All the Colors of Darkness. Lloyd Biggle jr.
Walker leaped to his feet, upsetting his coffee cup. “Is that official?” he demanded.
“Official and confidential,” Arnold told him. “Sit down and start mopping.”
Walker went to work on the spilled coffee with a handful of paper napkins. “Fine bunch of friends I have,” he grumbled. “Last month Darzek sat on a jewel robbery for a week, and not a whisper did I get.”
“I gave you a three-hour start when I cracked the case,” Darzek said. “And I’ll give you odds your editor wouldn’t use this story. How many grand openings does this make for Universal Trans? Six?”
“Seven,” Arnold said. “We probably won’t even get snide editorial remarks on this one. The official news release goes out at noon tomorrow, and we expect a lot of papers to ignore it.”
“Or bury it,” Walker said. “Page thirty-two, foot of the obituary column. ‘The Universal Transmitting Company announced today that it would open for business on Monday.’ Period. Taking any full-page ads this time?”
“No. We figure people would ignore them, so we’re going to save the money. That’s what the Boss said, but personally I think he doesn’t have the money to save. Anyway, we’ll get all the publicity we need once we start moving passengers, and it’ll be free.”
Walker nodded. “I’ll get myself assigned to cover the opening. I doubt that anyone else will want it. Everyone in favor of hanging onto the stock? Right. Meeting is adjourned. And Ted, you darned well better be right.”
“I’ll be right—barring accidents. And Monday you’ll be darned glad we dumped that airlines stock.”
“I want some more coffee,” Walker said.
Arnold summoned the waitress with a shout, and they sat silently while she refilled their cups.
“There’s just one thing that bothers me,” Darzek said, when she had returned to the kitchen. “Why was someone trying to buy my stock long before anyone at Universal Trans knew about this opening?”
“Speculators,” Walker said. “Or maybe they have a syndicate of realtors. I’ve heard of stranger things.”
Arnold shook his head. “More likely someone wants to get control of the company and kill it. Put it permanently out of business. The airlines interests, or the railroad and trucking interests, or—sure. Real estate. Why not? Can you guess what Universal Trans is going to do to real estate values? When we get operating properly a man will be able to live in California and commute to Wall Street by transmitter easier than he can commute now from Central Park West. The cost will be comparable with what the average commuter pays today for a train ticket. You should hear the Boss on that subject. He claims that Universal Trans is going to revolutionize our way of life more than the automobile did, and—”
He broke off and stared at Walker. “Did you say warehouse fire?”
“Over on the west side,” Walker said.
Arnold got to his feet slowly. He walked slowly to the pay telephone, and when he had made his call he sat down on the nearest chair and gazed thoughtfully at a blank wall.
“I don’t like this,” he announced finally. “That was my warehouse. We were using it for some tests.”
“Will this affect your grand opening?” Darzek asked.
Arnold shook his head. “We didn’t have much there, and we moved it out this afternoon.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. Write it off. It was insured, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose so. We were just renting it.”
“Forget it.”
“I don’t like it. We’ve had so many things happen—”
“Probably a coincidence,” Darzek said.
“You’re wrong there,” Walker said. “The fire marshal has it down as arson.”
CHAPTER 3
Only one New York paper gave the Universal Transmitting Company’s opening front-page coverage. Other papers across the country treated the announcement as a filler, usually under the terse heading, AGAIN? There was little editorial comment. Even the newspaper editors were tired of pointing out, with suitably cutting sarcasm, that Universal Trans was merely making propaganda to gain itself a temporary respite from the troubles that plagued it.
The average citizen was thoroughly fed up with Universal Trans. He was not just unenthusiastic, he was uncurious to the point of indifference. As a result, the hour of the opening found the Universal Trans terminals everywhere deserted except for employees.
The swank, half-finished New York Terminal on Eighth Avenue south of Pennsylvania Station was no exception. Ron Walker entered at eight-one that Monday morning, and looked about with the sinking feeling that he’d been had. Getting the assignment had been a problem, not because anyone else wanted it, but because his boss wanted no time wasted on Universal Trans, then or ever. The only thing that kept Walker from turning around and walking out was the knowledge that he had wasted twenty minutes of his editor’s time in arguing about the newsworthiness of Universal Trans, and he damned well had to produce some kind of story.
Walker stopped at the information desk and was directed to the mezzanine, where he found a row of ticket windows backed up by ticket agents. He asked for a ticket to Philadelphia. He was sold a ticket to Philadelphia, presented with an artistically printed pamphlet on the joys of transmitting, issued a free fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy, and directed to a passenger gate.
There he surrendered his ticket, walked through a turnstile and down a short passageway that angled off from it, and seconds later found himself incoherently shouting out his story from a phone booth in Philadelphia. Almost before his startled editor had hung up Walker was back in New York with a follow-up story, and minutes after a messenger reached him with a generous sum for traveling expenses he was on the phone from London. After that performance not even the most hardened skeptic could deny that Universal Trans was in fact open for business.
But the heat-fogged lethargy of the man in the street was not easily penetrated on that sultry July day. By ten o’clock there was only a scattering of pedestrians standing with noses pressed against the towering plate-glass windows of the Manhattan Terminal. A nattily dressed young man waved at them from a platform, stepped through a transmitter, and emerged on another platform eighty feet away, still waving. He moved six feet sideways, stepped through a second transmitting setup, and returned to his starting place.
The average New Yorker watched for three minutes, failed to figure out the gag, and went his way grumbling. Then at ten o’clock a Universal Trans employee with a genius for promotion plucked a shapely brunette from her seat behind a ticket window, sent out for a bathing suit, and set the young man to chasing her from platform to platform. Within minutes the most colossal traffic jam in the entire history of Manhattan was under way.
It required only one final touch of genius to plunge Eighth Avenue into complete chaos. At eleven-thirty the terminal manager supervised the draping of an enormous sign across the front windows, COME IN AND TRY IT YOURSELF—FREE OF CHARGE!
Forthwith the crowd surged into the terminal. The early arrivals may have been more interested in chasing the brunette than in transmitting, but transmit they did, and the brunette was quickly retired as an impediment to traffic. Police fought to keep order in the lobby, and bawled lustily for reinforcements. Cars were abandoned in the street when their drivers, tired of waiting for traffic to clear, fought their way into the terminal to see what all the fuss was about. Lines spread around the huge room in fantastic coils as one New Yorker after another cautiously mounted to the platform, stepped through to the opposite platform, returned, and was forcibly moved towards an exit.
No reliable count was made of the number of people who transmitted that day. Universal Trans claimed a hundred thousand, which was absurd, but one reporter watched for an hour with a stop watch,