Read Ebook: Tommy Tatters Uncle Toby's Series by Unknown

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Ebook has 90 lines and 7372 words, and 2 pages

"I am your steward from here to Vesta," he told him. "Send for your regular one at once and give him his instructions."

"But my dear sir," objected the captain, rising from his bunk, "as much as I would like to cooperate, I cannot do that. You must know that under the new regulations all members of a ship's crew must be photographed and the pictures posted in prominent parts of the ship. It is your own police rule and is for the protection of passengers from imposters."

"Never mind that," snapped Neville, "get him in here."

The steward came and Neville studied him carefully. He was a swarthy man with heavy shoulders and thick features. His eyes were jet black. But his height was little different from that of the special investigator.

"Say something," directed Neville, "I want to hear your voice. Recite the twelve primary duties of a steward."

The man obeyed.

"It's okay," announced Neville when he had finished. "I can do it."

He gave the captain a word of warning, then went with the steward to his room. There he handed the astonished man a hundred-sol credit note and told him to hit the bunk.

"Here's your chance to catch up on your rest and reading," said Neville grimly. "You don't leave that bunk until I tell you to, y'understand? If you do, it will cost you five years in the mines of Oberon."

The steward gasped and lay back on the pillow. He gasped some more when Neville yanked his box of transformations open and spread its contents on the table. His eyes fairly bulged as he watched Neville shoot injections of wax into his deltoids and biceps until the policeman's shoulders were the twins of his own. He saw him puff up his face, thicken the nose and load the jowls, and after that paint himself with dye, not omitting the hair. Then, marvel of marvels, he saw him drop something in his eyes and sit shuddering for a few seconds while the stuff worked. When the eyes were opened again they were as black as his own!

"How's dis, faller?" asked Neville in the same flat, sullen tone the steward had used in the cabin. "Lanch is sarved, sor ... zhip gang land in one hour, marm ... hokay?"

"Gard!" was the steward's last gasp. Then he lapsed into complete speechlessness.

Neville darted out into the passage. The baggage of the sole passenger to get on at Pallas lay in the gangway, and its owner, Mr. Carstairs, stood impatiently beside it. He growled something about the rotten service on the Callisto-Earth run, but let the steward pick up the bags. Then he followed close behind.

"Lay out your t'ings, sor?" queried Neville, once inside the room.

"No," said Carstairs savagely. "When I want anything I will ask for it. Otherwise, stay out of my room."

In the second hour of the sleep period, the false steward stole down the passage and with a pass key unfastened the door lock. There was an inside bolt to deal with as well, but an ingenious tool that came with the travel-kit took care of that. A moment later Neville was in the slumbering man's room. Five minutes later he was back in his own, and stacked on the deck beside him was all the baggage the magnate of Pallas had brought with him.

One piece opened readily enough, and its contents seemed innocuous. But the methodical police officer was not content with superficial appearances. He examined the articles of clothing in it, and the more he looked the more his amazement grew. There were no less than four sets of costumes in it. Moreover, they were for men of different build. One stout, two medium, one spare. In the bottom was a set of gray canvas bags--slip-covers with handles. Neville puzzled over them a moment, then recognized their function. They were covers for the very baggage he was examining. He had to use special tools to open the second bag and found it contained a makeup kit quite the equal of his own.

"Ouch," he muttered. "This guy is as good as I am."

The third and heaviest bag was a tougher job. It was double-locked and strapped, and heavy seals had been put on the straps. The Extra-Special travel-kit equipment took care of the locks and seals, but the contents of the bag were beyond anything a travel-kit could handle. They were documents--damning documents--neatly bundled up, each bound with its own ribbon and seal. Had Neville had twenty-four hours in a well-equipped laboratory with a sufficient number of assistants, he might have forged passable but less incriminating substitutes for them. As it was, he was helpless to do a very artistic job of switching. One package dealt with certain long-forgotten passages in Mrs. Carstairs' life, while others dealt with certain business transactions.

From that case, Neville chose to abstract all of them except the one which formed the outer wrapper. To make up the bulk he filled the bundle with blank paper, tied it up again and resealed it. He dealt likewise with the packet that contained the formulae for the radiation extraction process. And, for the good of the Service, he pursued the same course with regard to a rather detailed report on the foibles and weaknesses of a certain police colonel stationed in Pallas. There was not a hint of scandal or corruption in that, but often ridicule is as potent a weapon as vilification. After that came the tedious business of censoring the rest, repacking the bag as it had been, and restoring the locks and seals. The gently snoring Carstairs never knew when his bags were returned to him, nor heard the faint scuffling as his door was rebolted and relocked.

"Vasta, sor, in one hour," announced his steward to him eight hours later. "Bags out, sor?"

"When we get there," growled the magnate, yawning heavily, glancing suspiciously about the room. He locked the door behind the steward, didn't leave until the ship was cradled.

Neville watched him go ashore. Then he hurried in to see the skipper again.

"You will be compensated for this," he said hurriedly. "You can have your steward back on the job again. How long do you stay here?"

"Three hours, curse the luck. We usually touch and go, but this time I have an ethergram ordering me to wait here for a special passenger. Why in hell can't these hicks in the gravel belt learn to catch a ship on time?"

"Ah," breathed Neville. "That makes a difference. I think I'll stay with you. Have you a vacant room where I can hang out for the remainder of the voyage?"

"Yes."

Neville could not suppress a murmur of approval as he saw his quarry approaching. As an artist in his own right, he appreciated artistry when he saw it. The man coming down the field was Carstairs, but what a different Carstairs! He was more slender, he had altogether different clothes on, he had a different gait. His complexion was not the same. But the height was the same, and the bags he carried were the same shape and size, except for their gray canvas coverings. There was a little notch in the right ear that he had not troubled to rectify in the brief time he had had for his transformation in what was undoubtedly his pre-arranged hideaway on Vesta.

"What is the next stop, skipper?" Neville whispered to the captain.

"New York."

"I'll stay out of sight until then."

Billy Neville hit the ground not four miles from the designated skyport. A commandeered copter took him to it just in time to see the squat passenger vessel jetting down into her berth. He looked anxiously about the station. There was not a uniformed man in sight except a couple of traffic men of the local detachment. He needed help and lots of it.

Neville had no choice but to play his trump card. It was a thing reserved only for grave emergencies. But he considered the present one grave. He took his police whistle out of his vest pocket and shrilled it three times. It was a supersonic whistle--its tone only audible to first-class detectives having tuned vibrators strapped over their hearts. To sound a triple supersonic call was the police equivalent of sending out an eighth alarm fire-call. But Neville blew the blast. Then waited.

A man strolled up and asked the way to Newark.

"Wait," said Neville, only he did not use words but merely lifted his right eye-brow slightly. It was not long before four others came up and craved directions as to how to get to Newark. He lit a cigarette as they gathered around.

Neville knew better than to flash a badge on these men, even if he was in uniform. Both badges and uniforms could be counterfeited. But he knew that they knew from his procedure that he was a department agent.

"There he comes," he warned, and promptly ducked behind a fruit stall and walked away.

Neville allowed himself to be ushered into the office, but it was not without trepidation, for old Col.-General O'Hara had a vile reputation as a junior-baiter. He was not at all reassured when he heard the door click to behind him with the click which meant to his trained ears that the door would never be opened again without the pressure of a foot on a certain secret pedal concealed somewhere in the room. Nor did the appearance of the man behind the desk do anything to relieve his own lack of ease.

O'Hara was a gnome, scarcely five feet tall, with bulging eyes and wild hair that stood helter-skelter above his wrinkled face. He was staring at his desk blotter with a venomous expression, and his lower lip hung out a full half-inch. Neville stood rigidly at attention before him for a full three minutes before the old man spoke. Then he looked up and barked a caustic, "Well?"

"I am Special Investigator Neville, sir," he said, "and I want the pedigree of a certain

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