Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (59 page)

“Any idea when she’ll be back?”

“No.”

That was a lie. The girl had promised to return by six.

“H’m!” Harper glanced up and down the road in the manner of one idly wondering what to do next. In deceptively casual tones he tried to hand the other a mental wallop. “Ever plugged a state trooper?”

No alarm-bell rang in the opposing brain. The youth’s thoughts swirled confusedly while he doubted his own ears.

“Have I ever
what?"

“Sorry,” said Harper, knowing his blow had gone wide of the mark. “I was thinking out loud about something else. When do you suppose I could see Miss Whittingham?”

“I don’t know.” Same lie again.

“Too bad.” Harper registered indecision.

“What d’you want to see her about?” inquired the youth.

“A personal matter.”

“Well, she isn’t in, and I don’t know when she’ll be in.”

“Suppose I call back between six and seven?”

“Please yourself.” He showed facial indifference while his mind nursed the notion that the visitor could go jump in the lake.

“All right, I’ll try again later.”

The youth nodded, shut the door. He was not sufficiently interested even to ask Harper’s name. He was devoid of guilt and bored by the affairs of his sister, Miss Jocelyn Whittingham.

Harper spent an hour strolling aimlessly around the town while his car was greased and serviced in a central garage. At twenty to six he returned on foot to the road, stationed himself by a bus stop fifty yards from the house, kept watch for the girl’s homecoming.

He had only a rough description of his quarry, but needed no more than that. One question would serve to stimulate self-identification voluntarily or involuntarily. There is no way of preventing the brain from registering its negatives or affirmatives no matter how great the desire to distort it.

Once the girl got inside that house the puzzle then would be how to gain an interview contrary to her wishes. If she flatly refused to see him he had no power to compel her to do so. In such circumstances his only positive tactic would be to cajole the local police into bringing her in for further questioning. They would not do that without excellent reason, and it was distasteful to him to invent a reason.

A face-to-face interview was imperative. If she were indoors he could stand there all night picking up her thoughts and sorting them out from other nearby thoughts with no difficulty whatsoever. He could, if he wished, spy upon her mind for a week.

It would do him not the slightest bit of good so long as her mind and its thinking processes moved only in channels having nothing to do with the case in hand. Questions were necessary to force her brain on to the case and make it reveal any cogent evidence it might be hiding. A vocal stimulus was required. To provide it he must ask her about this and that, drawing useful conclusions from all points where her thoughts contradicted her words.

Twice while he waited a girl walked past and momentarily captured his attention. So long as they did not mount the steps to the house he made no attempt to identify them mentally. He had his code of ethics developed since early childhood; he did not listen to private musings except when circumstances impelled him to do so. Of course, he could not avoid hearing the sudden cry of an alarmed conscience or a loud call for help such as Alderson had broadcast. But the muted voice of a passing mind, lacking the amplitude of defensive untruths, went by him unheard. He merely watched those girls until they had gone beyond the house and departed from sight.

A few minutes later a third girl came from the farther end of the road. She, too, ignored the house, continued straight on and rounded the far corner. A bus pulled up at the stop, discharged four passengers and rolled away. One of them, a tall, sallow man, eyed him curiously.

“It’ll be half an hour before there’s another.”

“Yes, I know.”

The other shrugged, crossed the road, entered the house facing the stop. Harper moved some distance down the road where he could keep watch without being snooped upon from the windows by the sallow man.

At five to six a girl entered the road from the end nearest his former post, walked hurriedly along with a sharp click-click of high heels. She was of medium height, fresh-featured, plump and about twenty. Without glancing around or noticing Harper, she climbed the steps to the house, felt in her handbag for a key.

From seventy yards away Harper probed at her, seeking confirmation of her identity. The result was shocking. The precise instant his mind touched hers she became aware of the contact and he, in his turn, knew that she was aware. She dropped the handbag in her flurry, bent and grabbed for it as he started to run toward her.

Getting the bag, she fumbled inside it with frantic haste while his feet pounded heavily along the sidewalk. Her eyes held a luminous glare as she found the key, stabbed it at the door. Perspiration beaded the running Harper’s broad features while his right hand pawed under his left arm and his legs continued to race.

The key slid in and turned. Harper stopped at ten yards distance, leveled his gun and squeezed its butt. The thing went
spat-spat-spat
with such swiftness that it sounded like somebody tearing a foot of canvas. The noise was not loud. A stream of matchhead sized steel balls hit the target dead center.

Miss Jocelyn Whittingham let go the key, sank to her knees without a sound, keeled over with her head against the door. Harper stood sweating, watched the blood run out of her hair and listened to her brain packing up for keeps.

He stared around, saw no onlookers, no witnesses. The brief plinking of gunfire had attracted nobody’s attention. He left her lying there and paced swiftly up the road. His face was strained and wet as he retrieved his car and got out of town fast.

The police must have moved fast and skillfully. He had covered a mere three hundred miles before he was advertised on the air and in the news-sheets. He was having supper in a cheap hashery when he got an evening paper carrying the news.

Wanted For Murder,
it said. There followed a fairly accurate description of himself and of his car, complete with tag number. He cursed under his breath as he read it. There were twenty customers in the place, most of them long-distance truckers. Half of them had read or were reading the same sheet. Some were unaware of his existence; the others glanced at him casually and without suspecting that the subject of the report was here under their very eyes. He knew their lack of suspicion with absolute certainty and that was about the only advantage he possessed.

Outside, in plain view, stood the car. Its numbers seemed to swell and grow enormous even as he looked at them. Three big men in denims lumbered past its rear end without giving it so much as a second look, got into an adjacent machine and pulled away. His luck might hold out like that for some time but it just couldn’t last for ever. Sooner or later the number-plate would be spotted waiting somewhere, by somebody with sharp eyes and a good memory.

He could leave the car where it was and help himself to another. When you’re wanted for murder a mere theft can’t add to the grief. But to do that would have compensating disadvantages. The number of the stolen car would be broadcast in short time, leaving him no better off than before. Moreover, right now the law did not know whether he was heading for Peking or Pernambuco but a car-swap would give away the direction of his escape and get every hick deputy on the lookout for him ahead. Also it would reveal that he had crossed state lines to evade arrest, a federal offence that might bring in the F.B.I.

The F.B.I. needed bringing in. Of that he was more than positive. But he did not relish the notion of the F.B.I. taking part in a nation-wide hunt for himself, especially since someone over-excitable might copy his recent tactic by shooting first and asking questions afterward. He was in the most peculiar position of wanting to get to the F.B.I. before they could get to him.

The means by which the law had tagged him as the culprit could be guessed quite easily. Ledsom’s knowledge that he was visiting the girl. Her brother’s description of the caller at the door. The sallow man’s evidence about the lounger at the bus stop. Above all, the missiles in the body, like unto bullets from no other gun.

Stewing it over, he could not help wondering whether Ledsom now felt certain that he knew who had killed Alderson. It would be a very natural tendency on that officer’s part to assume the same hand in both cases even though different weapons had been used.

What he liked least about this sudden howl for a man named Harper was not that it boosted the official hunt for him, but that it might start an unofficial search. The forces of law and order should not be the only ones to take deep interest in the datum that he had killed Miss Jocelyn Whittingham. Certain others undoubtedly would be after him, anxious to know how it all came about, anxious to deal with him before it was too late. Those three fellows in the Thunderbug, for instance.

Swallowing the rest of his coffee, he got out of the place as quickly as he could without drawing attention to his urgency. He waited nervily by a row of alk-pumps while his tank was filled, then drove at top pace into the twilight that rapidly became night, a dark, moonless night. He had more than five hundred miles yet to go.

At four-forty in the morning, with the pale halo of dawn beginning to show in the east, some wide-awake sharp-eye either read his plates or chased him on general principles.

He reached a half-mile stretch of road under repair, perforce crawled at fifteen over the torn surface. A watchman’s hut stood at the end, and beside it a car with side-lamps glowing. He passed the hut, accelerated, gained speed and a mile and a half lead when the parked car came to life, shot out on to the road, went after him with spotlight blinking.

Harper could not hear a siren nor pick up following thoughts. He was too far ahead and too preoccupied with driving. He shoved the pedal down to the floorboards and let the machine leap ahead. If the pursuers were police, as their spotlight suggested, that alone would be enough to convince them that they were on to something worth running down.

There was no alternative other than letting them chase. If he was going to be taken in it must be by people who were peculiarly well informed and knew how many beans make five. He was pretty certain that no county sheriff, no state, city or town police possessed the information that qualified them to become his captors.

Tires squealed, headlights swung and rocked as he took a couple of bends at breakneck speed. The car was powerful and fast, in tiptop condition, but the one behind might be even better. So far as he could judge from frequent glances at the rear-view mirror, the other machine did have a slight advantage because its winking spotlight seemed to be creeping up on him ever so gradually.

With his needle trembling at over ninety he tore through a crossroads, along a main artery darkened still more by large trees on both sides. The trees whizzed past like huge ghosts, arms out, transfixed by this night-time pursuit.

There was no traffic other than his own car and the one behind. Far ahead and slightly to his right he could see the sky-glow from streetlights of a sizeable city, wondered whether he could make it that distance and, if so, what he’d do when he got there. Maybe if the ones behind came close enough in the next ten miles they’d start shooting. What to do then?

He rocked around another half-bend, momentarily lost the lights in the mirror which by now were less than a mile to the rear. His own beams swung briefly across the end of a track through thick timber. He dived into it so suddenly and recklessly that for a second or two he feared the machine would overturn.

Switching off all lamps he plowed another fifty yards into complete blackness, meanwhile praying that he would not hit an invisible tree or dive into a hidden ditch. Twigs crackled and snapped under rolling wheels but luck remained with him. He braked, dropped a window, watched and listened.

The siren could be heard now. A prowl car, sure enough. By this time it was on top of the bend. Headlights slewed across the night as it came round and the next moment it thundered past, wailing as it went. Its passing was far too swift to enable Harper to see how many were within or to pick up a random thought.

He sat in darkness until he could see faint, diminished beams racing up a slope four miles away. Then he reversed, got back on to the road, made off in the way he had come. Reaching the crossroads over which he had recently blundered, he turned to the right, continued along this new route.

Without further incident he reached Washington late in the morning, planted the car in a park on the outskirts, took a bus into the city. There he found a phone and called the office.

Either the office visiscreen was out of order or had been switched off, for his own screen remained blank and Moira’s response was equally blank.

“Harper plant. Can I help you?”

“Only God can help me,” he said. “This is your boss.”

She let out a distinct gasp.

“What’s so soul-shaking about that?” he demanded. “You have spoken to me many a time before.”

“Yes, Mr. Harper. Of course, Mr. Harper.” She sought desperately for words. “I didn’t expect you just yet.”

“Tsk!” He grinned wolfishly at the dead screen. “Why not? I told you I’d call, didn’t I?”

“Certainly, Mr. Harper, but—”

“But
what?”

She hadn’t the vaguest idea what. She was tongue-tied and in a tangle.

“You’ve been reading the papers,” he observed grimly. “But no matter. Has anything turned up?”

“Turned up?”

“Look, Moira, pay no attention to those fat-butted dicks sitting on my desk. Listen to me: has anything come along in the mail that requires my personal handling?”

“N-n-no, Mr. Harper.”

“Any complications I’m needed to clear up?”

“N-n-no.”

“All right. Put one of those guys on the phone.”

She got into a worse tangle. “I don’t understand, Mr. Harper. There isn’t—”