rest I will deal with," said Winchester.
He watched Lohan's image fade. Then he brought out his lists. The first was a short one. It consisted of four hundred and three cell leaders — dangerous and cruel men, all. Next came a longer one, the roster of the regular AFPA operatives of the third and fourth grades. It numbered above ten thousand. There followed the names of five times as many more stool pigeons, and a selection from the ranks of the more brutal prison guards.
Winchester called his fifteen subordinates. They were still unaware of their own impending fate.
"These men are to be executed within the hour. If you doubt authority, any one of you is at liberty to appeal to His Highness. That is all."
One by one they acknowledged, but with awe-struck eyes.
Again Winchester sat back, tense and on edge, until the glimmer of the monitor lights began bringing in the confirmation that his orders were being executed. This time he did not look on. For although he knew that every man marked for the purge richly deserved all that could be done to him, Winchester had no desire to witness his death agonies.
Yet the glint of supreme satisfaction was in his eyes. The iron of persecution had branded him deeply, to the very heart. Whether he failed or not, this night many a scoundrel would go to his just doom. The world would be rid of its crudest tormentors.
Then Winchester thought of Cynthia, restless and impatient in her precarious role as handmaiden to the royal princess. He stole toward the princely televisor set and examined it. A moment later he called an electrician.
"But it is death, horrible death, to do that," whispered the man in terror.
"It will be still more horrible if you do not," said Winchester grimly.
The man began to work. His hand trembled violently.
"Now you can do it, Excellency," he said, but his face was ghastly pale. "There is two-way transmission."
"Thank you," said Winchester.
His ray-gun was in his hand. Without a moment's hesitation he blasted the man out of existence. The fellow was high up on his list of proscription, for his crimes were many. He was the best wire-tapper on the Moon. Now he had done his last job.
Winchester sniffed the acrid smoke of what had a moment before been a man. He had only advanced the man's ordered death by a few hours. It was a detail he must not worry over.
With considerable trepidation he approached the controls. In a moment he would be listening in on Prince Lohan's private palace, in its beautiful location in Southern Germany.
Slowly he tuned in and was rewarded by the return glow as the screen warmed. From his point of vantage he was looking over the shoulder of Princess Chen Chin. Directly facing him was Cynthia. And her eyes were full of horror!
CHAPTER XIX
Catastrophe
The princess was sobbing and wringing her hands.
"Oh, oh, my dear," she was crying, "if only we could save him! But we cannot. Lohan is so clever. He left me only a moment ago. He has achieved what he set out to do — extinguish at one stroke all seeds of rebellion, and at the same time purge his own ranks.
"Now that he has done that he will throw your man in with the rest. He just boasted of it and taunted me with it! He says that now that your Winchester has served his purpose, he has sent his red-striped hellions to assassinate him. They will leave shortly and land on the Moon within four hours.
"Your man is done for!" the princess said brokenly. "After that, Lohan promises, you will succumb to his advances. I can tell you, child, that man can be vile when he chooses. He has methods you would never dream of — "
"It can't be," moaned Cynthia, "it can't be! I won't — I won't, I don't care what he does! But if only we could warn Allan — that is all that matters now — "
Allan Winchester shut the machine off. He had had his warning and there was no time to spare. His own fate and that of Cynthia's hung in the balance. All was lost unless he acted quickly.
He cast anxious eyes about him. He knew already that the ranks of his outer guards were thinning, for many of them had been marked for the purge. It took but the work of a moment to order the inner sentries to reinforce the recently depleted outer guards.
In a few seconds Winchester was free from the supervision that necessarily accompanies a man of great rank. The men who watched over his inner office were on their way to cubicles down corridors many hundreds of feet away.
He ran into the great file room where the basic records of millions of men were kept. For once he was thankful for the mysterious way in which the data for them had been submitted. Those damning reports had come in via television and were recorded as they came. Their source was lost. They could not be reconstructed except from the memories of men, most of whom were now dead or in the act of dying.
If the photo-recorded files were destroyed, the work of half a century of AFPA activity would be lost. No one could know what any number signified, nor the detailed record of any man.
Winchester surveyed swiftly the precautions previously made to preserve the priceless records. He also noted their inflammable nature, engraved as they were on reels of magnesium wire. He had only to seize a wrench and wreck beyond repair the valves leading to the sprinkler system.
Then he built a fire and shut the steel doors, to which only he and the now defunct Number Two had keys. In a few minutes the central files would be an inferno of flames, and the ashes would yield nothing.
All the carefully gleaned confidential information as to each citizen in the System would go up in smoke. Even the identity of the numbered slaves and convicts would be lost. No one could know who was in for what, or for how long.
Winchester hastily stripped. He shifted to one of the many disguises available — that of a common workman of Cosmopolis. Then he lifted his transmitter and called Number Fourteen down the corridor.
"Number One speaking," he said, in as cold and casual a voice as he could muster. "I have just been interviewing a most valuable witness and have let him go, thinking he was immune from arrest. He is tall and dressed in brown, and is walking down 'D' passage. He is a dangerous man, but I want him kept for further questioning.
"Grab him and send him at once to the Primary Barracks, but take care not to harm him in any way. His record will follow."
"I understand," said the faithful Number Fourteen.
Winchester hung up and glanced down at his brown garments. A distinct change, these poor clothes, from his robes of authority. He took one backward glance at the door to the file room, which was already reddening and beginning to bulge.
He had taken the precaution to sever the wires to the general alarm system, but a fire of that heat could not be concealed long. Within a few minutes the castle would be swarming with fire-fighters. He must be clear of the building before then.
Winchester crawled under his desk and raised a hidden hatch. In
