‘Caitiff—I can see that sign,” she snickered. “Almost microscopic letters, severely plain,
in the lower right-hand corner of an immense plate-glass window. One gem in the
middle of an acre of black velvet. Cartiff, the most peculiar, if not quite the most
exclusive, jeweler in the galaxy. And nobody except you and me knows anything about
him. Isn’t that something?”
“Everybody will know about Cartiff pretty soon,” he told her. “Found any flaws in
the scheme yet?”
“Nary a flaw.” She shook her head. “That is, if none of the boys over-do it, and
I’m sure they won’t. I’ve got a picture of it,” and she giggled merrily. “Think of a whole
gang of sleuths from the Homicide Division chasing poor Cartiff, and never quite
catching him!”
“Uh-huh—a touching picture indeed. But there goes the signal, and there’s
Tellus. We’re about to land.”
“Oh, I want to see!” and she started to get up.
“Look, then,” pulling her down into her original place at his side. “You’ve got the
sense of perception now, remember; you don’t need visiplates.”
And side by side, arms around each other, the two Lensmen watched the
docking of their great vessel.
It landed. Jewelers came aboard with their carefully-made wares. Assured that
the metal would not discolor her skin, Illona made the exchange willingly enough. Beads
were beads, to her. She could scarcely believe that she was now independently
wealthy—in fact, she forgot all about her money after Ilyowicz had seen her dance.
“You see,” she explained to Kinnison, “there were two things I wanted to do until
Hank gets back—travel around a lot and, learn all I can about your Civilization. I wanted
to dance, too, but I didn’t see how I could. Now I can do all three, and get paid for doing
them besides—isn’t that marvelous?—and Mr. Ilyowicz said you said it was QX. Is it,
really?”
“Right,” and Illona was off.
The Dauntless was serviced and Clarrissa was off, to far Lyrane.
Lensman Kinnison was supposedly off somewhere, also, when Caitiff appeared.
Cartiff, the ultra-ultra; the Oh! so exclusive! Cartiff did not advertise. He catered, word
spread fast, to only the very upper flakes of the upper crust. Simple dignity was Caitiff’s
key-note, his insidiously-spread claim; the dignified simplicity of immense wealth and
impeccable social position.
What he actually achieved, however, was something subtly different. His
simplicity was. just a hair off-beam; his dignity was an affected, not a natural, quality.
Nobody with less than a million credits ever got past his door, it is true. However,
instead of being the real creme de la creme of Earth, Caitiffs clients were those who
pretended to belong to, or who were trying to force an entrance into, that select stratum.
Cartiff was a snob of snobs; he built up a clientele of snobs; and, even more than in his
admittedly flawless gems, he dealt in equally high-proof snobbery.
Betimes came Nadreck, the Second Stage Lensman of Palain VII, and Kinnison
met him secretly at Prime Base. Soft-voiced, apologetic, diffident; even though Kinnison
now knew that the Palainian had a record of accomplishment as long as any one of his
arms. But it was not an act, not affectation. It was simply a racial trait, for the intelligent
and civilized race of that planet is in no sense human. Nadreck was utterly, startlingly
unhuman. In his atmosphere there was no oxygen, in his body there flowed no aqueous
blood. At his normal body temperature neither liquid water nor gaseous oxygen could
exist.
The seventh planet out from any sun would of course be cold, but Kinnison had
not thought particularly about the point until he felt the bitter radiation from the heavily-
insulated suit of his guest; perceived how fiercely its refrigerators were laboring to keep
its internal temperature down.
“If you will permit it, please, I will depart at once,” Nadreck pleaded, as soon as
he had delivered his spool and his message. “My heat dissipators, powerful though they
are, cannot cope much longer with this frightfully high temperature.”
“QX, Nadreck, I won’t keep you. Thanks a million. I’m mighty glad to have had
this chance of getting acquainted with you. We’ll see more of each other, I think, from
now on. Remember, Lensman’s Seal on all this stuff.”
“Of course, Kinnison. You will understand, however, I am sure, that none of our
races of Civilization are even remotely interested in Lonabar—it is as hot, as poisonous,
as hellish generally as is Tellus itself!” The weird little monstrosity scuttled out.
Kinnison went back to Cartiff’s; and very soon thereafter it became noised abroad
that Cartiff was a crook. He was a cheat, a liar, a robber. His stones were synthetic; he
made them himself. The stories grew. He was a smuggler; he didn’t have an honest
gem hi his shop. He was a zwilnik, an out-and-out pirate; a red-handed murderer who, if
he wasn’t there already, certainly ought to be in the big black book of the Galactic
Patrol. This wasn’t just gossip, either; everybody saw and spoke to men who had seen
unspeakable things with their own eyes.
Thus Cartiff was arrested. He blasted his way out, however, before he could be
brought to trial, and the newscasters blazed with that highly spectacular, murderous jail-
break. Nobody actually saw any lifeless bodies. Everybody, however, saw the Telenews
broadcasts of the shattered walls and the sheeted forms; and, since such pictures are
and always have been just as convincing as the real thing, everybody knew that there
had been plenty of mangled corpses in those ruins and that Cartiff was a fugitive
murderer. Also, everybody knew that the Patrol never gives up on a murderer.
Hence it was natural enough that the search for Cartiff, the jeweler-murderer,
should spread from planet to planet and from region to region. Not exactly obtrusively,
but inexorably, it did so spread; until finally anyone interested in the subject could find
upon any one of a hundred million planets unmistakable evidence that the Patrol
wanted one Cartiff, description so-and-so, for murder in the first degree.
And the Patrol was thorough. Wherever Cartiff went or how, they managed to
follow him. At first he disguised himself, changed his name, and stayed in the legitimate
jewelry business; apparently the only business he knew. But he never could get even a
start. Scarcely would his shop open than he would be discovered and forced again to
flee.
Deeper and deeper he went, then, into the noisome society of crime. A fence
now—still and always he clung to jewelry. But always and ever the bloodhounds of the
law were baying at his heels. Whatever name he used was nosed aside and “Cartiff!”
they howled; so loudly that a thousand million worlds came to know that hated name.
Perforce he became a traveling fence, always on the go. He flew a dead-black
ship, ultra-fast, armed and armored like a super-dreadnought, crewed—according to the
newscasts—by the hardest-boiled gang of cut-throats in the known universe. He traded
in, and boasted of trading in, the most blood-stained, the most ghost-ridden gems of a
thousand worlds. And, so trading, hurling defiance the while into the teeth of the Patrol,
establishing himself ever more firmly as one of Civilization’s cleverest and most
implacable foes, he worked zig-zag-wise and not at all obviously toward the unexplored
spiral arm in which the planet Lonabar lay. And as he moved farther and farther away
from the Solarian System his stock of jewels began to change. He had always favored
pearls—the lovely, glorious things so characteristically Tellurian—and those he kept.
The diamonds, however, he traded away; likewise the emeralds, the rubies, the
sapphires, and some others. He kept and accumulated Borovan fire-stones, Manarkan
star-drops, and a hundred other gorgeous gems, none of which would be “beads” upon
the planet which was his goal.
As he moved farther he also moved faster; the Patrol was hopelessly
outdistanced. Nevertheless, he took no chances. His villainous crew guarded his ship;
his bullies guarded him wherever he went—surrounding him when he walked, standing
behind him while he ate, sitting at either side of the bed in which he slept. He was a
king-snipe now.
As such he was accosted one evening as he was about to dine in a garish
restaurant. A tall, somewhat fish-faced man in faultless evening dress approached. His
arms were at his sides, fingers bent into the “I’m not shooting” sign.
“Captain Cartiff, I believe. May I seat myself at your table, please?” the stranger
asked, politely, in the lingua franca of deep space.
Kinnison’s sense of perception frisked him rapidly for concealed weapons. He
was clean. “I would be very happy, sir, to have you as my guest,” he replied,
courteously.
The stranger sat down, unfolded his napkin, and delicately allowed it to fall into
his lap, all without letting either of his hands disappear from sight, even for an instant,
beneath the table’s top. He was an old and skillful hand. And during the excellent meal