He tucked the card and the package into a pocket and left his transient room. And Tyburn, who had followed him to the hotel, and who had been observing all of Ian’s actions from the second of his arrival through sensors placed in the walls and ceilings, half rose from his chair in the room of the empty suite directly above Kenebuck’s, which had been quietly taken over as a police observation post. Then, helplessly, Tyburn swore and sat down again, to follow Ian’s movements in the screen fed by the sensors. So far there was nothing the policeman could do legally—nothing but watch.
So he watched as Ian strode down the softly carpeted hallway to the elevator tube, rose in it to the eightieth floor and stepped out to face the heavy, transparent door sealing off the resident section of the hotel. He held up Kenebuck’s card with its message to a concierge screen beside the door, and with a soft sigh of air the door slid back to let him through. He passed on in, found a second elevator tube, and took it up thirteen more stories. Black doors opened before him—and he stepped one step forward into a small foyer to find himself surrounded by three men.
They were big men—one, a lantern-jawed giant, was even bigger than Ian—and they were vicious. Tyburn, watching through the sensor in the foyer ceiling that had been secretly placed there by the police the day before, recognized all of them from his files. They were underworld muscle hired by Kenebuck at word of Ian’s coming; all armed, and brutal and hairtrigger—mad dogs of the lower city. After that first step into their midst, Ian stood still. And there followed a strange, unnatural cessation of movement in the room.
The three stood checked. They had been about to put their hands on Ian to search him for something, Tyburn saw, and probably to rough him up in the process. But something had stopped them, some abrupt change in the air around them. Tyburn, watching, felt the change as they did; but for a moment he felt it without understanding. Then understanding came to him.
The difference was in Ian, in the way he stood there. He was, saw Tyburn, simply . . . waiting. That same patient indifference Tyburn had seen upon him in the Terminal office was there again. In the split second of his single step into the room he had discovered the men, had measured them, and stopped. Now, he waited, in his turn, for one of them to make a move.
A sort of black lightning had entered the small foyer. It was abruptly obvious to the watching Tyburn, as to the three below, that the first of them to lay hands on Ian would be the first to find the hands of the Dorsai soldier upon him—and those hands were death.
For the first time in his life, Tyburn saw the personal power of the Dorsai fighting man, made plain without words. Ian needed no badge upon him, standing as he stood now, to warn that he was dangerous. The men about him were mad dogs; but, patently, Ian was a wolf. There was a difference with the three, which Tyburn now recognized for the first time. Dogs—even mad dogs—fight, and the losing dog, if he can, runs away. But no wolf runs. For a wolf wins every fight but one, and in that one he dies.
After a moment, when it was clear that none of the three would move, Ian stepped forward. He passed through them without even brushing against one of them, to the inner door opposite, and opened it and went on through.
He stepped into a three-level living room stretching to a large, wide window, its glass rolled up, and black with the sleet-filled night. The living room was as large as a small suite in itself, and filled with people, men and women, richly dressed. They held cocktail glasses in their hands as they stood or sat, and talked. The atmosphere was heavy with the scents of alcohol, and women’s perfumes and cigarette smoke. It seemed that they paid no attention to his entrance, but their eyes followed him covertly once he had passed.
He walked forward through the crowd, picking his way to a figure before the dark window, the figure of a man almost as tall as himself, erect, athletic-looking with a handsome, sharp-cut face under whitish-blond hair that stared at Ian with a sort of incredulity as Ian approached.
“Graeme . . . ?” said this man, as Ian stopped before him. His voice in this moment of off-guardedness betrayed its two levels, the semi-hoodlum whine and harshness underneath, the polite accents above. “My boys . . . you didn’t—” he stumbled, “leave anything with them when you were coming in?”
“No,” said Ian. “You’re James Kenebuck, of course. You look like your brother.” Kenebuck stared at him.
“Just a minute,” he said. He set down his glass, turned and went quickly through the crowd and into the foyer, shutting the door behind him. In the hush of the room, those there heard, first silence then a short, unintelligible burst of sharp voices, then silence again. Kenebuck came back into the room, two spots of angry color high on his cheekbones. He came back to face Ian.
“Yes,” he said, halting before Ian. “They were supposed to . . . tell me when you came in.” He fell silent, evidently waiting for Ian to speak, but Ian merely stood, examining him, until the spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheekbones flared again.
“Well?” he said, abruptly. “Well? You came here to see me about Brian, didn’t you? What about Brian?” He added, before Ian could answer, in a tone suddenly brutal. “I know he was shot, so you don’t have to break that news to me. I suppose you want to tell me he showed all sorts of noble guts—refused a blindfold and that sort of—”
“No,” said Ian. “He didn’t die nobly.”
Kenebuck’s tall, muscled body jerked a little at the words, almost as if the bullets of an invisible firing squad had poured into it.
“Well . . . that’s fine!” he laughed angrily. “You come light-years to see me and then you tell me that! I thought you liked him—liked Brian.”
“Liked him? No.” Ian shook his head. Kenebuck stiffened, his face for a moment caught in a gape of bewilderment. “As a matter of fact,” went on Ian, “he was a glory hunter. That made him a poor soldier and a worse officer. I’d have transferred him out of my command if I’d had time before the campaign on Frieland started. Because of him, we lost the lives of thirty-two men in his Force, that night.”
“Oh.” Kenebuck pulled himself together, and looked sourly at Ian. “Those thirty-two men. You’ve got them on your conscience, is that it?”
“No,” said Ian. There was no emphasis on the word as he said it, but somehow to Tyburn’s ears above, the brief short negative dismissed Kenebuck’s question with an abruptness like contempt. The spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheeks flamed.
“You didn’t like Brian and your conscience doesn’t bother you—what’re you here for, then?” he snapped.
“My duty brings me,” said Ian.
“Duty?” Kenebuck’s face stilled, and went rigid.
Ian reached slowly into his pocket as if he were surrendering a weapon under the guns of an enemy and did not want his move misinterpreted. He brought out the package from his pocket.
“I brought you Brian’s personal effects,” he said. He turned and laid the package on a table beside Kenebuck. Kenebuck stared down at the package and the color over his cheekbones faded until his face was nearly as pale as his hair. Then slowly, hesitantly, as if he were approaching a booby-trap, he reached out and gingerly picked it up. He held it and turned to Ian, staring into Ian’s eyes, almost demandingly.
“It’s in here?” said Kenebuck, in a voice barely above a whisper, and with a strange emphasis.
“Brian’s effects,” said Ian, watching him.
“Yes . . . sure. All right,” said Kenebuck. He was plainly trying to pull himself together, but his voice was still almost whispering. “I guess...that settles it.”
“That settles it,” said Ian. Their eyes held together, “Good-by,” said Ian. He turned and walked back through the silent crowd and out of the living room. The three muscle men were no longer in the foyer. He took the elevator tube down and returned to his own hotel room.