PROFESSOR
Scott.
A seventy-year-old eccentric who wakes at eight in the morning, when the sun strikes through the bedroom window and lances across the thin blankets he uses even in the summertime.
He gets up and dresses slowly; his underwear drapes loosely on his bony hips. He’d be the last to admit it but morning is hard on him and he sits on the edge of the bed a minute to build up his strength. Then he walks into the bathroom and lathers the weathered angles of his face with a brush that smells of rot and has lost half its bristles. His razor is an old-fashioned straight-edge. The flashing metal shakes momentarily in his hand, then steadies when he brings it into contact with his face.
He shaves and finishes dressing and toys with the simple breakfast the housekeeper has prepared—flaccid oatmeal and toast spread with marmalade. He spends an hour with the morning paper; his mind is still keen and it’s only occasionally he forgets a story five minutes after reading it. Then it’s slowly out the door for a short walk in the park, where he will relax on a bench and soak up the sunshine and speculate with humor on the shortcomings of the younger generation.
A vigorous man growing old, sitting in the sun and watching the days flick by, thinking each morning is just a little chillier than the one before, that each walk to the park takes just a little more out of him.
Or is it all an elaborate front designed to fool the peasants?
Tanner stretched uneasily behind the wheel of the car.
Did Scott actually bound out of bed with the reflexes of a thirty-year-old, run an electric razor around his jaw, take a needle-spray shower, and then settle down to a breakfast of sausage and fried eggs and steaming black coffee? Had the housekeeper been … indoctrinated … so she wouldn’t tell? When Professor Scott creaked down the front steps was it just Adam Hart mimicking the actions of an old man?
It was possible. But then anything was possible.
It was a scorching day, the sun a blazing plate in the clear blue sky. The kind of day when the firemen open the hydrants and the asphalt feels sticky and a lawn can turn from green to brown between sunrise and sunset. It was midafternoon and most people were down by the beach, or trying to sleep off the heat in sweat-soaked hammocks and porch swings.
The curving walks in the park were almost empty. A little boy, his short pants soaking wet, was playing with the drinking fountain, holding his thumb over the spout and seeing how far the squirting water would go. A couple were on the tennis courts, the
thunk
of the ball against the racket breaking the puddling stillness of the afternoon.
And there was an old man walking slowly past the empty benches, searching for one in the shade.
Professor Scott.
The old suit that was just a shade too big now, a straw hat, and a rolled-up copy of the paper under his arm. His back a little hunched with age, his walk a tired imitation of his once-jaunty stride.
An act?
Tanner turned the key in the ignition and started the car. Professor Scott wouldn’t find a shady bench on that side of the street; his favorite spot was in the full glare of the sun, the wooden seats and the metal armrests too hot to be comfortable. Sooner or later the old man would have to cross over.
And when he did, the moment of decision would be upon him.
The old man suddenly stopped and glanced towards a shady spot under the trees, a dozen yards away, on the same side of the street. Tanner held his breath. Scott
had
to cross the street; if he didn’t, it would be all off. The plan wouldn’t work later in the day, the park would be too crowded.
Professor Scott obligingly continued straight ahead.
Tanner felt a little sick and nervous. He eased the car away from the curb and let it glide slowly down the tarry street that paralleled the sidewalk. The essential element of surprise. Professor Scott didn’t know what was going to happen—and neither did Adam Hart.
But he shouldn’t think about it. That would be dangerous.
Action.
Blankness.
A few feet more and the sidewalk ended at an intersection. Beyond the junction there was only one walk and that was on the opposite side of the street.
He leaned heavily on the accelerator and glanced quickly around. The empty park and the deserted benches, the little boy at the fountain and the tennis players hidden from view by a curve in the road.
No witnesses.
Professor Scott was stepping off the curb, preparing to cross the intersection at a diagonal.
Sweat was making the palms of his hands slippery against the plastic steering wheel. The car was leaping down the street now, its engine roaring in the quiet afternoon.
The old man had stopped and was looking up, startled.
The perfect target:
One slip and I’m a murderer
, Tanner thought.
But it’s too late now to stop. I couldn’t stop if I wanted. Grossman … But I mustn’t think … .
Professor Scott was turning to run, his face a mask of fear. He had dropped his paper and his straw hat had fallen off and was rolling into the gutter.
Let’s see you change now, Professor! If you’re Hart then you’re off balance, there’s nothing you can do to stop this car. Let’s see you suddenly leap for the curb, let’s see you sprint down the street with a thirty-year-old’s muscles. And if you do then it’s going to be all over. You’ll have lost the game! But if you can’t run faster than a hobble, then please God let Grossman do his share … .
And then it occurred to him that if Scott was really Scott, he could just as easily die of heart failure from fright or overexertion. Sudden panic clutched him by the throat.
He was in the intersection now Professor Scott was past it but still in the middle of the street, his legs working frantically.
Oh God …
He was a split second from murder. Then a blue sedan shot out of the intersection and smashed into his trunk. There was the squeal of tires and the scream of tearing metal and then the impact threw the two cars together like the arms of a collapsing V His car jumped the curb and rocked to a rest.
The sun and the heat and a moment of startled quiet. He frantically worked the door handle, then put his shoulder against the panel and forced it open. A huddled form lay in the street fifty yards away. They were off to a great start, he thought. They had wrecked two stolen cars and nearly killed a man.
But the problem of who was Adam Hart had been decreased by a factor of one.
Grossman got out of the blue sedan and hurried over. “William, is he …”
“No, probably just fainted. Give me a hand here.”
“All right, but I think we … Watch out!”
The truck was speeding and Tanner got out of the way just in time. Then he realized it wasn’t after either him or Grossman, that somebody else had been the target for the day. It could have missed the fallen form of Professor Scott; it actually had to swerve out of its way to hit him.
There was a
thunk
and a tearing sound and then the truck had disappeared around the curve.
A block away, there was a sudden babble of voices.
Grossman’s face was starchy white. “It could have missed him!”
Tanner raced up to the bleeding figure. He took one look and knew there was nothing anybody could do for the old man. He knelt down and hurriedly searched through the torn pockets, found what he wanted, and scrambled for the shrubbery lining the road.
Grossman was close behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out of here. How much luck do you think we would have convincing a crowd that we hadn’t run over the old man? With Hart around to whip them up, we’d be lucky if we didn’t end up dangling from a tree. Where’d you leave your own car?”
“A business street a few blocks from here. Where are we going?”
“To Professor Scott’s home—before the police get there. The old man was killed for more reasons than just to make us look bad. I want to find out why!”
A crowd had begun to gather around Scott’s body but by then they were out of sight. In a drugstore Tanner made a phone call to Scott’s home. He passed himself off as a police officer and told the housekeeper what had happened and that she should get there as soon as possible.
Then he drove around to the house and parked until she had left. He took out of his pocket the things he had taken from the dead man’s clothing and started to sort through them.
Grossman looked at him accusingly. “Why did you take his wallet?”
“Because money isn’t going to do Professor Scott any more good. But it might come in very handy for us for such little things like eating and hotel rooms, or hadn’t you thought of that?” He brushed his hand across his forehead. “I’m sorry, Karl, I’m a little jumpy. Let’s go in.”
He opened the door with the keys he had taken from Scott’s body. The house was lavender and old lace with antique furniture made of thick cherry wood, hand-turned. A family album was on the sideboard, along with a chest of silver that was stained and tarnished. In the bedroom there was a tintype on the dresser and an old shaving mug whose gold letters had been nearly worn away. The room was closed up and stuffy and there was dust and yellowed curtains and the stink of age.
He rifled quickly through the dresser drawers and went hurriedly through the clothes in the closet. One suit caught his eye and he laid it aside on the bed. Scott had been a withered old man but he had a large frame. The suit would fit him, Tanner thought, and Lord only knew he needed a new one.
Grossman was leery. “His suit, too, William?”
“The dead don’t give a damn, Karl, and I need one.”
“You are looking for something?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure what. Some note, some message. Something that would have made it dangerous for Scott to live any longer.”
“Perhaps he had a den?”
He hadn’t seen any on the main floor but it was logical that Scott would have had some kind of a workroom. He snapped his fingers. “Let’s try the basement.”
At first glance the basement was like any other basement. An oil furnace and a washing machine and dryer and the screens stacked up in one corner. There was a room just off the side and he stepped in and flipped the light switch.
The lights were fluorescent and it took a moment for them to come on. It was different than he had expected and a good deal different from the upstairs of the house. The study was a modernistic room with pine paneling and a mobile hanging from the ceiling at one end. Shelves of books were built right into the wall and one whole wall was devoted to a battery of filing cabinets.
He didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know what he could expect to find, he wasn’t even sure of what he was looking for. He looked over the den carefully, then two things caught his eye.
The first was a file card on the desk with a heading neatly typed on it reading: “Heterosis, bibliography.” On the card, Scott had written:
“The most important. See dossiers.”
What dossiers? he thought.
And on whom?
And then he knew. Professor Scott had moved fast, possibly even faster than Hart had. The old man hadn’t lost any time. He had started assembling a dossier on each member of the committee before people had started to … forget.
But where would the dossiers be?
He looked through the desk and the bookcases, then came back to the shelf above the desk itself. An open space, about two inches, in the middle of the small group of books. Just right for half a dozen eight-by-twelve file folders.
Somebody had taken them, somebody who had entered the house about the same time Professor Scott had left for his walk in the park. Somebody who had known about the dossiers or had suspected their existence.
Who?
The other item depressed him. Scott had had access to the same information about John Olson that he had had and the old man had looked up a medical directory and then written a letter to Brockton. It was addressed to
Dr. Herman Schwartz, Brockton, South Dakota.
It had come back, stamped:
Deceased.
The return postmark was Sunday night.
Saturday evening he had talked to Schwartz, he thought. Either he had unintentionally given Schwartz away or else … He looked at the back of the envelope. Somebody had read it and resealed it and they hadn’t done a good job. The chances were that Schwartz had never received the letter, a letter that undoubtedly asked questions about Adam Hart. Somebody who worked in the post office automatically read the incoming mail so any information relating to Adam Hart could be sidetracked and destroyed, and the people to whom it was sent could be investigated.