Warren Murphy: Death Sentence

"They're so frantic I can't get that out of them."

"I see," Ransome said slowly. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mrs. Mikulka. I shall see to the matter personally."

Norvell Ransome ignored her as he bounded past her desk. His tread made the water in her desktop flower vase slop over the lip and onto the Rolodex.

Mrs. Eileen Mikulka felt nervous. Since Dr. Smith's heart attack-if that was indeed his problem-nothing had seemed to go right. She thought the whole matter of Norvell Ransome himself was very strange. The lecherous way he looked at the nurses. She had even caught him looking at her in a disturbingly carnal way.

Then a stranger thing happened. A man she knew only as Remo, who had worked at Folcroft in some custodial capacity months before, emerged from the stairwell, looking lost.

"Hi!" he said nervously. "Is this Dr. Smith's office?"

"Of course," she replied. "You know that, Mr.... I'm afraid I've forgotten your name."

"Thanks. Just checking," he said, slipping into the office.

"Wait!" she called after him. "You can't go in there." She started to rise from her desk, but the door lock clicked. He had locked it after him. Something was distinctly wrong, but Mrs. Eileen Mikulka was not about to do anything to get herself fired. She composed herself and waited for Mr. Ransome's return.

Inside Dr. Smith's office, Remo walked up to the desk and lifted the ordinary blue telephone. It was a standard AT nderneath there was a silver lever. He slid it to the end of the slot marked "Louder. "

That done, he paused for a look around the Spartan office. There was a big picture window behind the desk, showing Long Island Sound. None of it looked familiar to him. But it exactly matched the office Smith had occupied in one of his dreams. Puzzled, Remo hurried to the door.

Norvell Ransome approached the big black double doors to the Folcroft gym. He put his ear to the cold metal. There was absolutely no sound on the other side. Ransome procrastinated. This was not to his taste at all. Dealing with physical problems like a common field agent. That was why he had hired a fresh complement of guards. But summoning the police was out of the question.

With painstaking slowness he pushed the door open a crack. He peered inside.

There was a guard lying on his back on the Nautilus machine. His hand clutched the bar of the device that was weighted with heavy metal slabs. Ransome waited for him to push them up. But the guard simply held that position.

Ransome pushed the door open all the way. He saw the other guards. Two hung from gymnast hoops. Not by their hands, but by their necks, their faces a smoky lavender. Ransome gasped in spite of himself.

His entire guard force was dead. Some grotesquely so. The hanging guards, for example, had had their heads somehow forced through the aluminum rings. The rings were obviously too small for their necks, which was why their faces were purple, yet their heads had evidently gone through without crushing their skulls. The guard under the weights was literally under them. His head had been crushed, his hands clutching the handles in a death grip.

The others were worse. Yet there was no blood anywhere. Just mangled bodies. And neither was there any indication of who-or what-had decimated them.

Ransome hurried from the gym. This wing of Folcroft lacked an elevator, forcing him to run. He was puffing by the time he reached the main building. The reception-area guard was absent. Ransome assumed he had been the unfortunate with the mashed cranium.

Ransome reached the elevator in safety and stabbed the button marked two.

Mrs. Mikulka started like a frightened animal when Ransome appeared on the second floor.

"What is it now, Mrs. Mikulka?" he snapped.

"A man barged into your office. I couldn't stop him."

Ransome stopped in his tracks. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know. He left just moments ago."

"Is anyone in there now?" Ransome demanded nervously.

"No."

"Then be good enough to inform any callers that I am out for the day."

"Of course, Mr. Ransome."

Norvell Ransome locked the office door after him. He lumbered for the computer, which was up and running. Then he realized he had forgotten to conceal it this time. He frowned. Such sloppiness was unforgivable.

"Must get a grip on myself," he said, sliding behind the desk. He attacked the keyboard. Somewhere there must be a hidden file. He initiated another diagnostic dump.

The intercom buzzed and Ransome shouted, "I told you I am not accepting calls!" without bothering to trip the intercom.

"I ... I think you should take this one," Mrs. Mikulka shouted back.

Ransome blinked. He eyed the blue telephone. Gingerly he lifted it.

"Hello?" he said cautiously.

An unfamiliar lemony voice spoke into his ear. "It is over, Ransome. I am back."

"Who ... who are you?"

"That you will never know. There is a contingency for everything in this organization. You should know that by now. After all, every secret of this institution is at your fingertips."

"Not quite," Ransome blurted out. "There is you, and the meaning of the organization's code name. I don't suppose I can pry that out of you?"

There was a pause on the other end. Then the lemony voice resumed speaking. "The answer to that and other questions you have may be obtained by calling a certain number."

"I have a pen in my hand," Ransome said quickly. The lemony voice gave a phone number.

Then, abruptly, the man hung up, saying, "Good-bye, Ransome. "

"Wait! What about-?"

Ransome replaced the receiver. He looked at the telephone number. It bore a local exchange. In fact, it seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place it. After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself Norvell Ransome began punching the keypad with his fat stubby fingers.

He clapped the receiver to his ear and waited for the first ring. As his watery eyes jerked around the room nervously, he noticed the number in the plastic window under the blue telephone's keypad.

It was identical to the number he had dialed. "What on earth!" he muttered. Then, fear rising from his Brobdingnagian belly, he hastily let go of the receiver.

The problem was that he could not. His muscles would not respond. There was a sudden sharp whiff of something burning in his nose. He never realized that it was his own nostril hairs because the neurons of his brain had died and his corneas turned cataract white from the two thousand volts coursing through his blubbery body. He continued jerking and spasming even after he had been cooked to death.

Then the lights blew and his face hit the desk edge with a mushy whump!

Chapter 25

Folcroft Sanitarium was blacked out for no more than forty-five seconds before the emergency generators came on, filling Dr. Smith's hospital room with harsh white light. The oscilloscope beeped into life, but it did not register Smith's heart rate, for Smith was no longer hooked up to it.

Instead, he was sitting on an aluminum wheelchair, a robe covering his thin legs.

"What happened?" Remo wanted to know.

"Ransome used the telephone," Smith said tersely.

"You really should have better wiring," Remo remarked.

"The wiring is fine. Now, would one of you please push me to the elevator. We are going to reclaim my office. "

Chiun turned to Remo. "Remo, do as Emperor Smith says."

"Emperor?" Remo and Dr. Dooley said simultaneously.

"Now," Chiun added sharply.

Obligingly Remo got behind Smith and started pushing. Chiun and Dr. Dooley followed them to the elevator. They rode one floor down in silence.

Mrs. Eileen Mikulka jumped to her feet at the sight of her employer being wheeled up to her desk. "Dr. Smith!" she exclaimed.

"Mrs. Mikulka, you have the rest of the day off," Smith said firmly, his gray eyes on the closed door to his office.