There was no doubt Buster had robbed him. And that meant Elmer had robbed him, for Buster was basically no more than an extension of Elmer, a physical agent for Elmer. Buster was the arms and legs and metallic muscles of a thing that had no arms or legs or muscles.
And Elmer, having robbed him, wanted him to know he had. Buster deliberately had set the stage for suspicion to point him out.
Charles Carter sat down heavily in the chair before his desk, staring at the papers on the floor. And through his brain rang one strident, mocking phrase:
“Twenty years of work. Twenty years of work.”
The mistiness that hung among the ornamental girders swirled uneasily with fear. Not the old, ancestral fear that always moved within its being, but a newer, sharper fear. Fear born of the knowledge it had made mistakes — not one alone, but two. And might make a third.
The Earth people, it knew, were clever, far too clever. They guessed too closely. They followed up their guesses with investigation. And they were skeptical. That was the worst of all, their skepticism.
It had taken them many years to recognize and accept him for what he really was — the residual personality of the ancient Martian race. Even now there were those who did not quite believe.
Fear was another thing. The Earthlings knew no fear. Quick, personal glimpses of it undoubtedly they knew. Perhaps even at times a widespread fear might seize them, although only temporarily. As a race they were incapable of the all-obliterating terror that lay forever on the consciousness of Elmer, the Martian Ghost.
But there were some, apparently, who could not comprehend even personal fear, whose thirst for knowledge superseded the acknowledgment of danger, who saw in danger a scientific enigma to be studied rather than a thing to flee.
Stephen Lathrop, Elmer knew, was one of these.