The only lights were in the second-floor windows. From where Jack was standing it appeared to be a loft apartment, but he couldn’t be certain. There were no drapes or other obvious signs of domesticity.
While Jack was eyeing the building, vaguely wondering what to do next, the lights went on up on the fifth floor. While he watched he saw someone raise the sash of the smaller window to the left. Jack was unable to see if it had been the man he followed, but he suspected it was.
After making certain he wasn’t being observed, Jack quickly moved over to the door where the man had entered. He tried it, and it opened. Stepping over the threshold, he found himself in a small foyer. A group of four mailboxes was set into the wall to the left. Only two had names. The second floor was occupied by G. Heilbrunn. The fifth-floor tenant was R. Overstreet. There was no Frazer Labs.
Four buzzers bordered a small grille which Jack assumed covered a speaker. He vaguely contemplated ringing the fifth floor but had trouble imagining what he could say. He stood there for a few minutes thinking, but nothing came to mind. Then he noticed that the mailbox for the fifth floor appeared to be unlocked.
Jack was about to reach up to the mailbox when the inner door to the building proper abruptly opened. It startled Jack and he jumped, but he had the presence of mind to keep himself turned away from whoever was exiting the building. The person hastily brushed by Jack with obvious distress. Jack caught a fleeting glimpse of the same nylon ski parka. A second later the man was gone.
Jack reacted quickly, getting his foot into the inner door before it closed. As soon as he was certain the man was not immediately returning, Jack entered the building. He let the door close behind him. A stairway wound up surrounding a wide elevator built of a steel frame covered by heavy wire mesh. Jack assumed the elevator had been for freight, not only because of its size but also because its doors closed horizontally instead of vertically, and its floor was rough-hewn planks.
Jack got into the elevator and pushed five.
The elevator was noisy, bumpy, and slow, but it got Jack to the fifth floor. Getting off, he faced a plain, heavy door. There was no name and no bell. Hoping the apartment was empty, Jack knocked. When there was no answer even after a second, louder rapping, Jack tried the door. It was locked.
Since the stairway rose up another floor, Jack climbed to see if he could get to the roof. The door opened but would lock behind him once he was outside. Before he ventured onto the roof he had to find something to wedge between the door and doorjamb so he could return to the stairwell. Just over the threshold he found a short length of two-by-four, which he guessed was there for that very purpose.
With the door propped open Jack stepped out onto the dark roof and gingerly walked toward the front of the building. Ahead of him he could see the arched handrails of the fire-escape ladder silhouetted against the night sky.
Arriving at the front parapet, Jack grasped the handrails and looked down. The view down to the street awakened his fear of heights, and the idea of lowering himself over the edge made him feel momentarily weak. Yet just twelve feet down was the fire-escape landing for the fifth floor. It was generously illuminated by the light coming from within the apartment.
Despite his phobia, Jack knew this was a chance he couldn’t pass up. He had to at least take a look into the window.
First he sat on the parapet facing the rear of the building. Then, holding on to the handrail, he stood up. Keeping his eyes fixed on each rung, Jack lowered himself down the short run of ladder. He moved slowly and deliberately until his foot hit up against the grate of the landing. Never once did he look down.
Maintaining one hand on the ladder, he leaned over and peered through the window. The space was indeed a loft as Jack had surmised, but he could see it was partially divided with six-foot-high partitions. Immediately in front of him was a living area with a bed to the right and a small kitchen built against the left wall. On a round table was the opened remains of Jack’s parcel. The doorstop and the crumpled newspaper were strewn about the floor.
What interested Jack more was what he could just see over the partition: It was the top of a stainless-steel appliance that did not look as if it belonged in an apartment.
With the window in front of him invitingly open, Jack could not control his urge to climb into the apartment for a better look. Besides, he rationalized, he could exit into the stairwell rather than subject himself to climbing the fire-escape ladder again.
Although he continued to avoid looking down, it took Jack a moment to convince himself to let go of the ladder. By the time he had slithered into the apartment headfirst, he was perspiring heavily.
Jack quickly collected himself. Once inside with his feet planted on the floor, he had no compunction about peering back out the window and down at the street. He wanted to make sure the man in the ski parka wasn’t coming back, at least not for the moment.
Satisfied, Jack turned back to the apartment. He went from the combination kitchen-bedroom into a living room dominated by a storefront-sized window. There were two couches facing each other and a coffee table on a small hooked rug. The walls of the partitions were decorated with posters announcing international microbiological symposia. The magazines on the coffee table were all microbiological journals.
Jack was encouraged. Perhaps he had found Frazer Labs after all. But there was also something that disturbed him. A large, glass-fronted gun cabinet stood against the far partition. The man in the ski parka was not only interested in bacteria; he was also a gun enthusiast.
Moving quickly, Jack passed through the living room intent on locating the door to the stairwell. But as soon as he passed beyond the living room’s partition, he came to a stop. The entire rest of the large, multicolumned loft was occupied by a lab. The stainless-steel appliance he’d seen from the fire escape was similar to the walk-in incubator he’d seen in the General’s lab. In the far right-hand corner was a type III biosafety hood whose exhaust vented out the top of the sashed window.
Although Jack had suspected he’d find a private lab when he climbed through the window, the comprehensiveness of the one he’d discovered stunned him. He knew that such equipment was not cheap, and the combination living quarters/lab was unusual to say the least.
A generous commercial freezer caught Jack’s attention. Standing to the side were several large cylinders of compressed nitrogen. The freezer had been converted to using liquid nitrogen as its coolant, making it possible to take the interior temperature down into the minus-fifty-degree range.
Jack tried to open the freezer, but it was locked.
A muffled noise that resembled a bark caught Jack’s attention, and he looked up from the freezer. He heard it again. It came from the very back of the lab where there was a shed about twenty feet square. Jack walked closer to examine the odd structure. A vent duct exited from its rear and exhausted through the top of one of the rear windows.
Jack cracked the door. A feral odor drifted out as well as a few sharp barks. Opening the door farther, Jack saw the edges of metal cages. He flipped on a light. He saw a few dogs and cats, but for the most part the room was filled with rats and mice. The animals stared back at him blankly. A few dogs wagged their tails in hopeful anticipation.
Jack shut the door. In Jack’s mind the man in the parka was becoming some kind of fiendish microbiological devotee. Jack didn’t even want to think about what kind of experiments were in progress with the animals he’d discovered.
A sudden, distant high-pitched whine of electrical machinery made Jack’s heart skip a beat. He knew instantly what it was: the elevator!
With rapidly mounting panic, Jack frantically searched for the door to the hall. The spectacle of the lab had diverted his attention from locating it. It didn’t take long to find, but by the time Jack reached it, he feared the elevator would be nearing the fifth floor.