Dead as a Dinosaur (14 page)

Landcraft moved to his left in narrow space, his back rubbing what seemed to be a rough wall, and then the wall behind him ended. But the other was inside, by then, edging toward him. Jesse Landcraft stepped backward into a clearer area and here, dimly, there was light. It came from the Great Hall, through a thick pane of glass.

The place was cluttered and the light was very faint. Landcraft reached the glass and stood against it, his two hands against it. He could see out into the Great Hall, shadowy, half lighted. He tried to beat on the glass, but his hands seemed soundless against it.

There was no one in the Great Hall; no one to help. Seeing that, Jesse Landcraft stood for a second as if he were pinned to the glass. Then he turned to face the other.

“You should have stayed out of it,” the other said. It was said with little emphasis, stating a fact. And then Jesse Landcraft saw what it was the other held.

He raised his hands against the blow, but they did no good. Stone is harder than bone and flesh, and men have known it for half a million years. Stone is harder than the bones in hands, and harder than the bone which compasses the brain.

Dr. Paul Agee opened the door of his office at a little after seven o'clock Friday evening. He opened it with impatience and looked along the corridor, which was empty. He hesitated; then reached back into the office and flicked a tumbler switch. Lights in the office went out; Dr. Agee closed the door of the office behind him and heard a click, but he nevertheless tested the door. It was locked. He walked along the hall to the central corridor and looked down it. Near the far end, there was a lighted office. Dr. Agee walked down to it, further opened a partly open door and said, “Oh, still here?”

“I am,” Albert James Steck, D.Sc., said from his desk. He spoke without looking up from a pamphlet he was reading.

“Yes, so you are,” Dr. Agee agreed. “Anybody else around?”

“I'm sure I don't know,” Dr. Steck said. Then he did look up. “I'm going to need help with those bones of Preson's. All his labels came off.”

Dr. Agee made a sound indicating, absent-mindedly, regret at this news.

“Haven't seen old Landcraft around, then?” Dr. Agee asked.

“Landcraft?” Dr. Steck repeated. “Oh, Landcraft. Haven't seen him for years. Why?”

“He was supposed to come around,” Dr. Agee said. “I've been waiting for him.”

“I thought he retired years ago,” Dr. Steck said. “Didn't something happen to him? Health?”

“Yes,” Dr. Agee said. “He retired. All the same, he wanted to see me.”

“Hm-m,” Dr. Steck said. “Wasn't he some relation to Preson?”

“In-law,” Agee said. “His sister married Preson's brother.”

Dr. Steck regarded the director of the Broadly Institute.

“I don't know what he wanted,” Agee said. “He said it was important.” He waited a moment, but Steck said nothing. “Well, I guess he changed his mind,” Agee said. “You want to run the expedition?”

“Yes,” Steck said.

Agee merely nodded. He said then that he would be getting along. He went down the central corridor, turned left in a corridor at the rear of the building and then left again. He came to the staff elevator and pushed the button. The elevator sighed beneath, rattled itself together and came up. It took Paul Agee down and Paul Agee took himself out.

Left behind, Dr. Steck returned to his pamphlet. But he read only briefly and then looked up, and looked for a time at nothing in particular. After a few moments he shrugged and stood up. He got hat and topcoat from a rack and went out, locking his office behind him. He crossed the corridor to an office which was identified as that of Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., Curator of Mammals, opened the door and went in. He turned on the lights and looked around the large, unoccupied room. He looked around it speculatively for a minute or more and then walked to the desk and looked down at it. He went around the desk then, opened the central drawer, and looked into it. Nobody had got around to cleaning it out yet. He closed the drawer, looked around the room again and then left it, turning off the lights.

“Yes, dear, I know,” Mrs. Robert Franklyn said at a few minutes after ten o'clock on Saturday morning to her niece, who was nine years old, named Rose, and Mrs. Franklyn's to protect until five o'clock Saturday evening. “I know there's a man in there. It's—that is, he's a prehistoric man. Some people think that a long time ago men looked—”

“I don't mean that man,” Rose said. “I mean a real man. Only he looks funny.”

“Just a model of a man, dear,” Mrs. Franklyn said. “When he was just beginning to be man. You see—” She paused, a little doubtful of her ability to explain evolution at ten o'clock on Saturday morning—or, indeed, at any time—to a child of nine.

“A
real
man, Aunt Jane,” Rose insisted. “Only his head's funny.” She pulled at Mrs. Franklyn's hand. “You look,” Rose directed.

It was simpler, obviously, to look. Mrs. Franklyn allowed herself to be led to a glass-fronted alcove which bore the instructive sign: “Neanderthal Man, Middle Pleistocene.” Mrs. Franklyn looked into the lighted space, saw Neanderthal Man and—Mrs. Robert Franklyn began to scream. She pulled the little girl away from the glass, got between her and the glass, and kept on screaming.

It did not appear that any actual effort had been made to conceal the body of Dr. Jesse Landcraft. It had, however, fallen forward so that it was partly inside the cave which artificers had contrived, out of papiermâché, to simulate the entrance to one of mankind's earlier dwellings. Most of Dr. Landcraft remained visible, however, and most of what remained of his head. He was sprawled only a little; his long black coat covered most of him.

Although the exhibit of Neanderthal man had been simulated—the appearance of Neanderthal himself is only a scientific postulation—one item in the tableau was authentic. Men had once chipped a stone into the rude shape of an axe head and other men, searching for fossils, had subsequently found it. It may be, although no one is certain, that half a million years elapsed between these events. In preparing the exhibit at Broadly, other men had lashed this ancient stone to a club, as they thought prehistoric man had done.

The rude stone axe head had not been stained as it now was in years too many to be counted.

9

S
ATURDAY
, 11:15
A
.
M
.
TO
4:15
P
.
M
.

It was “the cave-man murder” from the start; it might have been “the Neanderthal murder” but “Neanderthal,” in addition to being unfamiliar, is unadaptable to headlines. It was the
New York Post
which first, publicly, put one and one together, came up with a total and made it “the cave-man murders.” The police had done it some hours earlier. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley had done so with reluctance. He had even been testy about it.

“This guy Preson kills himself,” he told Weigand. “That's what you say.”

“Said,” Bill corrected.

“Kills himself,” O'Malley repeated. “This other guy gets killed. Methods entirely different. It could just've happened.”

Bill Weigand did not say anything. O'Malley looked at him and waited. O'Malley said, “Well?” Bill shook his head. “Why?” O'Malley insisted. “Not complicated enough for you that way? You young cops—” He sighed, deeply.

“Too complicated,” Bill said. “You know that, inspector. Coincidence isn't simple. It isn't likely. We were wrong the first time.”

“One time somebody goes through a long rigmarole to knock a guy off,” O'Malley pointed out. “The next time he hits a guy with a chunk of stone. Chunk of stone somebody thinks is a million years old, maybe.” He paused, considering this. “How the hell they know?” he enquired.

Bill, deciding against an attempt at explanation, chose to regard the question as rhetorical. He chose, indeed, to regard the whole conversation as essentially rhetorical. It had turned screwy on Inspector O'Malley. He was fighting it.

“You know they don't change methods,” O'Malley said. “Not one time poison, the next time this hunk of rock. It's one of the first things a cop's got to learn.” He looked almost anxiously at Bill Weigand. “You know that, Bill,” he said. “Sure you know that.”

“Well,” Bill said, “I guess this one's different, inspector.”

Then he waited. Inspector O'Malley swore. He pointed out that they had, already, told the press that Dr. Preson's death was self-caused. He said they would look like a bunch of fools.

“Right,” Bill said. “Apparently we were.” He corrected hastily. “I was,” he said. “We can always tell them we are reopening the case. We've got to, you know.”

O'Malley swore again, but more weakly. He said it looked to him like those Norths were mixed up in it somewhere. He said it was the sort of thing the Norths would be mixed up in. Bill Weigand kept his counsel. Inspector O'Malley sighed deeply and said, “All right, what're you waiting for, captain?” Bill went, by car, to the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, which was by then closed and fairly full of policemen. Police photographers were busy outside, and inside, the glassed alcove in which the body of Dr. Jesse Landcraft still lay, a shaggy approximation of mankind's past towering over him. Neanderthal's mate crouched a few feet from Landcraft's shattered head. She seemed to be staring at it.

“That guy look like anybody you know, Loot?” Sergeant Mullins enquired, looking at Neanderthal. “Seems to me like—” He paused, a little hurriedly. “I mean it would if he had clothes on,” he said. “You see what I mean?”

“Now Mullins,” Bill Weigand said. “Remember you're a sergeant.”

“Who said anything about the inspector?” Mullins enquired, and they went on through the Great Hall to the staff elevator.

Dr. Paul Agee was playing host to several—to a lieutenant from the precinct, another lieutenant from Homicide East, to a man from the district attorney's Homicide Bureau. Bill Weigand and Mullins added themselves to the audience. Bill was told by the man from Homicide East to go back across the street, where he came from. Bill Weigand grinned. He said, just audibly to the other, “Here about a guy named Preson?” The man from Homicide East nodded slowly. He raised eyebrows slowly. Then Bill Weigand nodded.

“Let's go over it again, doctor,” the man from the Homicide Bureau suggested. “You say he called you up about four? Wanted to see you about something important? He didn't say what it was?”

“No, he didn't,” Dr. Agee said. “Of course, as I told you, I can guess now. At least, I suppose I can. I suppose he wanted to tell me about this plan to contest the will.”

“Why should he?” the man from the district attorney's office asked. “That's what I don't get. Why make a trip all the way down here to tell you that? Your lawyer called you up this morning and told you that.”

“The Institute's lawyer,” Agee said. “Called one of the trustees, who asked him to notify me. As for the rest, I share your puzzlement. But I am unable to think of anything else. I hadn't seen Dr. Landcraft for years. He was no longer connected with Broadly. He'd retired, as a matter of fact. The Preson connection is the only one I can think of.”

“The Presons contesting?” Bill asked the Homicide East man, speaking behind the fingers of his left hand. “So he says,” the Homicide East man said, and nodded at Dr. Agee.

“All right,” the Bureau man said. “You arranged to meet him here about six. Arranged to have the staff door left unlocked so he could get in. And he didn't show up.”

“That's correct,” Dr. Agee said. “I waited an hour or so and went home, as I said. Dr. Steck was still here. He hadn't seen Dr. Landcraft either.”

“Well,” the Bureau man said, “Landcraft got here, all right.”

No answer was expected to this, and none was offered. Dr. Agee looked unhappy, Bill Weigand thought. That was reasonable. The Bureau man looked around at the others; nodded at Bill in greeting; said, “The Preson angle?” Bill Weigand said, “Right.”

“By the way, doctor,” Bill said, “you just heard this morning that the Presons plan to contest the will? I suppose on the contention that Dr. Preson was mentally incompetent?”

“That's as I understand it,” Dr. Agee said.

“You think he was?” Bill asked.

“I certainly saw no indication of it,” Dr. Agee said. “But I understand there had been some—some rather confusing developments in recent weeks.”

Bushelmen, Bill Weigand thought. Midgets. Shetland ponies.

“There were,” he said. “Some of them were quite confusing.”

“I hate to keep going over the same ground, doctor,” the lieutenant from Homicide East said, “but, so far as you know, there was no one else in the building after, say, six or so? Except you and Dr. Steck. Both of you in your offices on this floor?”

“So far as I know,” Dr. Agee said. “But the building has four floors, you realize. There are offices and laboratories—work rooms—on two of them. There's a basement. There are store rooms. Obviously, several people—staff people—could have been here. In addition, the staff door was unlocked, as I said.”

“And the watchman, this Marms, wasn't due on until eight?”

“That's right,” Dr. Agee said. There was a pause. “When can we reopen the Institute?” Agee asked. “I mean, to the public.”

“This afternoon, far as we're concerned,” the man from Homicide East said. “You'll have a crowd, you know. Particularly at the prehistoric man exhibit.”

They would curtain that off, Dr. Agee said.

“I still don't see,” the Bureau man said, “why Dr. Landcraft should make such a point of coming down here to tell you what wasn't any secret. About this will contest. I wish you could clear that up for me, Dr. Agee.”