The Collection (120 page)

“He could be taken in too large doses,” I admitted.
“Charlie, what do you know about Eric Andressen?”

“Not much. He's rather a puzzle. Smart all right but I think
In: missed his bent. He should have been an artist or a musician instead of a
scientist. Just the opposite of Paul Bailey.”

“Is Bailey good?”

“Good? He's a wiz in his field. He can think circles around
the other assistants---even your Annabel.”

“What's Bailey's specialty?”

“He's going to be an astrochemist. After university, he
worked five years as research man in a commercial chem lab before he got into
astronomy. I guess it was Zoe and her father who got him interested in
chemistry on the cosmic scale. He knew Zoe at university. They were engaged.”

I whistled. “Then this Elsie business must have hit Zoe
pretty hard, didn't it?”

“Not at all. Bailey came here about eight months ago, and
his engagement with Zoe lasted only a month after he came. And it was mutual;
they just decided they'd made a mistake. And I guess they had at that. Their temperaments
weren't suited to one another at all.”

“And they're still on friendly terms?”

“Completely. What animosity there is seems to be between
Bailey and Fillmore, instead of between Bailey and Zoe. Fillmore didn't like
their decision to break the engagement and he seemed to blame Paul for it,
although I'm pretty sure the original decision was Zoe's. They're still cool
toward one another---Paul and Fillmore, I mean. But for other reasons.”

“What kind of reasons?” I asked.

“Well---professional ones, in a way. I don't know the whole
story but Fillmore was very friendly toward Paul when Paul and Zoe were
engaged. He is really the one who persuaded Paul to come here as an assistant.
And talked the board of regents, back in Los Angeles, into hiring Paul.

“Then he had a reaction when the engagement was broken. I
think he tried to undermine Paul then and to get him fired. At any rate, he
threatened to do it.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds as though Fillmore isn't quite the
disinterested scientist at heart.”

“There may be something on his side,” said Charlie.
“Fillmore himself isn't too popular with Lecky and with the regents. And he
thinks, rightly or wrongly, that Paul Bailey is shooting for his, Fillmore's,
job. If so, it's quite possible Paul will succeed. He's got an ingratiating
personality and he knows how to rub Lecky the right way.”

“Who has the say-so on hiring and firing---the director or
the regents?”

“The regents, really. But under ordinary circumstances,
they'd take Lecky's advice.”

I glanced at the luminous dial of my wrist watch. “Getting
late,” I said. “If you're going to hunt those rattlesnakes at dawn, hadn't you
better get some sleep?”

“Don't think I'll sleep tonight. It's too late, now, to turn
in. And anyway--- Oh, hell, I just don't want to sleep. I'm too jittery.”

Design for Dying

Back in my room, I picked up the manuscript of the book Hill
had given me. I was beginning to get a bit sleepy and “The Murderer's Guide”
ought to affect that, one way or the other. I didn't care which way. If it made
me sleepy, I'd sleep.

It started out slowly, dully. I was surprised, because the
random paragraphs I had read previously had been far from dull. In fact,
they'd been uneasy reading in a place where murder had just been done.

But, before I became really sleepy, I reached the second
chapter. It was entitled “The Thrill of Killing; a Study in Atavism.”

And here Darius really started to ride his hobby and to
become eloquent about it. Man, he said, survived his early and precarious days
by being a specialist in the art of killing. He killed to live, to cat, to
obtain clothing in the form of furs. Killing was a necessary and natural
function.

“Man,”
Darius wrote,
“has a gruesomely long
heritage of murder. Nationalities, government, and progress are based upon it.
The first inventions that raised man above the lesser beasts who were stronger
than he, were means of murder---the club, the spear, the
missile. . . .

“Is it any wonder, then, that in most of us survives an
atavistic tendency to kill? In many it is rationalized as a desire to indulge
in the murder-sports of hunting and fishing.

“But occasionally this atavistic impulse breaks through
to the surface in its original, primitive violence. Often the first step is an
unintended slaying. The murderer, without really intending to do so, or forced
to do so by circumstances beyond his control, has tasted blood. And blood, to a
creature with man's heritage, can be more heady than
wine. . . .”

And his third chapter was “The Mass Murderer; Artist of Crime.”

A clever man who kills many, Hill wrote, is less likely to
be caught and punished than one who commits a single crime. He gave a host of
instances---uncaught and unpunished Jack-the-Rippers.

A single crime, he said, is almost always a strongly motivated
one, and motivation gives it away. If a killer kills only for deep-lying cause,
the motive can almost invariably be traced back to him and proved. On the
contrary, a man who kills for the most casual and light of reasons is far less
likely to be suspected of his crimes.

“The indigent heir who kills for a fortune, the betrayed
husband who slays, the victim who kills his blackmailer---all these act from
the most obvious of motives and are therefore doomed from the start, no matter
how subtle the actual methods they use. The man who puts nicotine in another
man's coffee merely because the latter is a bore, is far more likely to remain
free.

“Taking advantage of this, the clever killer will often
extend his crime from a single one to a series, one or more of which are, by
design, completely without motive. Confronted with such a series, the police
are helpless to use their usual effective methods.”

There was more, much more, in this vein. Case after case
quoted, most of them solved, if at all, only by a voluntary confession years
after the crimes. Case after case of
series
of crimes which have never
been solved to this day.

And suddenly, as I read something came to my mind with a
shock.

Undoubtedly the murderer, the man or woman who had killed
Elsie Willis and Otto Schley had read this very book. Was using it, in fact, as
a blueprint for murder. . . .

There was a soft rap on my door. I said “Come in,” and
Charlie Lightfoot stuck his head in the doorway.

He said, “Come on down to the kitchen for coffee, Bill.”

“Huh? At this time of night?”

Charlie grinned. “Night is day in an observatory, Bill.
These guys never go to bed till later than this in seeing weather. Even in bad
weather they stay up late out of habit. They always have coffee around this
time.”

Coffee sounded good, now that Hill's book had made me
wakeful again. I said, “Sure, I'll be down in a minute,” and Charlie went on.

I put on slippers instead of replacing my shoes, and put the
manuscript away in a drawer of the bureau.

As I neared the bottom of the staircase, I noticed Fergus
Fillmore writing at a desk in a niche off the hallway. I wondered for a moment
why he didn't find it more convenient to work in his room---then I remembered
he didn't have a room here, and was cut off from his own house until Charlie
gathered in the rest of the rattlesnakes in the morning.

He looked up at me and nodded a greeting. “Hullo, Wunderly.
I see you're turning nocturnal like the rest of us.”

“Having coffee?” I asked him.

“In a few minutes. The police will be here tomorrow or the
next day; they'll get through somehow. They'll want our testimony, and I'm
making notes while things are fresh in my mind. I'm almost through.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I'll do the same when I get back
upstairs.”

I went on into the kitchen.

“It's cafeteria, Wunderly,” Darius Hill told me. “Pour
yourself a cup and sit down.”

He, Charlie Lightfoot, Eric Andressen and Rex Parker were
seated around the square table in the center of the big kitchen. Charlie slid
his chair to make room for me. He said, “I guess Paul Bailey's asleep. I rapped
lightly on his door and he didn't answer.”

Andressen said, “He should sleep through all right; we gave
him a pretty strong dose. Where's Fergus?”

“Right here,” said Fillmore from the doorway. “Darius,
what's this about your twisting the tails of spectroscopic binaries?”

“Haven't made them holler yet” said Darius slowly, “but
maybe I've got something. Look, Fergus, on an eclipsing binary the maximum
separation of the spectral lines when they are double determines the relative
velocity of the stars in their orbits.”

“Obviously.”

“Therefore---” said Darius, and went on with it. At the
fourth cosine, I quit listening and reached for a ham sandwich.

As I ate, I looked at the faces of the men around me.
Charlie Lightfoot, Eric Andressen, Rex Parker, Fergus Fillmore, Darius
Hill. . . . Was one of these men, I wondered, a murderer? Was
one of these men even now planning further murders?

It seemed impossible, as I studied their faces. The Indian's
haggard and worried, Hill and Fillmore eager on their abstruse discussion with
Andressen listening intently and Rex looking bored.

Charlie was the first to leave, then Parker and Andressen
together. When I stood up, Darius Hill stood also. He asked:

“Play chess, Wunderly?”

“A little,” I admitted.

“Let's play a game before we turn in.”

When we reached his room, he produced a beautiful set of
ivory chessmen. He said apologetically, “Don't judge my game by these men,
Wunderly. They were given to me. I'm just a dub.”

He wasn't, by a long shot. But I managed to hold him to a
close game that resolved itself finally into a draw when I traded my last piece
for his final pawn.

“Good game,” he said. “Another?”

But I excused myself and left.

My slippers made no sound along the carpeted hallway.
Possibly if I'd been noisy I'd have never seen that crack of faint light under
the edge of Paul Bailey's door. Maybe it would have been turned off, in time.

But I saw it and stood there outside the door wondering
whether it meant anything. If Bailey had awakened and turned on a lamp,
certainly I'd make a fool of myself turning in an alarm.

Death Before Dawn

Yet if an intruder---the murderer---was in there, I'd warn
him if I knocked on the door. There seemed only one way of finding out. I
stooped down and looked into the keyhole.

All I could see was the desk at the far side of the room.
The lamp on the desk wasn't on and the light that shone on the desk came from
the right and couldn't be from the overhead bulb.

A flashlight? Someone standing still on the right side of
the room, holding a flashlight pointing at the desk. But why would anyone be
standing there?

Something else caught my eye; there was a lot of chemical
equipment shoved back under the desk itself. Bottles, a rack of test tubes, a
retort---and a DeWar flask.

I'm no chemist, but I do know what a DeWar flask is. And the
moment I saw it, I knew how Elsie Willis had been killed. Knew, rather, why we
had heard the sound of her fall downstairs
when
we heard it, just after
Paul Bailey had walked into the living room.

As I straightened up from the keyhole I lost my balance.

Instinctively my hand grasped the doorknob to regain my equilibrium.
And the doorknob rattled!

That ended the advantage of secrecy, and I hurled myself
through the doorway.

The flashlight was there, but it was not being held. It was
lying flat on the bureau.

There was no one in sight. The killer, then, was
behind
me
on the same side of the room as the bed! I tried to turn around---too late. I
didn't even feel the blow that felled me. . . .

Charlie Lightfoot was bending over me, and past him I could
see a blur of other faces. Then my eyes came more nearly to focus and I could
make out Annabel among them.

Charlie was saying, “Bill, are you all right?”

I sat up and put my hand back of my head. It hurt like hell.
I took my hand away again.

“Bill!” It was Annabel's voice this time. “Are you all
right?”

“I---I guess so,” I said. And then, quite unnecessarily,
“Somebody conked me. I---”

“You don't know who it was, Wunderly?” It was Darius Hill's
voice.

I started to shake my head, but that hurt, so I answered verbally
instead. Then, because I was beginning to wonder how long I'd been out, I asked
Darius:

“How---how long has it been since I left your room?”

“About half an hour. Did this happen right after that?”

“Yes, only a minute or two after. I saw a light under
Bailey's door. I busted in and turned the wrong way.”

I tried to stand up. Charlie gave me a hand on one side and
Annabel on the other. I made it, all right, but leaned back against the wall
for a moment until I got over the slight dizziness.

Other people were talking excitedly and I had time to take
inventory. Eric Andressen and Fergus Fillmore were both still fully dressed.
Darius had a lounging robe and slippers on but

still wore trousers and shirt under the robe. Paul Bailey,
looking sleepy and as though he was suffering from a bad hangover, was sitting
on the edge of the bed, a bathrobe thrown across his shoulders over pajamas.
Annabel wore a dressing gown.

Charlie Lightfoot and Rex Parker, who was standing in the
doorway, were both fully dressed.

I said, “Charlie, who found me?”