All the Colors of Darkness (Jan Darken Trilogy) by Lloyd Biggle Jr

Author:Lloyd Biggle Jr. [Biggle, Lloyd Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective, science fiction, novel, sci-fi, teleportation
ISBN: 9781434448477
Publisher: Ingram Distribution
Published: 2012-07-08T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Jan Darzek’s only full-time employee was a former model named Jean Morris. She was a splendid ornament to his office, which she ran with ruthless competence, and on certain outside assignments her efficiency was deadly. Few people, male or female, could contemplate her superb figure and exquisite features and guess that behind her long lashes both of her large brown eyes were private.

She entered Darzek’s employment because she fell in love with him. She quickly learned that Jan Darzek was no mortal man, but an institution of weirdly developed talents, all directed at securing elusive bits of information and assembling them into comprehensive reports to clients. By that time she had transferred her love to the detective business and begun the intense cultivation of her own talents. They made a spectacularly successful team.

On the day of the Universal Trans opening, Darzek returned from lunch and found her puzzling over a telephone call. “From Berlin,” she said. “Supposedly from Ron Walker.”

“You don’t say.”

“It was a collect call.”

“It would be,” Darzek said with a grin. “If he calls back, don’t accept it.”

“I thought it was a gag. Or was that Ron’s twin brother that was here when I came in this morning?”

“Ron hasn’t got a twin brother, and it was a gag. This morning he was in New York. Now he’s in Berlin. In the meantime he’s been in London, Paris, and Rome. He’s traveling on a newspaper assignment. I met one of his buddies at lunch, and heard all about it.”

“Oh,” she said. “That transmitting business.”

“Right. Ron is doing a world tour by transmitter, sending back local color stuff on how the foreign populations are taking it. Naturally he’d like to give me a long personal report, with me paying the phone bill. If he calls again, tell the operator I just left for Siberia by transmitter.”

Twenty minutes later Darzek had a visitor, a businessman who had failed to control his exuberance on a trip to Paris the previous spring. There were complications.

“Paris?” Darzek said with a smile. “Last week I’d have told you I couldn’t spare the time. This week—I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

The businessman delivered himself of a deep sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll leave the whole thing in your hands. When you get back—will you be back by Friday?”

“I’ll go over tomorrow afternoon,” Darzek said. “I’ll see the young lady, and come right back. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

The businessman’s brows arched in surprise, then relaxed. “Ah. Universal Trans. I’d forgotten.”

“You’ll never forget it again,” Darzek said.

By Tuesday morning the police had decided to capitulate. Three blocks of Eighth Avenue were blocked off. The perspiring populace jammed the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. Universal Trans developed a sudden and thoroughly justified apprehension that the crowd might interfere with business, and opened a side entrance for paying passengers. When Jan Darzek arrived on the scene Tuesday afternoon it took him forty-five minutes to push his way from the Pennsylvania Station to the Universal

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