Dead as a Dinosaur (3 page)

“Of course you are,” Jerry said. “I'll tell you. We'll go out and have a drink and—”

But then the telephone rang, and when Jerry answered it was for Dr. Preson.

“Told them I'd be here,” he said. “If the police actually found out—yes?”

He listened. Above the scraggling beard his face reddened; with his free hand he clutched his hair. Suddenly, he thrust the telephone at Gerald North. “You listen!” he commanded.

Jerry North listened. There were four men in the lobby of the apartment hotel in West Twenty-second Street. They were there to see Dr. Preson; they intended to remain there until he returned. They were large men, and stubborn, and the hotel management wanted to turn them over to Dr. Preson as soon as possible.

“Dr. Preson will not be back this evening,” Gerald North said. “Tell them that. If they don't leave, call the police.” He hung up; he looked at Dr. Preson, who was sitting again in the chair across the desk. He had his face in his hands.

Dr. Preson had masseurs, now. He had advertised for them.

2

T
UESDAY
, 10:15
P
.
M
.
TO
W
EDNESDAY
, 12:15
A
.
M
.

Mr. and Mrs. North looked at the chair in which Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., curator of Fossil Mammals of the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, author of
Tertiary Mammalian Dispersal
(1941);
Felid Myology
(1943);
Taxonomic Memoirs
(1948) and
The Days Before Man
, Vol. I (1950), had been sitting.

“My!” Pamela North said. She looked at Martini, who sat on the floor in front of her and blinked up. “Felid,” Pam said to Martini. “There are irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding your phylogeny.” She looked at Jerry North. “Why badger a mammalogist?” she asked. “I'd think they had enough to bear. And speaking of bears. Do you believe they used to be dogs?”

On that subject, and on subjects which were related, Jerry North was, he told his wife, willing to take Dr. Preson's word, assuming he could understand it. They were, he told her, away from the point. Pam agreed that they were, but pointed out that it was Dr. Preson who had taken them there.

“Because he was as excited about Dr.—what's his name?—Stick?”

“Steck,” Jerry told her. “He—”

“As about the bushelmen,” Pam said. “What does he want you to do?”

“Among other things, he's an author,” Jerry told her. “He wants me to hold his hand. Or—” He broke off. “As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I know,” he said. “I suppose he needed an audience. It is a damn funny thing. Damn irritating, too, of course.”

“I keep thinking of the Doberman,” Pam said. “It ought to be—funny. It all ought to be funny.”

“In a way it is,” Jerry said. “As I told Preson. But—”

“But you brought him home for a drink,” Pam said. “Because it wasn't—well, only funny. It isn't, is it?”

Somebody, it had to be presumed, thought it was funny, Jerry told her. What other reason could there be for all of it, for any of it? It was a crackpot's idea of a rousing joke; on that the man from the precinct was right. There was nothing much to be done about it; on that the man from the precinct was right again.

“Why Dr. Preson?” Pam asked.

Presumably, Jerry said, and made them drinks—presumably there was no “why” to it, any more than there was a “why” to the direction lightning took, the victims it chose. Any object which stood above its immediate environment—even if it stood no higher than a small boy, playing with a puppy—was enough “why” for lightning. The small boy died; the puppy lived. Prominence was relative—a towering tree, a little boy on a level field. He brought the drinks back.

“Preson is prominent enough,” he said. “People have heard his name, particularly since
The Days Before Man
. There've been stories about him. We saw to that, of course. He's made good copy—a scientist, a subject dry as—as fossil bones—and a best seller out of them. A target for a crackpot.”

Pamela North patted her lap and Martini jumped to it. She stroked Martini, who purred faintly. Pamela North said she supposed so, but her tone was without confidence. She sipped the drink.

“You know what the catch is,” she said. “He does too, doesn't he? That's why he—he dragged in this Dr. Stick—Steck. It's going on too long. Wouldn't a crackpot get bored?”

It depended perhaps on the width of the crack, Jerry suggested. But his tone, too, lacked assurance. The alternative was deliberate persecution—meaningless persecution. Why should anyone persecute a curator of fossil mammals?

“Particularly,” Pam agreed, “a nice one. He is nice, isn't he? In a jumpy, prickly way? In spite of the whiskers and those—those very strange glasses. I'd think you'd go crazy deciding what part to look through.” She paused. “You don't think he has?” she asked.

Jerry didn't. He said Dr. Preson's book—the popular book—was entirely sane. He said that Dr. Preson had proved sane enough in contract negotiations. He pointed out that Dr. Preson was being victimized, was not making it up—as evidence the authenticated arrival at the apartment hotel of four masseurs. He paused.

“This Dr. Steck,” Pam said. “Do you know him? The one he's feuding with. The one he calls a ‘splitter.'”

“By correspondence,” Jerry said. “He looked over the manuscript for us—Preson's manuscript. It was beyond us, so we called in Steck and a couple of others, just as a precaution. As specialists in a field we didn't—”

“All right,” Pam said. “Did he like it?”

Jerry did not at first remember.
The Days Before Man
had been, at any rate, not technically disapproved by the consultant scientists, which was all that was wanted. (Lay opinion was unanimously favorable.) He had a vague feeling one of the consultants had indicated certain reservations. Then he remembered.

“It
was
Steck,” he said. “Said the book probably was all right for the kind of people who would read it, since it didn't make any difference what they thought anyway. Said Preson was a ‘lumper' and unsound on something or other. The genera of the Felidae, I think. Oh yes—said there was no point to Canoidea since everybody knew what Arctoidea meant. I remember looking that up.” He stopped.

“All right,” Pam said.

“Couple of names for the dog family, is all,” Jerry told her. “You can call it Ursoidea, too, but authority will be against you.”

Other things would be against her also, Pam pointed out. She asked what kind of a man Dr. Steck had sounded like.

“Was he feuding back?” Pam asked.

It had not appeared from his letter, so far as Jerry could remember. But it was a couple of years ago.

“Anyway,” he said, “I gathered from what Preson said that what you call the feud was pretty special—pretty private. Not anything you'd invite outsiders to. Anyway, would people really feud about—about the classification of extinct mammals?”

“People will feud about anything,” Pam told him. “Don't you know that, Jerry? Particularly about anything they're enough interested in. Dr. Preson cares a great deal about old bones, probably. Probably Dr. Steck does.”

It was a long way from an interest in old bones, however mammalian, to bushelmen, masseurs and Shetland ponies, Jerry pointed out. It was a long way from paleozoology to what Jerry, with some reluctance, brought himself to call crackpotism. He could, in effect, imagine no one less likely to annoy a distinguished mammalogist than another mammalogist.

“The trouble is,” Pam said, “that Dr. Preson doesn't seem to think so.”

There had been that, certainly, during the hours Dr. Preson had spent with the Norths—hours which included a cocktail or two and a dinner stretched by Martha from two to three; which included, also, a subsequent period of conversation in which living dogs, variety Doberman; animals that, a million years ago, approached dogdom; the taxonomic errors of Dr. Albert James Steck and the unanticipated appearance of tree surgeons; the race history of cats and the lack of enterprise of the New York Police Department—in which these and other subjects were rather inextricably mixed. Toward the end, particularly, Dr. Preson had rather harped upon Dr. Steck. But it was not clear whether Dr. Steck had become topical because of things which had happened during the past week or of zoological changes which had, on the best evidence, taken place a few millions of years ago. To be a “genera splitter”—a vice only vaguely comprehensible to the Norths even when explained—was also, Dr. Preson indicated, to be a crackpot. Speaking of crackpots—there was a man who split the existing and prehistoric cats into twenty genera. Speaking of crackpots—there was a man who inserted newspaper advertisements to annoy Dr. Preson. Yet Dr. Preson, possibly because he spoke to laymen of a confrere, did not specifically accuse Dr. Steck.

“You can't deny that Dr. Preson wanders a good deal,” Pam told Jerry, who had not thought to deny it; who did, however, now attribute it to a mental uneasiness natural in one who was being assailed by bushelmen. Usually, Jerry said, Dr. Preson kept pretty much to one subject—prehistoric mammals. Jerry had to admit, however, that he did not know a great deal about Dr. Preson.

He told Pam what he did know. Preson was a paleozoologist widely known in his field, which was a field into which laymen seldom ventured. He was important at the Broadly Institute of Paleontology as a scientist and also as a man who could, and did, finance expeditions, not only, although chiefly, in his own special field. A good many of these expeditions he had led; where interesting bones were found, there hastened Dr. Preson, with pick and spade. He had been doing this for years, and publishing what he discovered and speculating on the meaning of what he had discovered. He had remained unknown to the readers of the
Daily News
, whose interest in mammalogy was more immediate, and also to all but a handful of the readers of the
New York Times
.

And then a literary agent had telephoned Gerald North, of North Books, Inc., and had said he had something pretty special. Possibly, he had said, a little out of Jerry's line, but still—. Perhaps of interest to a special audience. (“But, by God, Jerry, it interests
me
.”) A book which would have to be illustrated and which was, admittedly, a little long. Well—of which one volume, in itself pretty long, was presently at hand. A book now called “Some Aspects of Paleozoology” which, certainly, few readers could be expected to ask for at Macy's book counter. Still and all—

“Well—” Gerald North had said, in a tone of extreme doubt. He had nevertheless read the book; he had read it most of one night and part of the next day, and the next night strange monsters had stalked his dreams and the time of man had seemed trivial and wan—a moment during which evolution or nature, or whatever one chose to think of as the animating Force, had grown bored between marvels. “Some Aspects of Paleozoology” had, in short, turned out to be quite a book, and Jerry could not remember another like it. The public, when given the opportunity, appeared to agree.

Dr. Preson, alone among those concerned, was unsurprised that
The Days Before Man
appeared on lists of best sellers and remained there. He pointed out that paleozoology was a very interesting study and always had been. He said that the trouble was people usually got it in bits and pieces from popularizers who didn't, as a matter of fact, know Machairodontinae from Nimravinae, and never would. He excepted certain publications of the American Museum of Natural History, and lamented that they were not more widely read. He was, however, gratified and surprised at the size of the royalty checks. Ancient bones are most readily uncovered by modern dollars.

“Do you mean,” Pam asked, “that he was running out of his own money?”

Jerry could only shrug to that. He had only an impression, not certain knowledge, that Dr. Orpheus Preson was well off by—well, call it by nature. Call it by inheritance, since, until
The Days Before Man
, mammalogy could hardly have paid highly. Now he knew that Dr. Preson had, so far, made a little under fifty thousand dollars in royalties—and that, for income tax purposes, he probably could spread the amount over three years, which would help. He had been told, however, that, over a period of years, Dr. Preson's financial contributions to research had been very considerable.

“Apparently,” Pam said, “he hasn't any family.”

The connection escaped Jerry North, who waved at it in passing.

“Few wives really care much about old bones,” Pam said. “Of course, wives are just an example. I don't suppose cousins and nephews and aunts do either. I mean, I'd just as soon my aunts didn't go in for Smilodons, and I don't think I'm mercenary.” She paused. “Or am I?” she enquired, proving an open mind.

Jerry reassured her.

“So,” Pam said, “has he?”

“I don't—” Jerry began, and remembered. “He's got a brother, apparently,” he said. “Lives up in Riverdale, I think. Dr. Preson went up there last week when things got too tough. Stayed a couple of days and went back to his own place. I don't know whether there are any more.”

“Sometimes,” Pamela North said, “one relative is enough.” She paused and considered. “I'll admit I can't see any connection, though,” she added.

If she meant between relatives and uninvited masseurs, Jerry North couldn't either. Then he remembered Frankel's novel, ignored in his briefcase, and sighed. He mentioned the Frankel novel to his wife. He said that, interesting as Dr. Preson was, he would have to get on with it.

“From mammalogist to mammaries,” said Pam, who had read novels by Mr. Frankel. “I'll wake you when I go to bed.”