Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (56 page)

The voice in the earpiece growled, “State police barracks. Captain Ledsom.

“My lucky day,” remarked Harper, unconsciously confirming theories at the other end. “You’re the very man I want.”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Harper. Remember me?”

“Ah, so you’ve thought up something you forgot to tell us?”

“I gave you all I had at that sorry time. I’ve since dug up a bit more.”

“Such as what?”

“The car you want is a recent model green Thunderbug carrying three fellows and a girl. I have descriptions of all but one of the men.”

Ledsom exploded, “Where the blazes did you get all this?”

Grinning to himself, Harper told him where and how.

“Why don’t you join the cops and have done with it, instead of fooling around with germ-chivvying gadgets?” Ledsom demanded.

“Because I’m a couple of inches too short, six inches too wide, detest discipline and want to go on living.”

Giving a deep grunt, Ledsom said, “I’ll send a car out there right away. Maybe the boys will pick up something else. Meanwhile you’d better give me the dirt you’ve collected.”

Harper recited it, finished, “Obviously there are now two leads I couldn’t follow even if I wanted. They are properly your work because you have the facilities. Firstly, have any three fellows answering these descriptions been let out of prison or climbed the walls recently? Secondly, has any young girl answering this description been reported missing of late?”

A tolerant chuckle sounded before Ledsom replied, “We’ll tend to those and about six more angles you’ve missed.”

“For example.”

“Where did they get the clothes they’re wearing, the money they’re spending, the car they’re using, the gun they fired?” He was quiet a moment, then continued, “We’ll send out a flier that may bring us the answers from some place. With luck we’ll learn the tag-numbers on that Thunderbug. Ten to one it’s stolen.”

“I could push on along this route and perhaps learn more,” said Harper. “They may have stopped for beer or a meal and talked out of turn within somebody’s hearing. But why should I bother? What do I pay taxes for? I have business of my own to do.”

“You’re arguing with yourself, not with me,” Ledsom pointed out. “Nobody’s asking or expecting you to do anything.” He hurried on with, “Of course we really do appreciate the part you’ve played so far. It shows fine public spirit. Things would be easier for us if everyone were as helpful.”

Harper removed the phone from his ear, stared at it suspiciously, put it back, said, “Why can’t they have visiscreens on these things in rural areas too?”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“One could watch a guy’s expression while he’s plastering on the butter.” He hooked the phone, turned, said to the oldster, “They’re coming straight out. You’d better spend the interim stewing the matter and see if you can recall any item you may have overlooked. They’ll need everything you can give them.”

Returning to his car, he set about his normal affairs confident that so far as he was concerned the episode was finished. He was out of it, no more involved in it, a momentary witness who had paused and passed on.

He could not have been more wrong.

He stopped at the next town, found a suitable hotel, booked a room for the night, took in a third-rate show during the evening. He listened to the midnight news before going to bed but it made only brief mention of the killing plus the usual soothing statement that the police hoped to make an early arrest.

The stereoscopic video—called by all and sundry “the pane” since the day a famous cynic had defined the self-styled “window on the world” as “a pane in the neck”—gave the murder a little more attention with pics of troopers and deputies searching the loop-road.

Both radio and video were more interested in vagaries of the weather, sports results, the round-the-globe rocket race, and a complicated legal battle between the government and the Lunar Development Company. According to the latter the government was trying to use its Earth-Moon transport monopoly to bludgeon the L.D.C. into handing itself over complete with fat profits. The L.D.C. was fighting back. It was the decades-old struggle of private enterprise against bureaucratic interference.

Harper sat out this last part in the role of a spectator foreseeing his own fate should he grow too big and become too prosperous. In his line of business he’d had a lot to do with officialdom, but fortunately the basis had been cooperative rather than dictatorial. Nevertheless he sympathized with L.D.C.

He had a sound sleep, arose at eight, breakfasted, spent the morning at the Schultz-Masters Research Laboratories where they needed certain special micromanipulators and displayed the flattering attitude that only he could make them. At one o’clock he left with two tough technical problems solved, two more yet to be considered, and a provisional order in his pocket.

After a meal he started homeward and at three-thirty was halted by a prowl car at a point forty miles from the scene of yesterday’s shooting. One of the two troopers in the car got out and came towards him.

He watched the approach with surprised interest and because the oncomer’s mind was warily broadcasting
“Maybe and maybe not, but if so he won’t get away with it
this
time!”

“Something wrong?” Harper asked.

“You Wade Harper?”

“Yes.”

“A call went out for you half an hour ago. Captain Ledsom wants to see you.”

“I saw him yesterday.”

“This is today,” the trooper reminded.

“Can I talk to him on your short-wave?”

“He wants you in person.”

“Any idea why?”

The other shrugged. His mind showed that he did not know the reason but viewed Harper as a major suspect merely because he was wanted. It showed also that he and his companion were ready to cope in effective manner with any refusal. “Mean to say I’ve got to take time off and go all the way to the barracks?”

“That’s how it is.” He made an authoritative gesture with an added touch of impatience. “Turn her around and get going. Make it a steady pace, not too fast, and no monkey tricks. We'll be right behind.”

Feeling rather peeved, Harper did as instructed. It wasn’t that he was in a great hurry, in fact he had time to spare, but he disliked being given peremptory orders by a wide-open mind devoid of adequate motive.

He had been the same in this respect since he’d worn rompers. Perceptive mind resented dictatorship by non-perceptive mind. To do exactly as he was told smacked of the sighted being led around by the blind.

Occasionally, in introspective moments, he chided himself for his mutinous tendencies lest the fact that he’d been mentally alone, completely without intimate contact with a mind similar to his own, should be giving him a superiority complex born of a sense of uniqueness. He had no desire to be humble, he had less desire to be sat upon. He was a seeker of the middle way.

Tramping unwillingly into Ledsom’s office, he thumped himself into a seat that creaked, stared belligerently across the desk and read the other’s change of viewpoint as easily as an ordinary person reads a book.

“Well, here I am.”

Ledsom said pointedly, “We're having a tape-recording this time.” Leaning sidewise, he switched on the apparatus. “Where were you the night before last?”

“At an hotel.”

“Which one?”

Harper told him.

“What time did you leave there?” Ledsom inquired.

“At nine-thirty.”

“Where did you spend the morning?”

“At the Pest Control Station.”

“Until when?”

“Close on one o’clock. I then had dinner.”

“Where?”

“At the Cathay, a Chinese restaurant.”

“With whom?”

“Nobody. I was by myself. Say, what’s behind all this?” The question was pure concealment. He already knew what was behind it because he could watch Ledsom’s brains fizzing.

“Never mind, Mr. Harper. Just you answer the questions. You have nothing to fear, have you?”

“Who hasn’t? Any minute Gabriel may blow his horn.”

“You know what I mean.” Ledsom eyed him without the friendliness of yesterday. “At what time did you leave the Cathay?”

“About two o’clock, give or take five minutes.”

“And after that?”

“I headed for Hainesboro. I had business to do there today at the Schultz-Masters place.”

“You came this way?”

“Of course. It’s on the direct route.”

“You were passing the loop-road about when?”

“Four o’clock.”

“Now tell me exactly what happened from that point onward.”

“Oh, Lord! I gave you the whole story yesterday. You’ve got it in writing.”

“I know. And now we want it again.” Ledsom’s mind added with mistaken secretiveness,
“A liar needs a good memory. This is where we find contradictions in his story, if any. ”

Harper went grimly through the account for the second time while the tape-recorder purred on. It was the same in all details. He knew it and also that Ledsom knew it.

“About that trick gun you’ve got,” said Ledsom. “You wouldn’t be in the habit of carrying a second one such as a .32, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“There’s a large pond of considerable depth in the woods about fifty yards from where Alderson was killed. Did you notice it?”

“I didn’t enter the woods.”

“Did you know of the pond’s existence?”

“No.”

“You told us you went up that road for a certain purpose. Presumably you were balked by what you discovered. Did you achieve that purpose?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“After I’d called Forst on the radio.”

“You found Alderson, called the police and then went into the woods?”

“It wasn’t necessary to go into the woods, there being no ladies present.” Ignoring that point, Ledsom went on, “At what time did you leave your hotel yesterday morning?”

“You’ve asked that one before. Nine-thirty.”

“And you were all morning where?”

“At the Pest Control Station. If you’re trying to catch me out you’re wasting time and breath. We can go on this way for a week.”

“All right,” said Ledsom, changing tactics. “If you had a deal in prospect with Schultz-Masters why didn’t you go there until today?”

Harper gave a resigned sigh and said, “Firstly, because my appointment was for today and not for yesterday. Secondly, I reached Hainesboro too late for any business calls, in fact it was already too late when I left here.”

“That’s what interests us,” informed Ledsom, gazing at him steadily. “You’d been badly delayed by the time we finished with you. All the same, you took time off to hum up four people in a Thunderbug. Why did you do that?”

“Alderson died in my arms. I didn’t like it.”

Ledsom winced but kept firmly to the issue. “Is that your only reason?”

“It’s the major one.”

“What’s a minor one?”

“My day was messed up. A couple of hours one way or the other couldn’t make any difference.”

“No other motives whatsoever?”

“One,” admitted Harper reluctantly.

“Name it.”

“I got some personal satisfaction out of finding a trace on the killers myself.”

“If
they
were
the killers,” commented Ledsom. He switched off the recorder, meditated a minute, continued, “Up to a couple of hours ago I didn’t doubt it. Now I’m not so sure.” He kept his full attention on his listener, watching for reactions. “We’re pumping out that pond. Maybe we’ll find the gun and learn who used it.”

“Meaning me?”

“I haven’t said so.”

“You’re hinting at it with every muscle in your face.” Harper made a gesture of disparagement. “I can’t blame you in the least for suspecting anyone and everyone. I could have killed Alderson. The time, the place and the opportunity all fit in. Only things lacking are the gun and the motive. You’re going to have a hell of a time tying a motive on to me. I had never seen Alderson in my life until that moment.”

“We had a senseless killing near here four years ago,” answered Ledsom. “Two brothers fell out over an incredibly trivial matter, got equally stubborn about it, gradually switched from argument to abuse and from there to mutual challenges. Finally the hotter tempered of the two upped and slugged the other, killed him, made a very clever try at concealing his guilt by distracting attention elsewhere. He almost succeeded—but not quite!”

“So I followed Alderson into a lane, stopped behind him, swapped backchat. One word led to another. Being cracked, I shot him twice, threw the gun into a pond, called you to come take a look.” Harper pulled a wry face. “Time I had my head examined.”

“I can’t afford to overlook any possibilities,” Ledsom gave back. “I’ve just asked you a lot of questions. Are you willing to take them again with a lie-detector?”

“Positively not!”

Ledsom breathed deeply and said, “You realize that we must attach a certain significance to your refusal?”

“You can tie a couple of tin cans on to it for all I care. The polygraph is an outrageous piece of pseudo-scientific bunkum and its needle-wagglings aren’t admissible as legal evidence.”

“It has helped extract a few confessions,” declared Ledsom, on the defensive.

“Yes, from the babes and sucklings. I am a maker of top-grade scientific instruments myself. You drag a polygraph into court and I’ll tear it to pieces for all time.”

That worried Ledsom. His thoughts revealed that he believed Harper perfectly capable of it and peculiarly competent to do it. He dismissed the lie-detector as a blunder and wished he had never mentioned it.

“How about scopomaline?” suggested Harper, for good measure. “I’ll talk that right out of usage if you’ll give me half a chance.” He leaned forward, knowing that their respective positions were reversed even if only momentarily, that for a few seconds he was the inquisitor and Ledsom the culprit. “From the criminal viewpoint what have I got that those punks in the Thunderbug haven’t got? Do you regard them as figments of my imagination and think I’ve bribed witnesses to support my story?”

“They were real enough. We have proof of that.”