Dead as a Dinosaur (28 page)

He was midway of the last long, quiet block; the next street was Broadway. Even this far uptown you could tell it, the broad, bright street. The subway station was at the corner; trains ran through it toward the familiarity of downtown.

The station wagon passed him slowly, drew in to the curb ahead of him indifferently, without menace. But he knew, all the same. He knew before he saw who got out of the car, unmistakable even in the dim light.

The small man was quick. He turned back quickly, and thought quickly. He had just passed a mail box. That would fix it. He walked, then he ran, toward the box, and as he ran he tugged to get the envelope out of his jacket pocket. He heard running steps behind him.

All he had to do was to make the box. The box was sanctuary; if he reached the box he was safe on base, untouchable. He held out his left hand toward the iron box as he ran the last few steps; his fingers clutched at the iron tongue of the box, and pulled it toward him, pulled it down. His right hand with the envelope in it came up to the slot and then—

Then he was safe. He started to turn.

But then there was a great clanging—that was the mouth of the box clanging shut. That was—

His fingers had relaxed, by then. Then the noise stopped. There was no sound, then.

He did not really hear the clanging as the box closed on the six-by-six envelope. But the sound was heard.

II

Monday, October 27: 8:30
P
.
M
.
to 10:40
P
.
M
.

She wasn't coming home to an empty apartment; that was one of the many things about having cats. Pamela North, trim in a fall coat, hatless, week-end bag in her left hand, could hear Gin through the door. One could hear Gin through almost anything. Pam put her key in the lock and all three spoke as the door opened. Gin spoke from the radio; Martini from the arm of a sofa; Sherry from the floor. They spoke with indignation, and Martini was the most indignant.

“Th' Martini,” Pam said, closing the door behind her, putting her bag down beside Sherry on the floor. “Th'
nice
Martini.”

Martini said, “Yah!”

“The Gin!” Pam North said. “The Sherry.”

“Yah!” said Gin. “Yah-ah!” said Sherry.

The three of them regarded her through blue eyes, Sherry with head on one side, since her eyes had never tracked. They continued to speak. Martini, who set the pace in all feline matters, was the angriest. She was very angry. Pam reached out to touch the little, violent Siamese and Martini produced a “Yah!” which was at least half snarl and went off, swishing her tail.

“I'm very sorry,” Pam North said, formally. “I really planned to come home last night. But the timetable was wrong because it wasn't daylight saving any longer, and this morning it was too nice. Didn't Martha feed you?”

The cats, with one voice, assured Pamela North that they had not been fed; that they were never fed; that at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North, cats were abandoned to starvation. Pam did not believe a word of this, and told them so. Nevertheless, she went first of all to the kitchen, moving in a swarm of cats. At dinner time, three cats were twenty cats; if Siamese, twenty desperate tigers crying out. They screamed up at Pam as they moved around her feet, creating, with long bodies and dark tails, patterns of infinite anxiety. Sherry reared to snag claws in the wool of fall coat, and to receive the sharpest of “No's!” for her trouble. Gin leaped to the counter to assist in the opening of cans. They fell on “junior beef,” three lifted tails quivering with enthusiasm. One didn't, certainly, come home to an empty apartment.

The morning's mail was waiting; a note from Martha also was waiting, on top of the mail.

“Mr. Mutton called,” Martha had written. At least, it looked like “Mutton.” “Said you'd be back after dinner. Gin threw up breakfast. Out of steel wool.”

It was all clear enough, except for Mr. Mutton, who was utterly unlikely. Gin had eaten too fast, as she was inclined to. Steel wool did run out. But Mr. Mutton did not telephone. Mr. Mutton did not exist. Martha's fidelity was great, her cooking excellent. But as a passer-on of such trifles as telephone messages Martha was open to improvement, although she remained beyond it. Mr. Mutton had called to say (or be told?) that Pamela North would return after dinner. Pam shook her head. She laid the note aside. Time might clarify Mr. Mutton; on the other hand, this might be the last she ever heard of him. There was precedent for either outcome.

There was no letter from Jerry. Bergdorf and Saks and Lord & Taylor were having sales. Jerry's club had something to say to Jerry.
Who's Who in America
also sought communication with him; it would be wanting him to bring his biography up to date, which he had not done for almost a month. Pam put these aside, pending his return. It occurred to Pam that even three cats did not actually fill an apartment, however they animated it. “Why,” Pam asked Martini, who then returned from the kitchen, her mood improved—“why do so many authors seem to live in San Francisco?” Martini jumped to Pam's lap and settled down to distribute cat hairs. It was fortunate, Pam thought, not for the first time, that she was not particularly fond of dark clothing; it was remarkable how nearly white a Siamese cat's fur turned out to be when it had left a Siamese cat.

Pam picked up the morning papers, which were under the mail, and which she had read on the train from her week end in the country. Under the papers there was a square, stiff envelope. It bore a printed caution: “Do Not Bend.” It bore a printed explanation: “Voice-Scriber Record.” It was addressed, in pencil, scrawlingly, to Mr. Gerald North.

Pam turned it over in her hands, seeking a return address and finding none. She tried to decipher the postmark and failed. The envelope had not, she realized, been sent through the canceling machine, for reasons no doubt having to do with not bending. It had been postmarked by hand, and hurriedly. It might, so far as she could tell, have come from almost anywhere in the world—no, from anywhere in the United States.

She knew the machine called a Voice-Scriber; Jerry used one at his office. It was a compact recording phonograph, in essence. Into it—or half of it, the recording half—Jerry dictated. From the other half of it, the transcriber, Jerry's secretary typed what Jerry had said. Now and then, Jerry brought home his half, which fitted neatly into a carrying case and weighed only about fifteen pounds, and spent an evening talking into it—while the cats, frantic to discover to whom he talked, with Pam elsewhere, yammered at his study door. One of the advantages of the Voice-Scriber was that its small records could be mailed conveniently from dictator to typist.

This one, it appeared, was for some reason retracing its steps. Well, it, too, would have to wait until Jerry—She lifted the envelope to lay it on top of the communication from
Who's Who
and stopped. Was it really
Mr
. Gerald North? Or was it
Mrs
. Gerald North? She studied the scrawl. She couldn't, she slowly realized, be certain either way. But if to her—?

It has never been said of Pamela North—at least not said by anyone who knows her—that she is sluggish of imagination. Out of the most minor of inconsistencies, Pamela North has been known to create the most unlikely of melodramas. Charged with this, she has an answer ready: It has been her experience that unlikely melodrama is the likeliest to happen of anything in the world. “Particularly,” she adds, “to people who know Bill Weigand.” Not even Acting Captain William Weigand, Homicide Squad, Manhattan West, New York Police Department, denies this, although sometimes speculating on the relationship in time between chicken and egg.

What now occurred to Pam North, as she turned the Voice-Scriber record over in her hands, was that something had happened to Jerry, far away and alone in San Francisco. Momentarily, she considered the possibility that he was, for reasons she might come to later, held a prisoner in Chinatown, but this she rejected. She had seen San Francisco's Chinatown and been unimpressed. New York's was smaller, to be sure, but, to Pam, beyond comparison more devious. But elsewhere, in that most gayly exciting of smaller cities, anything, she thought, might happen. Since Jerry was there, and without her, anything might happen to him.

Suppose—well, suppose something had. Suppose that (for reasons she would come to later) he was in a position where he could not communicate with her more simply, but had access to a Voice-Scriber. Suppose he had got somebody to mail this record to her. (He had not mailed it himself, or, at any rate, not addressed it.) Suppose his safety somehow depended on her hearing his recorded message.

But on the other hand, suppose that Jerry had merely wanted to talk to her, and taken this way. Suppose he had been lonely on the other edge of the continent and had wished to say—well, put it, to say, “Hello, Pam. How are you, lady? How are the little cats?” Jerry did not often do such things; on the other hand, he had sometimes done them.

She looked once more at the address. The more she looked at it, the more sure she was that it read “Mrs.” not “Mr.” Gerald North.

“It isn't just curiosity,” she told Martini. Martini said, “Yah” in a tone combining irritation and skepticism. “Well, it isn't,” Pam said. “I've got to go see.”

She went. The cats had never been more put out in their lives, but Pam went all the same. She carried the record in her hand, since there was no room in her bag.

She found a cab with little trouble and gave the address of Jerry's office. The cab went up Fifth, through moderate traffic, turned right in the Thirties, crossed Madison and stopped in the block beyond it. The block was a quiet one, in which some residences quietly held their own in the face of trade; in which trade was, for the most part, suitably dignified. North Books, Inc., occupied the fourth, and top, floor of a building which was as self-effacing as a building might be.

Mrs. North's cab stopped in front of the building. A station wagon which had fallen in behind it near Washington Square passed the cab but, a few doors farther along the street, pulled to the curb and stopped.

Mrs. North went into a small lobby and an elderly man, sitting at a small table, reading
Time
magazine of the week before, looked up at her. He peered through rimless glasses; then he removed them.

“Oh,” he said, “hello, Mrs. North.”

“Good evening, Mr. Helder,” Pam said. “Isn't it a beautiful evening?”

“Won't last,” Sven Helder told her. “Want to go up?” Then he sighed.

“I'm afraid I do, please,” Pam North said. “I hate to bother you.”

“Can't be helped,” Sven Helder told her, and put
Time
magazine, open, spine up, on the table. “Probably,” he added. He turned a ledger toward her. “Have to sign in,” he said.

Pam North put purse and envelope on the table and signed it. She added, “North Books, Inc.,” after her name. Sven Helder looked at her signature with care. He took a large watch from a pocket and looked at it. He wrote “2132” after North Books. Then he got up, pushing himself up with both hands on the little table. He led the way to one of the two elevators and led the way into it. The elevator awoke and seemed to rub its eyes; it started up, not hurrying.

“Nobody up there,” Sven Helder said.

“I suppose not,” Pam said.

“Nobody in the building,” Sven Helder told her, as they trundled between the second floor and the third. “You're the only one.” There was resigned accusation in his tone.

“I'm sorry,” Pam said.

“Can't be helped,” Sven Helder said. “What I'm here for, I guess.” He sighed deeply.

“I won't be long,” Pam said, between third and fourth.

“Doesn't make much difference, does it,” Sven Helder asked her, slowly, making cautious approach. He stopped ten inches below the floor level. “Go too high she can jam,” he said.

“It's perfectly all right,” Pam said, and stepped up. “Ring when you want me,” Helder said, and sighed, and closed the sliding door. The elevator began to inch downward.

Pam unlocked the double doors lettered “North Books, Inc.” She went into the dark offices—the almost dark offices. Some light sifted in from windows; in New York it is never wholly dark. The offices, as they always did, seemed much larger at night. Pam found herself, and this again as always, wondering who sat at the many desks and what they did at them. Ideas formed in a mind, and words were found for them; the ideas were communicated, in varying degrees of accuracy, to other minds. That was the gist of it; but between, many people sat at many desks, and at machines, too. Tall filing cases, like those near the door, were filled with—with what? Pam turned on lights. She went among the desks to Jerry's book-lined office in a corner. She turned on lights there.

She could play back from Jerry's recorder, instead of from the other thing, whatever it was, on Miss Corning's desk. That way, Pam thought, she wouldn't have to use the earphones. Earphones made her feel shut in.

She found the recorder. She took the record from its envelope and dropped the envelope, absently, in a wastepaper basket. She put the record on the turntable and set it going. There was only a faint hum, first. Then there was a voice; a woman's voice. It was faint, as if the speaker had failed to hold the microphone close enough to lips. Yet it was distinct, and for all the present smallness of the captured sound, Pam felt that the voice itself had been raised, excited.

“You must be crazy,” the voice said. “Why would I—?”

“Because you have no choice,” another voice said.

A man had spoken this time; spoken sharply, breaking in. His voice, also, had been raised; it had an oddly metallic texture, but that might be the machine's distortion. There was a moment's pause. Then the woman laughed. The laughter seemed high to Pam North, listening; seemed too high by far.