Dead as a Dinosaur (27 page)

So Wayne proceeded, and all went well. He was first on the scene. For the poisoned labels, he substituted an almost full package of labels not poisoned.

“I thought of that,” Pam said. “There would have to be some unused labels. But he wouldn't leave the poisoned ones.”

“Right,” Bill said. “And, at first, it worked. The Presons took away Dr. Preson's personal effects. The Institute collected the bones and with them, naturally enough, the unused labels. Everything was neat and tidy. But then, Uncle Jesse came in.”

As Dr. Jesse Landcraft came in, a little guesswork also came in. Bill admitted that. Neither Laura nor her brother professed to believe that Dr. Landcraft had become privy to their plot. It was nevertheless almost certain that he had. He was much in and out of the Preson house; probably the Presons sometimes forgot that he was there—probably he was hardly more than another chair, or an old man asleep in another chair. It appeared he had not been.

How much he had found out—that was entirely guesswork. He might not, Bill thought, have realized that the plan had overcarried into murder because of Wayne Preson's impatience to get his share—to get it for a business, through a business for a girl. Landcraft may have thought that his friend Preson had actually been driven mad enough for suicide. But this he evidently had known: enough of the plot to stop the Presons' contest of the will. He had started to take what he knew to Paul Agee, in the interest of the Institute, of science—of mankind's slow accumulation of knowledge. He had not got that far.

How Wayne had learned of Landcraft's journey they had again to guess. Landcraft had telephoned first; probably he had used a telephone in the lower, dark hall of the rooming house in which he lived. At that time—and this they could prove—Wayne had been in the neighborhood but not in the Preson house. (Both Homer and Laura Preson had admitted that, before they realized the implications.) It could be assumed that Wayne had been in the hall, perhaps on his way to see Dr. Landcraft, and had overheard. But perhaps he had merely seen the old man going off, resolutely, at an odd hour, and had followed. Murderers have to keep their eyes open.

“And,” Bill said, “murderers have to keep on worrying, which is a good thing for us. One thing leads to another, which is a bad thing for them. You are sure Wayne picked up the package of labels, Pam? Sure you and Jerry saw him?”

“Well,” Pam North said, “I am now. I wasn't then. I couldn't swear to anything. Jerry?”

Jerry North shook his head. He had merely seen Wayne standing by the table.

“But he had to worry,” Bill said. “He had to assume you had seen him, were sure you had seen him. So—he had to take steps.”

“He almost did,” Pam said. She shivered.

Bill admitted that. It was lucky that his search for her had taken him to the corridor behind the exhibit alcoves. It was true, of course, that by that time he and Jerry had been in most of the other likely places.

“The odd thing is,” Bill said, “that he had no reason for picking up the labels. I suppose he got to worrying about fingerprints. Naturally he had handled them, naturally without gloves. He needn't have worried—we hadn't tested the box for prints, and hadn't planned to. We had, of course, taken samples enough to prove there was no phenobarbital on them; we hadn't thought there would be. But we knew that a dozen people might have handled them, and almost certainly had. Anybody's prints could be on the box innocently, including Wayne's. But Wayne got to worrying, all the same.”

“Like not having turned the gas off when you know perfectly well you have,” Pam said. “And going back and doing it again.” She paused. “Of course,” she said, “sometimes you haven't. There's always that.”

It had been that way with Wayne Preson, Bill agreed. He had too much wanted to make sure of everything; been too anxious to tidy all behind him. Amateur murderers often were. But it had only informed Pamela North; by then it was only corroboration. The whole pattern was there to be seen, once there were facts enough.

“What were the Presons doing there?” Jerry asked.

“Putting Orpheus's spare glasses back where he kept them,” Bill said. “Putting things back in the laps of those at the Institute.”

“They knew Wayne was the one?” Pam asked.

Bill shrugged. They denied it. He assumed that, by then at any rate, they did. Bill emptied his glass and Jerry refilled it.

“Bits and pieces,” Bill said then. “Wrong trees to bark up. Agee had been fooling around with the Institute's funds. He says, merely to prove they could be better invested than the bank was investing them. That's up to the trustees of the Institute, and the Fraud Bureau. He got afraid that we would stumble on the record of prescriptions Dr. Steck had given him for phenobarbital, and think maybe he hadn't taken the stuff himself. He says he had. There's no reason not to believe him.”

“Where did Wayne get the stuff?” Dorian asked. “Where did Laura, for that matter?”

Bill shrugged to that. Probably they would find out; perhaps they wouldn't. Unfortunately, phenobarbital was not too hard to come by.

“And Dr. Steck wasn't in it at all,” Pam said, her tone a little wistful. “For a while I was so sure.”

“No,” Bill said. “He wasn't at all.” He sipped. “Sorry, Pam,” he said. “He got the idea toward the end Agee was the man. Partly because by then he wanted it not to be someone Emily cared about. He just stumbled into things. Agee hadn't tried to push Emily down the stairs; she doesn't say he had. But Steck was—was looking for things. Feeling protective.”

“Knight errant,” Pam said. “His armour doesn't fit very well but—I don't know. Perhaps it does.” She looked at Jerry thoughtfully. “He's certainly very big,” she remarked.

“Listen,” Jerry said.

“Oh—too big, of course,” Pam said. “Who wants a man who can carry somebody around like a parcel? I mean, the occasion doesn't arise much. Still—”

“About Emily,” Dorian said. “What about Emily?”

It would, Bill said, be up to the district attorney, as would the status of Homer and Laura. As for Emily—his guess would be that nothing would happen.

“I think,” he said, “she's just a scared kid. Although, of course, she's not really a kid.”

“Oh yes,” Pam said. “She is, of course. Because she wants so much not to be.”

They listened to this. It echoed faintly and was gone. Jerry mixed more drinks.

“The district attorney'd better not do anything to Emily,” Pam said, abstractedly, sipping a martini. “Dr. Steck wouldn't like it, I don't think.” She sipped again. “He's very big,” Pam said. “And I still think he swears in Greek.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

I

Sunday, October 26: 9:15
P
.
M
.
to 9:21
P
.
M
.

He was a small, quick man, walking an unfamiliar street. He was pleased with himself. As he walked toward the subway, he hooked his thumb in the right hand pocket of his suit jacket and, with patting movements of his fingers, reassured himself that nothing had happened to the stiff, square envelope. Tomorrow evening, that envelope was going to be worth five thousand dollars. And there was no real reason things should stop with that.

They caved in when you really had it on them. Big shots and little shots, if you really had it on them, they caved in. All you needed was a break and he had had his. It had been a good while coming. Twenty-four hours ago—less than twenty-four hours ago—the break had seemed as far away as it had in all the thirty-odd years of his life. Now it was in his pocket, as good as money. He walked jauntily along the unfamiliar street—the quiet street, the dull street. A man could walk along it for blocks and not find a single bar.

Not that he particularly wanted a bar. He owed himself one, maybe two; he had something to celebrate. But there was no hurry. Perhaps he'd come across a bar when he got to Broadway; maybe he would wait until he got downtown again, and have a couple at Julio's. He'd run into somebody at Julio's. He might even stand a drink, although he wouldn't—you could lay odds he wouldn't—give anything away. This one wasn't going to be cut up.

Tall, dignified buildings were only a couple of blocks away as he walked toward Broadway. He could see them above the lower buildings. The smart guys hung out in them, the bright boys. That was what they thought. What they thought gave you a laugh. He did laugh, briefly. Big shots and little shots and bright boys, they caved in when you had it on them. Or even—and this was funnier even than that—when you made them think you had it on them.

That was the best thing about the whole unexpected deal. When he had started out the night before he had had no idea what he was going to happen on, and when he had made the telephone call this evening he wasn't really sure what he had. He had something that looked like being something—that was what it came to. A really bright boy might have talked him out of it.

And anybody could have talked him out of getting into the little house in the first place. He had almost talked himself out of it, because what would anybody who lived in a house like that have that would be worth the trouble? He had had to remind himself that people who have even tiny houses in the city of New York are likely to leave lying around things worth picking up. He had had to point out to himself how easy it was, with a rear window not quite closed. Of course, he was usually like that; jobs did make him nervous. Well, it would be a good long time, now, before he would have to work again. Maybe he'd never have to. Maybe he could quit with his luck good.

Even now, when it had turned out so well, thinking of last night made him feel jumpy. It had been a close one; there had been a couple of times when the best thing he could hope for had seemed to be that he would get out in one piece. That was the trouble with the racket; he could admit that now that he was getting out of it. You either got excited, like Sammy said he always did, or you just got nervous. He got nervous.

All the same, he would like to see Sammy in the spot he had been in last night when they came home at just the wrong time. He'd like to see Sammy running up and down those narrow stairs and hiding in the bathroom—and finding there wasn't any fire escape; a violation that was, if he'd ever heard of one—and then, when things looked like settling down, having this other one show up—the one she had greeted, in a funny voice, by name. Sammy would have been nervous all right; hell, Sammy would have been scared. Anybody would have been. He had been. If he had had a chance, he'd have cut the whole thing. If they hadn't been where they could see the door, and reach it in a couple of steps, he'd have run like—well, like a scared rabbit. Instead of which, he had had to get back to the bathroom, and hope neither of them would want to use it.

Even now, walking through the warm night, along the quiet street, he shivered involuntarily when he thought how close it had been—and what being caught would have meant. He breathed again the warm dampness of the bathroom; listened again for sounds which would mean he had a chance to get out of the little house. He heard again the raised voices from below, tried again—and failed again—to overhear words which would give him some inkling of what was planned. He heard the voices raised again, as if they were arguing, and then, once more, that long silence. The silence had been worse than anything.

What the silence meant he could guess at now; had guessed at. But then it could have meant anything, and it told nothing. He had been forced merely to sweat it out-very literally to sweat it out, since the bathroom was hot, the air dripping. It had been odd to sweat and still be cold with nervousness; to sweat and shiver at the same moment. It had seemed an hour before he heard the outside door close.

And even then he had had to wait, of course. He'd like to see Sammy, cocky Sammy, sweating that out, waiting for someone to come up the stairs on the way to bed—and waiting.
And
waiting. And knowing that a bathroom is an almost inevitable stop-over on the way to bed. (Of course, Sammy wasn't a three-time loser; that made a difference, made it easier to be cocky.)

Well—it was over, now. He wasn't waiting there any longer, listening to nothing, waiting for a lead. He was walking down a quiet street with a six-inch-square envelope, five grand worth of envelope, in his right hand jacket pocket, his fingers tapping it. Nothing now to nerve himself up to, as he had nerved himself to leave the bathroom and have a shot at getting out. That had been the last tough thing; the rest-was velvet. It was velvet that they were both gone, leaving the little house empty except for him. It was velvet that, finding nothing much else he wanted, he had taken the shiny little plastic machine, which was new looking and obviously worth a buck or two and, in its case, portable. It hadn't looked like velvet, merely like a buck or two—which proved that you couldn't tell. As soon as he heard—