The Collection (106 page)

Dr. Roth cowered back against the tier of rat cages,
holding a hand in front of him to ward off the attack. I watched from the
doorway, and I tried to open my mouth to scream at her to stop, not to jump.
But I seemed paralyzed. I couldn't move a muscle or make a sound.

I saw the cat's tail grow larger. Her eyes seemed to shoot
blue sparks. And then she leaped.

Dr. Roth's arm was knocked aside as though it had been a
toothpick. Her claws sank into his shoulders and her white, sharp teeth found
his throat. He screamed once, and then the scream became a gurgle and he lay on
the cement floor, dead, in a puddle of his blood. And the cat, backing away
from him, was shrinking to her real size, getting smaller, her claws still
scraping the cement as she backed away. . . .

And then, still frozen with the horror of that dream, I
began to know that I was dreaming, that the sound I heard was the opening of a
window.

I sat up in bed, fast. I opened my mouth to yell for Jack.
Someone stood there, just inside the window!

And then, before I had yelled, I saw that it was Jack who
stood there. Enough light came in from the other room that I could be sure of
that. He'd raised the shade. He was crouched down now, and his eyes, level with
the middle of the lower pane, stared through it into the night outside.

He must have heard the springs creak as I sat up. He
turned. "Shhh," he said. "It's all right--I think."

He put the window back down again then, and threw over the
lock. He pulled down the shade and came over to the bed and sat down in a chair
beside it.

"Sorry I woke you," he said, very quietly.
"Can you go back to sleep, or do you want to talk a while?"

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Three-forty. You were asleep only half an hour. I'm
sorry, but--"

"But what? What's been happening? Did you think you
heard a sound outside?"

"Not outside the window, no. But a few minutes ago I
thought I heard someone try the knob of the hall door. But when I got there and
listened, I couldn't hear anything."

"It could have been Alister Cole," I said,
"if he got in the back way. Wheeler isn't watching the back door."

"That's what I thought, even though I didn't hear
anything back there. So I went to the window. I thought if I could attract
Wheeler's attention, he'd come in the front way. Then I'd take a chance opening
the hall door--with my gun ready, of course. If Cole was there, we'd have him
between us."

"Did you get Wheeler's attention?"

He shook his head slowly. "His car isn't where it was.
You can't even see it from the window. Maybe he moved it to a different spot
where he thought he'd be less conspicuous, or could watch better."

"That's probably it. Well, what are you going to
do?"

"Nothing. Sit tight. If I stick my neck out into that
hall, or go outside through the window, the edge is going to be with Cole. If I
sit here and make him come to me, it's the other way round. Only I'm through
reading for tonight. I'm sitting right here by the bed. If you can sleep, go
ahead. I'll shut up and let you."

"Sure," I said. "I can sleep swell. Just
like a lamb staked out in the jungle to draw a tiger for the hunters. That's
how I can sleep."

He chuckled. "The lamb doesn't know what it's there
for."

"Until it smells tiger. I smell tiger." That
reminded me of my dream, and I told him about it.

"You're a psychologist," he said. "What does
it mean?"

"Probably that I had a subconscious dislike for Dr.
Roth," I told him. "Only I know that already. I don't need to
interpret a dream to tell me that."

"What
did you have against Roth, Brian? I've known there was something from the way
you've talked about him."

"He was a prig, for one thing," I said. "You
know me well enough, Jack, to know I'm not too bad a guy, but he thought I was
miles away from being good enough for Jeanette. Well--maybe I am, but then
again, so's everybody else who might fall in love with her."

"Does she love you?"

"I think so." I thought it over. "Sure, I
practically know she does, from things she said tonight."

"Anything else? I mean, about Roth. Is that the only
reason you didn't like him?"

I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking. I
thought, why not tell Jack now? Sooner or later, he'll know it. The whole world
will know it. Why not get it off my chest right now, while there was a good
chance to get my side of it straight?

Something made me stop and listen first. There wasn't a
sound from outside nor from the hallway.

"Jack," I said, "I'm going to tell you
something. I'm awfully glad that you were here tonight."

"Thanks, pal." He chuckled a little.

"I don't mean what you think I mean, Jack. Sure, maybe
you saved my life from Alister Cole. But more than that, you gave me an
alibi."

"An alibi? For killing Roth? Sure, I was with you when
he was killed."

"Exactly. Listen, Jack, I had a reason for killing Roth.
That reason's coming out later anyway. I might as well tell you now."

He turned and stared at me. There was enough light in the
room so that I could see the movement of his head, but, not enough so that he
could watch my face. I don't know why he bothered turning.

"If you need an alibi," he said, "you've
sure got one. We started playing chess at somewhere around eight. You haven't
been out of my sight since then, except while you were in Chief Randall's
office."

"Don't think I don't know that," I told him.
"And don't think I'm not happy about it. Listen, Jack. Because Roth is
dead, I'm going to be a millionaire. If he was alive, I still might be, but
there'd have been a legal fight about it. 1 would have been right, but I could
have lost just the same."

"You
mean it would have been a case of your
word against his?"

"Exactly. And he's--he was--department head, and I'm
only a flunky, a little better on his social scale than Alister Cole. And it's
something big, Jack. Really big."

"What?"

"What kind of rat cages did you find in the basement
when you looked down there?" I asked him.

"What kind? I don't get you. I don't know makes of rat
cages."

"Don't worry about the make," I said. "You
found only one kind. Empty ones. The rats were dead. And disposed of."

He turned to look at me again. "Go on," he said.

Now that I'd started to tell him, I knew I wouldn't even
try to go back to sleep. I was too excited. I propped the pillow up against the
head of the bed.

"Make a guess, Jack," I said. "How much food
do rats eat a year in the United States alone?"

"I wouldn't know. A million dollars' worth?"

"A hundred million dollars' worth," I said,
"at a conservative estimate. Probably more than a million dollars is spent
fighting them, each year. In the world, their cost is probably a billion
dollars a year. Not altogether--just for one year! How much do you think
something would be worth that would actually completely eliminate rats--both
Mus
Rattus
and
Mus Norvegicus
-
-
completely and once and for all?
Something that would put them with the hairy mammoth and the roc and the
dinosaurs?"

"If your mathematics are okay," Jack said,
"it'd be worth ten billion bucks in the first ten years?"

"Ten billion, on paper. A guy who could do it ought to
be able to get one ten-thousandth that much, shouldn't he? A million?"

"Seems reasonable. And somebody ought to throw in a
Nobel prize along with it. But can you do it?"

"I can do it," I said. "Right here in my
basement I stumbled across it, accidentally, Jack, in the course of another
experiment. But it works. It works! It kills rats!"

"So does Red Squill. So does strychnine. What's your
stuff got that they haven't?"

"Communicability. Give it to
one
rat--and the
whole colony dies! Like all the rats--thirty of them, to be exact--died when I
injected one rat. Sure, you've got to catch one rat alive--but that's easy.
Then just inject it and let it go, and all the rats in the neighborhood
die."

"A bacillus?"

"No. Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't know
exactly how it works, but it's not a germ. I have a hunch that it destroys a
rat's immunity to some germ he carries around with him normally--just as you
and I carry around a few million germs which don't harm us ordinarily because
we also carry around the antibodies that keep them in check. But this
injection probably destroys certain antibodies in the rat and the germs
become--unchecked. The germs also become strong enough to overcome the
antibodies in other rats, and they must be carried by the air because they
spread from cage to cage with no direct contact. Thirty rats died within
twenty-four hours after I innoculated the first one--some in cages as far away
as six feet."

Jack Sebastian whistled. "Maybe you have got
something," he said softly. "Where did Roth come in on it, though? Did
he claim half, or what?"

"Half I wouldn't have minded giving him," I said.
"But he insisted the whole thing belonged to the university, just because
I was working on an experiment for the university--even though it was in my own
place, on my own time. And the thing I hit upon was entirely outside the field
of the experiment. I don't see that at all. Fortunately, he didn't bring it to
an issue. He said we should experiment further before we announced it."

"Do you agree with that?"

"Of course. Naturally, I'm not going off half-cocked.
I'm going to be sure, plenty sure, before I announce it. But when I do, it's
going to be after the thing has been patented in my name. I'm going to have
that million bucks, Jack!"

"I hope you're right," he said. "And I can't
say I blame you, if you made the discovery here at your own place on your own
time. Anyone else know about it?"

"No."

"Did Alister Cole?"

"No, he didn't. I think, Jack, that this thing is
bigger even than you realize. Do you know how many human lives it's going to
save? We don't have any bubonic here in this country--or much of any other
rat-and-flea borne disease, but take the world as a whole."

"I see what you mean. Well, more power to you, keed. And
if everything goes well, take me for a ride on your yacht sometime."

"You think I'm kidding?"

"Not at all. And I pretty well see what you mean by
being glad you've got an alibi. Well, it's a solid one, if my word goes for
anything. To have killed Dr. Roth--no matter how much motive you may have
had--you'd have had to have had a knife on a pole a block and a half long.
Besides--"

"What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I'm worried about Wheeler. Probably
he moved that car to another spot, but I wish I knew for sure."

"It's a squad car, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"With two-way radio?"

"Yes, but I haven't got a radio in here."

"We got a telephone. If you're worried about
Wheeler--and you're getting me that way too--why don't you phone Headquarters
and have them call Wheeler and phone you back?"

"Either
you're a genius or I'm a dope," he said. "Don't tell me which."

He got up out of the chair and I could see he was still
holding the gun in his hand. He went first to the door and listened carefully,
then he went to the window. He listened carefully there. Finally, he pulled
back the shade a crack to look out.

"Now you're giving me the willies, and I might as well
get up," I said. "For some reason, I'd rather get killed with my
pants on--if I'm going to get killed." I looked at my cat. "Sorry,
Beautiful," I said as I pulled my feet out from under the Siamese.

I took off my pajamas and started putting on my shirt and
trousers.

"Wheeler's car still isn't anywhere I can see,"
Jack said.

He went over to the telephone and lifted the receiver off
the hook. I slipped my feet into a pair of loafers and looked over. He was
still holding the receiver and hadn't spoken. He put it back gently.
"Someone's cut the wires," he said. "The line is dead."

The Cat

I said, "I don't believe this. It's out of a horror
program on the radio. It's a gag."

Jack snorted. He was turning around, looking from the window
to the door. "Got a flashlight?"

"Yes. In the drawer over there."

"Get it," he said. "Then sit back in that
corner where you're not in direct range from the window or the door. If either
opens, bracket it with your flash. I've got my flash but I'm using it
left-handed. Anyway, two spots are better than one, and I want to see to shoot
straight."

While I was getting the flashlight, he closed the door to
the other room, leaving us in pitch darkness except for our flashes. I lighted
my own way to the chair he'd pointed out.