Now, maybe you think a tough Hunky with a gun in his pants can absorb that kind of surprise with no more reaction than a curled lip and a reflex move toward the hip. I made the reflex move OK: I jumped so hard I bent one of the rods an inch out of line with my head and one foot slipped off and I was hanging by my hands looking up at bones.
There was enough light to see a set of fingers and a wrist joint and above that what was left of an arm leading up to some less clearly defined anatomy. There was no flesh there, just the clean yellow-white skeleton, glowing a little, like old neon, in the dark. I made out the skull with the lower jaw hanging wide open as if it was getting ready to take a bite, and the other arm, and the torso and legs, just sort of folded down against the spine, which was broken in two places and doubled back on itself and jammed against the rungs.
I held on there for a while and then got my feet back on the rungs and made three tries and swallowed and felt sweat drip off the end of my nose. I got one hand unglued and reached up and got a grip on Mr. Bones above the wrist and pulled. The forearm came off at the elbow and flopped back and broke at the wrist and small bones made a light clatter going down the shaft. I dropped the ulna and went up a step higher and my face was in front of the spot where the hand had been and there was something on the wall there: a stain in the form of a couple of lines that made a straggly "T". I touched the lines and a dry, brownish powder crumbled away. Dried blood. Before he'd died, the skeleton with the broken back had tried to write something, and almost made it.
T. T for Treachery, or for Too late. I couldn't think of anything good that started with a T. T for Trouble, T for Turn back.
T for Trap.
I looked up and the empty sockets met my look. Number Four; the letter-writer. The letters that had still been there, left there for me to find—like these bones—warning me to look out for trouble ahead; tipping me off that I was walking into ambush. But why hadn't the man that killed him taken the dead mouse out of the trap and dusted off the cheese and set it, all ready for the next one?
Or maybe I was building it all on a set of cold feet. Maybe the skeleton was just a careless carpenter left over from the construction phase. Maybe he was the guy who designed this back stair, tossed in on top of it after it was finished, to seal his lips. And maybe I was a fan dancer.
It had to be the fourth man, because this was his route, and nobody had used it after him, because he was blocking it solidly with his bones. Yeah, maybe that was it. He'd gone up, walked into the trap, taken a load of slugs in the stomach, and then instead of lying down there to die, he'd made it back to his rat hole and fallen down it, so the next man would find him and think what I was thinking.
I looked up past the bones and saw the faint cylindrical shine of the tube, leading on up to the place I had to go, to find the man I had to find.
"Thanks, pal," I said to the skull. I pushed at the bones and they fell away into darkness. The rungs led upward another hundred feet and ended at a door that opened into a small, dark room.
I crossed the room without falling over anything much, put an ear to the door. That told me nothing. I eased it open half an inch and looked out into a lighted hall.
There was a Blackie standing with his back to me about twelve feet away. He had a gadget like a stopwatch in his hand and he was aiming it at the wall and his lips were moving. I waited in the shadows until he worked his way close enough. Then I stepped out and he came around fast but too late and I hit him up under the angle of the jaw, the one that breaks the neck if you do it right. My aim was OK. He started his dive and I caught him and took him back into my lair.
It took me ten minutes to get him stripped out and tucked away in the closet, another five to get his pants and coat on. They were a lousy fit, and hadn't been out to the dry cleaner lately. I had to pass the boots; the ones I had on were close enough. I checked his gun, but it had too many colored buttons I didn't know about. I ditched it and tucked Minka's little one in the holster and headed for a door down the hall. I was almost there when a foot scraped behind me and a heavy voice said, "OK, all you culls are wanted up to Comsat on the triple."
I kept going, reached the door, had it halfway open when the voice yelled after me, "OK, Wallik, that means you, too."
I slid inside and was in a tiled room with a dirty window and plumbing. Great. Trapped in the john. The window was two feet high and a foot wide, with obscure glass in it. A light-and-shadow pattern on it looked like bars. It didn't give much light. I got behind the door and palmed the gun and waited. A minute went by. It was quiet outside now. Then feet came across and a fist hit the door and a heavy voice said, "OK, it don't take that long," and the feet went away.
I gave it another five minutes and came out, cautiously. The hall was all mine again. Faint sounds came from the far end of it. I went the other way, found stairs, went up them to a landing, listened, went on up and came out in a wide corridor with lights and open doors and crossed the hall and went into another door. Somebody was arguing with somebody, saying, "I don't care if you've replaced all of them, check them again, high and low scale. . . ."
I could see the foot of a wide staircase along the hall. It didn't attract me. I went to the right, checked a plain door that might have been a service stair, was looking at a vacuum cleaner and a shelf with cans and bottles. Maybe it was a good find at that. If the chase got hot I could hide in there and pretend to be a broom.
I went on to the end, turned left, smelled breakfast cooking somewhere. It made my jaws ache. There was a carpet here, and the lighting was recessed and muted, the way it is when there's money around. A Blackie came out of a room and started my way. I took the first door to the left and was in a room with a couple of easy chairs and a divan long enough to sleep two in-laws. A window looked out on a garden with flowers and another wing of the building on the other side. The steps outside went by softly. I waited and then opened up and looked out. He was standing at the intersection, looking back at me. For a long second we stared at each other. Then I winked. He staggered back a step as if I'd hit him in the gut with a wet towel and whirled and disappeared. I came out and went on and a few doors farther found an open elevator door and stepped in and palmed a panel full of buttons and started up.
The car went up one floor and stopped and two men got in. I got my fingers over the gun and one of them gave me a hard look and said to the other, "By God, things have changed since I pulled the duty." The other one did some noisy breathing through his nose.
We rode along in silence together and the car stopped and a woman with a pale doughy face got on and the two men got off without looking back. The woman gave me a look and patted her back hair. At the next stop a girl got on and stared at me. She stared at me through two more stops. At the next one a man in a gray coverall got on and she opened her mouth to say something and I said, "Excuse it, kid, I was up all night, and I don't mean walking the baby," and patted her hip going past. Her mouth was still open as the door closed.
There were more people here, moving up and down the hall, which was neat and clean and full of that office smell. Nobody seemed to see me. I went along fast to the end of the hall and found the service stair and went up two flights and dead-ended at a landing that needed sweeping. There was a small window here that showed me a nice sweep of early-morning lawn and the fence in the distance, inconspicuous behind the screen of shrubbery. There seemed to be a lot of Blackies out on the grass. I was estimating my altitude at ten stories now. From outside it hadn't looked that high. The lonesome feeling was back, strong. I hadn't met any live people, to talk to, for quite a few days now. I pushed through a narrow door and out into the whisper of air conditioning and the dead white of artificial light. It was a big room with chairs and tables with magazines on them, like a room where you wait for one of those dentists who hate to talk about money. A hall led away from the other side of it. There was nobody in sight, in the room or in the hall. Everything seemed quieter than it ought to. I looked at two plain wood-slab doors with shiny hardware, and another door with a used look around the knob. It looked friendlier than the others. I went over to it and tried it. It swung in on a swell storeroom full of sealed cartons and a fat voice behind me said "Hey!"
I came around fast with the gun all set to go and a big fellow with eyes bugged behind lenses like biscuits pointed toward the door I came in by and said, "I've warned Alders about you people intruding here!"
"Sorry, chief," I said. "I guess maybe I kind of lost my way—"
"I heard you'd staged another of your ridiculous false alarms—the third this week, wasn't it? Every time a bird flutters over the building looking for a worm it starts bells ringing and lights flashing! You don't delude me with your show of activity! It's all an excuse for prying here in Tabulation!" He grabbed his glasses and pushed them back into his head, like coal eyes on a snowman. With his kind of vision, contacts wouldn't help.
"Yeah, I'll just be on my way. Guess we can't fool you, Doc—"
"Mind your tongue, you! You're aware that I detest that flippant epithet! Has Alders instructed you to add insolence to your other offenses?"
"Sorry, Doctor. I was just on the way out—"
"The other way!" He pointed a finger that was just a little longer than it was thick. I went the way it pointed and had a choice of up or down on a narrow stairway with dope-stick butts. I went up past a little landing with a couple of empties parked in the corner, up six more steps, and was stopped by a black door with panic hardware on it. I tried it and it gave and I came out into brilliant sunshine. I was on the roof. The tower apartment I was looking for wasn't here.