Dead as a Dinosaur (25 page)

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “O.K!”

Mullins advanced; of necessity, although he hesitated for a moment, Steck retreated.

“Right,” Bill said. “Go ahead, doctor. What about the glasses?”

“I looked earlier in the week,” Steck said. “In Preson's desk. No glasses. I looked this evening. Glasses were there.” He paused. “So was Mrs. North, incidentally,” Steck said. “Not in the desk, of course. In the office.”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “And where is she now?”

“She left,” Steck said. “I was in the middle of talking to her. Was just going to explain what Agee probably was up to and she left. Excitable young woman.” He sighed. “My evening for excitable young women,” he said. His own words seemed to recall him. “We've got to find Emily Preson,” he said. “I left her here with Agee.”

“Right,” Bill said. “We will. You went to get the glasses. Why?”

“Listen,” Steck said. “Preson was impersonated, wasn't he? Anyway, that's what you think.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Probably he was.”

“You've thought of Agee?”

“I,” said Bill Weigand, “have thought of several people.”

“To make him appear insane? Preson I mean?”

“Probably,” Bill said. “About the glasses?”

“Preson kept a pair here,” Steck said. “I knew it. Probably Agee knew it, although now he says he didn't. Trifocals, you know?”

“Right,” Bill said.

“Agee could have borrowed them,” Steck said. “Used them. Forgotten to put them back. Then remembered to. I was going to test them, with Agee there. Put it up to him.”

“Test them?” Bill said.

“Fingerprints,” Steck said. “What did you think?”

“I didn't,” Bill said. “You've got them now?”

Steck had. He produced them. They were wrapped, carefully, in a clean handkerchief. They were so carefully wrapped that any prints which might have been on them would, almost certainly, have been blurred. Well, Bill thought, he's a professional at mammalogy, no doubt. Bill took the glasses and put them in his pocket. It was true, of course, that laymen did not know too much about prints. Sometimes it was useful.

“Why do you suspect Agee?” Bill asked, mildly.

“Preson was killed, wasn't he?” Steck said. “With an overdose of phenobarbital? On the labels he was licking?”

“Right,” Bill said.

“Damned fool not to use a sponge,” Steck said.

“Right,” Bill said again. “How did you know the stuff was on the labels, Dr. Steck?”

“My God,” Steck said. “I'm not an idiot. Men come around and take off bones and test them. Men want to know where the used labels are. Who wouldn't guess?” He waited. Bill merely nodded. “Ingenious method,” Steck said. “Long way around, but ingenious. Stuff wouldn't taste, you know. Not with all the flavoring in the mucilage.”

“I know,” Bill said. It was a point everybody brought up. Apparently it was the first objection of which everyone thought.

“Not much taste to phenobarbital,” Steck said. “Mild bitterness. Agee would know that. He took enough.” He waited for reaction; got it in raised eyebrows, new interest. “Anyway,” Steck said, “I suppose he did. I prescribed enough for him.” He paused again. “Of course,” Steck said, in his rumbling voice, “I don't really know he took it. Maybe he gave it away.”

“Go on,” was all Bill Weigand said.

“Cardiac arrhythmia,” Steck said. “Know what that is?”

“No,” Bill said.

“Irregularity of heartbeat,” Steck told him. “Common enough as people get along. Several causes, some of them bad. But some of them don't mean anything, like Agee's. Nerves go a little haywire; functional thing. Disturbing, of course—heart stops and you wonder, ‘Going to start up again?' Phenobarbital will calm the nerves down, just enough. Restore the rhythm.” He paused. “So will taking a brisk walk,” he said. “Agee preferred barbital. Perfectly all right. Wouldn't do him any harm, in the prescribed dosage. If he took it, of course. It was on his record in my desk. He's got the record.”

“Hm-m,” Bill said. It didn't fit. It was interesting, all the same.

“You people thought of checking the Institute accounts?” Steck asked. “Poor old Preson contributed quite a bit, you know. Meant to, anyway.”

“We've thought of quite a few things, doctor,” Bill said. “Now—”

“No,” Steck said. “You do what you like. I'm going to find the girl.”

He started for the door. He encountered Jerry North in it.

“Bill!” Jerry said. “Something's happened to Pam. She—” Jerry looked at Mullins. “Where the hell did you go?” he demanded. “You were supposed to watch the hall.”

“Jeeze,” said Sergeant Mullins, “how many places can a guy be at once?”

“We'll find—” Bill Weigand began, and then he said, “Hey!”

But he spoke too late. Jerry North's arrival had been sufficiently distracting. During it, Dr. Albert James Steck had gone about his business, which presumably was the recovery of Emily Preson. At least, Bill thought, it's that if I'm right. I hope I'm right.

He sent Mullins to retrieve Steck, all the same. Unfortunately, after the habit of people in the big building, so labyrinthine in arrangement, Dr. Steck had disappeared.

“For at least the third time,” Dr. Paul Agee said, “I did not ask you to come, Miss Preson. Where is that damned elevator?”

The question was directed to the elevator itself, or its inventor, not to Emily Preson.

“Some fool's left one of the doors open,” Agee said, answering the question. “Why don't you go back and see if Steck really found the glasses he thinks are so important?”

He turned away, then, and walked briskly along the rear corridor. He did not appear to care whether Emily went with him or went back to Steck. She went with him.

“I don't believe they're here,” Emily said. “Why would they be?”

“Bringing the glasses back,” Agee said.

“Why do you keep saying that?” Emily said. “Why should they?”

“He kept them here,” Agee said. “How many times do you want me to say it? Suppose the police found them at the house? Need explanation, wouldn't it? Bring them back here, put them back in the desk, then it looks like somebody here. Like me, specifically. Don't be a fool, Miss Preson.”

They reached the end of the corridor. Agee opened a door and started down a flight of iron stairs. “Wait!” the girl said. He did not wait. She went after him.

“Why not just throw them away?” she asked. “Anyway, I don't believe they came here.”

“Saw them,” Agee said. “Headed for the elevator. Don't you know opticians keep records, Miss Preson?” He widened the distance between them. “Too damn many people keep records,” he said, and went through a door. For all he had said before, he waited to make sure Emily Preson got through behind him.

14

S
ATURDAY
, 9:35
P
.
M
.,
TO
S
UNDAY
, 6:15
P
.
M
.

Pam burst out into the corridor and thought, Jerry'll be there. But the corridor was empty. She looked up and down it, and was nearer the transverse corridor at the rear. She made for it. She reached it and had two ways to go, and went to the right—went to the right and, almost at once, wished she had not, since she seemed to be hurrying toward a dead end. She thought, “dead end,” and the words were discomforting. But then she saw a door in the wall on her left. It must, since it was—surely it was!—an opening through the rear of the building, lead to a fire escape.

Pam opened it. There were iron-bound stairs leading down; beyond there was an area of darkness. The building was deeper than she had thought; behind the part available to the public; the part used for display rooms and offices, there was a space for—for crates and boxes, Pam thought, seeing them vaguely in the darkness. She hesitated, and then went down the stairs. She went down a short flight to a landing, back-tracked across the landing, and went down another short flight. Then she came to another landing, this time with a door on her left. That would lead to the second floor, Pam decided. Probably it would lead into the library, or into some area near the library. She hesitated there, listening. Perhaps she had lost her pursuer.

For a moment of waiting there was no sound at all. She might have been alone in the building. Jerry—all of them—had vanished somewhere.

She reached for the door. She would go through the library, along the length of the second floor and then, if it seemed safe, back up again to the third, where there had last been people—where Jerry had been last, and Dr. Agee, and Wayne Preson. She had her fingers on the knob when she heard the door above her open. She heard a voice say, “Wait!” and Pam North did not wait. There was no time to bother with a door; the door might be locked. Pam fled down the stairs. But as she fled she thought,
that wasn't the right voice!
She thought,
they're both in it!

She tried to make as little sound as she could, holding to the rail, stepping softly on her toes so that heels would not clatter on concrete and on iron. But her progress was not silent.

She went down a short flight to another landing; down another flight and another and came to a door. She did not hesitate, this time. She pushed anxiously at the door. It opened without protest.

“Thought I heard somebody,” Paul Agee said. “Guess I didn't. You want to find them, don't you?”

“I came,” Emily said. “Of course. But you're wrong.”

“Find them first,” Agee said.

He switched on lights in the library. It took only moments to discover the library was empty.

They went out of the library and Agee turned off the lights behind them. At the same time, he turned on lights which illuminated the broad central corridor on the second floor.

“Take that side,” Agee said, and gestured to the right. He himself took the other side. They went up, each on his own side, through the exhibit rooms, which were connected by arches.

Pam was at the end of the Great Hall. She could look up it through the gloom, see Teddy the Tyrannosaurus in skeletal majesty far up the room. Beyond the monstrosity that was Teddy were the main stairs leading up. Perhaps that way was the best way. She started up the room, threading a quick, not certain way among denizens of the unthinkable past.

She had gone only a few steps when she heard a sound at her right. It was the sound of a door opening. She heard a voice.

“Wait,” the voice said. “I won't hurt you.”

This time it was the voice she expected. It was a voice that lied. Pam North ran and, after a second, she heard behind her the sound of hurrying feet. Pam tried to run on her toes, but she heard, agonizingly, the clatter of her heels on the marble floor. The great room was filled with the clatter of her heels.

But I don't know
why
, Pam thought, as she fled—fled past unlighted display alcoves on her right, past the one in which (she did not look, but remembered) a man of half a million years ago stood in front of such a cave as he had lived in; finally past the grinning monster who had ceased to live before man was born. She could feel the dinosaur grinning behind her as she fled.

Stairs were no good, now. She hadn't the breath left for stairs; she would be caught on stairs. When she reached the divided staircase she ran past it, toward the double front doors. But they were locked; there would not be time there. She turned to her right again, down a passage and found a door which seemed to lead under the stairs. She prayed it would open; it did open. She went through it. Now, for a moment out of sight, she paused to yank off her high-heeled shoes.

She was in a very narrow passage, windowless on her left; lighted only, far down, by a dangling light bulb. On her right there were doors, one after another. Pam North ran—ran quietly now, except for her quick-drawn breath (but that was loud; she might, she thought, as well be screaming her presence) and knew, was certain, that this time she had trapped herself.

She was halfway down the narrow hall, and had realized that she was running, once more, the length of the building, when the door behind her opened, and closed again. She heard the sound of feet on what was here, in this tunnel, a wooden floor. There was no invitation to wait, this time; no promise of safety.

Pam was almost at the end of the passage; she was at the end, and at another door. It would be unlocked. She would—It was not unlocked! She tugged at it, and it did not move.

She turned and started back, facing the pursuer. She discovered, then, that she could still hear, but could not see—the light hung low enough so that, dim as it was, it still dazzled the eyes, still left the area beyond it almost dark.

If I can't see, I can't be seen, Pam thought, and reached for the knob of the nearest of the doors in the side wall. It opened and Pam was through it, closing it softly behind her.

She was in a meadow. Something that was almost grass came nearly to her knees; she was almost touching a strange beast with too many horns—with a horn growing out of the middle of the back of its head. But it's too dark to see, Pam thought, before she realized it was not completely dark. Light came from beyond the horned animal—the horned animals, because at the side there was another, but this one with a horn on its nose. Beyond her was openness and—and the Great Hall!

But before she reached it, moving slowly in what was almost grass, avoiding the animals which had grazed in Nebraska before last the ice came down, Pam knew that there was a sheet of glass between her and the Great Hall. Before she reached the glass, Pam North knew where she was. In such a glassed alcove as this, old Landcraft must have stood as she stood now, back to glass too thick for breaking, watching a heavy club, with a stone lashed to it, rise slowly in strong hands.