Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  She paused as though to permit Kirk to comment. "Go on," he said hoarsely.

  "There's not much left," the girl said. "I was standing there still holding that piece of metal when the door crashed open and the dead woman's husband ran in. He started to lunge across the room at me and I threw the thing I was holding at him. It struck him and he fell down. My only thought was to hide, for I realized I couldn't go out through the outer office, and the only window was barred. So I hid in that closet again.

  "It was only a few minutes before Paul Cordell regained consciousness. He staggered out of the room and down the hall and I could hear a lot of excited talk and Greg's secretary calling the police. Then I didn't hear anything at all for a moment, so I came out of the closet and looked down the hall. The office door was closed, but it seemed so quiet in there that I tiptoed quickly to the inner door, opened it a crack and peered through. The office was deserted; evidently Cordell and Miss Dakin had gone out to direct the police when they showed up.

  "When I saw there was no one in the main hall of the building itself, I simply walked out and left by another exit. No one I passed even noticed me."

  * * * * *

  For a long time after Naia North had finished speaking, Martin Kirk sat as though carved from stone, staring blindly into space. She knew he was thinking furiously, weighing the plausibility of what he had heard, trying to arrive at some method of corroborating it in a way that would stand up in a court of law.

  "Miss North."

  She came out of a reverie with a start, to find the Lieutenant's eyes boring into hers. "This shiny hunk of metal you used: where is it now?"

  "I'm sure I wouldn't know. Probably some place in the laboratory, unless somebody took it away. I do seem to remember picking it up and tossing it back with several others like it on the bench."

  "Then it's still there," he said slowly. "Judge Reed ordered the room sealed up until after the trial. And then there's the closet.... Were you wearing gloves that afternoon, Miss North?"

  She said, "No. You're thinking of fingerprints?"

  "If you're telling the truth," he said, "there's almost certain to be some of your prints on the inside of that closet door--maybe even on that length of metal, if we can find it."

  She said almost carelessly: "That's all you'd need to clear Paul Cordell, isn't it?"

  "It would certainly help." He swung around in the chair, scooped up the telephone and gave a series of rapid-fire orders, then dropped the instrument on its cradle and turned back to where she sat watching him curiously.

  He said, "A few things I still don't get. Like this business of your standing two feet off the floor in a ball of blue light. And the flashes of light just before Cordell heard his wife and Gilmore fall to the floor. Even the snatches of conversation he caught while still in the hall. He couldn't have dreamed all that stuff up--at least not without some basis."

  She had opened her bag and taken out a cigarette. Kirk ignited one of his kitchen matches and she bent her head for a light. He could see the flawless curve of one cheek and the smooth cap of blonde hair, and he resisted the urge to pass a hand lightly across both. Something was stirring inside the Lieutenant--something that had long been absent. And, he reflected wryly, all because of a girl who had just finished confessing to two particularly unpleasant murders.

  Naia North raised her head and their eyes met--met and held. Her lips parted slightly as she caught the unmistakable message in those gray-blue depths....

  The moment passed, the spell was broken and she leaned back in the chair and laughed a little shakily. "I read about those statements of his in the papers, Lieutenant. I think perhaps I can at least partially explain them. As I remember it, there were several Bunsen burners lighted on the laboratory bench near that window. They give off a blue flame, you know, and I must have been standing near them when Paul Cordell came charging in. In his confused frame of mind, he may have pictured me as being in a ball of flame."

  "Sounds possible," the man admitted, frowning. "What about those flashes of light?"

  "You've got me there. Unless they were reflections of sunlight through the window--from the windshield of a passing car, perhaps."

  "And the things he heard you and Gilmore saying?"

  She shook her head regretfully.

  "There I'm simply in the dark, I don't see how he could have twisted what little we said into the utterly fantastic nonsense he claims to have heard."

  * * * * *

  Kirk rubbed a hand slowly along the side of his neck, still frowning. "He could have confused that length of metal in your hand as a gun.... Well--" his shoulders lifted in the ghost of a shrug--"it all seems to add up. Except one thing: Cordell had been tried and convicted, leaving you in the clear. Why come down here voluntarily and stick your lovely head in a noose?"

  The girl smiled faintly. "'Lovely head', Lieutenant?"

  Kirk flushed to the eyebrows. "That slipped out.... Why the confession?"

  She said soberly: "I was so sure they'd let him off. When you know someone's innocent you can't realize that others won't know it too, I suppose. But when I learned he'd been found guilty and actually condemned to die ... well, I know it sounds noble and all that but I couldn't let him go to his death for something I'd done. Surely such a thing has happened before in your experience, Lieutenant."

  He watched as she drew smoke from the cigarette deeply into her lungs and let it flow out in twin streamers from her nostrils. Only rich men, he thought, could afford a woman like this, and somehow it made him resentful. What right did she have to walk in here and flaunt a body like that in his face? She went with mink stoles and cabin cruisers and cocktails at the Sherry-Netherland, and her shoe bill would exceed his yearly salary. She would be competent and more than a little cynical and not too concerned with morals or the lack of them. That kind of woman could kill--and would kill, on the spur of the moment and if the provocation was strong enough.

  "Well, Lieutenant?" She said it lightly, almost with disinterest.

  Then Kirk was all right again, and he was looking at a woman who had just confessed to murder.

  "You heard the phone call I made a moment ago, Miss North. Two men from the Crime Lab are already on their way to the University. If they find your fingerprints inside that closet, if they can turn up anything to prove you've been in Gregory Gilmore's laboratory, then you and that evidence and your confession get turned over to the D. A. and Paul Cordell will be on his way to freedom."

  "And if those men don't find anything?"

  "Then," he told her rudely, "you're just another crackpot and I'm tossing you and your phony confession out of here."

  * * * * *

  They found the fingerprints: several perfect ones on the inner door of the laboratory coat closet. But even more conclusive was their discovery of a short length of polished metal pipe among the dismantled parts of a Clayton centrifuge. At one end of the pipe were the imprints of four fingertips--at the other a microscopic trace of human blood.

  "We had no business missing it the first time, Lieutenant," the Crime Laboratory technician told Kirk ruefully. "I'd a sworn we pulled that place apart last month. But this time we got the murder weapon and we got the prints--and those prints match the ones we took off that blonde. Hey, how about that, Lieutenant? I thought this Cordell guy did that job?"

  Slowly Kirk replaced the receiver and eyed Naia North across the desk from him. "Looks like you're elected," he said somberly. "I'm telling you straight: the D. A. isn't going to like this at all--not even any part of it."

  Her brow wrinkled. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Doesn't he want murder cases solved?"

  Kirk smiled crookedly. "You're forgetting this case was solved--over a month ago. You any idea what it can mean to a politician to have to admit publicly that he's made a mistake? Especially a mistake that's going to get all the publicity this one's bound to? 'District attorney railroads innocent man!' 'Tragic miscarriage of justice averted only by chance!' Stuffy
editorials in the opposition press about incompetence in high offices and how the voters must keep out anybody who goes around executing the innocent and helpless. Looks like Arthur Kahler Troy is going to be a mighty unpopular man around these parts--and election less than five months away!"

  He glanced up at the office clock. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening, and both of them were showing signs of wear. Kirk left his chair and went over to the water cooler, drank two cupfuls and brought one back to the girl. She thanked him with a wan smile and gulped down the contents.

  He took the empty paper container and crumpled it slowly. "Might as well get hold of him," he muttered. "It's going to be mighty damned rough, sister. You sure you want to go through with it?"

  She lifted an eyebrow at him. "That's a peculiar question for a homicide officer to ask, isn't it?"

  "I suppose so." His eyes shifted to the phone on his desk, stayed there for a long moment. Then he shrugged hugely and picked up the receiver....

  * * * * *

  It was well after two in the morning before Martin Kirk reached his apartment. He showered and got into a fresh pair of pajamas and went into the small, sparsely furnished living room. He moved slowly and with no spring in his step, and the set of his features was harsh and strained in the soft light from the floor lamp.

  Troy had been even more difficult than he'd feared. What had begun as plain irritability at being disturbed, had passed by successive stages to amused disbelief, open anger and finally reluctant conviction that Paul Cordell was innocent of the crimes for which he had been sentenced to die.

  A male stenographer from his staff was called in and Naia North dictated a complete statement which she signed. Troy questioned her for nearly two hours, getting in every possible angle of her private life as well as minute details of her actions on the day of the murders. Kirk had not been present during that part of the night, but he figured it wouldn't be much different from what he'd heard many times before.

  He mixed himself a drink, and was surprised to discover that his hands were shaking noticeably. Well, why not? A day like the one he'd just been through would put the shakes in Grant's Tomb. Even as he made the excuse, he knew it wasn't the real reason. There had been cases that had kept him on his feet for as much as forty-eight hours--cases where men had pointed guns at him and pulled the triggers--and the shakes never came.

  No, it was the girl. Naia North. Naia--a strange name. But no stranger than the girl herself. Now how about that? Why should he think her strange? Because she'd taken a life or two? Hell, lots of people did that and no one called them strange. Criminal or unmoral or greedy or angry, yes. But not strange. She looked like other women--only a lot better. She dressed like them, walked like them, talked like them. So why strange?

  Because she was strange. Nothing you could put your finger on made her that way, but that's the way she was.

  He threw his cigar savagely into the fireplace. He went over and made another drink and poured it down fast and another one after it, right on its heels. Then he went to bed. Tomorrow--today, rather--was a work day and work days were tough days and he needed his rest.

  He didn't get much of it, though. The phone woke him a few minutes after seven o'clock. It was Arthur Kahler Troy at the other end and the D. A. was too angry to be coherent.

  It seemed Naia North had disappeared from her locked cell during the night.

  Chapter III

  "I don't give a triple-distilled damn what you say!" Troy snarled. "Nobody's got enough money to make that kind of payoff. Five men, Lieutenant--five men and five locked doors stood between that girl and the street. And you sit there and try to tell me somebody bought all five of 'em off!"

  "Then," Kirk said heatedly, "what's your explanation?"

  It had been going on this way for over an hour. The morning sun came in weakly at the window behind Troy's huge polished mahogany desk, picking up random reflections from the collection of expensive gadgets littering the glass top.

  Troy began to wear another path in the moss-colored broadloom carpeting. He was big and broad and getting puffy around the middle, like a one-time halfback going to seed. His round, heavy-featured face was even more florid than usual, and his heavy growth of reddish-blond hair needed a comb.

  Martin Kirk pushed himself deeper into the depths of a brown leather chair and watched the D. A. through brooding eyes. He wanted a cigar but it was too early in the morning for that kind of indulgence. You needed a good breakfast and a couple cups of coffee before--

  "I don't explain it," Troy said in quieter tones. He was standing by the window now, staring down into the boulevard passing that side of the Criminal Courts Building. "It's one of those things that make me think my sainted mother wasn't so wrong when she used to tell about elves and gnomes and leprechauns and fairies and--"

  Kirk made a sound deep in his throat, "Naia North was a hell of a long way from being a leprechaun. Somebody wanted her out of here for some reason--and they got her out. I want to know who took her out, why she was taken, and where she is now. And I'm going to find out the answers to all three if I have to turn this town on its ear."

  "Go ahead," Troy said. "Hop right to it and I wish you luck. Only leave me and my people out of it."

  "Seems to me you're mighty damned anxious to be left out."

  Arthur Kahler Troy turned on his heel and strode toward the Lieutenant until he was towering over him. "Just what," he said between his teeth, "do you mean by that crack?"

  "Figure it out for yourself," Kirk snapped. "And I'm sure you can."

  Troy reared back as though the police officer had pulled a gun on him. "Why--why you--I'll have you busted for making a dirty insinu--"

  "You couldn't bust a daisy chain at the police department," Kirk growled. "The Commissioner hates your guts and you know that as well as I do. Now let's cut out all this hokey-pokey and pick up a few loose ends, The first thing: what about Paul Cordell?"

  All the wide-eyed fury seemed to go out of Troy's face like water down the bathtub drain. He turned away and walked slowly back to his desk chair and sat down.

  He said, "What about Cordell," in a soft voice.

  "The morning paper," Kirk said, "reports he was taken up to Hillcrest last night. The warden out there's probably got him in Death Row already."

  "Uh-hunh."

  "Well, let's get him out of there. With the evidence we've got, plus Naia North's sworn statement, Judge Reed will have to bring him back down here and release him--at least on bail until we can find the girl. The man's innocent, Mr. D. A.; have you forgotten?"

  "Yes."

  "'Yes'? Yes, what?"

  "I've forgotten he's innocent," Troy said quietly. "Matter of fact, he's guilty as hell."

  * * * * *

  The Lieutenant half rose from his chair. "Now wait a minute! You heard that girl's story and you've got the evidence I turned over to you right here in this office last night. What more--"

  "I'll tell you what more," Troy snapped. "That girl was a fraud, her story was a downright lie and that evidence was faked. Let me tell you something else, Mister: within five minutes after the guard downstairs reported your girl friend missing, I had five squads of my men out running down the personal information she gave me a few hours before. And you know what they found out? Every bit of what she told me was false! Hear that? False! It took my men about one hour to prove as much, for the simple reason that not one lead panned out. Not one! And you know what I think?"

  Martin Kirk opened his mouth but nothing came out but a strangled croak.

  "I think you and this dame worked out the whole thing between the two of you to save Cordell's neck. Who could do a better job of faking evidence than a crooked cop? What's more, you might have gotten away with it, too--only it suddenly dawned on the girl that she was getting in too deep."

  "And so," Kirk cut in hotly, "she calmly walked through five locked sets of iron bars and went back to Mars!"

  He stood up and crossed to t
he desk and leaned down with his palms in the center of the brown blotter. "You won't get away with it, Troy. You didn't want any part of this new development from the minute I called you on the phone last night. You knew it could show you and your whole organization up as a bunch of bunglers and incompetents. So you got rid of the girl, thinking that without her the truth of those murders would never get out to the voters.

  "Well, it won't work, Fatso! The evidence I dug up is strong enough to reopen the case without Naia North. All I have to do is put that evidence in front of Judge Reed, and--"

  Troy was smiling wolfishly. "What evidence, Lieutenant?"

  Kirk stiffened. "You know damned well what evidence. It's in your files right now: Naia North's statement, the strips of paneling from that coat closet, the murder weapon. I turned the whole works over to you."

  The D. A. was shaking his head. "We don't keep worthless junk around here, my boy. The Cordell case is closed; the guilty man is awaiting execution. Sure, you run along and tell the Judge all about it. Tell the newspapers, tell Cordell's defense attorneys, tell the world for all I care. See who'll touch it without something more concrete than your highly imaginative day dreams. For all you can prove, the girl might have confessed the whole thing was a hoax and we tossed her out of here last night....

  "I'm a busy man, Lieutenant. Good morning--good luck--and kindly close the door on your way out."

  Chapter IV

  Lieutenant Martin Kirk shoved the pile of mimeographed pages aside. Three hours spent in going through the complete transcript of the Cordell trial and nothing to show for it but stiff muscles and an aching head.

  Give it up, a small voice in the back of his mind urged. You haven't got a leg to stand on as far as getting any action out of the authorities. Troy and his gang put the fear of God in that purple-eyed dame and shipped her out of the State. You lose, brother--and so does that poor devil up in Death's Row.