Power, The by Robinson Frank M

Author:Robinson, Frank M. [Robinson, Frank M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2000-03-02T07:00:00+00:00

The campus was deserted, the buildings gray and gloomy in the growing evening dusk. He worked his key in the door of the Science building and quietly slipped inside. The night watchman usually spent all night in a cubbyhole in the basement, reading thrillers and sitting with his ear glued to a blaring radio. He would be no trouble at all … .

He walked through the silent corridors and into the committee meeting room. The shadows were growing but there was enough light to make out the furniture and the worn marks in the tile floor. There was the long, heavily varnished table and the cheap, straight-backed chairs and the tinted photograph of an old professor, apple-cheeked and with mutton-chop whiskers, staring somberly down from the walls. Dust lay thick on the table and the window sills, marred by clean streaks where somebody had run his fingers or laid something down. And there were faint fingerprints in the dust on the molding and scratches around the door.

Somebody had gone over the room pretty thoroughly.

He stood there for a moment, wondering who it might have been and trying to concentrate on the mystery, rather than worry about his own exposed position.

Somebody coughed behind him and he whirled. He hadn’t heard the door open, he hadn’t heard the footsteps down the hall. But now Karl Grossman stood in the doorway, nervous and hesitant. Or was that a cover?

It is—I know it is!

Grossman started to waddle towards him, his hand outstretched.

“Professor Tanner! I …”

He let himself react automatically, not thinking at all, for thinking would tip his hand. The Beretta was in his hand and shots were splashing into the woodwork behind Grossman. He frantically worked the trigger, backing towards the window. He had a frozen picture of a shocked look on Grossman’s fat face and then the big man was weaving towards him and had wrapped his cordlike arms around his knees.

It was like watching a slow-motion film where time had crawled to a halt and he could see each individual frame as it flicked past. There was no thought, no emotion, no feeling.

He felt himself go down, smashing a chair behind him. He tried to reverse the automatic, to bring the butt down on Grossman’s skull. Then the physicist had his throat with one hand and was desperately straining for his gun hand with the other.

They rolled once and during the movement he worked the gun free and took hasty aim. Their bodies crashed into the wall and the thin molding near the ceiling gave way and the heavy photograph of the mutton-chopped professor plummeted down, at the same time the sharp crack of the Beretta filled the room.

Silence.

Smoke and blood and shards of glass. A frightened man on the floor beneath him, eyes glassy in a pasty face, stinking with the sweat of fear. But a man who was still very much alive. A man who wore crepe-soled shoes, so naturally he wouldn’t have made any noise coming down the corridor.

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