Part Nine, Chapter Five - Trick Disemboweling

Up until now Gris' sins have been somewhat indirect. Yes, he's given lots of people counterfeit bank notes that will earn them a death sentence, but someone else would be the one to carry them out, and there's always the slim chance that the victim will get out of it since the killing would occur off-screen. Yes, he gave a captive crew some poisoned food, but we don't know that it killed them because again we don't see it happen. Maybe they were too smart to eat it. Maybe it only made them sick, and they'll return to beat Gris within an inch of his life in a later book, because the universe exists to punish Soltan Gris.

Well, that changes this chapter. Gris spends half an hour quietly fuming after learning how the Countess Krak ruined his life. He finally decides to get up and get going, and repays the physician's aid with a counterfeit fiver. But the good doctor smiles and says "I'm afraid that is not quite enough, Officer Gris."

You can imagine Gris' astonishment - why, maybe letting the doctor hypnotize and interrogate him unsupervised was a bad idea after all! Yes, thanks to Gris' unconscious blabbing Cutswitz knows all about the Apparatus now, and wants a down payment of five thousand credits as hush money. So Gris resignedly hands over all the (fake) cash he has on him, and in the same motion stabs the doctor in the heart with his tricked-out knife.

Ladies and gents, we have Murder Two! And some wonky anatomy - Gris stabs the doctor in the heart, right, and then presses the button that makes the knife expand into three blades. But when he pulls the weapon out, it releases a splatter of "Guts and a gush of blood." From a chest wound. So either a Voltarian's plumbing is about as nonsensical as a Psychlo's, or that's a knife that Crocodile Dundee would think is overcompensating for something.

His would-be blackmailer thoroughly killed, Gris salvages the situation further by wiping the blood off the fake bills by smearing it on the dead doctor's coat before pocketing them. He seeks out, finds, and destroys the recordings of his unintended confessions, and steps out of the office. He thinks he sees someone quickly stepping out of sight at one end of the hall, but is immediately distracted when a woman comes the other way and spots him. And the still-bloody knife in his hand.

Gris is a well-trained secret agent, remember.

He keeps the woman from screaming by ordering her, in a "low, secret sort of voice [which] prevents that when used right," to take the murder weapon down to the nearby police station and tell them that Doctor Cutswitz has been killed. She runs off to be arrested and presumably executed by lazy cops happy to have murder suspects who accidentally turn themselves in. Again, Gris thinks he sees movement in the shadows, but he isn't concerned. After all, he's in that black motorcycle outfit with a helmet on. What are the chances that this hypothetical tail could have overheard part of the conversation in the doctor's office, or might follow him back home?

A well-trained, paranoid secret agent.

Gris is nice enough to return his stolen bike to where he'd found it, and even locks it again. Then he has Ske fly him home, where he spends the night plotting horrifying revenge on those who've wronged him.

I had never felt so deadly before in my whole life. I told myself, Hells have no Demon as full of hate as a man covertly hypnotized. And no Demon would have dared make up so ugly and varied plans as I made that night.

Heller was totally at my mercy now and I intended to make the very vengeful most of it!

Sheesh, a guy pulls someone's guts out through their ribcage and suddenly thinks he's hell in a shabby uniform. So I guess the rest of the series will be Gris coming up with elaborate murder schemes that Heller will cluelessly evade. Like Wile E. Coyote vs Mr. Magoo.


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