Free EMPIRE by Clifford D. Simak Page A

seemed to snap within him. The cold wind of terror reached out and struck at him. He staggered from the chair. His hand swept the wine glass from the table and it shattered into chiming shards.
    “They can’t do this to me!” he shrieked.
    There was a silence in the room a silence of terrible accusation. Everyone was staring at him. Eyebrows raised.
    A waiter was at his elbow. “Do you feel ill, sir?”
    And then, on unsteady feet, he was being led away. Behind him he heard the music once again, heard the rising hum of voices.
    Someone set his hat on his head, was holding his coat. The cold air of the night struck his face and the doors sighed closed behind him.
    “I’d take it easy going down the step, sir,” counseled the doorman.
    An aero-taxi driver held open the door of the cab and saluted.
    “Where to, sir?”
    Wilson stumbled in and stammered out his address. The taxi droned into the traffic lane.
    Hands twitching, Wilson fumbled with the key, took minutes to open the door into his apartment. Finally the lock clicked and he pushed open the door. His questing finger found the wall switch. Light flooded the room.
    Wilson heaved a sigh of relief. He felt safe here. This place belonged to him. It was his home, his retreat. . . .
    A low laugh, hardly more than a chuckle, sounded behind him. He whirled and for a moment, blinking in the light, he saw nothing. Then something stirred by one of the windows, gray and vague, like a sheet of moving fog.
    As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened, took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, a face that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fire of anger in the eyes.
    “Manning!” shrieked Wilson. “Manning!” He wheeled and sprinted for the door, but the gray figure moved, too . . . incredibly fast, as if it were wind-blown vapor, and barred his path to the door.
    “Why are you running away?” Manning’s voice mocked. “Certainly you aren’t afraid of me.”
    “Look,” Wilson whimpered, “I didn’t think of what it meant. I just was tired of working the way Page made me work. Tired of the little salary I got. I wanted money. I was hungry for money.”
    “So you sold us out,” said Manning.
    “No,” cried Wilson, “I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t stop to think.”
    “Think now, then,” said Manning gravely. “Think of this. No matter where you are, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, I’ll always be watching you, I’ll never let you rest. I’ll never give you a minute’s peace.”
    “Please,” pleaded Wilson. “Please, go away and leave me. I’ll give you back the money . . . there’s some of it left.”
    “You sold out for twenty thousand,” said Manning. “You could have gotten twenty million. Chambers would have paid that much to know what you could tell him, because it was worth twenty billion.”
    Wilson’s breath was coming in panting gasps. He dropped his coat and backed away. The back of his knees collided with a chair and he folded up, sat down heavily, still staring at the gray mistiness that was a man.
    “Think of that, Wilson,” Manning went on sneeringly. “You could have been a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. You could have had all the fine things these other people have. But you only got twenty thousand.”
    “What can I do?” begged Wilson.
    The misty face split in a sardonic grin.
    “I don’t believe there’s anything left for you to do.”
    Before Wilson’s eyes the face dissolved, lost its lines, seemed to melt away. Only streaming, swirling mist, then a slight refraction in the air and then nothing.
    Slowly Wilson rose to his feet, reached for the bottle of whiskey on the table. His hand shook so that the liquor splashed. When he raised the glass to his mouth, his still-shaking hand poured half the drink over his white shirt front.

CHAPTER NINE
    Ludwig Stutsman pressed his thin, straight lips together.