my ear,” he said. “I’d go obligingly glassy-eyed, recite my part of the formula your dear old dad had hidden away in my skull.”
“Yes, something like that, yes.”
“Games,” he said. “You’ve been trying to play games with me.”
“I don’t want to remind you that you’re working for us,” Jennifer said. “And, I must add, you haven’t thus far done a very satisfactory job. According to the Whistler Agency reports none of the missing people has been found. Considering the fees paid by Triplan I was expecting-”
“I’ve got them all.”
Jennifer took a step closer to him. “The Horizon Kids? Then why haven’t you reported that, turned them over to-”
“Several reasons. I want to keep them alive. Oscar Ruiz, Liz, Winiarsky and me.”
“Leaving them off somewhere that Syndek can-”
“Syndek didn’t kill Hal Larzon.”
“Of course they did. I-”
“Nope. I can prove that.”
“There’s no one else who could’ve done anything like that.”
“There are at least three people,” Smith told her. “Of those three, I’d vote for Benton Arloff, since-”
“Yes, I see.” She swung out across the darkness between them, slapping him, hard, across the cheek. “You go into business for yourself, betray mother and me and then try to frame my husband for-”
“Jennifer, it isn’t Syndek and it’s not the Trinidad Law Bureau,” he said evenly. “Now, if your husband could make you all believe that somebody like Syndek was out to trap the secret holders and kill them, he-”
“We already had Larzon’s part, before he was killed. So what-”
“He could eventually kill some of the Kids you hadn’t reached yet, after he got what he needed,” said Smith. “And, most likely, once he’d established the idea that the opposition wasn’t above killing, I was the most obvious candidate for that. Actually, I’m not sure he wasn’t figuring to kill all of us. That way he’d have the information and there’d be no way for you to get it. To get the transmutation process all to himself-”
“How’d you find out what the secret was?”
“I’m an investigator, remember. I find out things.”
Jennifer shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We’ll go down to Horizon House right now, talk to Benton. He’ll convince you.”
“No need for that, love,” said the tall, thickset man who stepped from behind a slice of ruined temple wall. Even in the new night they could see the silver kilgun in his right hand.
“Benton, why did you follow me?”
“Because, darling,” answered her husband, “your old buddy Smith is right about me.”
CHAPTER 27
Jennifer watched her husband walking toward them. “Benton, I don’t understand-”
“No doubt Smith does.”
Smith said, “All is better than a third.”
“Exactly,” said Arloff, smiling at them both.
“But we…love each other.”
“Later on, love, we can talk about it,” her husband said. “Right now, though, I’m going to deprive you of Smith’s company.”
“You didn’t kill Hal Larzon,” she said, unsure.
“I did, yes. And for the very reason your clever former beau mentioned.” He gestured at Smith with the kilgun. “I’ll have to take you someplace where I can persuade you to tell me where the others are.”
“I doubt you can accomplish that, Arloff.”
Arloff laughed. “Oh, there’s not a doubt in my mind,” he said. “After that, and after I’ve gathered in the last bits of the puzzle, then I’ll see about arranging some accidents and disappearances for you Horizon Kids.”
Jennifer said quietly, “You aren’t going to kill him, Benton.”
“You actually, darling, don’t have a hell of a lot of say in the matter.”
“Benton,” she said, even more quietly.
That made him turn toward her. “Really now, Jenny.”
She’d taken a small kilgun from the pocket of her jacket. It was aimed at her husband. “You’d just,” she said, “better go away from here.”
Laughing again, he started easing to her. “I know you, love,” he said. “You can’t shoot me, no matter what you think or feel.”
“I won’t let you kill Jared.”
“You will because…oof.”
Smith had leaped at the distracted Arloff.
The doves went flapping up into the darkness.
As the two men fell Smith got a grip on Arloff’s gun-wrist. They rolled and tumbled on the stone temple floor.
Grunting, Arloff tried to knee him in the groin. Smith twisted, avoided that.
The thickset man strained, struggling to regain control of the kilgun. Smith was forced to let go of his wrist for a second, then caught it again.
In that instant the gun went off, sending a thin line of crackling crimson light slicing across the night.
Arloff made a terrible keening sound when the beam touched him. His face began to smoke and go black. Stumbling back and away, Smith stood.
Arloff made three jerking movements, shoulders and arms shaking. Then he was dead, smoke rising up from his ruined head.
Bending, Smith picked up the kilgun. He held it gingerly, as though it were dirty.
“You killed him,” Jennifer said.
Smith, he had no idea why, grinned. “I wasn’t exactly planning to, but-”
“It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.”
He crossed to her, reached out the hand that didn’t hold the kilgun. “Jennifer, there’s nothing-”
“It’s all right, Jared,” she said. “But, please, don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me anymore. Don’t follow me.” She left him there and went hurrying downhill through the night forest.
Saint rewound the plaid muffler around his neck. The fog was thick and prickly in the quirky lane. “A sad turn of events,” he remarked.
Cruz said, “He may not be in this public house either.”
“One hopes not, but judging from what Jennifer told us when we called at Horizon House in quest of him, I fear the worst.”
Cruz pushed open the sewdooak door of the Snerg & Racket with his metal hand. “I lose the bet, there’s Smith yonder.”
There were some twenty or so patrons in the snug room, most of them at the small tables ringing the deep blazing fireplace. Two played at airdarts in a far corner.
Smith sat at a table alone, both hands locked around a glass.
“Not that the chap doesn’t have a perfect right to backslide under the circumstances,” said Saint.
Cruz led the way to Smith. “How’re you faring, old chum?”
Smith looked up at him. “It was Arloff,” he said. “He’s dead, up at the temple ruins. We’ll have to notify the local law soon.”
Saint rubbed at his nose, frowning down at Smith. “Jove, you’re perfectly sober.”
