Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [32]
“Yes, but—” and the commissioner shrugged, wordlessly.
“It’s a chance,” agreed Barr. “Naturally, a risk should have its compensation. It is a rather great favor to ask you, but we have already been greatly obliged with your kindness in offering us this opportunity to explain our problem. But if you would allow us to express our gratitude just slightly by—”
Devers scowled. He had heard this speech with its slight variations twenty times in the past month. It ended, as always, in a quick shift of the half-hidden bills. But the epilogue differed here. Usually the bills vanished immediately; here they remained in plain view, while slowly the commissioner counted them, inspecting them front and back as he did so.
There was a subtle change in his voice. “Backed by the Privy Secretary, hey? Good money!”
“To get back to the subject—” urged Barr.
“No, but wait,” interrupted the commissioner, “let us go back by easy stages. I really do wish to know what your business can be. This money, it is fresh and new, and you must have a good deal, for it strikes me that you have seen other officials before me. Come, now, what about it?”
Barr said, “I don’t see what you are driving at.”
“Why, see here, it might be proven that you are upon the planet illegally, since the Identification and Entry Cards of your silent friend are certainly inadequate. He is not a subject of the Emperor.”
“I deny that.”
“It doesn’t matter that you do,” said the commissioner, with sudden bluntness. “The official who signed his Cards for the sum of a hundred credits has confessed—under pressure—and we know more of you than you think.”
“If you are hinting, sir, that the sum we have asked you to accept is inadequate in view of the risks—”
The commissioner smiled. “On the contrary, it is more than adequate.” He tossed the bills aside. “To return to what I was saying, it is the Emperor himself who has become interested in your case. Is it not true, sirs, that you have recently been guests of General Riose? Is it not true that you have escaped from the midst of his army with, to put it mildly, astonishing ease? Is it not true that you possess a small fortune in bills backed by Lord Brodrig’s estates? In short, is it not true that you are a pair of spies and assassins sent here to— Well, you shall tell us yourself who paid you and for what!”
“Do you know,” said Barr, with silky anger, “I deny the right of a petty commissioner to accuse us of crimes. We will leave.”
“You will not leave.” The commissioner arose, and his eyes no longer seemed nearsighted. “You need answer no question now; that will be reserved for a later—and more forceful—time. Nor am I a commissioner; I am a Lieutenant of the Imperial Police. You are under arrest.”
There was a glitteringly efficient blast-gun in his fist as he smiled. “There are greater men than you under arrest this day. It is a hornet’s nest we are cleaning up.”
Devers snarled and reached slowly for his own gun. The lieutenant of police smiled more broadly and squeezed the contacts. The blasting line of force struck Devers’s chest in an accurate blaze of destruction—that bounced harmlessly off his personal shield in sparkling spicules of light.
Devers shot in turn, and the lieutenant’s head fell from an upper torso that had disappeared. It was still smiling as it lay in the jag of sunshine which entered through the new-made hole in the wall.
It was through the back entrance that they left.
Devers said huskily, “Quickly to the ship. They’ll have the alarm out in no time.” He cursed in a ferocious whisper. “It’s another plan that’s backfired. I could swear the space fiend himself is against me.”
It was in the open that they became aware of the jabbering crowds that surrounded the huge televisors. They had no time to wait; the disconnected roaring words that reached them, they disregarded. But Barr snatched