Mr. Benton fired first and missed.
Sutton folded the paper again and laid it carefully on the table. He lit a cigarette.
I thought it would be me, he told himself. I never fired a gun like that before…scarcely knew a gun like that existed. Although I had read about them and knew about them. But I wasn't interested in dueling, and duelists and collectors and antiquarians are the only ones who would know about an ancient weapon.
Of course, I didn't really kill him. Benton killed himself. If he hadn't missed — and there was no excuse for missing — the item would have read the other way around.
Mr. Asher Sutton was killed last night in an encounter…
We'll make an evening of it, the girl had said, and she might have known. We'll have dinner and make an evening of it. We'll make an evening of it and Geoffrey Benton will kill you at the Zag House.
Yes, said Sutton to himself, she might have known. She knows too many things. About the spy traps in this room, for instance. And about someone who had Benton conditioned to challenge me and kill me.
She said friend when I asked her friend or foe, but a word is an easy thing. Anyone at all can speak a single word and there is no way to know if it is true or false.
She said she had studied me for twenty years and that is false, of course, for twenty years ago I was setting out for Cygni and I was unimportant. Just a cog in a great machine. I am unimportant still, unimportant to everyone but myself and a great idea that no human but myself could possibly know about. For no matter if the manuscript was photostated, there is not a soul who can read it.
She said friend when I asked her friend or foe. And she knew that Benton had been conditioned to challenge me and kill me. And she had called me up and made a dinner date.