Dead as a Dinosaur (13 page)

“You don't understand,” Wayne said. “That isn't what we're thinking about. We're going into court to prove my uncle was—well, insane at the time he made the will. Not competent to make it. The police will back us up, because it's all true. What will that do to the book? It's your company we're thinking of, for God's sake. We didn't want it sprung on you. The court will decide Uncle Orph wasn't in his right mind. Then who's going to buy his book?”

Their attitude was considerate; their concern for North Books, Inc., very generous. Their attitude was also surprising. Jerry North tried to keep surprise from being too evident in his voice; as he told them both they were very thoughtful—and that there might, of course, be something in what they said. That, however, he would have to chance. In any case, one could never tell about people who bought books, at best a peculiar and diminishing group. Often, so far as he could tell, they formed judgments on the basis of the books themselves, without too much regard for the idiosyncrasies of authors. He could hope that would be the case this time. So could the Presons.

“After all,” he said, “if the second volume goes as well as the first, you'll profit. If the courts do upset the will.”

Wayne Preson said he supposed so. He put hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward, preparatory to rising. He repeated that he and his sister had thought North ought to know what they planned. He was glad that Mr. North didn't think the success of the book would necessarily be jeopardized. Then Emily Preson turned from the window, and her attitude was insistent.

“Mr. North,” she said, “whose side are you on? What will you say?”

“Side?” Jerry repeated.

“Uncle Orpheus wasn't sane,” the girl said. “Don't you know that?” She turned suddenly to Pam North. “Don't you?” she said.

You had to be in it, Pam thought. You had to respond.

“The things he did don't seem sane,” Pam said. “The things he seems to have done.”

“There isn't any doubt what he did,” Wayne Preson said, still leaning forward in his chair. “The police can prove that. It's a matter of record. And—we'd known it for a long time before.”

“He
couldn't
have been sane,” Emily Preson said. “Don't you know that?” This was to Pam North. It seemed to be vital to her that Pam North should know that, should say she knew it. It was as if her brother had not spoken.

Pam North shook her head.

“How can I know?” she said. “What do you care, anyway, whether I know or not?”

The girl looked at Pam for a moment, as if it were impossible Pam should not add to what she had said. But then Emily Preson turned away abruptly, dismissingly.

“You, Mr. North?” Wayne Preson said.

“You want me to testify that your uncle acted irrationally?” Jerry asked him. He shook his head. “He talked rationally to me,” he said. “He wrote rationally. It's obvious, now, that he wasn't, I suppose. But these irrational actions are only things I've heard about—that my wife and I've heard about. We couldn't help you.”

“You're against us then?” the girl said. There was surprised violence in her voice, her whole manner.

“For heaven's sake,” Pam North said. “Do we have to be one or the other? What makes you think we have to be in it at all?”

The girl looked at her, and now there was a puzzled expression in Emily Preson's eyes, as if what Pam North was saying were incomprehensible.

“Miss Preson,” Pam said, “we don't have to care. Don't you see that? We don't have to care one way or the other. Nobody does.” But then she looked into the girl's eyes. “I'm sorry,” Pam said. “You can't—can't tear things out of people, you know. Particularly not when the things aren't in them.”

Then Pam felt as if she had slapped this dark, demanding girl—slapped her needlessly, in callous rejection. She wondered if Emily Preson were not often so slapped, and so rejected, because her demands on people were insatiable. She must be lonely, Pam thought, and I'm sorry.

“I'm sorry,” she said to the girl, but Emily merely looked at her, puzzled.

“Come on, Emily,” Wayne Preson said, and now he did stand up. “Can't you see she's right?”

Emily Preson did not say anything. She went with her brother, who said the conventional things, and who was again thanked by Jerry North for the spirit which had prompted him to give a warning.

“All right,” Jerry said, after they had left the office. “What was all that about? Merely what he said—to give us, I gathered, a chance to get out of publishing the book? Or—” He shrugged. There were too many possibilities.

“She came,” Pam North said, “because she wants to be reassured.”

“Reassured?” Jerry said.

“That the world is real,” Pam said. “That she can get through to it. Because, you see, she can't really.” Pam paused. “Also that she is right about her uncle, probably,” Pam added. “You see, she isn't sure, either.” She paused. “I don't really know why
he
came,” she said.

8

F
RIDAY
, 3:55
P
.
M
.,
TO
S
ATURDAY
, 10:18
A
.
M
.

“You'll think it's important enough,” Jesse Landcraft said into the telephone. He listened. “Better make it this afternoon,” he said. “Might change my mind, eh?” He listened again. “After that, then,” he said. “Let your dinner wait for once, eh? Might even have it with you.” Once more he listened. “I know,” he said. His surprisingly young voice was a little impatient. “I know. Not senile yet, eh?
Nor
lost my memory.” He chuckled. “How's Teddy?” he enquired. He listened. “You'll be glad you did,” he said. “About six, eh?” He listened once more and replaced the telephone receiver on its hook in the dark hall of the old house where he had a room. He went back upstairs to the room and looked at himself in a mirror. He rubbed a hand over his face, decided he had better, and went to the bathroom down the corridor to shave.

He left the house at a few minutes after four, and walked toward the bus stop in gathering darkness, made deeper by low clouds. The rain had stopped. The wind would back around in a few hours, Jesse Landcraft thought; it would be cold by the time he got home. He wrapped a long coat around his long body. It was cold enough as it was. You needed heat and a good deal of it as you got older; you needed now, would like now, the kind of heat you had endured in Nevada on the dig with Orpheus ten years ago. Was it only ten years ago?

His route to the bus stop took him past the Preson house. There was a sports car in front of the door—one of the little English jobs Wayne was selling. So Wayne was there; they were having a conference, probably. Jesse Landcraft hesitated for a moment in his not rapid progress—he seemed disjointed when he walked, badly hinged. He chuckled. Then he went on toward the bus. It would be like the Presons to confer on their next steps, although all they now had to do was obvious—get their lawyer to work. But Homer would want things worked out in precise detail; Laura would want to pick at them; the girl would want—Jesse Landcraft shook his head. It was hard always to understand what his niece wanted. More than she was likely to get, he thought. The trouble with Emily was that she scared people—scared them off.

A bus was waiting. He got on it, slowly. Because she wanted too much to be in things—deeply in them, wholly in them—she was often left out of them. Had been this time, so far as he could gather. He shrugged. He rubbed fog from the bus window with his hand and looked out, seeing nothing of what he had thus made visible. The window fogged again, but he continued to look into it, hardly realizing he could now no longer see through it, until the bus stopped with finality. He got out with the others and took the subway downtown.

It would have been quicker to leave the subway at Ninety-sixth Street and go cross-town by bus, but he had ample time. He rode down to Columbus Circle and walked east along Central Park South, past hotels and restaurants, finally past the Plaza. It still was early; he moved so seldom nowadays out of a small area in Riverdale, living there as he might have lived in a village, that he had forgotten city distances and the time it takes to cover them. Now it was only a few minutes after five. He hesitated at the curb of Fifth Avenue and then walked back to the side entrance of the Plaza. He had not been there—he had not been anywhere—for a long time; a long, long time. He went into the Plaza and down the corridor to the bar in the rear. He had not been there for—was it five years? Or almost ten? It had not changed; now, early for cocktail time, it was uncrowded. He went halfway down the bar, away from a group of young men—very young men—at the corner nearest the door. He hesitated a moment while the bartender waited; then he ordered scotch and soda. He drank it slowly, letting the room and the drink warm him. He spent too much time in Riverdale, he told himself—too much time in his room, too much time at the Presons', part of the family yet not part of it; not a confidant in its councils, yet too close, and sometimes too taken for granted to remain wholly an outsider. He had been, too long, only an observer; too long detached and passive. He was not old enough for that; perhaps no one is ever old enough for that. He finished, almost abruptly, what remained in his glass, paid and walked out of the Plaza bar, a long man in a long coat, moving a little stiffly.

He walked to Fifth Avenue and across it and caught a bus uptown. As the bus ground north, the course he was taking became increasingly familiar. How many times—but how long ago!—he had ridden up Fifth toward the Institute, toward work he knew and men he knew. Old Smith had been director, then; Agee hadn't even been there. No—Agee had just come. It was a long time ago.

Although it was dark in the streets Dr. Jesse Landcraft knew, without conscious referral to landmarks, when it was time to signal for the bus to stop. Leaving the bus, he went without looking around him, without need for further orientation, down the side street beside the Institute building to the staff entrance. He no longer had a key to that door, as all staff members had, but it had been arranged he would need none. His hand remembered the doorknob, his body the slight effort of pushing inward the rather heavy door. He stepped inside, leaving the door to close behind him, slowly on its pneumatic check. He was at the bottom of a short flight of stairs leading to a small foyer, in which was the staff elevator. He reached out toward the push-button which would bring the elevator down and heard the door at his right, the door which gave access to the Great Hall, open. That would be old Marms, the watchman. “All right,” Landcraft said, “I'm—” Then he stopped. Marms wasn't opening the door.

The one opening the door—who now had opened the door—said nothing and Landcraft, although he drew his breath in quickly as if about to speak, said nothing. He heard the elevator coming down in the shaft, but he could not wait. Now he didn't have time to wait for anything. He turned to find a way out and as he turned—and only then—realized all that he had blundered into. Before he had only known part, thinking he knew the whole. That was the blunder.

He dismissed, without consciously dismissing, the door to the street. There would be no safety in the street. There was one other door, and, as the one who was not old Marms moved toward him, still not speaking, Landcraft lurched across the foyer toward it. He had only three steps to take; he took them convulsively, and reached the door and pushed it open. Then he was trying to run, shuffling a little, awkward on stiffening old legs, down a narrow corridor. The corridor ran toward the front of the building. The wall on the right was blank, windowless. On Landcraft's left as he tried to run there were regularly spaced doors. Midway of the corridor, which was narrow and straight for two hundred feet and ended in a door, there was a single dim light, dangling from the ceiling.

The other had been surprised by Landcraft's sudden flight; had not, perhaps, noticed the door into the corridor until Landcraft had got through it. But now the pursuer was coming down the corridor behind Jesse Landcraft, not even bothering to run. I'll be caught before the end, Landcraft thought and felt hatred of his feebleness, the stiffness of his legs; hatred of the other's insolent assurance. It was intolerable that the other did not need to run, and still would be quick enough. There was no hope in this flight down the straight and narrow hall.

What Jesse Landcraft did then he did almost without plan, his body thinking with its own fear; seeking, as if of its own volition, to put some barrier up against oncoming danger. Landcraft turned suddenly to one of the doors at his left, fumbling for the knob. His hand had remembered so easily, so surely, when nothing mattered; now it could only grope. But then the knob was in his palm. He pushed at the door and it did not open. That was wrong, then. He pulled the door toward him. It opened and he was through it. He pulled it hard behind him, and it cracked against the jamb. The sound was like the report of a pistol.

The space inside was very narrow. Landcraft held the inner knob with both hands and leaned back to put his weight against the pressure which was to come. He had a few seconds of standing so before it came. Then the knob tried to turn in his two hands, and he fought to keep it from turning.

He tried to cry out, then, but then he had no breath to cry with. His hands grew wet with sweat; his body ached with the effort. And slowly the knob turned. It turned enough and the latch was free, and then the one outside was pulling the door open. Landcraft gasped with effort. There was pain in his arms and hands. It was no use.

Then, because it was no use, he let the door go and the other, with the resistance suddenly abandoned, staggered slightly as the door jumped outward. Landcraft had not counted on this. He had merely, suddenly, reached the end of hope, and so of strength. But he took advantage of the other's momentary loss of balance.