Dead as a Dinosaur (22 page)

“I don't,” Pam said, “think I like it here much. Anyway, nobody's here but us and—and things. They'll be upstairs.”

If anywhere, they would be upstairs. Jerry agreed to that. They went toward the front of the Great Hall, from which staircases arose on either side, with public elevators under them. The staircases were broad, the treads of marble. Pam's heels clicked as they went up.

“We're not,” she said in a whisper, “exactly slipping up on anybody, are we?”

“I don't know what we're doing,” Jerry said. “I don't know why we're here.”

Pamela North was not at all sure that she knew either. The only thing was, there had been no one else to follow Steck and Emily Preson, and Wayne Preson who had followed them. And somebody had to. If I'm right, Pam North thought, she's served her purpose. He doesn't need her any more.

The second floor was bisected longitudinally by a reasonably broad corridor. The corridor, lighted by a single overhead light, ran half the length of the building, with doors on either side. It ended in double swinging doors, now closed. At the top of the stair flight the Norths stopped and stood very still, and listened. They could hear nothing. They went down the central corridor, which was lined, between the doors of the rooms opening off of it, with shallow cases in which were objects of antiquity—crudely made tools of stone and of some metals; tiny figures; a slab of stone on which, when it had been part of a cave's wall, some ancient man had tried to picture what he saw. There were also, of course, bones.

They reached the swinging doors and pushed them open. They looked into the library, with a desk near the front, and a railing, and walls book-lined. The room was empty, and as dim as the corridor, as the Great Hall below. They went back up the corridor, past the open doors of dark exhibit rooms. They were back by the stairs, from which they had started.

“Well,” Pam said, “they aren't here.”

She looked at the stairs, now a single flight, which led up to the third floor. The Norths went up the stairs, side by side. The third floor was different.

There they came first into a transverse corridor, crossing most of the front of the building but ending in a door at either end. Here, again, a central corridor ran toward the rear of the building, but at its end another corridor ran at right angles to it. At first, the lighting here was as dim as it had been on the lower floors. At first, this floor, too, seemed deserted.

But then, midway down the narrow central corridor, a light went on. It came through the glass half of a door. Somebody had turned on a light in one of the offices on either side of the corridor.

“There they are,” Pam said, in Jerry's ear. “Some of them, anyway. Come on.”

They went down the corridor, not surreptitiously—they might be trespassers but Pam's heart was pure; Jerry was of two minds about his own—and came to the door. It had Steck's name on it. They looked through the glass into the room they had visited the afternoon before.

Wayne Preson was standing at the far end of the room, by a table. He had been looking down at the table; it seemed to Pam and Jerry that he was just reaching out his hand to take something off the table or to put something on it. But as they looked in he turned and faced them and then stood looking at them. Jerry North opened the door, then.

“How did you two get here?” Wayne said. His voice, so far as they could tell, held only curiosity.

“We—” Pam began.

“Followed me,” Wayne said. “I wondered if you would.” He paused. “I'm damned glad you did,” he said. “I can't find them. But—I'm sure they came in.” He left the table, which they could now see still held Dr. Preson's bones, and came toward them. “I'm worried as hell about her,” Wayne Preson said. “My sister, I mean.”

“Worried about her?” Pam repeated.

“I don't know what she's—what she's trying to do,” Wayne said. Now his voice sounded strained, betrayed worry. “She—she's likely to rush into things without working them out.”

“She's with Steck,” Jerry said. “I don't imagine he rushes into things.”

“That's it,” Wayne said. “Why? Why should she be with Steck? Why would she meet him? Come here with him? They—so far as I know, they've only met a few times. Why does she run to him?”

“Why does she run?” Pam asked.

Wayne shook his head; he moved his shoulders.

“I don't know,” he said. “Half the time we—I mean dad and Aunt Laura too—don't know what's in her mind. She can't have had anything to do with this.” He spread his hands. “Any of this,” he said. “Whatever it is—whatever's going on. Uncle Orpheus kills himself. But then Uncle Jesse is murdered. And—now Emily. She's got herself mixed up in something. I'm afraid she'll—get hurt.”

“She'll be all right,” Pam North said, because it was the thing to say. She hesitated for a moment. “Dr. Preson was murdered too,” she said. “Didn't you know?”

“That's just the newspapers,” Wayne said. “Naturally they—” But he stopped because Pam was shaking her head.

“It's true,” she said. “He was killed too. Cleverly killed. Somebody poisoned the labels.”

“The labels?” Wayne repeated. “It was in the milk. What do you mean, the labels?”

Pam told him. He told her it was guesswork.

“The police found traces on the bones,” Pam said. “Where the labels had been.”

He shook his head, but he appeared to accept it. He did not raise the objections his aunt had raised, his father had raised. He seemed to think a moment.

“Steck,” he said. He gestured toward the table where the bones still were. Nothing much had been done with them since the afternoon before, Pam decided, looking. The bones were still without labels. No—something had been done. The picture was not right. Pam managed to re-create a picture of the table the afternoon before. It was a little shadowy around the edges but—Oh yes, then some of the bones still had had labels on them. Now none had. That could explain the divergence of the pictures.

“Steck threw the old labels away,” Wayne Preson said. “He was in a hurry about it. And—he gets Uncle Orpheus's job.”

Pam North nodded.

“You're jumping to conclusions,” Jerry said. “First Pam. Now you, Mr. Preson. It was perfectly natural to throw the labels away. They weren't of any use—so much wastepaper.”

Wayne Preson listened. He said, “Who then?” He said, “Emily must think—” and stopped.

Then he brushed past the Norths to the door.

“I've got to find her,” Wayne said. “She's here somewhere.”

They could hear him walking, almost running, up the hall toward the front of the building.

“He's right,” Pam said. “Whether she helped him or not. Wayne's right.”

She started toward the door. But Jerry's hand on her arm stopped her. At the same moment, Jerry flicked off the lights in the office. Then Pam, also, heard the sound. Someone had started to open the door of the office across the corridor which had been Dr. Orpheus Preson's. The door opened slowly; standing in the darkness of Steck's office, just inside the opened door, Pam and Jerry could hear the sound but for a second or two could detect no movement. Then the door was open and two people came out into the dim light of the corridor. They were Homer Preson and his sister.

They stood for a moment and looked up and down the corridor. Then, two slight, swiftly moving figures, they went down it toward the transverse corridor in the rear.

Pam started to speak, but again pressure on her arm stopped her. The Norths watched until the Presons, who seemed to be hurrying, yet who were making very little noise, reached the end of the corridor and turned left into the transverse corridor at its end. Then, softly, Pam said, “Why, Jerry? They're trying to find her, too. Somehow they found out Steck had her here and—”

“Then,” said Jerry North, “why were they looking in the dark? They didn't have any light on in there.”

“Well—” Pam said, her voice doubtful.

“
I'd
think,” Jerry told her, “that they didn't want to be found. I wonder—”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “Come
on!
”

They went quickly across the corridor and into the other office.

It was an honest to God screwy one, Sergeant Mullins thought. It got more so by the minute. He stood inside the door of the office next to Steck's, from where he had been watching the door of Preson's former office; keeping an eye, but only in a manner of speaking, on Homer Preson and Laura. That had been simple, if not greatly rewarding—he knew where they were, if not what they were doing. But then Wayne Preson had come down the corridor and gone into Steck's office. Mullins debated what, if anything, he ought to do about that, and the Norths came down the corridor and joined Wayne. Sergeant Mullins thought speculatively of the door between Steck's office and the one he himself waited in. An ear pressed against the door—

But if he eavesdropped he would have to abandon his post of observation. He had decided to leave Wayne to the Norths, and keep an eye on his own pigeons. But then Wayne popped out of Steck's office, and, evidently, away from the Norths, who did not follow. Mullins swore softly, wishing he could split himself, send part of himself in pursuit of Wayne, keep part on hand to watch Homer and Laura Preson. He vibrated slightly, in indecision and annoyance. Then, from the office across the hall, Homer and Laura had emerged and had taken off. Mullins had started to move, then, but the Norths moved first—across and into Preson's office.

Mullins decided to let the Presons go for the moment, and join forces. He started to come out. But then he heard new footsteps in the corridor, almost closed the door he had partly opened and looked through the crack he left.

The Norths heard footsteps. Side by side, within Preson's office, they peered through the glass of the door. Dr. Paul Agee came down the corridor, walking hurriedly, making little sound. When he reached the door of Steck's office, he stopped and looked quickly up and down the corridor. Then he went in. But he did not turn on the light. The office remained dark.

“Hide and go seek,” Pam North whispered, her whisper tense. “What's everybody doing whatever they're doing for?”

Jerry could not answer that one. He was still watching the door of Steck's office. Now there was a faint light behind the glass of the door—a dim and moving light.

“Stay here,” he told Pam, and slipped out into the corridor. He went cautiously across to the door of Steck's office and looked in. Dr. Agee, director of the Broadly Institute, apparently was engaged in burglary. He had a small flashlight and by its inadequate illumination he was examining something he evidently had taken from Dr. Steck's desk. Jerry could not see what it was Dr. Agee held in his hand; he thought it was a paper of some sort, perhaps a card. Dr. Agee examined it only briefly, put it down on the desk, and picked up something else from the desk. This time Jerry was almost certain it was a small file card.

Gerald North, who preferred order, sought to convince himself that there was nothing peculiar in this surreptitious ransacking of the desk of a curator of fossil mammals by the director of an institute of paleontology. Jerry failed. It was very peculiar. Gerald North wished for the police, but police did not appear at his elbow. If Dr. Paul Agee was to be caught red-handed—assuming he was doing anything to redden his hands—capture devolved on Gerald North.

Ten years ago, I wouldn't have done this, Jerry thought, reaching for the doorknob. Shows what associations will—He opened the door and joined Dr. Agee in Steck's office.

“Looking for something?” Jerry asked, with politeness; with what he hoped was an air of authority.

What Dr. Agee now held in his hand was unmistakably a file card. Jerry could see, but could not decipher, notations on it.

When Jerry did not come out of Steck's office, Pam started to open the door of the late Dr. Preson's. She was so intent to join Jerry that she did not, for a second, realize that what was delaying her was the touch of fingers on her right arm. She was not actually being held; the touch of the fingers was light. But there were, Pam North thought, no fingers to be there. “Oh!” Pam said, in a breath. She turned.

There was not much light. There was enough to enable her to see Dr. Albert James Steck looming beside her. “Oh!” Pam said again. She allowed herself to be drawn back into the office.

“What are you doing here?” Steck asked her, his heavy voice low, rumbling—so low it was hardly more than a ripple in silence.

“You were here all the time?” Pam asked, and for no reason—except that Steck's fingers were still on her arm, except that they seemed to warn—her own voice was low. “When the Presons were?”

“The Presons?” Steck said. “Here? Emily's looking for—” He stopped. “The offices have connecting doors,” Steck said. “I came that way. There was no one here but you, Mrs. North. Hiding.”

“Jerry's—” Pam began.

“I saw him,” Steck said. “What does he want in my office?”

“I don't—” Pam began. The fingers tightened on her arm.

“What does he want?” Steck said.

“—know,” Pam finished. “Dr. Agee went in there and then Jerry—”

She felt the fingers on her arm relax. She thought it was very dark—almost completely dark—in the office. She thought—if there are doors between the offices, perhaps I—

“There's nothing there for Agee,” Steck said, and now he had released her arm altogether. Now he was moving back toward the door to the corridor. “Unless—
by God! Arrhythmia!
”

He was, Pam decided, swearing in Greek. She was alone in a dark office with a mad scientist who swore in Greek!

But now the mad scientist, merely looking like a large man, was silhouetted against the glass of the door, his back to her. Pam North moved then, seeking the communicating door—either communicating door, since there might be two, one in either wall. In Steck's office—and now she remembered all of it in curiously vivid detail—there had been a door on either side wall, about halfway down the office. She moved lightly, cautiously; she receded into the gloom of the office and Steck, who seemed to have forgotten her, remained at the corridor door, looking out through it.