The Affair of the Brains
Public Domain
Chapter 7: The Coming of Leithgow
Hawk Carse awoke to the touch of a hand on his brow. He came very slowly to full consciousness. His pain was great.
His whole body was sore: every joint, every muscle in it ached; his brain was feverish, pumping turmoil. When he at length opened his eyes he found Friday’s face bent close down, tender anxiety written large over it.
“You all right, suh? How do you feel now?”
A harsh sound came from the Hawk’s throat. He pressed a hand to his throbbing temple and tried to collect his senses. Sitting up helped; he glanced around. They were back in the same cell, and they were alone. Then, shortly, he asked:
“Did I tell him?”
“About Mr. M. S., suh?”
“Of course, I can’t quite remember--a bit blurred--”
“I guess you did, suh,” Friday answered mournfully. “I didn’t hear you, but Ku Sui said you told him where Master Leithgow is. But dog-gone--you couldn’t help it!”
Carse forgot his pain as his brain straightened these words out into their overwhelming consequence, and something of its old familiar mold, hard and graven, emotionless, came back to his face. His eyes were bleak as he murmured:
“I couldn’t help it--no. I really don’t think it was possible. But I could have refused to get into the machine. I thought I could resist it. I took that risk, and failed.” He stopped short. His body twitched with uncontrolled emotion, and in decency the negro turned his back on his master’s anguish. A broken whisper reached him: “I have betrayed Leithgow.”
For a short while neither man moved, or made any sound. Friday was a little afraid; he guessed what must be going on in Carse’s mind, and had no idea what to expect. But the Hawk’s next move was quite disciplined; he was himself again.
He got up and stretched his body, to limber its muscles. “How long have we been here?” he asked.
“Don’t know suh; I was unconscious when they brought me here myself. But I guess not less’n six or eight hours.”
“Unconscious?” asked the Hawk, surprised. “You fought, and they knocked you out?”
The big negro looked sheepish and scratched his woolly head.
“Well, no suh,” he explained. “I was aimin’ to butt in some, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Then how did you get unconscious?”
Friday fidgeted. He was acutely embarrassed. “Don’t know, suh, Dog-gone, I just can’t figure it, unless I fainted.”
“Oh.” The Hawk smiled. “Fainted. Well so did I, I guess. I suppose,” he went on seriously, “you couldn’t tell whether the asteroid moved or not. I mean toward Satellite III.”
Friday scratched his head again.
“I guess I can’t, suh,” he replied. “I haven’t felt any movement.”
“The door is locked?”
“Oh, yes, suh. Tight.”
“Very well. Now please be silent. I want to think.”
He went over and leaned against the far wall of the cell. His right hand rose to the bangs of flaxen hair and with a slow regular movement began to smooth them. Lost in thought he stood there, thinking through the situation in which he found himself.
He had expected, of course, to subject himself to great risk in keeping the rendezvous with Dr. Ku Sui, but he had never thought he would be endangering Eliot Leithgow also. It was torture to know he had put the gentle old scientist into the Eurasian’s web.
That was it: if he could not somehow shear through that web, he must destroy Leithgow himself, and follow on after. The scientist would prefer it so. For whatever Dr. Ku’s exact reason for wanting the Master Scientist was, it was an ugly one: that it was worse than quick death, he knew full well.
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