Read The King is Dead for Free Online

he take his Bendigo scrip with him?’ asked Ellery.
    â€˜We have very few resignations, Mr. Queen,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Of course, if an employee should be discharged, his account would be settled in the currency of the country of his origin.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose your people find unions necessary?’
    â€˜Why, we have unions, Mr. Queen. All sorts of unions.’
    â€˜No strikes, however.’
    â€˜Strikes?’ Bendigo was surprised. ‘Why should our employees strike? They’re highly paid, well housed, all their creature comforts provided, their children scientifically cared for —’
    â€˜Say.’ Inspector Queen turned from the window as if the thought had just struck him. ‘Where do all your working people come from, Mr. Bendigo?’
    â€˜We have employment offices everywhere.’
    â€˜And recruiting offices?’ murmured Ellery.
    â€˜I beg your pardon?’
    â€˜Your soldiers, Mr. Bendigo. They are soldiers, aren’t they?’
    â€˜Oh, no. The uniforms are for convenience only. Our security people are not —’ Abel Bendigo leaned forward, pointing. ‘There’s the Home Office.’
    He was smiling again, and Ellery knew they would get no more information.
    The Home Office looked like a rimless carriage wheel thrown carelessly into a bush. Trees and shrubbery crowded it and its roofs were thickly planted. From the air it was probably invisible.
    Eight long wings radiated like spokes from a common centre. The spokes, Abel Bendigo explained, housed the general offices, the hub the executive offices. The hub, four storeys high, stood one storey higher than the spokes, so that the domed top storey of the central building predominated.
    Not far away, Ellery noticed some mottled towers and pylons and the glitter of glass rising from the heart of a wood. The few elements of the structure that could be seen extended over a wide area, and he asked what it was.
    â€˜The Residence,’ replied the Prime Minister. ‘But I’m afraid we’ll have to hurry, gentlemen. We’re far later than I’d intended.’
    They followed him, alert to everything.
    They entered the Home Office at the juncture of two of the spokes, through a surprisingly small door, and found themselves in a circular lobby of black marble. Corridors radiated from the perimeter in every direction. An armed guard stood at the entrance to each corridor. They could see office doors, endless lines of them, each exactly like the next.
    In the centre of the lobby rose a circular column of extraordinary thickness. A door was set into it at floor level, and Ellery guessed that it was an elevator shaft. Before the door was a metal booth, behind which stood three men in uniform. The collars of their tunics bore the gold initials PRPD.
    Abel Bendigo walked directly to the desk of the booth. To the Queens’ astonishment, he offered his right hand to the central of the three security men. This functionary quickly took an impression of the Prime Minister’s thumb while the man to the right whisked an odd-looking card, like a section of X-ray film set in a cardboard frame, from one of a multiplicity of file drawers before him. This film was placed in a small machine on the desk, and the Prime Minister’s thumbprint was inserted in the bottom of the machine. The central man looked through an eyepiece carefully. The machine apparently superimposed on the fresh thumbprint the transparent control print on file, in such a way that any discrepancy was revealed at a glance. This was confirmed a few moments later when the Queens’ thumbprints were taken and their names recorded.
    â€˜Films of your prints will be ready in a short time,’ said Bendigo, ‘and they will go into the control file. No one, not even my brother King, can get into any part of this building without a thumbprint checkup.’
    â€˜But these men certainly know you