He shook his head negatively. “No, of course not. This writer — and its been suggested before — mentions several alternatives. Possibly they are the survivors of an alien space ship that crashed here accidently hundreds of thousands of years ago. They weren’t completely able to adapt themselves to this planet and so degenerated until they are the unintelligent life forms we know today. But the alternative this writer liked best was that they were guinea pigs.”
“Guinea pigs?”
“That’s right. He suggested that aliens from some other world came to earth thousands of years ago, searching for possible planets for colonization. They landed and left specimens of the lower life forms of their own world here on earth. Their idea was to come back, thousands of years later, to see whether or not the spider and snake had survived. If they were able to survive, then the aliens would deduce that intelligent forms would be able to do the same.”
I added another brief shot to my coffee to strengthen it. “Why spiders and snakes?” I asked. “Why should they be aliens?”
Les Zimmer finished his coffee. “Haven’t you ever noticed that almost every other animal here on earth is repelled by the very sight of a snake, or a spider? The theory is that instinctively we know that they don’t belong; they’re alien and our flesh crawls at the sight of them.”
My pipe had gone out. I scratched a match on the underside of my chair, lit the tobacco carefully and blew out a long gust of smoke. I sat there, my eyes unseeingly resting on the white door of the refrigerator, considering what he had said thus far. He didn’t interrupt me. I said finally, “I suppose you have more of the same — that is, more of this sort of evidence.”
He nodded wordlessly.
“But no proof. Just these half-baked ideas, these — ”
“No proof stronger than such things as the flying saucers.” His tone made the words an objection.
I blew some more smoke around and tried to think, not very successfully. I said, “Was your door locked last night, Les? All of your doors?”
He said, “After I awoke this morning, I checked every door and window in the house. The only one open was that one of mine — my window, I mean. It’s at least fifteen feet to the ground.”
“Someone could have been down on the sidewalk with a ladder.” But even as I said it, I didn’t mean it. He would have been spotted by a passing car or a pedestrian too easily.
Zimmer didn’t answer me.
I took up a new thread. “Listen, Les, do you know of anyone who would want you dead?”
He didn’t get that at first. I said, “Has anybody a motive good enough to kill you?”
“Kill me?”
I was slightly exasperated. “Murder you, I mean. Listen, Les, last night somebody tried to kill you. Whether it was an alien from space, as you call them, or a good old down-to-earth human murderer, the attempt was made. It might be made again. My question is, do you know any human who might want to kill you?”
It finally sank in. He sat there wordlessly for a full minute, then got up and made us some more coffee. This time he spiked it. He sat down again and stared into his cup. Evidently this aspect of the matter hadn’t even occurred to him. I continued to draw on the brier, not interrupting. We sipped on the coffee over the next quarter of an hour. Finally he shook his head.
“No. There is no one.”
“Almost everybody has someone who’d like to see them dead. Are you going to inherit any money? Or would anyone inherit any if you died?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Did you ever steal anybody’s girl, or anything else that …?”
He shook his head.
I said, “Listen, Les, there was an attempt on your life last night. Anything is possible — maybe it was extra-terrestrials — but some things are damn improbable. Chances are, Les, that it was a human. We need a motive. Who would want to kill you; who would be better off, at least in his mind, if you were dead? Here’s an angle that may help you put your finger on the guy: he also wanted Harry Shulman out of the way. Your would-be murderer is connected with not only you, but Shulman as well. Think hard, Les; it’s your life at stake.”
Les Zimmer shook his head again.
I came to my feet. “All right. I guess that’s that.”
He stared up at me, his prominent eyes going a little wild again. “What should I do, Mr. Knight?”
“Get in touch with the police. Lieutenant Philip Davis at homicide, preferably. Tell him an attempt has been made on your life.”
“But — they wouldn’t believe my story.”
“Brother, you ain’t just a-whistlin’ Dixie they won’t believe your story. If you want to keep out of the nut factory, you’d better leave out any part about heat rays and men from space. Just stick to the facts.”
“You mean that they might send me to an asylum?” His earnest eyes were wide now.
“The authorities seem to take a dim view of people who even see flying saucers and little men; I don’t know what they’d do to someone who claimed these Martians were out to get him.”
I put my pipe back into my pocket, feeling its warmth through the cloth. “It might be a good idea, too,” I told him, “if you didn’t mention ringing me in on the situation. Davis already knows I’m working on this phase of the question; if he knew you’d spent a couple of hours telling me about it first, he might have you in a strait-jacket before you knew what was going on.”
He took me to the front door. I noticed that he went through the same rigmarole as when I’d entered. Before opening up he carefully peered through the curtain to see if the road was clear.
“Get in touch with me if anything else comes up,” I told him in parting.
He muttered something I didn’t catch.
CHAPTER TEN
It was getting to the point where I thought that if I didn’t talk to somebody at least semi-normal I’d develop a leak in my own roof. I walked down toward Montgomery Boulevard from Zimmer’s house, trying to put my finger on just who that might be. My impression of most of the characters I was coming in contact with led me to the uncomfortable feeling that I was dealing with a group of mental jitterbugs.
I stood on the corner of Montgomery, theoretically waiting for a cab, actually gazing, more or less unthinkingly, at the cars whizzing by. A Ford, a Chevvy, a Ford, a Buick, a Pontiac, a Dodge, a Nash, a Chevvy, a Plymouth, a Kaiser, some make I didn’t recognize — when I was a kid I knew them all — a Ford, a midget Crosley, a Chevvy.
A cab stopped finally, without my having hailed it. The driver stuck his head through the window and started to say, “Cab, mis …” He recognized me and finished off with, “You wouldn’t want to be going a block or two, would you?” It was my driver of the day before.
I didn’t have the gumption to growl at him. I got in the back silently.
He flipped down his flag and whined, “Where to?”
“Just a minute,” I told him; “let me think.”
“Take your time, buddy. It all adds up if we go or not.”
Finally I got my list out of my pocket and ran a finger down it indecisively. What I was doing in this business was a mystery even bigger than the one confronting me. Some investigator! Good old Jeb Custer Knight, super sleuth!
I read off an address to him and told myself I’d spend the time it’d take to get there trying to piece together some odds and ends that must make some sense if assembled correctly. They didn’t. I assembled them this way, that way, and the other way, like a kid with blocks. Perhaps I didn’t have the right odds and ends. This was strictly fertilizer for the aviary.
The cabby pulled up before the home of Ross Maddigan about a quarter of an hour later, and I piled out and paid him. He shot into low gear and was off.
I looked up at the house for a full minute, then, on a sudden intuition, went up the neatly graveled walk and, instead of continuing up the brick steps to the door, cut around the side toward the hedged garden in the rear. The hedge, in the light of day, didn’t
seem as heavy as I had remembered it. I ended up beneath the large tree whose limbs had shaded Harry Shulman’s dead body. A few of them, heavy and gnarled, extended over the hedge itself.
I could hear a typewriter clicking in the garden. Parting my way through the hedge, I stuck my head inside, coming up face to face with Ross Maddigan.
He was about ten feet away, dressed in shorts and sandals, nothing else, and was sitting before a substantial-looking card table which supported a portable typewriter. He had several different piles of paper on the table, a dictionary, another heavy book which was probably a thesaurus, and a multitude of pencils, pens, paper clips and erasers.
He said, “Hello,” his eyes widening slightly.
I grinned at him. “Didn’t want to startle you, but I thought I’d get a load of this set-up during the day. I was going to come around front and ring the bell in a minute, but when I heard your typewriter …”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Come on in, Jeb.”
I wedged myself the rest of the way through, then looked back reflectively. “It isn’t hard getting through that hedge.”
Ross came to his feet to shake hands with me. The day was hot and sultry, but his hand was still dry and firm. He admitted the hedge was no Siegfried Line. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there are even easier spots than where you came through. I think Lieutenant Davis has already considered the possibility that Harry was taken outside to be killed, then returned. Come on into the house; we’ll have a beer.”
I should have said something to the effect that I didn’t need a beer, that I’d been slopping up coffee royal for the past couple of hours, but it sounded good to me, and besides, the sun was too emphatic about things out there on the garden lawn. I could use some shade. I followed him wordlessly.
Ross Maddigan’s overgrown refrigerator was as well stocked as ever. He located two bottles of Blatz, beads of cold sweat on their sides, and put them on the table.
Ross said, “Like a sandwich? I’ve still got a lot of cold cuts left over from the party the other night. There’s ham, cheese, liverwurst, salami — ”
“All right, thanks; I could use a sandwich,” I admitted.
He went over to the cupboard and got a gigantic loaf of pumpernickel bread, a small jar of mustard and a couple of knives. He kept the conversation going while he built up the sandwiches and opened the beer.
“Julie says you saw her yesterday. How about ham and cheese, kind of a Dagwood?”
I nodded yes to both.
“I didn’t quite get it when you phoned for her address. That morning you’d turned me down when I wanted you to work on Harry’s death; then, later, you said you’d taken the case, evidently with another client.”
I was hungrily eyeing the sandwich he was making, beginning to realize that I’d been doing too much drinking the last few days and not nearly enough eating. I told him, “I didn’t take on the job of finding a murderer — not exactly, at least. Art Roget and your uncle hired me to continue the investigation into the possibilities of there being extra-terrestrials on earth. They thought Shulman might have been killed to cover over their presence.”
He finished the sandwiches, put them on saucers and slid one over to me. It must have weighed all of a pound and a half. Then he took up a can opener and with the bottle opener end popped the tops off the beer bottles. He poured the cold beer into two tall glasses, tall enough to take the full contents.
“I thought that was a gag for the convention,” he said, taking a huge bite.
I followed his example. “So did I,” I told him around the chewing, “but your uncle and Roget came around and twisted my arm. Listen, Ross, I’m in business. If they want to hire me to look for aliens from space, who am I to argue?” There was probably a defensive tone in my voice.
He was frowning, an expression out of place on his easygoing face. “I see your point,” he said slowly, “but I can’t see my uncle financing the project.”
I lifted my right shoulder in a shrug. “Usually kind of careful with his money, uh? Well, you’re right; as soon as he thought the idea over a mite he canceled it.”
Ross’s frown deepened. “How do you mean? You’re still working for him.”
“He called this morning and told me he and Art had decided to call it off as soon as my retainer is used up. I’m to work two more days. I guess when the excitement of the killing wore off, he began to see some of the more obvious angles. Besides, Zimmer went over and gave him and Roget the devil for laying you fans open to ridicule.”
He took another bite of his sandwich. “Oh, Les, eh?”
There didn’t seem to be any answer to that beyond a nod. I said, “Thing is that Les Zimmer talked your uncle out of the project last night, but he’s all keen for it this morning.”
“Les is?” Ross Maddigan was chewing industriously and with obvious relish — no wonder he weighed nearly two hundred, if he considered this just a between meals snack. His eyebrows were up questioningly.
“Yeah,” I said. “By the way, what is a heat ray? I never did find out.”
“A heat ray? I don’t know. When science fiction writers are trying to dream up some kind of gobbledygook weapon that’s used in the future or on Mars or Venus, or wherever, they sometimes call it a heat ray.”
I stopped chewing for a minute and rinsed down my mouthful of pumpernickel, cheese and ham with a swallow of the beer. I said, “Then nobody here on earth has one?”
Ross looked as though he didn’t know what this had to do with the conversation, but he said, “I think I read somewhere that the Japs had been experimenting with a heat ray during the war, but that the best they could do was kill a canary at a distance of about fifteen feet. Why?”
I took another bite of my sandwich. “Somebody took a shot at Les Zimmer with one last night. Burned the bejazus out of the wall just beyond his bed and missed him by only a few inches. Looked as though the ray were beamed right through his window.”
Ross Maddigan put his sandwich down and stared at me.
I shrugged. “That’s the way it looks, Ross. I was just over there. Don’t tell me I’m nuts; I already know it. So is everything else that’s been going on for the past few days.”
Ross finished up his glass of beer without taking his eyes from me, then got up and went over to the icebox for another couple of bottles. He opened them and put mine before me so that I could pour my own. He still looked dumbfounded.
I said, “Don’t ask me if I’m sure; I’m not sure of anything any more. I came over here because you’re the nearest thing to a sane person I’ve run into on this case — you and Julie; everybody else seems to be halfway around the corner.”
He said slowly, “Harry Shulman and now Les Zimmer.”
I nodded. “One of the things I wanted to ask you, Ross: Is there any connection between those two boys that might call for somebody wanting to kill them both? Some motive that might apply to — ”
He was already shaking his head. “They knew each other — but none too well. I think they put out a little fanzine together a few years ago. But otherwise — ”
“They didn’t work in the same office, or date the same girls or have any other connections outside science fiction?”
He still shook his head. “Harry was a fountain manager at some drug store or other; Les works in a print shop. In fact, he has a small press in his cellar; does up our programs and so forth.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“But I would say that aside from the Scylla Club and science fiction, they have practically nothing in common.”
“Except both of them were more than usually convinced that there were possibly aliens on earth today.”
Ross moved his lips, making his mouth small. “Well, Harry didn’t particularly tend in that direction, but Les certainly does.”
“Oh? I picked up the impression that Harry made quite a hobby of it. But anyway, who else around here — if anybody — thinks the same thing?”
He ha
d gone back to his sandwich again, thoughtfully now, eating absently and taking an occasional swig of the beer. “I can’t think of anyone in particular in this city; a fan named Bob Carr, out in Indianapolis, is the one who’s really gone overboard on the subject. He’s written a score of articles for the fanzines on alien life on earth. Of course — ”
Ross Maddigan had hesitated, so I prompted him. “Of course, what?”
He stirred uncomfortably. “Well, most of us have a certain amount of interest in the subject and believe in alien life to varying degrees.”
I closed my eyes and groaned, “Oh, my aching back. Not you, too!”
Ross tried a short laugh. “I said in varying degrees. For instance — ” He got to his feet and left the room for a minute to return with a book. “This is Conquest of Space by Willy Ley,” he told me. “It isn’t fiction, and Willy Ley is possibly the outstanding authority on space travel and related subjects.”
“I think Art Roget mentioned him that first day they came to my office.”
“Very possibly. At any rate, listen to this …” He leafed through pages for a minute, found his passage and read, “… We are justified in believing in life on Mars — hardy plant life. The color changes which we can see are explained most logically and most simply by assuming vegetation.” He skipped some lines, then went on, “Of terrestrial plants, lichen might survive transplanting to Mars and one may imagine that some of the desert flora of Tibet could be adapted. At any event conditions are such that life as we know it would find the going tough, but not impossible.”
“All right,” I nodded, “what’s the point?”
“The point is,” he said, closing the book and tossing it to the table, “that you don’t have to be a crackpot to believe that life exists on other planets, and possibly other star systems.”
“Listen, now, wait a minute,” I protested. “This guy’s talking about plant life, lichens, for instance; not about little green men that go around mashing people or firing heat rays at them.”
He finished the rest of the beer in his glass and poured more before answering me. Then he said, “You don’t get it, Jeb. Can’t you see that if you admit there’s any life at all, besides on the earth, you’ve admitted the greatest part of it? If plant life can exist elsewhere, then the possibility, if not the probability, is that higher life has evolved also.”
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 9
