Hell's Gate Read Free Page B

Victor Salsbury reached out and placed one palm flat one each of the glowing spots. Instantly, the next step of the operation was flashed into his brain and printed there for eternity. When the squares ceased to shine, he rose, went to the farthest trunk just as it popped open at a command from the computer. He took out a suit of conventional clothes, dressed, and left the cave. He had orders to follow.

CHAPTER 3
        
        He spent most of that morning up the street from the Oak Grove Greyhound Station-a ponderous aluminum and glass and concrete structure whose architecture suggested modern gothic-waiting for the bus from Harris-burg so that, when he walked into Wilmar Realty to proceed with the plan, he could say it was by this means he had arrived. He was kept company by a drunk, a small boy with fire red hair, and three persistent pigeons who were absolutely positive he must be concealing some delightful morsel in his suit pockets. He ignored them all, answered the boy or the drunk with clipped, terse replies when silence could no longer be excused. They soon grew wary of him, his isolation, his even, hard eyes. Even the pigeons seemed to start avoiding him.
        When the bus arrived, dispersed its passengers, and circled the block, heading back for Harrisburg, he got up, moving like a cat, and walked down the street toward the Wilmar Realty Agency.
        He stepped through the plate glass door which shut behind, and relished the cool breath of air-conditioning. Outside, the heat had been nearly intolerable. The place was one huge room almost large enough to hold go-cart races in. It had been partitioned along the rear into five office cubicles, each without a ceiling or door so that one got the ludicrous impression of looking into the toilet stalls in a low class men's gymnasium. The greatest part of the room was an unpartitioned lounge with ashtrays and display boards of Wilmar properties. A receptionist was set before the five cubicles, servicing each. The moment he stepped in, she smiled a plastic smile. “Can I help you?”
        “I'd like to inquire about a house,” he said.
        “Renting or buying?”
        “It depends on what I like.” But that was a lie, of course. He knew exactly which house. He had, after all, killed to obtain it.
        “Why don't you look around?” she said. “Someone will be with you in a moment.” Glittering plastic teeth shone so brightly that they almost made him squint.
        He scanned several display boards, found the Jacobi house on the third. He had never seen it from the front (all actions on that night two weeks ago had been initiated from the rear), but he knew it immediately. His mind kept wanting to return to Harold Jacobi, the man he had killed. He had learned the name from the hypnotic briefing with the computer. But the iron programmed part of him forced down any such foolishness.
        “Is that something like what you had in mind?” a gentle voice next to his right shoulder asked.
        He turned, smiled automatically, and said, “Yes.”
        The trapped portion of his mind, the humane part that kept trying to assert itself, reacted much more violently. That part had been expecting a jolly, hard-sell jackass in loud clothes and squeaking shoes and was presented instead with this stunning, lithe, five-foot-five-inch blonde with a dark tan and a long fall of coarse, bright hair. She made the lovely receptionist look like the boy on the corner. Her face was the sort of creamy perfection that made Hollywood starlets scream and break mirrors in frustration. She had stolen her eyes from a large cat. The figure under the face came from somewhere in mythology, though it was not quite obvious whether it was Diana, Venus, or Helen.
        She smiled, though it was a slightly unsure smile. Plainly, she expected a greater reaction from men than the iron Victor Salsbury was giving her. “Were you renting or buying?” she asked, flashing even,