“What kind of weapons are there in the inn?” I asked him.
“The Winchester, two hunting shotguns. A pistol. We have weapons, but which of us are going to shoot them?”
“Right,” I said. “That’s a good question.”
Shotguns versus machine guns. Du Barnstoker against top-notch goons. Anyway, there wouldn’t be any shootouts, I know this “Champ”: he’d just throw some nasty piece of work out of the plane and pick us all off in an open field, like partridges…
“While you were upstairs,” the owner said, deftly washing my forehead off around the wound, “Moses came to see me. He put a sack of money on the table—a sack, Peter, I’m not exaggerating, and demanded that I put it immediately in the safe. He believes, you see, that in such a situation his property is in grave danger.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I may have made a slight mistake,” he confessed. “I slipped and told him that you had the keys to the safe.”
“Thanks, Alek,” I said bitterly. “Now he’ll start hunting police inspectors…”
We were quiet. The owner bandaged me up. It was painful, I was starting to feel nauseous from the pain. That jerk must have broken my collarbone. The radio receiver crackled and hissed out the local news. Not a word was said about the avalanche in Bottleneck. The owner stepped back to examine his handiwork.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
He picked up the basin and asked, busily:
“Who should I send you?”
“To hell with it,” I said. “I want to sleep. Take the Winchester, sit in the hall and shoot anyone who comes near that door. I need at least a short hour to sleep, otherwise I’m going to collapse. Damned ghouls. Stinking werewolves.”
“I don’t have any silver bullets,” the owner said shortly.
“Then use the lead ones, dammit! And quit it with your superstition! This gang is leading me around by the nose, and you’re helping them do it… Are there shutters on this window?”
The owner set down the basin, quietly went to the window and pulled the iron shutters closed.
“Good,” I said. “Excellent… Don’t turn on the light… And one more thing, Alek… Put someone… Simone or that girl… Brun… tell them to watch the sky. Explain that it’s a matter of life or death. The minute they see any kind of plane, they should sound the alarm…”
The owner nodded, took the basin and headed towards the door. On the threshold he stopped.
“Do you want my advice, Peter?” he said. “One last piece.”
“Well?”
“Give them the suitcase and let them go straight back to whatever hell they came from. Do you really not understand that it’s the only thing keeping them here?…”
“I understand,” I said. “I understand that very well. And that’s the exact reason that I’m going to sleep here on the hard chairs, resting my head on your damned safe, ready to shoot silver bullets into any son of a bitch who tries to take that suitcase away from me. If you see Moses, tell him that, word for word. Don’t water it down. And tell him that I’ve won prizes for accuracy with a .45. Now go away and leave me alone.”
15.
Maybe it wasn’t by the book. But I had no reason to expect that help would come from anywhere, and the gangsters were liable to fly in at any minute. The only thing I could count on was that Beelzebub wasn’t the only problem Champ had to deal with right now. Having stumbled upon the blockage last night, he was probably confused, and in a hurry, which meant that he might easily have made some stupid mistake—like trying to commandeer a helicopter at the Mur airfield. I knew that the police had been following this felon for some time, which meant that I had some reason for hope there. Anyway, I could barely stand on my feet. That damned Finch had practically finished me off. I spread the newspaper and some kind of report out next to the safe, pulled the bureau in front of the door, and lay down, placing my Luger right beside me. I fell asleep instantly, and when I woke up, it was already past one o’clock.
There was a quiet but persistent knocking at the door.
“Who’s there?” I barked, frantically grabbing the handle of the Luger.
“It’s me,” came Simone’s voice. “Open the door, Inspector.”
“Is there a plane?”
“No. But we need to talk. Open the door. Now’s not the time to sleep.”
He was right. It wasn’t the time to sleep. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I got up—first to my hands and knees, then, supporting myself against the safe, onto my feet. My shoulder was hurting terribly. The bandage had slid down over my eyes; my chin was swollen. I turned the light on, pulled the bureau away from the door and turned the key. Then I stepped back, holding my Luger at the ready.
Simone looked unusually solemn and businesslike, although I could tell that he was trying to disguise some pent-up agitation.
“Jesus!” he said “It’s like a fortress in here. And for no reason: no one’s coming to attack you.”
“I don’t know that,” I said gloomily.
“Exactly. You don’t know anything in here,” Simone said. “While you’ve been dozing, Inspector, I’ve done your job for you.”
“Is that so?” I said sarcastically. “I suppose Moses is in handcuffs already, and his accomplice is in custody.”
Simone frowned. What had happened to the tiresome troublemaker who only yesterday had been running up and down the walls without a care in the world?
“There’s no need for that,” he said. “Moses isn’t guilty of anything. Things are quite a bit more complicated than you think, Inspector.”
“Just don’t talk to me about ghouls,” I asked, sitting down on the chair beside the safe.
Simone smiled.
“No ghouls. No mumbo-jumbo. Just solid science fiction. Moses is not a man, Inspector. In that regard, our inn owner was right. Moses and Luarvik are not of this world.”
“They came here from Venus,” I said knowingly.
“That I don’t know. Maybe from Venus, maybe from another solar system, maybe from a neighboring dimension… They haven’t said anything about that. The important part is that they aren’t human. Moses has been living on Earth for a while now, over a year. About six weeks ago he fell in with some gangsters. They blackmailed him, held him captive at gunpoint. He only barely managed to escape them and flee here. Luarvik is something like a pilot, he manages the transportation from there to here. They were supposed to leave yesterday at midnight. But at ten o’clock there was some kind of accident, a piece of their equipment blew up. That’s what caused the avalanche, and that’s why Luarvik had to walk here on his own two feet… They need help, Inspector. It’s our responsibility, really. If the gangsters get here before the police, they’ll kill them.”
“And us too,” I said.
“Possibly,” he agreed. “But that’s Earth business. If we allow visitors from another planet to be killed, that would be shameful.”
I looked at him sadly. No, I thought, at the end of the day there are just too many crazy people in this inn. And here’s one more nut.
“Let’s wrap this up. What do you want from me?”
“Give me the accumulator, Peter,” Simone said.
“What accumulator?”
“The one in the suitcase. The accumulator. It’s an energy source, for the two robots. Olaf isn’t dead. He’s not actually a living being. He’s a robot, and so is Mrs. Moses. These robots need energy in order to operate. Their power station was destroyed in the explosion, the source of their energy was cut off, and all the robots within a hundred kilometers were turned off, so to speak. A few were probably able to connect themselves to portable accumulator batteries. Moses connected Mrs. Moses to the battery himself… if you recall, I thought she was dead. But Olaf didn’t have time to hook himself up…”