"Now, son of a bitch," said Brandreth. "You're gonna tell me—"
He reached down, meaning to yank the smaller man to his feet. But something that felt like a gorilla's paw closed on Brandreth's own left shoulder. His reaching arm was stopped. Then his whole body was yanked into the air, as it hadn't been since he was pint-sized and in the orphanage. Now he was being thrown. The room spun round him with his flight, and smashed him with its far wall, almost hard enough to knock him out.
He wasn't that easy to take out, though. Gun still in his right hand, he got himself up on one knee, ready to use it on—
—on one thin man in dark, burned-looking clothes. A man with a pale, half-familiar face, calm now as an utter lunatic. Thorn, God yes, it was Thorn. Brandreth, when playing butler, had one day answered the front door of this very house to let him in. He must be a black belt in judo, to throw a man of Brandreth's weight like that . . . but Brandreth held the top card in his own hand now. As his head cleared, he smiled, even though his left shoulder still wasn't working, and was going to begin to hurt like a bastard in a minute.
The situation, and Thorn's burned clothes, made Brandreth smile again. "Holy shit," he remarked. "You must have been standing right beside the car." Then he made a preemptory motion with his gun. "Who else is in here?"
"No one," the singed man said calmly. "We three are quite alone."
"You blew that safe? I guess you're pretty good in the trade yourself." Brandreth could see, in the far corner of the room, Robinson Miller getting slowly up to his hands and knees. A drop of blood dripped from Miller's head to the carpet. But this time it wasn't going to be Brandreth's job to clean up anything.
Thorn inquired: "In the trade?"
"You know. Making things go bang. I'm pretty good at that myself."
At last there came a change in Thorn's madly cool expression—a relief for Brandreth, it had begun to make him nervous to have someone look back at him like that from the wrong end of a gun.
"Then it was you," said Thorn, "who planted the bomb . . . ?" He had no need to finish. He could read his answer in Brandreth's face. "How fortunate," he added in a softer tone, and came walking forward.
"You're better off dead, you lunatic," said Brandreth, and fired. Twice.
And somehow missed, both times. How could he have missed? And fired again, and—
The grip this time came on the arm that held the gun. Brandreth screamed, feeling the bones go.
When he came out of it, or at least out of it enough to know where he was, he wished he hadn't. He was sitting propped up in one of the chairs inside the laboratory, which was almost dark. In front of him a projection screen had been rolled open, and Thorn stood nearby, fussing with a projector. Beyond Thorn the door was open to the small room with the cot, and Brandreth could see that Robinson Miller was lying in there. Miller's face looked pale in the dim light but he was only sleeping, for his chest rose and fell.
Thorn lifted his head from what he was doing, enough to glance at Brandreth from the corner of an eye. He inquired softly: "What is on this film that you were carrying?"
"Honest to God . . . I don't know."
"We shall soon see, in any event. Why did you come to this house today?"
"I—I was the butler here. Just checking up—"
Thorn put out a hand and touched him on the arm. "That is a half-truth, and not acceptable. Ah, if screaming will relieve your feelings, pray continue. I feel sure that those who scream down here are never heard outside."
The next time Brandreth's senses cleared, Thorn was bending over him again, but only speaking very gently, pointing to a frozen image on the screen. "That is the face of Delaunay Seabright, is it not?"
"I . . ." Brandreth tried his best to see the screen clearly. He was still slumped in his chair, groggy with shock, bathed in a cold sweat. His left arm wouldn't work and his right felt as if the bones might be about to poke out through his coat sleeve. He didn't want to know if they really were. "I dunno." His voice was pitiful. "I never saw Delaunay. Honest to God. Ellison's the one who hired me."
"And Gliddon?"
"Gliddon was already working for the Seabrights. I take orders from Gliddon. He passes on what . . . Ellison wants." Brandreth drew a deep, shuddering breath. Once he had been seriously afraid of Gliddon. But now he understood more fully what it could mean to be afraid. "Gliddon's supposed to be dead now. But he's not."
"To be sure," Thorn said soothingly. "And it was Gliddon who sent you here to get this film?"
Brandreth nodded. He could feel another faint coming on now, and tried to fight it back. He knew that if he fainted now he was going to be revived. But he didn't know how.
"And what were you to do with it?"
"Destroy it. The film and tape both. Just the ones in the little, hidden safe. Gliddon said there were more in a big wall safe somewhere, the one you blew I guess. But he didn't care about those. Why these are so important I don't know. Something big is going on here that I don't know about . . . I don't ask questions. I need help with this arm. Or I'm gonna pass out."
"Who helped you with the bombing?"
"I . . . do all that on my own. Gliddon just told me to do it."
"Not Ellison Seabright?"
"It was supposed to be what he wanted done. I dunno. I hardly ever talk to Ellison. He's supposed to be in Santa Fe now. As far as I know, he is."
Thorn turned away, to the projector. Brandreth let out a sighing groan. In the next room, Robinson Miller mumbled something but did not wake up. Now the screen darkened, then brightened again with a closeup of Delaunay's face, talking.
"This will be Session Thirteen," Delaunay's bass voice said, addressing the camera. He was filmed sitting in the laboratory. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater under an expensive sport coat, and looked vastly more competent, somehow, than his half-brother ever did. "Session Thirteen, on the fourth of April. I think we made real progress yesterday, and I hope for more today."
Darkness again, and when the scene came back there were two people sitting in the lab. In a soft reclining chair facing Delaunay and what was probably a hidden camera sat a teenaged girl with brown hair, small and slight, demurely dressed. Delaunay was also fully clothed, and it was soon apparent that both participants were likely to remain that way.
The girl was gazing, dreamily, at a small instrument on Delaunay's desk that sent a rhythmic, gentle, flashing light into her eyes.
"—sleep," Del was intoning gently as the scene started. "Deep sleep. And you will not wake up until I tell you. You will be able to hear me perfectly, and follow my instructions, but you will not awaken until I tell you . . . Helen? Are you asleep?"
"Yes," the girl answered in a calm, remote voice. Her eyes were now closed.
Delaunay brought his hand out from under his desk, where it had perhaps been on a hidden control that served to turn hidden recording devices off and on.
In Brandreth's ear Thorn whispered: "Who is the girl?"
"It must be Helen Seabright. The one who was killed. It looks like her pictures. I never saw her."
Thorn stood up straight, emitting a faint sigh.
"The last time we talked, Helen," Seabright was now saying, in the voice of a chatty psychiatrist, "you told me that next time you'd tell me why that painting fascinates you so."
"I don't want to talk about that, Uncle Del." It was a prim, calm voice, the voice of a young lady who knew her mind.
"But next time is now, Helen," Seabright prodded gently. When he got no response he tried again. "I'll make a bargain with you, if you like. How's this? I'll leave the painting where you can come and look at it anytime. And in return—what, Helen?" The girl had said something, very low.
"I said, it was really Annie who liked the painting anyway."