The Avenger 32 - The Death Machine by Kenneth Robeson

you.”
    “Me? Oh, I see. About the plan to kill me.”
    “There was never any plan to kill you. That was all just a little fantasy, a show put on to snag me.”
    “I don’t think I see what—”
    “Your suicide. It was a fake. Timed so you’d be at the rail when I passed,” Early told her. “Your people knew I’d be at the site of the Hershman death, and when I started back for the bridge you got a signal.”
    “Don, that’s completely ridiculous.”
    “If something went wrong . . . if I hadn’t stopped, for instance, you still could have gotten to me some other way. If a cop had reached you first, your hypnotized victim act was sufficient to have brought you eventually to my attention.”
    The girl sank back against the window ledge. “I really don’t see how you can believe . . . What kind of object would such an act serve?”
    “They wanted to have somebody in our camp, somebody who could find out how close I was getting. Somebody who’d eventually set me up for capture, capture and killing.”
    “I’d never do anything like . . . And it was me who told you about the death machine in the first place. If I were on the other side, why would I do that? You had no idea there even was such a device.”
    “You threw away a good card, because you figured you had a sleeveful of aces,” he said. “Sooner or later we’d have found out about Dr. Heathcote’s invention and what your people were doing with it. I was locked down in a hole with the doctor for several hours today, Emmy Lou, and he told me about the Heathcote Ultrasonic Brain Control Box.”
    She said, “I don’t really know . . . how to cope with these . . . accusations, Don. I thought . . . I thought you liked me.”
    “I did.”
    “Then how can you believe what a gang of spies tells you? Naturally they’re going to try to smear someone who—”
    “You made a small mistake.” Early took a slip of paper from his coat, unfolded it but did not look at it. “Nothing much else you could have done, I guess, being stuck in this hotel room. You had to use the phone here.”
    “The phone?”
    “The phone, yes. Fifteen minutes after I left you this morning you put through a call to the Macri Brothers Winery,” Early said. “To alert them to the fact I’d taken the daisy design bait and was heading their way.”
    “You never trusted me, then.”
    “Oh, I trusted you. But a check of all calls is standard procedure in a situation like this.”
    “I see. Well, now what?”
    “Going to have to take you in to our local office.”
    “Let me get my things.” She walked toward the closet, which stood half open.
    “Don’t try for a gun, Emmy Lou.”
    The blond girl smiled, leaned down and touched something inside an open suitcase. “You actually carried this in for me, Don. I thought it might come in handy.”
    A strange low humming began as the death machine warmed up.
    Then nothing but silence.
    The waves of silence hit Early. He felt as though he were being pushed back by a harsh wind.
    “Listen to me,” said the girl. “You are going to do exactly what I say.”
    “Yes, I’ll do exactly what you say.”
    “Not really going to be too unpleasant, at first,” she said. “You’re going to tell Willis that I’m going to dinner with you.”
    “Going to dinner.”
    “Yes, right here in the hotel. Up in the celebrated Skylight Room, overlooking the panorama of the night city.”
    “Skylight Room.”
    “Exactly, and I’m going to quietly disappear in the confusion.”
    “In the confusion.”
    “Yes, in the confusion that will follow your suicide leap from the restaurant terrace.”

    Emmy Lou frowned at the handsome grinning waiter. “You’re not our original waiter,” she said, setting her menu down on the crisp white tablecloth.
    “The young lady is very perceptive,” said the new man. “Actually Michael, for such was the unfortunate chap’s name, has been most suddenly felled by what appears to be food