“Why would he do a crazy thing like that?”
“Because he was planning to disappear.”
“Come on, you’re talking in riddles.”
“No, I’m not. If Mrs. Hornback is right about her husband stealing that money—and she has to be—he was wide open to criminal charges. And she’s just the type who would press charges. He had no intention of hanging around to face them; his plan from the beginning had to be to stockpile as much money as he could and, when his wife began to tumble to what he was doing, to split with it. And with this girl friend of his, no doubt.
“But he didn’t just want to hop a plane for somewhere; that would have made him an obvious fugitive. So he worked out a clever gimmick, or what he thought was clever anyway. He intended to vanish under mysterious circumstances so it would look like he’d met with foul play—abandon his car in an isolated spot with blood all over the front seat. It’s been done before and he knew it probably wouldn’t fool anybody but he had nothing to lose by trying.”
“O.K. This disappearing act of his was in the works for last night—which is why he stopped at the drugstore in North Beach after dinner, to buy razor blades and Band-Aids. But something happened long before he headed up to Twin Peaks that altered the shape of his plan.”
Both Eberhardt and Klein were watching me intently. Ed said, “What was that?”
“He spotted me,” I said. “I guess I’m getting old and less careful on a tail job than I used to be; either that or he just tumbled to me by accident. I don’t suppose it matters. Anyhow, he realized early in the evening that he had a tail—and it wouldn’t have taken much effort for him to figure out I was a private detective hired by his wife to get the goods on him. That was when he shifted gears from a half-clever idea to a really clever one. He’d go through with his disappearing act all right, but he’d do it in front of a witness—and under a set of contrived circumstances that were really mysterious.”
“It’s a pretty good scenario so far,” Eberhardt said. “But I’m still waiting to find out how he managed to disappear while you were sitting there watching his car.”
“He didn’t,” I said.
“There you go with the riddles again.”
“Follow me through. After he left Dewey’s Place—while he was stopped at the traffic light on Portola or when he was driving up Twin Peaks Boulevard—he used the razor blade to slice open his finger and drip blood on the seat. Then he bandaged the cut. That took care of part of the trick. The next part came when he reached the lookout.”
“There’s a screen of cypress trees along the back edge of the lookout where you turn in off the spur road. They create a blind spot for anybody still on Twin Peaks Boulevard, as I was at the time; I couldn’t see all of the lookout until after I’d turned onto the spur. As soon as Hornback came into that blind spot he jammed on his brakes and cut his headlights. I told Ben about that—seeing the brake lights flash through the trees and the headlights go dark. It didn’t strike me at the time, but when you think about it, it’s a little odd somebody would switch off his lights on a lookout like that, with a steep slope at the far end, before he stops his car.” Eberhardt said, “I think I see the rest of it coming.”
“Sure. He hit the brakes hard enough to bring the Dodge almost, but not quite, to a full stop. At the same time he shoved the transmission into Neutral, shut off the engine, and opened the door. The bulb for the dome light was defective so he didn’t have to worry about that. Then he slipped out, pushed down the lock button—a little added mystery—closed the door again, and ran a few steps into the trees where there were enough heavy shadows to hide him and conceal his escape from the area.
“Meanwhile, the car drifted forward nice and slow and came to a halt nose-up against the guard rail. I saw that much, but what I didn’t see was the brake lights flash again. As they should have if Hornback was still inside the car and stopping it in the normal way.”
“One thing,” Klein said. “What about that match flare you saw after the car was stopped?”
“That was a nice convincing touch.” I said. “When the match flamed, I naturally assumed it was Hornback lighting another cigarette. But I realize now I didn’t see anything after that—no sign of a glowing cigarette in the darkness. What really happened is this: he fired a cigarette on his way up to the lookout; I noticed a match flare then too. Before he left the car he put the smoldering butt in the ashtray along with an unused match. As soon as the hot ash burned down far enough it touched off the match. Simple as that.” Eberhardt made chewing sounds on his pipe stem. “O.K. he said, “You’ve explained the disappearance. Now explain the murder. Who killed Hornback? Not his wife?”
“No. The last place he would have gone was home and the last person he would have contacted was Mrs. Hornback. It has to be the girl friend. She would be the one who picked him up near the lookout. An argument over the money, maybe—something like that. You’ll find out eventually why she did it.”
“We won’t find out anything unless we know who we’re looking for. You got any more rabbits in your hat? Like the name of this girl friend?”
“I don’t know her name,” I said, “but I think I can tell you where to find her.”
He stared at me. “Well?”
“I followed Hornback around to a lot of places last night,” I said. “Restaurant, drugstore, newsstand for a pack of cigarette, Dewey’s Place for a couple of drinks to shore up his courage—all reasonable stops. But why did he go to the branch library? Why would a man plotting his own disappearance bother to return a couple of library books? Unless the books were just a cover, you see? Unless he really went to the library to tell someone who worked there what he was going to do and where to come pick him up.”
“A librarian?”
“Why not, Eb? Librarians aren’t the stereotypes of fiction. This one figures to be young and attractive, whoever she is. You shouldn’t have too much trouble picking out the right one.”
He kept on staring at me. Then he shook his head and said, “You know something? You’re getting to be a regular Sherlock Holmes in your old age.”
“If I am,” I said as I stood up, “you’re getting to be a regular Lestrade.”
That made him scowl. “Who the hell is Lestrade?”
The following day, while I was trying to find a better place to hang the blow-up of the 1932 Black Mask cover I keep in my office. Eberhardt called to fill in the final piece. Hornback’s girlfriend worked at the branch library, all right. Her name was Linda Fields, and she had broken down under police interrogation and confessed to the murder.
The motive behind it was stupid and childish, like a lot of motives behind crimes of passion: Hornback wanted to go to South America, and she wanted to stay in the U.S. They had argued about it on the way to her apartment, the argument had turned nasty after they arrived, Hornback had slapped her, she had picked up a butcher knife, and that was it for him. Afterward she had dragged his body back into her car, taken it to Golden Gate Park, and dumped it. What was left of the stolen money—$98,000 in cash—had been hidden in her apartment. That would make Mrs. Hornback happy—sweet lady that she was—and insure my getting paid for my services.
When Eberhardt finished telling me this, there was a long pause. “Listen,” he said, “who’s this Lestrade you mentioned yesterday?”
“That’s still bothering you, is it?”
“Who is he, damn it? Some character in one of your pulps?”
“Nope. He’s a cop in the Sherlock Holmes stories—the one Holmes keeps outwitting.”
Eberhardt made a snorting noise, called me something uncomplimentary, and banged the phone down in my ear.
Laughing to myself, I went back to the Black Mask poster. Eb was no Lestrade, of course—and I was no Sherlock Holmes. I was the next best thing though. At least to my way of thinking, and in spite of my dream.
A good old-fashioned pulp private eye.
Tomorrow’s Locked Room
ELSEWHEN
by Anthony Boucher (1911-1968)
Most of the time it would be cheating to combine a locked-room murder with a science-fictional device like a time machine, but not when it’s done by Anthony Boucher. Best known as a mystery critic and a science-fiction editor, Boucher began his career as a novelist. His Nine Times Nine, Rocket to the Morgue, and The Case of the Empty Key handle the miracle crime in a manner similar to that of his friends Carr and Rawson, but he is at most delightful in such stories as “Elsewhen” in which locked rooms are scientifically acceptable but in practice disastrous.
MY dear Agatha,” Mr. Partridge announced at the breakfast table, “I have invented the world’s first successful time machine.”
His sister showed no sign of being impressed. “I suppose this will run the electric bill up even higher,” she observed. “Have you ever stopped to consider, Harrison, what that workshop of yours costs us?”
Mr. Partridge listened meekly to the inevitable lecture. When it was over, he protested, “But, my dear, you have just listened to an announcement that no woman on earth has ever heard before. For ages man has dreamed of visiting the past and the future. Since the development of modern time-theory, he has even had some notion of how it might be accomplished. But never before in human history has anyone produced an actual working model of a time-traveling machine.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Agatha Partridge. “What good is it?”
“Its possibilities are untold.” Mr. Partridge’s pale little eyes lit up. “We can observe our pasts and perhaps even correct their errors. We can learn the secrets of the ancients. We can plot the uncharted course of the future—new conquistadors invading brave new continents of unmapped time. We can—”
“Will anyone pay money for that?”
“They will flock to me to pay it,” said Mr. Partridge smugly. His sister began to look impressed. “And how far can you travel with your time machine?”
Mr. Partridge buttered a piece of toast with absorbed concentration, but it was no use. His sister repeated the question: “How far can you go?”
“Not very far,” Mr. Partridge admitted reluctantly. “In fact,” he added hastily as he saw a more specific question forming, “hardly at all. And only one way. But remember, “he went on, gathering courage, “the Wright brothers did not cross the Atlantic in their first model. Marconi did not launch radio with a worldwide broadcast. This is only the beginning and from this seed—”
Agatha’s brief interest had completely subsided. “I thought so,” she said. “You’d still better watch the electric bill.”
It would be that way, Mr. Partridge thought, wherever he went, whomever he saw. “How far can you go?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Good day, sir.” People have no imagination. They cannot be made to see that to move along the time line with free volitional motion, unconditioned by the relentless force that pushes mankind along at the unchanging rate of—how shall one put it—one second per second—that to do this for even one little fraction of a second was as great a miracle as to zoom spectacularly ahead to 5900 A.D. He had, he could remember, felt disappointed at first himself—
The discovery had been made by accident. An experiment which he was working on—part of his long and fruitless attempt to recreate by modern scientific method the supposed results described in ancient alchemical works—had necessitated the setting up of a powerful magnetic field. And part of the apparatus within this field was a chronometer.
Mr. Partridge noted the time when he began his experiment. It was exactly fourteen seconds after nine thirty-one. And it was precisely at that moment that the tremor came. It was not a serious shock. To one who, like Mr. Partridge, had spent the past twenty years in southern California it was hardly noticeable, beyond the bother of a broken glass tube which had rolled off a table. But when he looked back at the chronometer, the dial read ten thirteen.
Time can pass quickly when you are absorbed in your work, but not so quickly as all that. Mr. Partridge looked at his pocket watch. It said nine thirty-two. Suddenly, in a space of seconds, the best chronometer available had gained forty-two minutes.
The more Mr. Partridge considered the matter, the more irresistibly one chain of logic forced itself upon him. The chronometer was accurate; therefore it had registered those forty-two minutes correctly. It had not registered them here and now; therefore the shock had jarred it to where it could register them. It had not moved in any of the three dimensions of space; therefore—
The chronometer had gone back in time forty-two minutes, and had registered those minutes in reaching the present again. Or was it only a matter of minutes? The chronometer was an eight-day one. Might it have been twelve hours and forty-two minutes? Forty-eight hours? Ninety-six? A hundred and ninety-two?
And why and how and—the dominant question in Mr. Partridge’s mind—could the same device be made to work with a living being?
He had been musing for almost five minutes. It was now nine thirty-seven, and the dial read ten eighteen. Experimenting at random, he switched off the electromagnet, waited a moment, and turned it on again. The chronometer now read eleven o’clock.
Mr. Partridge remarked that he would be damned—a curiously prophetic remark in view of the fact that this great discovery was to turn him into a murderer.
It would be fruitless to relate in detail the many experiments which Mr. Partridge eagerly performed to verify and check his discovery. They were purely empirical in nature, for Mr. Partridge was that type of inventor which is short on theory but long on gadgetry. He did frame a very rough working hypothesis—that the sudden shock had caused the magnetic field to rotate into the temporal dimension, where it set up a certain—he groped for words—a certain negative potential of entropy, which drew things backward in time. But he would leave the doubtless highly debatable theory to the academicians. What he must do was perfect the machine, render it generally usable, and then burst forth upon an astonished world as Harrison Partridge, the first time traveler. His dry little ego glowed and expanded at the prospect.
There were the experiments in artificial shock which produced synthetically the earthquake effect. There were the experiments with the white mice which proved that the journey through time was harmless to life. There were the experiments with the chronometer which established that the time traversed varied directly as the square of the power expended on the electromagnet.
But these experiments also established that the time elapsed had not been twelve hours nor any multiple thereof, but simply forty-two minutes. And with the equipment at his disposal, it was impossible for Mr. Partridge to stretch that period any further than a trifle under two hours.
This, Mr. Partridge told himself, was ridiculous. Time travel at such short range, and only to the past, entailed no possible advantages. Oh, perhaps some piddling ones— once, after the mice had convinced him that he could safely venture himself, he had a lengthy piece of calculation which he wished to finish before dinner. An hour was simply not time enough for it; so at six o’clock he moved himself back to five again, and by working two hours in the space from five to six finished his task easily by dinner time. And one evening when, in his preoccupation, he had forgotten his favorite radio quiz program until it was ending, it was simplicity itself to go back to the beginning and comfortably hear it through.
But though such trifling uses as this might be an important part of the work of the time machine once it was established—possibly the strongest commercial selling point for inexpensive home sets—they were not spectacular or startling enough to make the reputation of the machine and—more important—the reputation of Harrison Partridge.
The Great Harrison Partridge would have untold wealth. He could pension off his sister Agatha and never have to see her again. He would have untold prestige and glamour, despite his fat and his baldness, and the beautiful and aloof Faith Preston would fall into his arms like a ripe plum. He would—
It was while he was indulging in one of these d
reams of power that Faith Preston herself entered his workshop. She was wearing a white sports dress and looking so fresh and immaculate that the whole room seemed to glow with her presence. She was all the youth and loveliness that had passed Mr. Partridge by. and his pulse galloped at her entrance.
“I came out here before I saw your sister,’’ she said. Her voice was as cool and bright as her dress. “I wanted you to be the first to know. Simon and I are going to be married next month.”
Mr. Partridge never remembered what was said after that. He imagined that she made her usual comments about the shocking disarray of his shop and her usual polite inquiries as to his current researches. He imagined that he offered the conventional good wishes and extended his congratulations, too, to that damned young whippersnapper Simon Ash. But all his thoughts were that he wanted her and needed her and that the great, the irresistible Harrison Partridge must come into being before next month.
Money. That was it. Money. With money he could build the tremendous machinery necessary to carry a load of power—and money was needed for that power, too—that would produce truly impressive results. To travel back even so much as a quarter of a century would be enough to dazzle the world. To appear at the Versailles peace conference, say, and expound to the delegates the inevitable results of their too lenient—or too strict?—terms. Or with unlimited money to course down the centuries, down the millennia, bringing back lost arts, forgotten secrets—
Money—
“Hm-m-m!” said Agatha. “Still mooning after that girl? Don’t be an old fool.”
He had not seen Agatha come in. He did not quite see her now. He saw a sort of vision of a cornucopia that would give him money that would give him the apparatus that would give him his time machine that would give him success that would give him Faith.
“If you must moon instead of working—if indeed you call this work—you might at least turn off a few switches,” Agatha snapped. “Do you think we’re made of money?”
Death Locked In Page 56
