Part 8 (2/2)

Patricia said impatiently, ”He's right, I'm afraid. I would collapse rather quickly under physical coercion. You might last a bit longer, Ross possibly longer still. But in the end we would concede.”

Crowley said, as though in amazement, ”You know, eggheads aren't as stupid as some would reckon. O.K., folks, I got a laboratory all fixed up with your things. Let's go. Ah, Ross, old pal, I'm carrying heat, as Larry would say, so let's don't have any trouble, eh?”

He had been as good as his word in regards to the laboratory. It was obviously one of the rooms used by the staff when the place had been a sanitarium. Now, each of the three had all the equipment and supplies they required.

Crowley took a seat at the far end of the room, facing them. There had been a guard outside the door when they entered and a call would bring him in seconds. Even so, Crowley sat in such wise that his right hand was ready to plunge inside his coat to the gun that evidently was holstered there. He said, ”O.K., folks, let's get about it.”

It took them half an hour or so to sort out those materials each needed in his own contribution to the end product.

Their captor looked at his watch impatiently. ”Let's get a move on, here. I thought this was going to take a few minutes.”

Patricia said testily, ”What's the hurry, Don?”

He grinned at her. ”Tonight's the big night. This evening, just before closing, I walk into.... Well, you don't have to know the name. Like I said, it'll make the Brinks job look like peanuts. They lock up the place and leave, see? O.K., about two o'clock in the morning, when the city's dead, Larry and the boys drive up into an alley, behind. I go around, one by one, and sock the four guards on the back of the head.

Then I open up for Larry and they take their time and clear the place out. From then on, we got all the dough we need to start pyramiding it up on the Stock Exchange and like that.”

Patricia had drawn on rubber gloves, pulled a lab ap.r.o.n around her. She began reaching for test tubes, measuring devices. She murmured softly, ”What keeps you from telling yourself you're nothing but a crook, Don?

When we first met you--it seems a terribly long time ago, back there in Far Cry--you didn't seem to be such a bad egg.”

”We didn't know, then, he was a cracked egg,” Ross muttered. He looked to where Crowley slouched, his eyes narrow as though considering his chances of rus.h.i.+ng the other. Crowley grinned and shook his head. ”Don't try it, Buster.”

Crowley looked at Patricia. ”You don't get it, sister. It's like somebody or other said. The ends, uh, justify the means. That means....”

”I know what it means,” Patricia said impatiently.

Dr. Braun, who rather hopelessly was also beginning to work at the equipment their captor had provided, said reasonably, ”Don, the greater number of the thinkers of the world have rejected that maxim. If you will, umah, a.n.a.lyze it, you will find that the end and the means are one.”

”Yeah, yeah, a lot of complicated egghead gas. What I'm saying, Pat, is that what I'm eventually heading for is good for everybody. At least it's good for all real hundred per cent Americans. Everybody's going to go to college and guaranteed to come out with what you three got, a doctor's degree. Everybody's going to get a guaranteed annual wage, like, whether or not they can do any work. It's not a guy's fault if he gets sick or unemployed or something. Everybody....”

”Shades of all the social-reformers who ever lived,” Ross muttered.

”By Caesar,” Braun said in despair, ”I have an idea you'll get the vote of every halfwit in the country.”

Crowley came to his feet. ”I don't like that kind of talk, Doc. Maybe I'm just a country boy, but I know what the common man wants and what I'm going to do is give it to him.”

Patricia looked up from her work long enough to frown at him. ”What special are you going to get out of this, Don?”

That took him back for a moment and he scowled at her.

”Come, come,” she said. ”You've already admitted to we three just what you think and are going to do. Now, how do you picture yourself, after all this has been accomplished?”

His face suddenly broke into its grin, a somewhat sly element in it now.

”You know, when I get this all worked out, the folks are going to be pretty thankful.”

”I'll bet,” Ross muttered. He, too, was working at his element of compounding the serum.

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