But was there a third party lurking somewhere close?
He stiffened in the chair, chopping off his thoughts as the minute sound carried to him from the kitchen door.
There was the gentle forcing of the plywood such as he had done, and a moment later the knob turned to let the door swing quietly inward. The intruder paused a moment in the kitchen, again as he had done, to smell the stale air and probe the darkness of the house. He wondered if his own presence could be sensed. Again a tiny sound as the door was closed and then soft, cautious footsteps creeping across the kitchen floor. The footsteps hesitated in the blackness of the place and finally a small light flashed out, picking out the bedroom door in bold relief. The wife’s bedroom.
Nash relaxed in the chair with a self-satisfied grin and let the footsteps go their way.
The newcomer poked about the bedroom in a rather noisy manner, opening drawers and peering behind things, moving the chair and bedside table, flashing the light around carelessly. The sounds came to a full and breathless stop twice. Once as the prowler paused beside the bed and caught sight of the bloodstain, and again at the door leading to the bath and opposite bedroom. Nash listened intently. There was the low, secretive rattle of the key being withdrawn from the lock, and then the snap of purse clasps. The intruder then continued on into Hodgkins’s bedroom and repeated the search, only to emerge into the living room after a long and thoughtful interval. The pleasant odour of her perfume arrived with her.
Nash unlaced his fingers from beneath his chin but didn’t stir in the comfortable chair. Before she could see him and be unduly frightened, he spoke quietly.
“Hello.”
To be continued
FOREWORD
To the secret agents working direct from Washington, Gilbert Nash was something more than an enigma. No amount of investigating and back-checking could uncover anything about him prior to March 8th, 1940 which coincidentally was the date the American National Defence Research Committee was set up. Dikty and his supervisor Cummings, members of the secret security police, had followed Nash’s back-trail to that date when he first appeared in Miami, but could uncover no further evidence of where he had come from. A number of isolated incidents apparently gave them the information that Nash knew far more about the nation’s secrets than any ordinary individual should. Was it coincidence, for instance, that found Nash installed ostensibly as a private detective in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, only a short distance from the Government’s experimental atomic plant at Oak Ridge? The fact that Nash had actually been in residence in Knoxville before Oak Ridge was started didn’t help matters—it seemed that he had expected the research station to be built at that spot! Certain other facts are also highly suspicious—the fact that Nash has odd ‘foreign’ characteristics and apparently subscribes to all scientific journals and bulletins make Dikty and Cummings the more determined to unravel the mystery.
Meanwhile, in his office as a private detective, Nash receives a visitor, Gregg Hodgkins, one of the Oak Ridge scientists, whose wife has disappeared. Hodgkins wants Nash’s assistance in tracing her and infers that Carolyn has probably obtained some vital secrets from himself. Nash, by some astute deduction, reasons that they might concern either a spaceship or a new fuel vital to such a project. He decides to take the case.
Details of this meeting between Nash and Hodgkins reach Dikty who also discovers that after leaving Nash’s office Hodgkins had made several unsuccessful attempts to purchase a gun. That night Hodgkins is found dead at his home, shot through the head, apparently a suicide, but Dikty inclines towards a murder theory. He discusses these points with Cumming’s secretary Shirley Hoffman and learns that another operator is now being assigned to the office to assist them in the deepening mystery.
Twenty-four hours after Hodgkins’ death Nash waits in the rainswept darkness outside the deceased’s house for the neighbourhood to settle down for the night. When the last light is extinguished he forces an entry and begins a careful investigation of Hodgkins’ former residence but finds little that may be of help. Sitting in the dark mentally running over the numerous points concerning the dead man he suddenly hears cautious footsteps creeping across the kitchen floor; a small light flashes across the bedroom door and the intruder enters and begins rummaging around only to emerge into the living room after a long and thoughtful pause. The pleasant odour of her perfume arrived with her. Before she could see him and be unduly frightened he spoke quietly.
VI.
Her gasp was almost a scream, half smothered and quickly choked off as she remembered where she was. Again her light stabbed out, spotlighting him in the chair.
“Better put that out,” he advised her. “Neighbours might see it.” The light stayed on him a moment or two longer and blinked off. He could not see her at all in the new blackness, and knew that she could see him but dimly.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded in fright.
“Meditating.”
She had no ready answer.
“There isn’t much to be found,” he continued in a conversational tone, striving to put her at ease. “I imagine the police have removed most of it.”
She sucked in her breath and started again. “I want to know what you are doing here!” The voice was small and strained, still frightened at discovering him.
“Don’t you believe that I would come here to meditate? The house was fairly quiet, until you came barging in. You aren’t very accomplished at housebreaking, you know—much too noisy.” He listened to her rapid breathing in the darkness. “Oh, all right, I’m here for the same reason you are. Loot.”
“I’m not looting!” she shot back.
“Searching, then.”
“Searching for what?” she demanded instantly.
“Anything,” he told her calmly. “Anything at all that may prove useful.”
“Useful? To whom?”
“To myself.”
She hesitated. “What is your interest in . . .?”
“Come now, let’s not be naive as well as noisy.”
She said nothing to that, standing across the room and peering at him. Nash locked his fingers-in his lap, his eyes becoming used to the darkness again and pinpointing her. She remained only a dim figure against the far wall. “I notice,” he said casually, “that you haven’t asked my name, who I am. You must know me.”
“I’ve seen you,” was the grudging admission.
“How nice.” He smiled. “And may I see you?”
“No! Don’t move.”
“But why not? I’m quite sure you are an attractive woman; you have an attractive voice, and I like the perfume.”
“Never mind that.” A measure of self-control was returning to her voice.
“But I do mind that. I’m fond of women.”
“I still want to know what you are doing here!”
“But I’ve already told you the truth, believe me. I was searching the place, as you have.”
“In that chair?” she asked derisively.
“I had come to the end of my search—as empty-handed as you. And so I sat down to meditate.”
“What were you meditating?”
He laughed. “I’m sorry, dear mysterious girl. My thoughts are my own, free and untaxed. You are the most inquisitive person I’ve met in a long time. Please tell me who you are?”
No.”
“Very well. I’ll find out for myself.”
There was a catch to her breath. “How . . .”
“I’ll remember your voice, your perfume,” he said chidingly. “I’ll remember the way you walk. But I shall always remember your voice, even when it has lost its overtones of fright.” He laughed again. “I’d like to become better acquainted with the voice. Oh, I’ll find you.”
“And then?” she asked.
He smiled to himself in the darkness; she really wanted to hear the answer. “It depends upon the time, and the place. I may buy you a drink or a dinner, may ask you to dance or come in and s
ee my butterfly collection. Or I may ask you to remove your hat because you’re obstructing the picture. We’ll meet,” he promised.
“Did—” She paused to rephrase the question. “Didn’t you find anything? There is nothing in the house?”
“I found a hairpin,” he acknowledged. “I have it here in my pocket. If you’d like one there are more in the vanity drawer.”
She was obviously astonished. “What in the world do you want with a hairpin?”
“Oh—keep it. Perhaps try to match it to those you wear in your hair when I find you again, perhaps put it away as a sentimental bit of nothing. I don’t know.” He peered at her dim figure, wishing he could see her face more clearly. “I may even twist it out of shape—say fashion it into the horns of a bull, hold it over a flame.” He was suddenly tense, awaiting her reaction.
The room was enveloped in silence with the two people regarding one another as duelists, each struggling to see the other better in the almost nonexistent light. The rain was a background of continual sound to their duel.
Her question was a taut whisper. “Who are you?”
“Not at all what I seem,” he answered cheerfully, now suddenly relaxed. “And if I may suggest, much like you in that respect.”
“But who are you?” she repeated insistently.
“Gilbert Nash,” Gilbert Nash said. “Hours from nine until four.” He glanced around the darkened room. “Special hours of meditation by appointment.”
“Stop being silly. You know what I mean!”
Nash shrugged, forgetting she could not see him. “You wouldn’t tell me your name. So . . .”
She said slowly, “I could make you tell.”
He peered at her, amused. “I doubt it.”
“Hodgkins visited you, didn’t he? In your office?”
“Yes, he did. And don’t bother asking the next question because I won’t tell you the answer.”
Again she said, slowly and suggestively, “I could make you tell me.”
Nash dryly repeated his doubt, and added as an afterthought, “I’m not like Hodgkins.”
There was a tight moment of silence before she continued. “I wasn’t thinking of using force.”
“I know very well what you were thinking,” Nash told her, striving to conceal the sudden amusement in his voice. “And again I say, I’m not Hodgkins.”
“You seem so damned sure of yourself!”
. “And you,” he countered, “like so many women, seem to believe that one thing will open all doors.”
“I think I could hate you.”
“It’s only a surface thought, dear girl. It’ll melt away with time; I’m really a lovable character. You can’t afford to hate me—not in your present position. But go home and have a good cry if it will help.” He sat up in the chair and stretched. “I suggest we both go home—we’ve been here far too long. The neighbours may have seen your light or a prowl car may stop by on a routine check. Neither of us wants to be found here.” He made as if to rise.
“Don’t move,” she warned quickly.
“All right,” he agreed, “not until after you leave. But please start leaving, will you? I’ve lived too long to want to be shot now.” He put out a hand. “Shake hands before you go—bosom buddies and all that?”
“No!”
She slowly edged along the wall, inching her way toward the kitchen door. Nash remained seated, following her cautious movements with a speculative gleam. The girl backed up to the door and fumbled with the door-knob; it swung open but she hesitated a moment, one hand on the knob.
“I’ll find you,” Nash called after her.
She was gone, leaving the door hanging open.
Nash left his chair and leaped across the silent room, dropping to one knee and focusing his light on the spot where she had stood for so long. A trace of dampness, of mud, but no clear impression. He moved on into the kitchen and knelt again at the door, studying the frightened woman’s muddy prints on the linoleum. They were slurred and indistinct, much like his own near by. He extinguished the light to stare through the open doorway at the rain.
“That certainly wasn’t Carolyn Hodgkins,” he said with satisfaction.
Gregg Hodgkins’s funeral the following afternoon was a small, poorly attended affair for a man who had accomplished so much, for a man who had helped hurl at least three tiny ships into space. The stonecutter was still censored.
Clustered together in a corner of the mortuary parlour were a knot of men who had known him and worked with him at Oak Ridge; his co-leader on the recent project, a group of others who had contributed their bit, the psychiatrist, and perhaps one or two others from the front office who attended because they felt it their duty—not because they had known the deceased. Scarcely a dozen in all. So much for fame, for a genuine contribution to human progress.
There was still another man who sat apart and continually glanced at his watch—Hodgkins’s doctor, Nash guessed. And there were two men who kept themselves carefully separated from each other, who tried to act as though they didn’t know the other. These two men constantly eyed every other person in the room, speculating, weighing, examining. Independently they swung around to stare at Nash as he walked in. They might as well have worn blue uniforms.
There was one other person in the room—a young woman. She sat quietly still, listening to the sermon.
Nash deliberately seated himself near her, choosing a chair slightly behind hers that he might study her much the same as the two policemen were now studying him. She did not match the description of Carolyn Hodgkins that the husband had furnished, certainly did not appear to be the forty-one that Carolyn was “by agreement,” nor was she someone who could pass as ten years younger—someone who hadn’t grown much older “than the day they were married.” This woman had not yet reached thirty. The hair was of a different colour, the height was not the same, nor the approximate weight. He could not see her face clearly and had not seen the eyes at all; she hadn’t turned around when he entered the room, hadn’t turned when he sat down behind her. She was aware of him. He knew that by the sudden rigidity of her body, by the way she held her head and kept her attention on the minister. But this was not Carolyn Hodgkins.
Who then? What other woman had an interest in Gregg Hodgkins, living or dead?
Near the end of the sermon, Nash both felt and heard someone else come into the room. Someone who took a chair near the door. It seemed to be a man, judging by the heaviness with which he seated himself, and after a few moments Nash copied the plain-clothes men by turning to look.
The government man, Dikty was staring at him.
Nash gave him the briefest of nods, which was as briefly returned, and then both of them returned their attention to the funeral proceedings. Nash contented himself by staring at the back of the girl’s neck, waiting for the long sermon to come to an end.
Afterward he stood outside the mortuary, waiting in the half-cloudy sunshine for the girl to pass by. A group of silent Oak Ridge men came out and moved down the sidewalk. Then the two plain-clothes men emerged from the door, fixed him with twin stares, and purposefully approached him. He instantly guessed that Dikty had sent them. Dikty himself appeared in the door after a few moments and stayed there, pretending not to notice him or the policemen.
“Nash?” one of the men asked.
“Yes.”
“We sort of wondered why you came down?”
“Hodgkins? Well—he was my client, for a time.”
“How long a time?”
“Something like ten or twelve hours.” Nash studied their faces, seeking a hint as to their intentions.
“What did he want with you?”
“Asked me to locate his wife.”
“That all?” the policeman asked suspiciously.
“That’s all.”
“It wasn’t nothing to do with his job?”
“Absolutely not.” Nash was emphatic.
“We could take you in for questioning y
ou know.”
Nash nodded. “Yes, you could.”
“We could have your license.”
“Yes, you could do that too.”
The two policemen were studying him now. “It don’t seem to worry you none.”
“Friend, it doesn’t bother me at all. I have a clean record, and nothing has passed between Hodgkins and myself that you could hang a complaint on. Still—I know that you could revoke the license on some excuse or other, if you decide to. But it’s not very important.”
“Whaddya mean by that crack? Without a license you can’t do business.”
“I haven’t had enough business in the last year to fill a thimble; do with the license as you please. I don’t have much use for it any more.”
The second man spoke up with a new suspicion. “Are you thinking of moving?”
“I had considered it—yes.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. North, south, east, west-—I don’t know.” He smiled blandly at the pair. “There isn’t much for me to do in Knoxville any more.”
The pair of officers lapsed into impatient silence, waiting for further questions to suggest themselves. Nash looked over their shoulders as the mortuary door opened again and the girl stepped out into the warm sunlight. She stopped just past the door to glance at Dikty, and then down the walk to where he waited with the police. Her eyes widened.
The Time Masters Page 7
