Dead as a Dinosaur (19 page)

Bill Weigand walked back toward the house, stopped in shadows before he quite reached it; seemed to vanish in the shadows. He waited there, but he did not have to wait long. Lights went out in the Preson house, and then the door opened. Brother and sister were much of a height as they came down the porch steps, as they turned up the street. Whatever they had failed to see to, they were going to see to together. At least, Bill Weigand thought, giving them a start and sauntering after them, I hope so. It would be a nuisance if they were merely going to a late movie.

He followed them to the bus terminal and stopped half a block away while they waited for the bus. He watched them get into it when it arrived, waited, with the cold wind biting, until the bus moved off. Mullins, when it was a block away, rolled the Buick to the curb, and Bill joined him in pleasant warmth. The Buick rolled after the bus, unhurrying.

“I don't get it, Loot,” Mullins said.

“I'm not sure I do,” Bill said. “A policeman's lot is a chilly one, sergeant. He must also, as regulations instruct, be curious at all times. Didn't you ever hear of a Miss Albrenza?”

“Nope,” Sergeant Mullins said. “This is another screwy one, Loot.”

“You should read gossip columns, Mullins,” Bill told him. “Improve your mind. Of course, this may be another Miss Albrenza. If it isn't, I'd think she'd be a bit rich for Wayne's blood.”

“Big league, huh?” Mullins said.

If the same Miss Albrenza, Miss Marie Albrenza, big league enough. The competition would be strenuous. To stick it, Wayne would need to be quite a man.

“Then?” Mullins said.

But Bill Weigand shrugged. It was early days or, if the day was not early, they had wasted a good deal of it. There was the audit of the Institute accounts, which might prove interesting—which already had turned up a point or two of interest. There was also Steck.

“Too big,” Mullins objected. “Preson saw that.”

That Steck was too big was obvious. Possibly, it was too obvious. Possibly, Mrs. Gerald North had something there, if they could work it out.

“She often has had,” Bill pointed out.

“All the same, when she gets in things they get screwy,” Mullins said. “You know that, Loot.” He let the car creep while the bus stopped ahead of them, let it pick up as the bus went on. “You don't think them?” He indicated the bus with a movement of his head. “What he said makes sense, don't it?”

“Oh yes,” Bill said, “very good sense, Mullins. But I think they have something to see to, don't you? There they go.”

The bus had reached its stop at a subway station. The Presons were with several leaving it.

“On your way, Mullins,” Bill said, and Mullins went on his way. Bill watched him, thought that for a large man Detective Sergeant Mullins could be conveniently unnoticeable, and waited until the Presons and Mullins too had gone down the subway stairs. Bill started the Buick then. Almost at once he slowed it and looked at an imported sports car parked near the corner. It was, Bill thought, an interesting place for Wayne Preson's car to be standing. Bill started up again, heading downtown. A properly ambitious motor car agency ought to be open late on Saturday night.

11

S
ATURDAY
, 7:15
P
.
M
.
TO
9:05
P
.
M
.

They had said they were in no hurry, which was true, and Raul had taken them at their words, which was to be expected. Jerry North tapped the bell on the table in front of them and Pam helped herself to peanuts. The Algonquin's lobby appeared to be the scene of a largish, but relaxed, cocktail party—a party at which there were chairs and tables enough so that even men could sit; a party without pressure, yet with a comfortable mood of unity. Actually, the Norths had met only two or three people they knew.

“The point is,” Pam said, through peanuts, “that almost everybody's somebody you might know, if you happened to. You really feel you do.”

There was that, Jerry agreed, and tapped the bell again, gently. Sometimes it took a little time. This was particularly true, of course, just before dinner on Saturday evening.

“I wonder if Mullins got Dr. Preson's bones?” Pam said. “Or whether Dr. Steck threw them away, too.”

She was too certain about Steck, Jerry told her. “Two more, please,” he told a waiter who visited them. She was riding to a fall, unless she could think of some fashion in which a broad man, well over six feet tall, could impersonate a man who weighed, at a guess, a hundred and twenty and stood five feet six or seven in his shoes. Furthermore, he pointed out, Steck lacked the beard for the part.

“As for the beard,” Pam said, “who doesn't? But it wasn't a very big beard. It was just around the edges. The muffler took care of that.”

“Size,” Jerry told her. “Big man. Little man. There's your problem.”

“Dr. Preson found out that Dr. Steck was putting the ads in,” Pam said. “He put the last one in himself, to confuse Steck. So that—” She stopped.

“Exactly,” Jerry said.

“Steck hired somebody,” Pam said. “An actor. Then—”

“Then the actor finds he's tied up in a murder,” Jerry said. “Then he goes to the police. Then—”

“Steck disposes of him before that,” Pam said. “Probably in concrete.”

The waiter brought drinks.

“I'm not really sure you need another,” Jerry told Pamela. “Your imagination's reeling already.”

“Don't think people don't,” Pam said. “Concrete, I mean. I've always liked mad scientists.”

The preference did not become her, Jerry said. He would, himself, as soon like a heroine bound to railroad tracks. Sooner, if one were forced to so painful a choice.

“Seriously,” Pam said. “He stands to profit. He has profited.”

“Seriously,” Jerry said. “He's too big.”

Pamela North sipped. She did not appear happy.

“You can't just buy phenobarbital,” she said. “But wouldn't they use it at a museum?”

Jerry thought that few of the specimens handled in an institute of paleontology would require sedation. He said that there were probably hundreds of places in New York where anyone could buy phenobarbital, against the law or not. But if she wanted someone at the Institute, why not Agee? He was more of a size; he would make as good a mad scientist as Steck. He—

“Why?” Pam said.

“I don't know,” Jerry told her. “Why not the Presons—any Preson? Eeny, meeny, miney. Right size; family resemblance. Stand to profit, if they win the will contest.”

That, Pam said, was one of the troubles—
if
they won the will contest. Why should they have arranged it so that they took the chance?

“Even if Mr. Preson had wanted the money that badly,” Pam said, “he wouldn't have killed for it. He's much too—too neat for that. Driving Dr. Preson crazy, or making him look crazy, would have been different. But Mr. Preson would have stopped there. So would his sister. I don't think the girl would have gone that far.”

“Wayne?”

“What papa tells him, I think,” Pam said. “Also, he's too young to be so devious. He'd never have thought it up.”

She paused and drank.

“I want Dr. Steck,” she said.

Jerry started to wish her luck. He stopped, abruptly, his gaze fixed on the door to the Rose Room.

“Well,” Jerry said, “in a way you've got him, Pam.” He nodded toward Dr. Albert James Steck, who was following Emily Preson out of the room. He was very close behind her. He had one hand on her arm.

“Oh!” Pam North said. “Oh—Jerry!
She's
the right size! Jerry—
cement!
”

Emily Preson and Dr. Steck walked toward the door, walked past the desk and the entrance to the small bar which is just beside the entrance. They went out into Forty-fourth Street.

“Jerry,” Pam said. “Just coming out of the bar. That's her brother, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “I think so.”

“Then,” Pam said, “come on. We've got to help Bill. We've got to hurry, too.” She stood up. “Concrete, I mean,” she said.

Wayne Preson, who had been sitting near the end of the bar, where he could see out into the lobby, left money for the drink over which he had been rather outrageously lingering and went, not hurrying, after his sister and Dr. Albert James Steck. He went wondering what in the devil Emily was up to now. None of it made any particular sense, which was disturbing. Emily could, certainly, mess things up. She could get herself into trouble. She had always been able to do that. She could never leave things alone. This did not explain where Steck came into it, or where she thought he did.

It had been evident that she was up to something when she made that curious small movement in the bus. He would not have noticed her except for that—that lifted hand of concealment. It had been a flicker in the corner of his eyes; he had driven on for almost a block before he realized that he had seen Emily in the bus and that, recognizing him and the car, she had tried to avoid being seen, which had meant that she was indeed up to something. Other things, he had then decided, would have to wait, and he had U-turned the little car and loitered in it behind the bus to the subway station. He had parked quickly, had been in luck there, and been lucky that, on the subway platform, Emily had had to wait for a train. It had been easy enough to follow her out of the subway, but very difficult once she was in the crowd. It was, again, pure luck that he had not lost her—luck and the tall visibility of Dr. Steck.

Until just as she met Steck—and it was odd, Wayne thought, to arrange a meeting in the Forty-second Street crowd,—he had, in fact, almost lost her. He had known, or at least been sure, that she was somewhere in front of him in the crowd, but she was not tall enough to be visible. (Neither was he, when it came to that.) But Steck had solved the problem, being visible and unexpected. He had almost lost them when, suddenly, they veered toward the curb and a cab, but fortunately he was close enough by then to hear Steck's rumbling voice. They would have lost him otherwise, since there was no other cab immediately available. They would have lost him if they had, once in the cab, changed their minds as to their destination.

He had, finally, walked to the Algonquin, hoping his luck still held. At first he had thought it did not; it had been several minutes before he located them in a far corner of the lobby. They were, apparently, just ordering drinks. He hesitated, not wanting to go into the lounge itself, and finally went along the wall to the telephone booth near the newsstand. He telephoned his father from there. When he came out of the booth, Steck and Emily were just being served drinks.

If they had been out in the room, he might have taken a chance—he was beginning to believe in his luck's holding. He might have found a seat behind them, but close enough to listen. Steck's voice carried and so, when she was excited—as God knew she usually seemed to be—did Emily's. One cannot, however, get behind people who are sitting in a corner. Where he stood now, he was himself exposed.

He had had an idea which seemed as good as any. He had gone to the newsstand, which included the counter of a theater ticket agency, and begun to enquire about tickets for that evening. He asked for plays impossible of achievement and when, as he expected, they were quickly termed impossible, he went down the line to the merely improbable, realizing he took some risk of having actually to buy a ticket. The improbable plays required telephone calls and the telephone calls took time, which was the idea. During them he could, and did, turn quickly from time to time to see that Steck and Emily were where they had been.

They had finished their first drink, and were talking with intentness—what about? what was the whole thing about?—when there were still two of the probables to go. They had ordered a second drink when the last two probables turned out to be impossibles.

“I seem to be out of luck,” Wayne said pleasantly. The friendly woman behind the counter, who had supposed all along that he would be, but who thought of him as a nice-looking young man, lonely in New York, had said that it was, after all, Saturday night. She suggested he should have tried earlier, and he said he knew he should. She suggested a movie and he, ruefully, agreed he apparently would have to settle for a movie. He turned away, hesitated like one undecided as to how the evening was to be spent, and turned back to buy a package of cigarettes. At the cigarette counter he was partly hidden from view of people in a distant corner of the lounge. He lighted a cigarette and stood looking down—having in a sense bought the right—at the displayed afternoon newspapers. The headlines gave him an odd feeling; it was strange to see so much attention paid, in such black ink—except that on the
Journal-American
the ink was red—to events of which one was a part.

He turned away from the newspapers and was just in time to see Steck and his sister leave the table. He moved so that a pillar was between himself and them, since now they might, as they moved through it, look around the lobby. He watched them go to the entrance to the Rose Room, and watched them led in. He should have expected that; food was in season, his own stomach told him that. Wayne realized that his stomach probably would go on telling him that for some time longer. He could not risk the Rose Room, where, since he could not choose his own path into or through it, he might very possibly be seated in plain sight of the two he followed. The Oak Room was even more unavailable; supposing he could get into it, which was unlikely, he would there, for his purpose, be no better off than he would be in, say, Riverdale.

The bar offered an alternative. Its door did command the exit. His stomach would merely have to continue unheeded prayers, be now and then granted a peanut for answer.