The Thief of Thoth

20

WITH A SWIFT all-encompassing glance, Quicksilver noted his immediate surroundings, including the man who stood behind the pistol. A small dingy room and a small dingy man. His opponent was old, balding, well past the 150 mark, and rapidly going to seed. Also to pot, Quicksilver noted, as he eyed the other's quivering paunch and drooping jowls.

However, the hand that gripped the coagulator was steady as a rock.

The little old man peered fiercely at him with rheumy, bloodshot little eyes. He cackled harshly, exposing a gaping maw wherein the worn stumps of two or three greenish teeth wobbled insecurely.

"That's it, me lad! Not a quiver o' yer eyelid, or I'll curdle yer red stuff to blood puddin'," he wheezed. Hautley complied with unruffled demeanor.

Hufferd, if indeed it were he, and Hautley suspected such was the case, looked him up and down curiously.

"Never saw ye before in all me days, so I'll be askin' yer name, me lad, before I clot ye. Speak up! Who th' divil be ye, heh?”

Quicksilver's mind raced at flashing speed, weighing psycho-semantico-emotional factors, and spoke in a curt clipped voice of steely sternness.

"Captain Rex Dangerfield!" he snapped.

His verbal blockbuster had the desired effect. At the unexpected and shocking news that he held the most feared crime-fighter in the entire galaxy at gun point, Hufferd gaped, gasped, and gagged. His gun hand flinched and wavered, no longer pointing straight at Hautley's heart.

Quicksilver's right leg flashed out in a neo-karate stroke. The coagulator went flying, clattering into a corner amidst broken crockery and noisome garbage. Hautley dove on his paralyzed prey, and it took him only 1.04 seconds to secure his aged opponent in a hammerlock.

"C-captain D-dangerf-field!" Shpern Hufferd spluttered, writhing feebly in Quicksilver's iron grip. "B-but wh-what the d-divil 'ud ye be wantin' wif an ol' duffer th' loikes o' me? I haven't tipped me fumbly ol' mitt in twenny-foive year or more, I b-been livin' the peaceable loife o' a retoired, lawr-abidin' citizen an' tax-payer, I have! Thar wuz I, takin' a li'l nap in t'other room, when I heard ye unlock me door—wot was I to think, I asks ye!—so natcherly I gits me gun and comes t' see what scut be pussyfootin' aroun' me quarters. What c'd the loikes o' yez, Cap'n, be wantin' from the loikes o' me ..."

"Just one thing, Hufferd. The present whereabouts of your former partner-in-crime, the notorious Dugan Motley. Quick! Speak up, and I'll not run you in," Quicksilver deadpanned in a level voice.

Hufferd goggled incredulously.

"Th' boss? Why, Cap'n, it's been many th' long year since I—"

His quavering voice broke of on a querulous note, and the fat little bandit sagged limply in Quicksilver's steely arms. Had he fainted from the unaccustomed shock of this encounter? Hastily, Hautley stretched him out on the dusty floor and tried to arouse him from his swoon. Then his hands grew still, and his bright mirror-eyes narrowed to glinting icy alits ...

Shpern Hufferd would never awaken from this swoon.

A tiny poison needle bristled from behind one sagging jowl. The little old man's eyes were glazed in sudden death.

Hautley recalled the faintly audible hiss of compressed air his sensitive ears had noted a split second before the little gnome had slumped lifeless in his embrace. A needle gun! Fired from somewhere beyond the window, perhaps in the street outside ...

He sprang lithely to the rectangle of grease-smeared plastic set in the street wall of the hovel. Sure enough, a minute hole punctured the pane.

Mind flashing into high gear, Quicksilver calculated the angle of fire from a swift mental reconstruction of the position of Shpern Hufferd's body at the moment it was struck, and the angle of the needle when it entered his flesh. The shot had come from a second-floor window of the building directly across the street. Keeping well out of the line of fire, Quicksilver peered at the structure opposite. As he had already noticed, prior to entering the flat, the first floor was a bar, the second floor seemed to be of a residential nature. The upper windows were unlit, seemingly unoccupied. But the murder shot could have come from no other position.

Hautley cursed briefly in three different languages. If only Hufferd had not switched on the room lights when he bad Quicksilver at gun point! If the room had remained in darkness, the unknown assassin across the way would have had to fire blindly, and the chances were that Shpern Hufferd would be alive this moment. But now he would never speak to reveal the hiding place of the Master Burglar of Capitan ...

Quicksilver exploded into a whirlwind of action. There was little if any time to be wasted. Valuable intelligence could be wrung from the unknown assassin, but Hautley must be swift to capture the villain before he eluded pursuit by mixing with the crowd.

The galaxy's ace criminal ground his weight upon one certain edge of his left bootheel, wherein a hollowed compartment contained a micronegagrav of his own exclusive design. The cunning device engaged, nullifying the gravitational forces about Hautley's body.

He hurtled into the air in a long spring of uncoiling power. The window of Shpem Hufferd's flat splintered into a cloud of gritty particles as Hautley's body zoomed projectile-like through the aperature—arched into mid-air above the foetid street—flipped head over heels—and came crashing through the window of the room above the bar.

Hautley landed in a fighting crouch, gun at the ready, amidst a litter of shattered plastic.

But the room was empty!