Warren Murphy - Last Drop

A mind, in fact, quite like his own.

The instrument turned in the keyhole. Smith dropped his tie down the hole again. There was no reaction. He lowered himself into the opening, catching his foot on the step of a ladder, and let himself down.

There was a naked electric lightbulb at the base of the ladder, activated by a string. Simple, no frills, Smith thought. A good, clean mind. On a table against the wall sat a small computer. A home model, augmented with special one-of-a-kind hardware. Attached to it by a series of wires was the telephone from Smith's attaché case. Beneath the table was the case itself.

He disconnected the wires, dialed the special routing code that led directly into Folcroft information banks, and said, "Abort self-destruct."

A small wave of relief washed over him. Not much, certainly not what he'd expected. His eyes kept wandering over to the small computer.

He knew there would be a computer. Unless the theft of his attaché case had been simply a random crime, it was certain that the thief knew computers. But this, he thought, touching a slender hollow tube protruding from the computer's open back. The tube was welded to a five-inch disc covered with frames of microcircuitry. It was almost identical to the hardware he himself had constructed in order to develop the Folcroft Four's capability to tap other computer information banks through the direction of shortwave signals.

"Remarkable," he said. He realized that the telephone was still in his hand. "Repeat. Abort self-destruct," he said, his hands straying back to the tabletop computer.

On the other end of the line, the Folcroft computers whirred, clicked, and then died down. At the end, a Morse code transmission reading, VOICE PRINT ACCEPTED, SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM DE-ACTIVATED clattered out, and then the connection was broken.

He set down the phone and gave his full attention to the computer. He knew he would have to dismantle it and leave immediately, even though the beauty of the thing piqued his curiosity almost to the point of physical longing. He turned on the console. Experimentally his hand passed over three tiny glass cylinders. Who used glass anymore? he wondered excitedly. Only someone who knew hardware well enough to create whole new circuits.

"Stop it," he said aloud. He opened his leather case and selected his tools for dismembering the machine.

"2, 16, 28, 59," he keyed, in at random. "FIND SEQUENCE."

The little machine spewed out numbers until it organized a mathematical sequence in twenty-digit figures. Inserting a flat tool into a recognizable circuit, he watched the numbers disappear from the screen as he erased the sequence-finding function.

He poised the instrument over the remaining exposed circuitry and keyed in the computer's biographical file mode. He typed the first name that came to mind.

"DONNELLY, HUGO."

The machine responded:

DONNELLY, HUGO

322 W. LINDEN DRIVE

WASH., D.C. (RES.)

B. 1927, PORTLAND, ORE.

MARRIED, ARLENE NASH PALMER

(DECEASED)

1931-1957... ESMERALDA VALASQUEZ

DONNELLY, B. 1950...

He stared at the information. It was presented in exactly the same way the Folcroft computers would have given it. But that wasn't possible. He had programmed the Folcroft biographical banks himself. Of course, it may just be coincidence, he thought.

"SMITH, HAROLD W.," he typed. No information banks in the world except for those at Folcroft contained any precise information about himself, and even the Folcroft computers didn't release Smith's information without a special code.

SMITH, HAROLD W, B. 1925

RES. 426 WESTACRE LANE, RYE, NY...

MARRIED, IRMA WINWOOD SMITH, B.

1927...

CHILDREN: 1 (F)F BETH JO ANN, B. 1955...

OCC: DIR, FOLCROFT SANITARIUM, RYE,

NY...

OCC: DIR., CURE (REF: CURE, SPECIAL

CODE 4201–26, OPERATIONAL MODE 58–

MMC)...

The instrument fell out of his hand.

"Surprised, Dr. Smith?" a voice said softly from the ladder behind him. He whirled around.

The first thing he saw was a pair of gray kidskin gloves.

He had been right. Exactly right. From her coat, Darcy Devoe extracted a .38 Browning revolver.

?Chapter Twenty-One

"You flatter me," Darcy said.

"How did you gain access to my information banks?"

She smiled. A real smile, devoid of the dazzling imbecility of Hugo Donnelly's secretary. She seemed like a different woman now, her head poised elegantly, the hands still, her eyes steady with cold intelligence. "It wasn't easy," she said. "Although once I'd constructed the hardware, the routing signals were relatively uncomplicated."

Smith nodded vaguely. "You monitored the calls to my office yourself."

"From Washington. I wanted to know who your successor would be, so I hooked your telephone up to my computer and arranged it so that any call coming into Folcroft— and consequently to the phone in your attaché case— would ring both in my office and at my home. I must say, it was a surprise to find you were still alive. But we'll take care of that soon enough."

"I— I've been followed," Smith said, stalling.

Darcy laughed. "That's a pitiful attempt. I don't imagine you're much good at lying."

"I'm not as good as you are."

"I might as well tell you right now, Dr. Smith, that there is no way you're going to escape from here, with or without your extraordinary little helpers. I've installed certain failsafe measures to ensure that. Speaking of your friends, I believe they've recently disposed of Mr. Donnelly."

"That was just what you wanted, I suppose," Smith said. "First Esmeralda, then Arnold, now Donnelly. The last obstacle's out of the way, as far as you're concerned."

She raised an eyebrow. "That's a good deduction. I like the way you think." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Yes, I do. I feel I've come to know you through your computers. You have a clean mind. A useful mind. I haven't underestimated it. From the minute you gave me that phony card in Donnelly's office, I guessed you knew much more than you appeared to. You hide your abilities well."

"The same could be said about you."

Darcy laughed. "Are you referring to my office persona? I thought I performed that role rather well."

Smith cleared his throat. "Er... your computer. It's very good."

"Thank you. I take that as a great compliment. But what you're really getting at is, how did I construct it? You've looked into my background, of course."

"Yes," Smith said. "That's what puzzles me. I know that you grew up here, in this town. In this house. You have no education to speak of. If you don't mind my asking..."

He blushed. It was all very strange. Here he was, held at gunpoint by an obvious menace to everything he held dear, and yet he felt like a schoolboy asking a girl to dance.

She watched him. Her eyes twinkled. "No, I don't mind," she said. "I taught myself. I read everything I could about everything. I sat up till dawn every night for twelve years to learn how to think. When I was twenty-six years old, I went to work for a computer manufacturing company, on the assembly line. That's where I learned how these machines worked. I stole some parts, studied them at home, and brought them back before they were missed. It was a passion with me.... Do you find that impossible to believe about a woman?"

"No," Smith said simply. "Only... you could have put your gifts to better use."

"I've found a way to make all the money I'll ever need," Darcy said. "That's the best use I can think of."

"That's not true—"

"Don't lecture me, Smith. You didn't have to grow up in a hole like this. You didn't have to drop out of school in the eighth grade to clean houses so that your old lady could keep herself in smack."

"Johnny Arcadi used to operate in this area a long time ago. You knew him, I gather?"