"No," Jubal said. "I will not allow everyone to go around armed with deadly weapons. As likely as not, inexperienced as we all are in such things, we'd end up accidentally killing each other or ourselves."
"I have narcotic-dart pistols," Hirschel said. "They produce an hour of sound sleep, nothing worse."
"How many do you have?" St. Cyr asked.
"Three different types, all workable in this situation. They all fire clusters of darts, so you don't even have to aim well, just point and pull the trigger." The big, dark man seemed to be enjoying the tension.
"How about that?" St. Cyr asked Jubal.
The patriarch's white hair was in complete disarray. He tried to comb it in place with his fingers, frowned, and said, "I guess that would be all right."
"Get the guns," St. Cyr told Hirschel.
The hunter was back in five minutes and explained the operation of each piece. St. Cyr left one with Jubal and Alicia, warning them to stay close together whenever possible and never to leave each other for even a moment during the night hours. Two of the three murders had taken place late at night. The second he gave to Dane, who seemed eager to understand its workings and willing to use it.
"I doubt it's going to work, though," he said.
"Why is that?" St. Cyr asked.
"I think the du-aga-klava is only susceptible to certain substances. Drugs most likely have no effect on it."
St. Cyr looked at Hirschel to see what his reaction was to what Dane had said; he felt more comradeship with the violent man than with any of the others, even though he also had greater suspicions about him. But the hunter seemed unmoved, either way, by the theory of supernatural intervention.
The third handgun went to Tina, who quickly caught on to the proper way to hold it and take aim. Hirschel said that she would make a fine marksman. Jubal looked unhappy at that.
"I'd like to make a suggestion," Tina said when Hirschel had finished explaining the narcotic-dart pistol to her.
She had been so taciturn before that St. Cyr was surprised by this sudden turnabout. In fact, he thought it was the longest statement he had ever heard her make. "What is that?" he asked.
'That someone run a check on Walter Dannery."
Puzzled, St. Cyr said, "Who is he?"
"A man my father fired from the family business about a year and a half ago."
St. Cyr turned to Jubal. "Is he a possible enemy?"
Jubal waved the suggestion away as if it were a bothersome insect flitting about his face. "The man was a weakling, an embezzler. He would not have the nerve for something like this."
"Just the same," St. Cyr said, "I'd like to hear about him."
"My accountants came to me with proof that he'd embezzled nearly two hundred and eighty thousand credit units over a period of nine months. They had already let him go, but he seemed to blame the whole thing on me. Offered a sob story about dependent children, a sick wife, all very melodramatic. But he's been gone from Darma for quite a long time, well over a year."
"Have you told Inspector Rainy about him?"
"Yes, first thing."
"He checked Dannery out?"
"Yes. He's gone to Ionus, taken an administrative position in one of the heavy industries there. Whoever hired him is a fool, but at least he's no longer my consideration."
St. Cyr turned to Tina and said, "You think that more ought to be done about this man?"
"Yes," she said. "He was terribly bitter about losing his job, blamed it on everyone but himself — and he broke things the one time he came here."
"Broke things?"
"He smashed a vase," Jubal said, trying to minimize it "He was emotionally unstable, a weakling, as I told you. I threw him out of here myself."
"Just the same," St. Cyr said, "I'll get off a light-telegram to my contact on Ionus tomorrow morning, see what he can dig up. The last thing any detective can afford to do is ignore even the smallest lead."
As the group split up to go back to bed, St. Cyr checked the house map and found that Tina lived on the second level, the only member of the family with quarters that far down. He started after her, aware again of the gently rounded curves of her body, of the richness of her black hair; he caught up with her at the end of the corridor and took her elbow in his hand.
She looked up, eyes black, lips pursed. When he had been asking questions, she was just another subject for interrogation; the bio-computer made certain of his impartiality like that. Now, however, she was much more than a suspect.
He said, "May I see you back to your rooms?"
She looked at the gun in her hand but said, "Okay."
In the elevator, when they were alone, he asked, "Why do you have rooms so far away from the rest of the family?"
"The fourth and fifth levels are pretty much broken up into the regular suites for family and guests, a few small art galleries and music rooms. The third level is where father has his den, mother her retreat. The library is also on the third level, as well as the recreation room and the drawing room, the motion picture theater and the pool. The studio level contains the storage rooms, kitchens, dining room — and my studio. I'm a painter, you know. I need plenty of space. The second level was the only place where I could have the studio the way I wanted it. You'll see soon enough what I mean."
The elevator doors opened, and the hall lights came up in quick response.
They were alone, or seemed to be.
"This way," she said.
She led him to her door, talked it open, went into her studio.
He followed.
The chamber was impressive, especially in that the ceiling was a good fifty feet overhead, arched by stained beams that criss-crossed in a neat geometric pattern. The walls were all white, almost dazzlingly white, broken only by a dozen of her own paintings. Two doors led to other rooms in the suite, and a barred window, forty feet long, was set in the far wall, providing quite a splash of sunlight during the day. The room itself measured approximately sixty by sixty feet.
"See?" she asked, turning to face him, smiling tentatively.
"Very nice."
"I'm glad you think so."
"Your work?" he asked, walking to the nearest painting, though he knew it was hers, recognized the style from the signed paintings in the fifth floor corridor.
"Yes," she said. Her abrupt tone held no pride.
He examined the painting, saw that it was a portrait of her father, Jubal, done entirely in shades of blue and green — and as if seen through a thousand small fragments of glass, some fragments crack-webbed. "I like it very much," he said.
"Then you haven't much taste for art," she said. When he turned and looked at her, he found that she was serious, though there was a grim humor in her voice.
"Oh?"
"You like the colors, the shapes," she said. "But if you could go beyond that, if you knew some of the criteria for judging art, you'd know what a flop it is."
"And these others?"
"Flops too."
He said: "Upstairs, in the corridors—"
"Disasters," she said, chuckling, though there was little mirth in her chuckle.
"Well," he said, "I disagree. You've got a great deal of talent, so far as I can see."
"Bullshit."
He turned and looked at her and was suddenly caught up by the way the overhead lights gleamed in her black eyes and revealed unsuspected depths, by the way the same light shimmered on the long slide of her hair and turned the black to a very dark, dark blue.
Unconsciously, he let his gaze wander down her slim neck to the pert roundness of the breasts. He felt his hands coming up from his sides, driven by an urge to cup her breasts, and he wondered what she made of his movements.
Somehow he remembered the nightmare from which the bio-computer had wakened him that afternoon, and he felt that it had bearing here, though he could not say how…