He jumped out and hurried over.
“But you simply can’t!” a white-haired man in blue-and-orange business clothes was protesting. “If you do, the Associated Fraternities’ll be liable for losses we incur; you know that!”
Bayne, his thin face livid with anger—and also, Cardon noticed, with what looked like a couple of fresh bruises—ignored him. Feinberg broke off his chant of “Unfair! Unfair!” long enough to answer:
“A Literate First Class has been brutally assaulted by the Illiterate owner of this store. Literate service for this store is, accordingly, being discontinued, pending a decision by the Grand Council of the local Fraternity.”
Cardon grabbed the blue-and-orange clad man and dragged him to one side.
“What happened, Hutschnecker?” he demanded.
“They’re walking out on us,” Hutschnecker told him, unnecessarily. “The boss had a fight with Bayne; knocked him down a couple of times. Bayne tried to pull his tablet gun, and I grabbed it away from him, and somebody else grabbed Pelton before he could pull his, and a couple of store cops got all the other Literates in the office covered. Then Bayne put on the general-address system and began calling out the Literates—”
“Yes, but why did Pelton beat Bayne up?”
“Bayne made a pass at Miss Claire. I wasn’t there when it happened; she came into the office—”
Cardon felt his face tighten into a frown of perplexity. That wasn’t like Literate First Class Stephen S. Bayne. He made quite a hobby of pinching salesgirls behind the counter which was one thing; the boss’ daughter was quite another.
“Where’s Latterman?” he asked, looking around.
“Down in the office, with the others, trying to help Mr. Pelton. He’s had another of those heart attacks—”
Cardon swore and ran for the descending escalator, running down the rotating spiral to the executive floor and jumping off into the gawking mob of Illiterate clerks crowded in the open doors of Pelton’s office. He hit and shoved and elbowed and cursed them out of the way, and burst into the big room beyond, and then, for a moment, he was almost sorry he had come.
Pelton was slumped in his big relaxer chair, his face pale and twisted in pain, his breath coming in feeble gasps. His daughter was beside him, her blond head bent over him; Russell Latterman was standing to one side, watching intently. For an instant, Cardon was reminded of a tomcat watching a promising mouse hole.
“Claire!” Cardon exploded, “give him a nitrocaine bulb. Why are you all just standing around?”
Claire turned. “There are none,” she said, looking at him with desperate eyes. “The box is empty; he must have used them all.”
He shot a quick glance at Latterman, catching the sales manager before he could erase a look of triumph from his face. Things began to add up. Latterman, of course, was the undercover man for Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the rest of the Conservative faction at Literates’ Hall, just as he, himself, was Lancedale’s agent. Obsessed with immediate advantages and disadvantages, the Joyner-Graves faction wanted to secure the reelection of Grant Hamilton, and the way things had been going in the past two months, only Chester Pelton’s death could accomplish that. Latterman had probably thrown out Pelton’s nitrocaine capsules and then put Bayne up to insulting Pelton’s daughter, knowing that a fit of rage would bring on another heart attack, which could be fatal without the medicine.
“Well, send for more!”
“The prescription’s in the safe,” she said faintly.
The office safe was locked, and only a Literate could open it. The double combination was neatly stenciled on the door, the numbers spelled out as words and the letters spelled in phonetic equivalents. All three of them—himself, Claire, and Russell Latterman—could read them. None of them dared admit it. Latterman was fairly licking his chops in anticipation. If Cardon opened the safe, Pelton’s campaign manager stood convicted as a Literate. If Claire opened it, the gaggle of Illiterate clerks in the doorway would see, and speedily spread the news, that the daughter of the arch-foe of Literacy was herself able to read. Maybe Latterman hadn’t really intended his employer to die. Maybe this was the situation he had really intended to contrive.
Chester Pelton couldn’t be allowed to die. If Grant Hamilton were returned to the Senate, the long-range planning of William Lancedale would suffer a crushing setback, and the public reaction would be catastrophic. The Plan comes first
, Lancedale had told him. He made his decision, and then saw that he hadn’t needed to make it. Claire had straightened, left her father, crossed quickly to the safe, and was kneeling in front of it, her back stiff with determination, her fingers busy at the dials, her eyes going from them to the printed combination and back again. She swung open the door, skimmed through the papers inside, unerringly selected the prescription, and rose.
“Here, Russ; go get it filled at once,” she ordered. “And hurry!”
Oh, no, you don’t, Cardon thought. One chance is enough for you, Russ. He snatched the prescription from her and turned to Latterman.
“I’ll get it,” he told the sales manager. “You’re needed for the sale; stay on the job here.”
“But with the Literates walked out, we can’t—”
Cardon blazed: “Do I have to teach you your business? Have a sample of each item set aside at the counter, and pile sales slips under it. And for unique items, just detach the tag and put it with the sales slip. Now get out of here, and get cracking with it!”
