Benjamin turned the page and began reading about the "Vision and Tragedy" of the Rev. Harlan Phlegon Bainbridge, 162?-1675. And for a while he was engrossed in his reading, but eventually his eyes began to droop, his head began to nod…
As Benjamin fell asleep, the book slipped from his hands and fell off the side of the bed. And as it fell, a slip of paper-small, yellow, with ruled lines-fluttered out of the center of the manuscript and dropped lightly to the floor. When the book landed next to it, the gust of air sent the paper floating sideways a foot or so, so that it came to rest under the bed.
CHAPTER 4
Jeremy Fletcher's room was tidy to the point of obsession. So like Jeremy, Benjamin thought. Which made the overturned chair and computer keyboard on the floor all the more surprising.
Wolfe had awakened Benjamin at the ungodly hour of 6:00 A.M., thrusting a cup of hot coffee under his nose.
"Get changed and meet me in the hall," he'd offered by way of a morning greeting. "Those leaks won't plug themselves."
Once Benjamin had washed his face and put on some fresh clothes, they'd walked down the hall and through the manse's expansive foyer-in the early morning light the mural was more visible, but Benjamin hadn't time to make out any details-and down a hallway until they stood before Jeremy's door. Wolfe was neatly dressed in a suit and tie, and showed no evidence of a hangover. He was carrying a small black briefcase in one hand.
"Haven't you already examined his room?" Benjamin had asked, sipping the coffee.
"I just glanced in yesterday, before you arrived. Then after we met… well, I decided to wait until we could examine it together, when both our impressions would be fresh."
"But I don't even know what I'm looking for."
"Exactly," Wolfe had said. "Unbiased eyes are the best detectors of fraud."
When they'd reached Jeremy's doorway, Wolfe had stopped and examined the space where the door met the jamb. Finding what he was looking for-a small, transparent piece of tape-he'd ripped it from the jamb before unlocking the door and ushering Benjamin into the room.
It was furnished almost identically to Benjamin's room: bed, nightstand, mahogany secretary-bookcase, small round tables, a cherry chifforobe-armoire. Set in front of the window in the left wall was a small mahogany Philadelphia card table, also much like the one in his room.
But upon this table was a laptop computer. And several feet in front of the table, lying on its side on a Persian throw rug, was a Chippendale chair. It was then Benjamin had noticed the detachable computer keyboard, also on the floor.
"I don't understand," Benjamin said. "If the laptop has its own keyboard, then why…?"
"Exactly," said Wolfe. "And why is it on the floor."
"So this is where he had his heart attack?" Benjamin asked. Wolfe nodded. "And who found him?"
"Another excellent question," Wolfe said, smiling. "You've a nose for this sort of thing, as I suspected. Anyway, Terrill told me it was one of the other fellows, a Mrs. Gadenhower. She was apparently bringing him some books, something about a topic they'd discussed earlier the day of the… incident."
"And then she notified Mr. Terrill?"
"She didn't have to. From what Arthur told me, close on her heels was Hauser."
"Hauser?"
"Eric Hauser. In charge of security here at the Foundation. Most providential, his timely arrival. He prevented anything from being touched. Except, of course, the body."
"And where…?"
"There's a fairly complete biology lab, with a storage freezer. Dr. Fletcher is laid out, very respectfully I might add, in there."
Benjamin frowned. "But isn't that… illegal? Shouldn't they have left his body here, for the police?"
Wolfe gave Benjamin one of his hooded, slightly disappointed looks.
"Given the Foundation's standing in the local environs, and the confidential nature of much that goes on here, Arthur assumed he would have a certain leeway in dealing with, as he so delicately called it, the 'incident.' However long is the arm of the law, the Foundation's reach is longer still."
"Well, I know the Foundation is influential, but this is a man's life. Well, a man's death."
"If you can't exercise influence over life and death, Benjamin, what good is such power?"
Benjamin had another question. "And why isn't this Hauser dealing with the investigation?"
Wolfe smiled again. "The Foundation may have some entitlement to do things in their own way and their own time, but there are limits. It's not some banana republic. Arthur understood that the government's going to want some assurances. There's a very large contract about to be finalized soon, and now's not the time for scandals."
"Who watches the watchers?"
"Something like that," said Wolfe.
"But Mr. Terrill said something about you already working for the Foundation. Isn't that-"
"That was some time ago, Benjamin," Wolfe cut him off. "Now, let's have a look around."
Wolfe stepped over to the chifforobe, opened it. There were two suits and half a dozen button-down shirts hanging neatly, another hanger with two almost identical ties, a pair of brown Florsheim shoes on the shelf. "Not exactly a bon vivant, " he said. He opened the lower drawers of the chifforobe, shuffled through small, neat stacks of underwear, white T-shirts, argyle socks.
All this time Benjamin had been staring at the laptop computer. Finally Benjamin said, "Excuse me, Mr. Wolfe-"
"Samuel," said Wolfe, still rifling the drawers.
"I don't mean to be telling you how to do your job, but all this…" He waved vaguely toward the chifforobe, the rest of Fletcher's room. "I just don't see how this relates to finding leaks."
Wolfe answered him without standing up. "My dear boy, leaks come in all shapes and sizes, but ultimately they're like pets: they tend to wind up looking a lot like their masters. First we have to complete our portrait of the good Dr. Fletcher. Or the bad Dr. Fletcher, depending on what sort of picture emerges here," and he waved about the room.
"So that is why you're here," Benjamin said half to himself. "Look, Mr. Wolfe-"
"Samuel," Wolfe insisted again.
"I may not have talked to Jeremy in a while," Benjamin said skeptically, "but I just can't imagine him being some sort of… traitor. Is there any evidence he was?"
"None whatsoever," said Wolfe, finally finished with the drawers and standing up. "In all his work for the Foundation to date, Jeremy Fletcher seems to have been meticulous, insightful, dedicated. The one word that keeps cropping up about him is 'brilliant.' "
"I know." Benjamin frowned. "So you're saying if he did breach security, such an indiscretion would be…"
"Yes?" Wolfe looked at him quizzically.
"Well, meticulous. Brilliant."
"Give the lad a hand. And ergo, any such leak will be damned difficult to spot. So, the more careful we are now, in the beginning, the less likely we are to make false assumptions later on."
Benjamin looked down at the laptop again. "Well, if we're looking for leaks, shouldn't we examine his computer?" He reached out a hand to its keyboard.
Wolfe reached over and stopped his arm.
"Fingerprints?" asked Benjamin.
"Sort of," said Wolfe.
Benjamin looked to the keyboard on the floor. "And that one, too?"
"Yes. Let's get a pristine keyboard in here before we continue."
Wolfe went to the phone next to the bed. Using his handkerchief to pick up the small black receiver, he dialed a few digits, spoke to someone for a few moments, hung up, looking a little puzzled.
"Interesting," he said. "I just spoke to someone in technical services, asked them to bring a keyboard to the room."
"Don't they have one?" asked Benjamin.
"Oh, yes, they do," said Wolfe. He looked at Benjamin. "But he complained. Wanted to know what had happened to the other two they'd sent over."
"Two?" asked Benjamin. He looked about the room again. "But there's only the one on the floor."
"As I said, interesting."
Wolfe went into the hallway, brought back the small black briefcase Benjamin had noticed earlier. As he opened the briefcase, he pointed to the windows. "If you wouldn't mind, the curtains."
As Wolfe extracted something from the briefcase, Benjamin went to the two windows and drew the curtains closed. When he turned back, he saw that Wolfe was leaning over the laptop's keyboard with a small aerosol can. He moved the can back and forth above the keys, a fine, white mist coming from the can's top. He put the can back in the briefcase, then brought out a small flashlight, but a rather strange one, with a rectangular blue plastic screen affixed over the lens.
"I thought that only worked for blood."
"The spray reacts to perspiration, not blood, but the principle is the same. Now," and Wolfe switched on the flashlight.
The laptop's keyboard reflected the black light dimly, the letters appearing as stark blue outlines against the dark keys.
"Nothing," said Wolfe, disappointed. He reached over and pressed the Power key of the laptop. There was a quiet whir as its hard drive spun up and the system messages moved across the screen. After a moment, a message appeared.
ENTER PASSWORD it read.
"Ah," said Wolfe. "The plot thickens."
At that moment there was a knock at the door. A young man was standing in the darkened doorway, a detachable computer keyboard in his hands. He looked around the room curiously. "Somebody called for this?" he asked.
"You said you'd already sent over two others?" Wolfe asked, accepting the keyboard.
"Well, yeah," the young man answered. "Dr. Fletcher said he didn't like using the laptop's. Said his wrists crimped on the edge. You know, carpel tunnel." The young man held up an arm, drooping his hand limply at the wrist.
"But he'd been using this," Wolfe pointed to the laptop, "for some time. Didn't he already have a detachable keyboard?"
"Yeah. But then yesterday afternoon he called over, said it was missing, could I bring him another one."
"That one?" Wolfe asked. He pointed to the keyboard on the floor.
"I guess so. I'd have to look at the serial number."
"All the keyboards' serial numbers are logged?" Wolfe asked.
"Computers, too. You know, Hauser-"
"Yes," interjected Wolfe. "And what time did Dr. Fletcher call you?"
"Uh, maybe three, three thirty, some time around then."
"One other question before you go. Did Dr. Fletcher's computer have access to the Internet?"
The boy smiled. "You're kidding, right?"
"Not at all," replied Wolfe coldly.
The boy looked nervous. "Sorry, I just thought everyone knew. Too much hush-hush stuff going on for just anybody to plug into the Internet. You have to put in a special request, use a special computer, one with these hardened firewalls and protocol filters and 128 encryption-"
"All right," said Wolfe, patting the young man's shoulder. "Well, thank you very much. That's all we need for now."
The techie shrugged, went off down the hall.
Wolfe went to the table, set the new keyboard carefully in front of the laptop, and plugged its USB cable into the side of the computer.
"Well, now all we need is the password." He looked to the keyboard on the floor.
"You still haven't explained why it's on the floor," said Benjamin.
"Imagine Fletcher sitting in that chair." Wolfe motioned toward the tipped-over Chippendale. "Now imagine him typing. Suddenly his left arm goes numb, his chest cramps, he jerks back, knocking over the chair… It must have been a massive coronary, to kill him so quickly. He's still gripping the side of the keyboard, and as he falls from the chair-"
"He takes the keyboard with him?" said Benjamin. "But that," he indicated the aerosol can in Wolfe's hand, "shouldn't work. If Dr. Fletcher had been using the keyboard all this time, wouldn't all the keys have fingerprints on them? How can we possibly know which ones were the password?"
"If Young Master Techie is telling the truth," said Wolfe, "and this isn't the keyboard originally registered to Dr. Fletcher, then yesterday would have been the first time he used it. And if I'm right about the most curious aspect of this entire incident, then perhaps his password was the only thing he managed to type."
"The most curious aspect?" asked Benjamin skeptically.
"Fletcher's age," Wolfe responded absentmindedly.
"His age?"
"Patience," said Wolfe, as if that answered Benjamin's question.
Wolfe hunched down over the keyboard and took the aerosol can, held it a few inches above the keyboard and, pressing the red tip down with his thumb, ran it slowly back and forth as he had with the laptop. As Wolfe shined the flashlight over the keyboard, several of the keys responded with a shiny smudge of eerie blue.
"Ah," he said. "We're in luck." He leaned back to the briefcase, took out a small spiral notepad and a felt-tip pen, handed them to Benjamin. "Write down what I dictate." Scanning the keyboard from left to right and top to bottom, Wolfe read off the glowing keys: "I, O, P, S, N."
"That's all?" Benjamin asked. "Nothing else? No numbers?"
Wolfe ran the black light over the keyboard again. "No, that appears to be all. Of course," and he switched off the flashlight, stood up, "that doesn't give us the order of the letters."
"Well, it's like a game of anagrams, isn't it," said Benjamin. He sat down on the bed, stared at the letters in the notepad. "I-O-P-S-N. Well," and he began writing combinations in the notepad, saying them out loud as he wrote them down. "Sopni, sonpi, sipno, sinpo, nospi, nopsi, nispo, nipso…"
"We're methodical, aren't we," said Wolfe.
Benjamin smiled nervously. "Frankly that's the only way I know how to do these things. The answers never jump out at me. I can't stand crossword puzzles… where was I… posni, pisno…"
Wolfe leaned over and took the notebook and pen from his hand. He wrote something, handed the pad back to Benjamin.
Benjamin read what he'd written.
"Poisn?" he asked.
"The fingerprints give us the letters, but not their order. Or their frequency. "
"So…"
"So he might have used one of these letters more than once. And if he did… say the O," Wolfe added a letter to the last word Benjamin had written, gave the pen back to him.
"Poison," Benjamin read. He laughed. "Isn't that just a little too Agatha Christie?"
Wolfe shrugged. "It's the only combination so far that's actually a word. And there's only one way to verify it."
He stepped over to the small table, switched on a banker's lamp next to the computer, and raised his hands above the new keyboard like a maestro over a piano.
"Of course, three wrong entries and the computer will lock out his account, perhaps permanently. Well, here goes." And Wolfe tapped out the word P-O-I-S-O-N on the keyboard, placed his finger over the Return key-then struck it.
INVALID ENTRY-PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD read the screen.
"That's one," said Benjamin.
Wolfe turned to the window, threw open the curtain, and stood staring out.
Benjamin moved over to the table. He looked from the keyboard to his little notepad. He began writing combinations again, and after a few more attempts sighed.
"That's really the only word that makes sense. If he didn't use a word, just those letters in some random combination that only he knew…" He began scribbling again.
Meanwhile Wolfe was still staring out the window. "Unless it wasn't his password," he said faintly, almost to himself.
"Damn!" exclaimed Benjamin. He slapped his forehead. "Idiot!"
Wolfe didn't turn. "I hardly think that's called for, I'm just speculating…"
"No, no, not you. Me. What was Jeremy's profession?"
Wolfe turned and looked at him, as though Benjamin was a very slow child, indeed. "I told you, a statistician. But what does that-"
"As you said, we know the letters, just not their order. Or their fr
equency. " Then he held the pad up to Wolfe's face. "What do you think?"
Poisson was written there.
"Why would the O be the only multiple letter?" Benjamin asked. "And what better word to choose than the name of one of the most famous statisticians of all time, Simeon-Denis Poisson."
Wolfe smiled broadly, stepped aside from the table. "Be my guest," he said.
Benjamin leaned over and slowly tapped out the letters: P-O-I-S-S-O-N. He looked at Wolfe. Wolfe shrugged. Benjamin hit the Return key.
The screen went blank for a moment-then a desktop appeared with several icons. The black-and-white picture on the desktop was of a distinguished-looking gentleman with the flat, curled hair and stiff, formal clothes of the Empire period.
"Greetings, Monsieur Poisson," said Wolfe, patting Benjamin's back.
Benjamin looked at the single icon on the desktop, a folder labeled "TEACUP-6."
"Teacup?" Benjamin turned to Wolfe. "Whatever that is, it's the only thing here."
"Well, open it."
Benjamin shrugged, double-clicked on the TEACUP-6 icon.
After a short delay, a splash screen appeared that read Text Entry, Analysis, Conversion and Utilization Program-Version 6.0.
"TEACUP 6," said Wolfe, smiling. "Fletcher was British, after all."
Benjamin was watching a small progress bar that was slowly expanding. "I remember Jeremy talking about this, back in college. A program that could convert text to a kind of mathematics. But I had no idea he'd kept with it…" And then he stopped. "I don't believe it."
Wolfe stepped over behind him. "What?"
Benjamin was pointing to the computer screen.
ENTER PASSWORD FOR TEACUP INITIALIZATION it read.
And beneath it was a small box with a cursor that was blinking steadily. Patiently.
Wolfe sighed, walked over and sat down heavily on the bed.
"Didn't Dr. Fletcher also have an office here at the Foundation?" Benjamin asked.
"Yes," said Wolfe. "I looked over it first thing I arrived. There were some books, mostly reference materials, a blackboard filled with equations. But nothing so convenient as a little Post-it note with 'Teacup password' written on it in bright red letters."
The shadow war Page 4
