yeah, what, this time?" Omar persisted. "I guess we'll hafta round up some o' the local churls and villeins and ship 'em over, like always. So what?"

"So, Master Wise Guy, if you'd care to refresh yer membry, ya might recall we ain't seen none o' the local clods fer some time now, what wit' the tide of battle, like, surging back and forth acrost their farms. Ain't nobody left in these here parts except us loyal retainers; including the hit squad, about forty souls in all. So who's gonna get to go and meet the vampire-god, except whatever guys happen to be on the gig-list at the moment? Here's three of us, onney four to go to make up the quota. We prolly got until daylight tomorrow."

"Have you went nuts, Marv?" Omar demanded without conviction. "You think a swell boss like Lord Trog would send his faithful boys off to a horrible end, just to save his own neck?" After a moment's thought he added, "Let's get outa here." He turned to O'Leary, "Now's yer chanst, bo," he said, "to get on our good side by working that nifty breakout you was telling about."

Lafayette heard sounds of fumbling in the dark. Then, with a sharp scratch of flint on steel, a spark glowed, and a moment later a candle-flame ignited, shedding a mellow glow on the stone walls. It showed a mildewed gray here in the tower base, rather than the soft pink of the outer structure; in its radiance, Marv and Omar squatted, heads together, a pair of hairy troglodytes eyeing O'Leary with inscrutable expressions on their rough-hewn features.

"Let's sum up," O'Leary proposed briskly. "I'm still in Artesia, although Lord Trog called it Aphasia—I'm not somehow shifted off into another continuum like Melange, or Colby Corners; but I've gotten myself shifted in time, three hundred years into the future, and this pile of rubble is all that's left of Adoranne's beautiful pink palace. I'll worry about 'how' later. And Daphne's here, too, probably hiding up in Nicodaeus' old lab at the top of the Tower, poor kid. But wait a minute: If it really is the palace, then the system of secret passages is still there, inside the walls. So—just where am I now, in relation to the palace? Marv, show me where this dungeon is in relation to the Tower." He smoothed the mud on the rough stone floor to create a sketching surface. "Draw me a map," he urged the barbaric ex-guard.

"Well, Al," Marv began reluctantly, "I ain't much of a one fer drawrin' pitchers, but if this here"—he made an X with a blunt forefinger—"is the Tower, the upper dungeon is over here to the side, like this here ..." He added a rectangle adjacent to the X.

"On which side?" O'Leary demanded. "Which way is north?"

Marv hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "I got a keen sense o' direction, Al, but so what? Inside this hole, the onney direction innersts me is up."

"I mean on the map," O'Leary explained testily. "Now, if we're to the west, that's where the wine cellars used to be. And if the lower dungeon is under the cellars, say, that would put us just about in the unused storeroom where Goroble had his stolen equipment stashed; and if that's so—" O'Leary rose unsteadily on legs which felt as if they had been freshly molded of papier-mâché; he staggered, but righted himself and went across the room to study the crudely mortared blocks of rough-hewn masonry which comprised the partition. He identified the faint arrow he had scratched on the stone so long ago, reached, pressed, and felt the apparently solid masonry yield and swing inward, exposing a pitch-black passage beyond.

"Come on, boys," he said, and without waiting for a response, stepped through.

At once, he was at home, and memories came flooding back:-creeping through dark passages behind Yockabump as the court jester led him for the first time through the system which gave covert access to practically every room in the great pile; later, exploring alone and finding the false king's hidden store of stolen high-technology gear; then, still later, leading Princess Adoranne and Count Alain to the ballroom just in time to cut short Quelius' bold attempt to usurp the throne of troubled Artesia. It was like the old days, Lafayette tried to tell himself—the bad old days when he was, at first, a displaced pauper in flight from the law and an outraged populace, and later, when he was a pampered favorite of the sovereign, in flight from the cops as well as from a gang of cutthroat wayfarers plus the Central Security Forces, all determined to cut him to small bits without trial. Compared with those days, he assured himself, this was a cinch: All he had chasing him now was Lord Trog's hit squad—and he was inside the ruins of the palace, with free access to the Tower, of all places, the one place he was likely to find some key to this mad situation; and surely Daphne was up there, waiting for him to rescue her.

But, he reminded himself sternly, he had promised Daphne to stay away from the lab, and now she was gone, poor trusting girl ... But she had to be in the Tower, unless Trog and his boys were better liars than seemed likely ... So all bets were off: His promise didn't count. And the pivot-stone opening on the narrow passage to the Tower stair had to be right along here ...

He found it and slipped through onto the landing outside which he had first been grabbed by Marv and Omar, which reminded him ...

"This way, fellows," he called heartily. "Stick with me and we'll be out of here in maybe a trice and a half."

"Where are we at?" Marv demanded sullenly from the darkness hiding him.

" 'Where' means 'at what place', Lafayette told the uncouth fellow. "So you don't need to hang that 'at' on the end of your sentence; it's redundant."

"Skip all that jazz, bo," Marv returned. "But whereat are we?"

"Where we are at," O'Leary replied with dignity, "is right back where you two clowns clobbered me in the first place."

"You mean—?" Omar's voice choked up before he could utter the thought.

"I mean," Lafayette confirmed. "It's a lot better than the lower dungeon, right?"

"Excuse us, bo," Omar's voice floated back as the two exited hastily into the night.

"Daphne," O'Leary yelled up the stairwell, but only a sardonic echo returned. He started up into darkness, brushing aside cobwebs, tripping over small objects on the stone steps; doubtless, he thought, items dropped by thieves as they hastily looted the ruin. He paused to yell again: nothing, not even a good echo this time. But she had to be up there, didn't she? he thought desperately. There was one way to find out. He started up, one step at a time. Round and round the spiral stairway climbed. The steps continued to be littered with loose objects. It was strange that the Tower had survived, essentially intact, when all the rest had been reduced to rubble; but that was a good sign, he thought contentedly—that Central still maintained an interest in their only permanent point of contact with Locus Alpha Nine-Three, Plane V-87, Fox 221-b, known to its inhabitants as Artesia.

He was halfway up when he heard the first sounds of pursuit from below. Apparently Lord Trog had offered his loyal hit squad a fate even more dismal than the Dread Tower to any who failed to enter the latter in pursuit of the quarry. He sat on a step and listened. The pursuers seemed to be moving rather slowly. But even so, he'd be trapped at the top and would be able to do nothing but await their arrival.

O'Leary rose and went on. At last he reached the big iron-bound door. A ragged hole gaped where the big combination lock installed by Nicodaeus had formerly served to bar intruders. It was just as well: he wasn't sure he could remember the combination. He called once again for Daphne as he pushed the door open wide. For a moment he thought he had elicited a response, if only a faint sound of movement within, but as he stepped eagerly forward he saw that the room was empty. Of course, the old lab equipment of Nicodaeus was long gone: the tables covered with alembics and retorts, the shelves containing eye of newt and best mummy-dust, the crackle-finish panels crowded with dials, indicator lights, and flickering oscilloscope traces. Now it had the appearance of some ancient tomb, deep with dust, festooned with cobwebs, eerie in the moonlight streaming through the double doors which opened on the small balcony from which he had been forced more than once to flee to safety.

There was one more possibility, he reminded himself, sternly rejecting hopelessness: the most important item of all—the special telephone to Central, in the cabinet beside the door. He turned to it, ready to utter a cry of relief, but instead he groaned. The door of the compartment had been ripped from its hinges, and the interior was empty but for a scattering of dust and a number of bits of waste paper. A stub of wire, rudely hacked short, projected from the cabinet wall near one corner.

Aha! This was more like the old O'Leary luck. He could scrape the insulation away, cross the bare wires, and tap out an SOS. Surely some on-the-ball operator at Central would get the message, trace it, and—

"Move not, on your life!" A harsh voice called so close to O'Leary's ear that he uttered a yelp and started violently. Hard hands grabbed his arms, half-supporting, half-restraining him. He considered stamp-kicking the man behind him, but upon seeing the other man, in front of him, he chose discretion.