The chiming of the communicator screen in one corner of the hotel room interrupted him. Ian put down his empty glass, went over to the screen and depressed a stud. His wide shoulders and back hid the screen from Tyburn, but Tyburn heard his voice.
“Yes?”
The voice of James Kenebuck sounded in the hotel room.
“Graeme—listen!”
There was a pause.
“I’m listening,” said Ian, calmly.
“I’m alone now,” said the voice of Kenebuck. It was tight and harsh. “My guests have gone home. I was just looking through that package of Brian’s things …” He stopped speaking and the sentence seemed to Tyburn to dangle unfinished in the air of the hotel room. Ian let it dangle for a long moment.
“Yes?” he said, finally.
“Maybe I was a little hasty …” said Kenebuck.
But the tone of his voice did not match the words. The tone was savage. “Why don’t you come up, now that I’m alone, and we’ll . . . talk about Brian, after all?”
“I’ll be up,” said Ian.
He snapped off the screen and turned around.
“Wait!” said Tyburn, starting up out of his chair. “You can’t go up there!”
“Can’t?” Ian looked at him. “I’ve been invited, Lieutenant.”
The words were like a damp towel slapping Tyburn in the face, waking him up.
“That’s right . . .” he stared at Ian. “Why? Why’d he invite you back?”
“He’s had time,” said Ian, “to be alone. And to look at that package of Brian’s.”
“But …” Tyburn scowled. “There was nothing important in that package. A watch, a wallet, a passport, some other papers . . . Customs gave us a list. There wasn’t anything unusual there.”
“Yes,” said Ian. “And that’s why he wants to see me again.”
“But what does he want?”
“He wants me,” said Ian. He met the puzzlement of Tyburn’s gaze. “He was always jealous of Brian,” Ian explained, almost gently. “He was afraid Brian would grow up to outdo him in things. That’s why he tried to break Brian, even to kill him. But now Brian’s come back to face him.”
“Brian . . . ?”
“In me,” said Ian. He turned toward the hotel door.
Tyburn watched him turn, then suddenly—like a man coming out of a daze, he took three hurried strides after him as Ian opened the door.
“Wait!” snapped Tyburn. “He won’t be alone up there! He’ll have hoods covering you through the
walls. He’ll definitely have traps set for you …” Easily, Ian lifted the policeman’s grip from his arm. “I know,” he said. And went.
Tyburn was left in the open doorway, staring after him. As Ian stepped into the elevator tube, the policeman moved. He ran for the service elevator that would take him back to the police observation post above the sensors in the ceiling of Kenebuck’s living room.
When Ian stepped into the foyer the second time, it was empty. He went to the door to the living room of Kenebuck’s suite, found it ajar, and stepped through it. Within the room was empty, with glasses and overflowing ashtrays still on the tables; the lights had been lowered. Kenebuck rose from a chair with its back to the far, large window at the end of the room. Ian walked toward him and stopped when they were little more than an arm’s length apart.
Kenebuck stood for a second, staring at him, the skin of his face tight. Then he made a short almost angry gesture with his right hand. The gesture gave away the fact that he had been drinking.
“Sit down!” he said. Ian took a comfortable chair and Kenebuck sat down in the one from which he had just risen. “Drink?” said Kenebuck. There was a decanter and glasses on the table beside and between them. Ian shook his head. Kenebuck poured part of a glass for himself.
“That package of Brian’s things,” he said, abruptly, the whites of his eyes glinting as he glanced up under his lids at Ian, “there was just personal stuff. Nothing else in it!”
“What else did you expect would be in it?” asked Ian, calmly.
Kenebuck’s hands clenched suddenly on the glass.
He stared at Ian, and then burst out into a laugh that rang a little wildly against the emptiness of the large room.
“No, no …” said Kenebuck, loudly. “I’m asking the questions, Graeme. I’ll ask them! What made you come all the way here, to see me, anyway?”
“My duty,” said Ian.
“Duty? Duty to whom—Brian?” Kenebuck looked as if he would laugh again, then thought better of it. There was the white, wild flash of his eyes again. “What was something like Brian to you? You said you didn’t even like him.”
“That was beside the point,” said Ian, quietly. “He was one of my officers.”
“One of your officers! He was my brother! That’s more than being one of your officers! “
“Not,” answered Ian in the same voice, “where justice is concerned.”
“Justice?” Kenebuck laughed. “Justice for Brian? Is that it?”
“And for thirty-two enlisted men.”
“Oh—“ Kenebuck snorted laughingly. “Thirty-two men . . . those thirty-two men!” He shook his head. “I never knew your thirty-two men, Graeme, so you can’t blame me for them. That was Brian’s fault; him and his idea—what was the charge they tried him on? Oh, yes, that he and his thirty-two or thirty-six men could raid enemy Headquarters and come back with the enemy Commandant. Come back . . . covered with glory.” Kenebuck laughed again. “But it didn’t work. Not my fault.”
“Brian did it,” said Ian, “to show you. You were what made him do it.”
“Me? Could I help it if he never could match up to me?” Kenebuck stared down at his glass and took a
quick swallow from it then went back to cuddling it in his hands. He smiled a little to himself. “Never could even catch up to me.” He looked whitely across at Ian. “I’m just a better man, Graeme. You better remember that.”
Ian said nothing. Kenebuck continued to stare at him; and slowly Kenebuck’s face grew more savage.
“Don’t believe me, do you?” said Kenebuck, softly. “You better believe me. I’m not Brian, and I’m not bothered by Dorsais. You’re here, and I’m facing you —alone.”
“Alone?” said Ian. For the first time Tyburn, above the ceiling over the heads of the two men, listening and watching through hidden sensors, thought he heard a hint of emotion—contempt—in Ian’s voice. Or had he imagined it?
“Alone—Well!” James Kenebuck laughed again, but a little cautiously. “I’m a civilized man, not a hick frontiersman. But I don’t have to be a fool. Yes, I’ve got men covering you from behind the walls of the room here. I’d be stupid not to. And I’ve got this . . .” He whistled, and something about the size of a small dog, but made of smooth, black metal, slipped out from behind a sofa nearby and slid on an aircushion over the carpeting to their feet.
Ian looked down. It was a sort of satchel with an orifice in the top from which two metallic tentacles protruded slightly.
Ian nodded slightly.
“A medical mech,” he said.
“Yes,” said Kenebuck, “cued to respond to the heartbeats of anyone in the room with it. So you see, it wouldn’t do you any good, even if you somehow knew where all my guards were and beat them to the draw. Even if you killed me, this could get to me in time to
keep it from being permanent. So, I’m unkillable. Give up!” He laughed and kicked at the mech. “Get back,” he said to it. It slid back behind the sofa.
“So you see …” he said. “Just sensible precautions. There’s no trick to it. You’re a military man—and what’s that mean? Superior strength. Superior tactics. That’s all. So I outpower your strength, outnumber you, make your tactics useless—and what are you? Nothing.” He put his glass carefully aside on the table with the decanter. “But I’m not Brian. I’m not afraid of you. I could do without these things if I wanted to.”
Ian sat watching him. On the floor above, Tyburn had stiffened.
“Could you?” asked Ian.
Kenebuck stared at him. The white face of the millionaire contorted. Blood surged up into it, darkening it. His eyes flashed whitely.
“What’re you trying to do—test me?” he shouted suddenly. He jumped to his feet and stood over Ian, waving his arms furiously. It was, recognized Tyburn overhead, the calculated, self-induced hysterical rage of the hoodlum world. But how would Ian Graeme below know that? Suddenly, Kenebuck was screaming. “You want to try me out? You think I won’t face you? You think I’ll back down like that brother of mine, that . . .” he broke into a flood of obscenity in which the name of Brian was freely mixed. Abruptly, he whirled about to the walls of the room, yelling at them. “Get out of there! All right, out! Do you hear me? All of you! Out—“