We finally pulled up to a kerb somewhere—traffic seemed surprisingly scanty, so I suspect we were on a side street. When we had come to a stop I instinctively began to take off the blindfold, but Bullet Head actually reached over the seat and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard.
“No...not yet. Keep still.”
I relaxed my hand, so that he could tell I was prepared to follow his orders.
I heard him get out of the car, slam the door, and then walk around the car to my side. Opening the door, he took my arm, firmly but not roughly, and drew me out. I stumbled a bit—we were not as close to the kerb as I had thought—but managed to reach what I took to be the sidewalk. Bullet Head let go of me and apparently helped Katharine out of the car. I could hear her utter a faint moan—not, apparently, from anything Bullet Head was doing, but possibly from confusion or nerves.
Evidently the man was now between us, and he took each of our arms and led us forward. We walked a considerable distance—far too long a distance if we were merely entering some building in front of the sidewalk—so I guessed that we were actually in some alley. It was very silent, only the crunching of our shoes on rough pavement reaching my ears. Strangely enough, I wasn’t afraid: I felt completely passive, and scarcely worried or cared whether I myself would come out of this escapade alive or not.
After what seemed an eternity Bullet Head tugged our arms as an indication that we should stop. Some keys rattled in his pocket, one key was fitted into a door, then another, and then the door opened. A faint trace of a strange odor—chemicals of some sort—tickled our nostrils. Bullet Head motioned us forward, but stopped us almost immediately with the single word: “Stairs.”
The stairs were of concrete, apparently. There were about twenty of them, constituting a single flight. At the top we were again asked to stop, while Bullet Head fished for more keys and opened another door. We entered, and, as the door closed behind us, we were finally permitted to take off our blindfolds.
I initially had difficulty understanding what I saw. The room seemed to be shaped in a perfect hexagon, and everything in it, except one object, appeared to be white: ceiling, floor, walls, even the desk and chair in the exact center of the room. The one thing that was not white looked at first like a head floating in mid-air—until I realized that it was connected to a man, dressed entirely in white, and standing in front of the desk.
The man seemed about forty or forty-five. He was tall, slim, his close-cropped hair quite gray. He was clean shaven, and had the most vivid green eyes I have ever seen. His face seemed unusually tanned and seamed, but otherwise there was only an expression of calm, placid intelligence on his countenance. He did not smile.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vance?” he said in a quiet, modulated voice. At our nod: “Welcome. I am Doctor Sanderson. You have come to the Removal Company.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It was only when Dr. Sanderson gestured to them that I saw there were two chairs—also in white—directly behind him, in front of the desk. In a kind of daze Katharine and I sat down in them, Sanderson walking with measured pace to sit in the chair behind the desk. For several moments there was complete silence.
Then Dr. Sanderson made a tent of his fingers and said quietly:
“My dear sir and madam, I trust you realize why you are here.”
Katharine suddenly leaned forward and began: “Yes, of course! Isn’t it all arranged? When—”
She stopped abruptly when Sanderson held up a hand, gently. It seemed he was incapable of any movement that was not calm, quiet, and composed.
“One moment, Mrs. Vance. There are some...preliminaries.”
He opened a drawer in the desk and drew out a clipboard. Then he continued:
“I really know very little about the two of you. I have only spoken once on the phone to Mr. Vance, and have not spoken to Mrs. Vance at all. We need to take care of some things first.”
Katharine seemed upset—far more upset than at any time since leaving Los Angeles. “You’re not going to try to talk me out of.... Oh! how could you, after we’ve come all this way!”
“Be assured,” Sanderson said. “I have no desire to persuade you to do or not to do anything. Your wishes are your own; I am entirely at your service to fulfill them.”
He got up and began to pace about, slowly.
“You realize, of course, that what we are about to do is, to be blunt, contrary to the laws of this nation? And you do realize that it is I who will absorb all the risks involved in this...operation? It is, indeed, quite possible that, if detected, I could receive the harshest penalty that our system of justice has in its arsenal....”
It was now my turn to be angry. “Sanderson, if you’re worried about your money, I have it right here.” I began to reach for the briefcase I had brought with me, but once again that hand of his restrained me. He wore a look of contempt on his face.
“I am not concerned about the money. I am aware that you have brought the money. Frankly, I would do this for no money, as a human service.”
He sat down again at his desk.
“My concern, Mr. Vance”—he looked directly at me with a gaze that made me feel queerly humiliated—“is that you have no second thoughts about this procedure. Pardon me for saying so, but it is not possible for Mrs. Vance to have any second thoughts in the matter. But you...”
“I don’t like what we’re doing,” I said harshly, heedless of what effect my words might have on Katharine, “but if it’s what my wife wants, then that’s all that matters.”
“Very admirable of you.” I couldn’t tell if there was sarcasm in his voice. “But time has a way of affecting one’s feelings. So I trust you will not object to signing this.”
He wheeled the clipboard around and thrust it at me.
“What is this?” I said.
“Merely a statement that you have participated in this affair. By signing it you make yourself…I believe the legal term is accessory. In this case, an accessory before the fact. You should be aware that in some cases the punishment for that is as severe as for….” He did not need to complete the sentence.
For some reason I had not expected this. Apparently Katharine had, for she was not looking shocked or surprised in the least, but instead was merely sitting calmly with hands folded and eyes fixed on a blank spot on the desk in front of her.
I became agitated—almost leaped from my chair. “What...what will you do with that paper if I sign it?”
Dr. Sanderson looked up at me as if I were a foolish schoolboy. “Why, nothing, Mr. Vance...assuming that you say or do nothing in the future about this business. Surely you understand that if I were to implicate you, I would be implicating myself. Quite frankly, I would have preferred working with Mrs. Vance alone, but since you insisted on coming, I have to...protect myself.”
“How do I know you won’t keep extorting more money from me to keep quiet about this?” I said, hotly. “This sounds like a pretty neat scheme for perpetual blackmail.”
Again those green eyes blazed at me, but now they seemed colder, filled with scorn and derision. But his tone of voice didn’t waver—it remained uncannily calm and even gentle.
“If you do not wish to accept my word as a gentleman and a scientist that nothing of the sort will happen, you can perhaps take comfort in the fact that, if I may use a vulgar locution, we each have the other over a barrel. You could blackmail me just as easily as I could blackmail you.”
I sat back down, grabbing