The Collection (59 page)
Caquer grunted noncommittally.
What was one more mystery, and a minor one at that, to a case like this?
"
Well,
Lieutenant,
"
Brager said, when the screen had gone blank,
"What do we do now?"
Caquer sighed.
"You can go off duty,
Brager,
"
he said.
"
But first arrange to leave
men on guard here and at the apartment. I'll stay until whoever you send comes
to relieve me."
When Brager had left, Caquer
sank wearily into the nearest chair. He felt terrible, physically, and his mind
just did not seem to be working. He let his eyes run again around the orderly
shelves of the shop and their orderliness oppressed him.
If there was only a clue of some
sort. Wilder Williams had never had a case like this in which the only leads
were two identical corpses, one of which had been killed five different ways
and the other did not have a mark or sign of violence. What a mess, and where
did he go from here?
Well, he still had the list of
people he was going to interview, and there was time to see at least one of
them this evening.
Should he look up Perry Peters
again, and see what, if anything, the lanky inventor could make of the disappearance
of the lathe? Perhaps he might be able to suggest what had happened to it. But
then again, what could a lathe have to do with a mess like this? One cannot
turn out a duplicate corpse on a lathe.
Or should he look up Professor
Gordon? He decided to do just that.
He called the Gordon apartment
on the visiphone, and Jane appeared in the screen.
"How's your father,"
Jane asked Caquer. "Will he be able to talk to me for a while this
evening?"
"
Oh, yes,
"
said the girl. "He's feeling much better, and thinks he'll go back to his
classes tomorrow. But get here early if you're coming. Rod, you look terrible;
what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing, except I feel
goofy. But I'm all right, I guess."
"You have a gaunt, starved
look. When did you eat last?
"
Caquer
'
s eyes
widened.
"
Earth! I forgot all about eating. I slept late and
didn't even have breakfast!" Jane Gordon laughed.
"
You dope! Well,
hurry around, and I'll have something ready for you when you get here."
"
But-"
"But nothing. How soon can
you start?"
A minute after he had clicked
off the visiphone, Lieutenant Caquer went to answer a knock on the shuttered
door of the shop.
He opened it. "Oh, hullo,
Reese,
"
he said.
"
Did Brager send you?"
The policeman nodded.
"He said I was to stay here
in case. In case what?"
"Routine guard duty, that's
all," explained Caquer.
"
Say, I've been stuck here all
afternoon. Anything going on?"
"
A little
excitement. We been pulling in soap-box orators off and on all day.
Screwballs. There's an epidemic of them.
"
"The devil you say! What
are they hipped about?"
"Sector Two, for some
reason I can't make out. They're trying to incite people to get mad at Sector
Two and do something about it. The arguments they use are plain nutty.
"
Something stirred uneasily in
Rod Caquer's memory but he could not quite remember what it was. Sector Two?
Who'd been telling him things about Sector Two recently-usury, unfairness,
tainted blood, something silly. Although of course a lot of the people over
there did have Martian blood in them ...
"
How many of the
orators were arrested?" he asked.
"We got seven. Two more
slipped away from us, but we'll pick them up if they start spouting that kind
of stuff again."
Lieutenant Caquer walked slowly,
thoughtfully, to the Gordon apartment, trying his level best to remember where,
recently, he heard anti-Sector Two propaganda. There must be something back of
the simultaneous appearance of nine soap-box radicals, all preaching the same
doctrine.
A sub-rosa political
organization? But none such had existed for almost a century now. Under a
perfectly democratic government, component part of a stable system-wide
organization of planets, there was no need for such activity. Of course an
occasional crackpot was dissatisfied, but a group in that state of mind struck
him as fantastic.
It sounded as crazy as the
Willem Deem case. That did not make sense either. Things happened meaninglessly,
as in a dream. Dream? What was he trying to remember about a dream? Hadn't he
had an odd sort of dream last night-what was it?
But, as dreams usually do, it
eluded his conscious mind.
Anyway, tomorrow he would
question-or help question-those radicals who were under arrest. Put men on the
job of tracing them back, and undoubtedly a common background somewhere, a
tieup, would be found.
It could not be accidental that
they should all pop up on the same day. It was screwy, just as screwy as the
two inexplicable corpses of a book-and-reel shop proprietor. Maybe because the
cases were both screwy, his mind tended to couple the two sets of events. But
taken together, they were no more digestible than taken separately. They made
even less sense.
Confound it, why hadn't he taken
that post on Ganymede when it was offered to him? Ganymede was a nice orderly
moon. Persons there did not get murdered twice on consecutive days. But Jane
Gordon did not live on Ganymede; she lived right here in Sector Three and he
was on his way to see her.
And everything was wonderful
except that he felt so tired he could not think straight, and Jane Gordon insisted
on looking on him as a brother instead of a suitor, and he was probably going
to lose his job. He would be the laughingstock of Callisto if the special
investigator from headquarters found some simple explanation of things that he
had overlooked...
*
* *
Jane Gordon, looking more
beautiful than he had ever seen her, met him at the door. She was smiling, but
the smile changed to a look of concern as he stepped into the light.
"
Rod!" she
exclaimed.
"
You do look ill, really ill. What have you been
doing to yourself besides forgetting to eat?"
Rod Caquer managed a grin.
"
Chasing vicious
circles up blind alleys, Icicle. May I use your visiphone?"
"Of course. I've some food
ready for you; I
'
ll put it on the table while you're calling. Dad
'
s
taking a nap. He said to wake him when you got here, but I'll hold off until
you're fed."
She hurried out to the kitchen.
Caquer almost fell into the chair before the visiscreen, and called the police
station. The red, beefy face of Borgesen, the night lieutenant, flashed into
view.
"Hi, Borg,
"
said Caquer. "Listen, about those seven screwballs you picked up. Have
you-"
"
Nine,"
Borgesen interrupted. 'We got the other two, and I wish we hadn't. We
'
re
going nuts down here.
"
"You mean the other two tried it
again?"
"
No. Suffering
Asteroids, they came in and gave themselves up, and we can't kick them out,
because there's a charge against them. But they're confessing all over the
place. And do you know what they're confessing?"
"
I
'
ll
bite," said Caquer.
"
That you hired
them, and offered one hundred credits apiece to them."
"Huh?"
Borgesen laughed, a little
wildly.
"
The two that came in voluntarily say that, and the
other seven-Gosh, why did I ever become a policeman? I had a chance to study
for fireman on a spacer once, and I end up doing this."
"
Look-maybe I
better come around and see if they make that accusation to my face."
"They probably would, bit
it doesn't mean anything, Rod. They say you hired them this afternoon, and you
were at Deem's with Brager all afternoon. Rod, this moon is going nuts. And so
am I. Walter Johnson has disappeared. Hasn't been seen since this morning.
"
"
What? The
Regent's confidential secretary? You're kidding me, Borg."
"
Wish I was. You
ought to be glad you're off duty. Maxon's been raising seven brands of thunder
for us to find his secretary for him. He doesn't like the Deem business,
either. Seems to blame us for it; thinks it's bad enough for the department to
let a man get killed once. Say, which was Deem, Rod? Got any idea?"
Caqucr grinned weakly.
"
Let
'
s
call them Deem and Redeem till we find out," he suggested.
"
I
think they were both Deem." "But how could one man be two?"
,
"
How could one
man be killed five ways?" countered Caquer.
"
Tell me that
and I
'
ll tell you the answer to yours.
"
"
Nuts,
"
said Borgesen, and followed it with a masterpiece of understatement.
"There's something funny about that case."
Caquer was laughing so hard that
there were tears in his eves, when Jane Gordon came to tell him food was ready.
She frowned at him, but there was concern behind the frown.
Caquer followed her meekly, and
discovered he was ravenous. When he'd put himself outside enough food for three
ordinary meals, he felt almost human again. His headache was still there, but
it was something that throbbed dimly in the distance.
Frail Professor Gordon was waiting
in the living room when they went there from the kitchen. "Rod, you look
like something the cat dragged in,
"
he said.
"
Sit
down before you fall down."
Caquer grinned.
"
Overeating
did it. Jane
'
s a cook in a million."
He sank into a chair facing
Gordon. Jane Gordon had sat on the arm of her father
'
s chair and
Caquer
'
s eyes feasted on her. How could a girl with lips as soft and
kissable as hers insist on regarding marriage only as an academic subject? How
could a girl with--
"
I don
'
t
see offhand how it could be a cause of his death Rod, but Willem Deem rented
out political books," said Gordon. "There's no harm in my telling
that, since the poor chap is dead."
Almost the same words, Caquer
remembered, that Perry Peters had used in telling him the same thing. Caquer
nodded.
"
We
'
ve
searched his shoo and his a
p
artment and haven't found any,
Professor," he said. "You wouldn't know, of course, what kind-"
Professor Gordon smiled.
"I'm afraid I would, Rod. Off the record-and I take it you haven't a
recorder on our conversation-I
'
ve read quite a few of them."
"
You?"
There was frank surprise in Caquer's voice.
"
Never
underestimate the curiosity of an educator, my boy. I fear the reading of
Graydex books is a more prevalent vice among the instructors in universities than
among any other class. Oh, I know it
'
s wrong to encourage the trade,
but the reading of such books can't possibly harm a balanced, judicious
mind."
"
And Father
certainly has a balanced, judicious mind, Rod,
"
said Jane, a
bit defiantly.
,
"
Only-darn him-he wouldn
'
t
let me read those books.
"
Caquer grinned at her. The
professor
'
s use of the word
"
Gravdex
"
had reassured him.
Renting Graydex books was only a
misdemeanor, after all.
"
Ever read any
Graydex books, Rod?
"
the professor asked. Caquer shook his
head.
"
Then you
'
ve
probably never heard of hypnotism. Some of the circumstances in the Deem
case-Well, I
'
ve wondered whether hypnotism might have been
used."
"I'm afraid I don
'
t
even know what it is, Professor.
"
The frail little man sighed.
"That
'
s because
you've never read illicit books, Rod,
"
said Gordon.
"Hypnotism is the control of one mind by another, and it reached a pretty
high state of development before it was outlawed. Y
'
ou've never
heard of the Kaprelian Order or the Vargas Wheel?"
Caquer shook his head.
"
The history of
the subject is in Gravdex books, in several of them," said the professor.
"
The
actual methods, and how a Vargas Wheel is constructed would be Blackdex, high on
the roster of the lawlessness. Of course, I haven
'
t read that, but I
have read the history.
"
A man by the
name of Mesmer, way back in the Eightenth Century, was one of the first
practitioners, if not the discoverer, of hypnotism. At any rate, he put it on a
more or less scientific basis. By the Twentieth Century, quite a bit had been
learned about it-and it became extensively used in medicine.
"
A hundred years
later, doctors were treating almost as many patients through hypnotism as
through drugs and surgery. True, there were cases of its misuse, but they were
relatively few.
"
But another
hundred years brought a big chance. Mesmerism had developed too far for the
public safety. Any criminal or selfish politician who had a smattering of the
art could operate with impunity. He could fool all the people all the time, and
get away with it.
"