"You got him during the session at the beach," I said, realization suddenly flooding over me. The compressed-air injection gun had to be pressed directly against the persons skin. All that backslapping hid his special purpose.
"Correct," he admitted. Reducing the unwieldly compressed-air injection gun was a piece of applied science that somehow didn't fit Krisst. I couldn't see him having that land of skill or knowledge.
"Where'd you have the gun reduced in size?" I shot out.
"An old friend right here in Switzerland," he said, his smile suddenly an evil, gloating thing. "He was a leading craftsman for the watch industry. You forget, miniaturization has been a part of our precision watchmaking for generations."
"Your old friend, where is he now?" I asked, having a nasty idea what the answer would be. I was right again. The round bastard smiled that unctuous smile.
"He had a sudden mental collapse one day," he chuckled. "A real tragedy."
"Why?" I asked directly. "Why all this?"
"Why?" he repeated, his little eyes growing still smaller. "Because they needed to be taught a lesson. Yes, a lesson in humility. It was quite a good number of years ago that I applied to the International Science Scholars for membership. They turned me down. I wasn't good enough. I hadn't the credentials to belong to their elite little group. I was only a self-taught physics teacher at a private school. They looked down on me. Later, when I conceived my plan, I applied for my present position with them. They were glad to have me for that, their paid lackey, a glorified servant."
Krisst was a fifteen-carat, first-grade psychopath. It was plain to see he'd been harboring his monumental grudge all these years.
"Why only those men working with the Western powers?" I probed further. That one still eluded me.
"Those who rejected me were all men belonging to the Western powers or working with them," he answered with some heat. "The Russian and Chinese scientists did not join the ISS until some years later, under the International Science Agreement. I am about ready now to go to the Soviets and reveal myself. The world will see how eagerly they will accept me into the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They will recognize me for the genius that I am."
I gestured to the vials on the laboratory table. Maybe he was nutty as fruit cake but he seemed to have come up with something horribly effective.
"Is what you use in those vials?" I asked. He nodded in triumph. "Yes, indeed it is," he smiled. "It is a concentration which specifically attacks the brain tissue, causing a fungus to grow in twenty-four hours which chokes off the oxygen supply to the brain cells."
I felt myself frowning. A fungus that specifically attacked the brain tissues. It rang a bell for me. A few years ago I knew of a Doctor Forsythe who had been working with such a fungus in an effort to develop a growth that would halt the spread of braindamaged or cancer cells. I gave Krisst a hard look.
"Isn't that what Dr. Howard Forsythe had been working on for positive purposes when he had his heart attack a few years ago?" I questioned. Krisst's round jaws began to shake and he reddened. "Yes, and I managed to get his formulae," he shouted. "But I developed my own use for them."
He was apoplectic. "I made it into a powerful instrument… I unleashed its force!
"They tried to rob me of my rightful place in the scientific community. But I showed them! I stole the minds of their so-called brilliant men. I'm better than all of them — better, do you hear, the best!"
About that time I stopped listening to his ranting. Clearly, the man was mad. Deluded — but dangerous, making deadly use of a respected physician's research findings. I wondered how Krisst got hold of someone to miniaturize the compressed-air injection gun. What luck, for him to have a friend in the watch industry — certainly he himself was totally incapable of accomplishing such a complex feat. His voice rose to a screech and I came alive to his words again.
"I'll get you too!" Krisst shouted, lunging for me. His shot, fired in insane fury, went wild. I had Hugo in my palm and slicing through the air in the flash of an eye. Krisst twisted away and the stiletto went right through the wrist of his gun hand. He cried out in pain and the gun dropped to the floor. I dived for it, but he kicked out and I had to roll away from the kick. Before I had another chance he kicked the gun away and I saw it slide into the narrow space beneath the lab table. I grabbed for him but, like so many fat men, he was surprisingly light on his feet and he avoided my grasp. Then, in his weird, twisted way, he did something I hadn't expected. Instead of pulling the stiletto out of his wrist, he struck out, flailing with the arm. The sharp point of the stiletto sticking through the wrist acted as a kind of spear tip at the end of an arm instead of a lance. I backed up, ducking under the thrusts of his arm, and got in a hard right to the mid-section. My arm sunk in and though he felt the blow, he had natural padding for protection. He swung a vicious right at me. I ducked under it and grabbed for his wrist to get a judo hold on him. I had to pull back to avoid getting my hand run through by my own weapon. Krisst came at me again, flailing with the right arm. I gave ground and we circled around the edge of the lab table. Suddenly I saw an opening and I stepped in with a right that was partly uppercut, partly right cross. I threw it from a crouch and saw it lift him off his feet and send him sprawling across the smooth table. His body crashed into the vials and the sound of smashing glass echoed as the entire row was swept onto the floor. I reached across the table for him. He drew back and kicked out with both feet I turned enough to avoid catching the kick full force but it knocked me backwards. He dropped off the other side of the table and raced for the stairway in an unexpected move. It took me an added two seconds to get around the long table. I reached the bottom of the steps just as he slammed the door shut and I heard the lock click. I stepped back and looked around for something to use to break the door open. Using a shoulder when you have to hit upwards from a flight of steps is pretty ineffective. I heard a hissing sound and looked up at an air vent near the ceiling. A whitish cloud was blowing into the cellar through the vent. I felt my lungs starting to contract already. Desperately, I looked around but there were no windows whatever. The room was a rectangular box. I flung myself against the door but it held. The gas was being blown through the vent in huge quantities. I felt my eyes tearing and the room was starting to swim. It was with a combination of apprehension, surprise and relief that I realized the gas was not one of the killing types but the disabling land. I clutched at the stairway bannister as the room circled faster. The thought raced through my fuzzy mind. Why is disabling gas? Why not the real deadly stuff? As I ditched forward I knew it wasn't because he was kindhearted. I wondered if I would become a vegetable in twenty-four hours. An incongruous thought minced through my mind before I passed out. If it had to be, I hoped I'd become a cucumber.
IX
The gas was wearing off. My eyes were tearing so that I hadn't any idea where I was. But I knew one thing. I was cold. In fact, I was so cold I was shivering. I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands. Gradually, I began to see, but at first all I could make out were large areas of black and white. I fell biting wind along with the cold and as I focused my eyes, I began to see snow, snow and darkness and feeling of being suspended in mid-air which is exactly where I was, sitting in a chair lift that was moving up along its cable over a ski slope. I looked down and saw Krisst standing by the operating mechanism. Beyond him was a darkened ski supply cabin. I could hear his voice calling to me.