CHAPTER VI
Three men got out of the car and stood there in the dusk, at the south side of the Diamond.
They wore windbreakers and slacks. One of them was short and pudgy, the other two were average-looking men. All of them carried Venn guns.
They talked, briefly. One of the average men seemed to be the leader, Wales thought, from the way he gesticulated and spoke.
"What are they going to do?" whispered Martha.
"Look for me," Wales said. "A hundred to one they've left a man at the Observatory, and at your home—in case I come there. And these three are going to search downtown for me."
The three separated. One walked east along Washington Street. The other one got back into the car and drove off on North Jefferson. The remaining man—the dark-haired pudgy one, started going around the Diamond, keeping close to the fronts of the stores, ready to dart into cover at any moment.
An idea came to Wales, and he acted upon it at once. He crept to the front door of the hardware store, unlocked it, and silently opened it a few inches.
He came back, rummaged frantically in the dimness of the shelves till he found a spool of wire. Then he told Martha,
"Come on, now—get down behind this counter. And stay there."
"Jay, he's coming this way!" she protested. "He'll see the door ajar—"
He interrupted. "Yes. I want him to. Do as I say."
Her face white in the dusk, she got down behind the counter, back in the middle of the store.
Wales crept swiftly to the front of the store, whipped behind the counter there, and crouched down.
Now, with the door ajar, he could hear the pudgy man coming along the sidewalk. Then he saw him, his heavy, doughy face turning alertly from side to side as he came along.
The man stopped and the tommy-gun in his hands came up fast. He had seen the hardware-store door was a little open.
With the gun held high, the pudgy man came slowly to the door. His foot kicked it wide open. He peered into the dimness of the store, poised on his feet like a dancer, ready to turn instantly.
Wales' fingers closed on a little carton of hinges, under the counter. He suddenly hurled the little box toward the other side of the store. It struck a display of tinware with a tremendous clatter.
The pudgy man whirled toward that direction, in a flash.
With a movement as swift, Wales darted out in the same moment and jammed his pistol into the pudgy man's back.
"Let go of that gun," Wales said, "or I'll blow your spine out!"
He saw the pudgy man stiffen and arch his back, in a convulsive movement. Wales' finger tightened on the trigger. But, before he pulled it, the tommy-gun clattered to the floor.
"Martha," said Wales.
She came, fast, her face white and scared in the dusk.
"Take this wire and tie his wrists behind him," Wales said. "Don't get in front of my gun."
With shaking fingers, she did as he ordered. "Now shut the front door."
Wales turned the pudgy man around. "Now sit down, on the floor. First sound you make above a whisper, you're dead."
The pudgy man spoke, in a high falsetto whisper. "You're dead, right now. Whatever happens to me, you won't get out of Castletown."
"Don't worry about us," Wales advised. "Worry about yourself. Where's Lee Kendrick?"
The pudgy man looked at him calmly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Martha whispered, with astounding fierceness, "Make him tell, Jay."
Wales first searched their prisoner. He found no papers on him at all, nothing but clips for the gun. Pudgy seemed quite unperturbed.
"All right, where's Kendrick?" Wales said again.
Pudgy said, "You talking about the Kendrick that discovered Doomsday coming? The Kendrick? How should I know?"
"Who are you working for?" Wales persisted. "Who took Kendrick, who sent you to follow me here from New York? The Brotherhood?"
Pudgy looked at him in blank surprise. "Huh?"
"The Brotherhood of Atonement," Wales said. "You're one of them, aren't you? They've got Kendrick, haven't they? Where?"
Pudgy's face split in the beginnings of a guffaw. Wales raised his pistol quickly, and the man choked off the laugh. But his sides shook.
"Me one of that Brotherhood? You're funny. You're really funny, Wales."
"So you know me," Wales snapped. "You know all about me, you came trailing me when I started to hunt for Kendrick. Who sent you?"
A queer gleam came into the eyes of Pudgy, but he remained silent.
Something in that look made Wales whirl around. Their prisoner sat facing the store-front.
Out there in the dusk, one of the two other men had come back into the Diamond.
"Martha," whispered Wales.
"Yes?"
"Take your shotgun. If he tries to open his mouth, bring it down on his head."
Promptly, she picked up the shotgun and stood with it raised. Pudgy looked up at her, and winced.
Wales crept back to the front of the store and looked out. The other man out there seemed worried, holding his Venn gun high and looking slowly all around the Diamond. That he was worried by Pudgy's absence, Wales knew.
The man out there got into cover behind the pedestal of the monument, and waited. Waiting, obviously, for the man with the car to come back.
Minutes passed. The twilight was deepening into the soft May darkness. Suddenly Martha whispered.
"Jay!"
He swung around. Her face was a queer white blur in the darkness. "What?"
"I hear singing," she said. "Someone is singing, a way off."
"Just the wind in the wires," he said. "There's no one in the whole town but us—and them. You keep your eye on that fellow, I think we're due for trouble soon."
He waited again. From outside, he could hear the sound of the wind rising and falling. Then a strange conviction crept over him.
It was not the wind. It was the rise and fall of distant voices, many of them. Now the breeze brought it through the night a little louder, now it ebbed back to a murmur. Carefully, Wales opened the door a crack to listen.
He exclaimed, "It's from up on North Hill, but what in the world—"
He suddenly crouched lower again, his pistol raised. Down the hill along North Jefferson came the long green car, racing fast.
It swung around the Diamond. The man in it leaned out and called. The man behind the monument ran out to meet him, talking fast and gesticulating.
But the driver of the car pointed northward and shouted. Wales could not see his face but he could hear the raw tone of his voice, and caught the one final word, "—coming!"
The other man leaped into the car, after a last look around the empty Diamond. The car shot away down Washington, heading east.
"Why, they've gone, run away!" Martha exclaimed. "They left their partner here and—"
Wales held up his hand. "Listen!"
As the roar of the receding car died away, the sound of singing came again—and this time it was louder, much louder, and there was a steady throb of drums beneath it.
It rolled down from the north and he thought now he could hear the words of a chorus, endlessly repeated.
"Halle-lu-jah! Halle-lu-jah—"
Lights suddenly sprang into being up there on the crest of North Jefferson Street hill. They were not steady lights, they were moving, tossing and shaking, and there were dozens, scores of them. They were torches.
A long, thick snake of burning torches came down the wide street into the dark and lifeless town. Wales could see no people, only the torches, scores of them, hundreds of them. But he could hear the loud chanting of the people who carried those lighted brands.
"Halle-lu-jah—"
Crash-crash-boom, thundered drums from the forefront of the river of torches, and Wales felt a wild quickening of their beat and of the chanting voices, that checked his breathing.
Martha uttered a low cry. "Jay, it's the Brotherhood coming! The fanatics coming here now, to—"
The hair bristled on Wales' neck. She did not need to finish the horrified exclamation. The nightmare shape of the looming event was only too clear.
From town to town the Brotherhood of Atonement marched, those weak, crazed minds unhinged by the coming of Doomsday. Brighton Falls they had burned, and Sharon, and God knows how many other deserted towns. And now it was the turn of Castletown to be a sacrifice and an atonement....
He wanted to turn and flee from that mad, oncoming parade. But he did not. He crouched, watching, and he felt Martha, beside him, shivering.
"Jay, if they have Lee—he might be with them!"
"That's what I'm hoping for," he whispered.
Now the torches were coming down into the Diamond, and now he could see the people who carried them. They started around the oval, and the tossing of the red burning brands was flashed back from the windows all around, that shone like big eyes watching in amazement.
First, ahead of the torches, marched a half-dozen men and women with drums, beating a heavy, absolutely unvarying rhythm. After them came the main mass. He thought there might be two to three hundred of them.
Men, women, children. Torn and dusty clothes, unkempt hair, unshaven faces, but eyes glittering with a wild, rapt emotion, voices shouting the endless chorus of
The Brotherhood of Atonement....
Halle-LU-jah!
These crazed fanatics were gripped by no religious passion. The religious folk of the world had seen God's hand in the saving of Earth's peoples by man's newly-won knowledge. But these shouting marchers had gone back to dark barbarism, to pagan propitiation of a threatening fate, back beyond all civilization.
Boom-boom crashed the drums, right in front of the Dutton store, as the van of the mad parade swept past, following a tightening path around the oval, making room for more and more of the torch-bearers here in the center of the old town. And presently they were all in the Diamond, a packed mass of wild faces and shaken torches, all turned toward the center where the monument stood.
A man with a white face and burning eyes leaped up onto the pedestal of the monument, and the drums banged louder and a great cry went up from the Brotherhood. He began to speak, his voice shrill and high.
"Jay, do you see Lee? I don't—"
"No," Wales said. "He's not with them."
From out there, across the waving torches, came the screeching voice. "—burn the places of sin, and the powers of night and space will see the shining signs of our Atonement, and withhold their wrath—"
Martha said, "Oh, Jay, they're going to burn Castletown. Can't we stop them, somehow—"
He took her by the shoulders. She had had too much, but he could have no hysteria now.
"Martha, we can't stop them, they'd tear us to shreds! And what difference does it make now? Don't you realize—in four months this town and all towns will be destroyed anyway!"
Their prisoner, back in the darkness, suddenly raised his voice. Wales leaped back, pressed his pistol against the pudgy man's body.
"You call out and you get it now!" Wales warned savagely.
Pudgy looked up at him, and said hoarsely, "Are you crazy? Those maniacs aren't friends of mine! They're going to burn this whole town like they burned others—we got to get out of here!"
The frantic fear in the man's voice was utterly sincere. And to Wales, crouching beside the captive, came a shattering enlightenment.
He said, "Then you and your pals aren't working for the Brotherhood? Then it wasn't the Brotherhood that took Lee Kendrick, after all?"
"They're maniacs!" said Pudgy, again. "For Christ's sake, Wales, are you going to let them burn us alive?"
Wales stooped, grabbed the man by the throat. "It's not the Brotherhood who took Kendrick, then. All right—who was it? Who wants to see millions of people trapped on Earth? Who sent you after me? Who?"
Pudgy's voice turned raw and raging. "Get me out of here, and I'll tell you. But if we stay here, we're goners."
"You'll tell me right now!"
Pudgy remained sullenly silent. Then, of a sudden, the single high screeching voice out in the diamond ended, on a frenzied note.
Boom-boom, crashed out the drums again. The Brotherhood roared, as with the single voice of a mighty beast. The men with torches began to mill, to split off from the main mass, to run into the four main cross streets, shaking their firebrands and shouting.
One yelling woman applied her torch to the faded canvas awning in front of the Electric Shoe Repair Parlor. The canvas blazed up, and the drums rolled again.
"Jay!" cried Martha.
Wales forced Pudgy to his feet, faced him toward the front windows, and the torch-blazing chaos out beyond them.
"Martha and I are going, out the back way," Wales said. "We're leaving you here tied and helpless—unless you tell!"