The Human Zero- The Science Fiction Stories Of Erle Stanley Gardner

by Matin Greenberg

  And then Inspector Hunter slammed down the window.

  The sickening sweet odor was still in the air, but it was not as noticeable as before.

  “Boys, take off your clothes and stand over there in the

  comer, naked as the day you were born.”

  Ramsay sneered. “Inefficient Inspector Insults Interviewer.”

  Searle added another thrust: “Police Inspector Drinking at Time of Tragedy.”

  Hunter whirled on him.

  “You’d use that? After my pulling the wires to get you in here so you’d have an exclusive?”

  “I’d use anything,” said Searle, his face still white. “The news comes first. You can’t hush this thing up, and you can’t stall it. The Star will get scooped by every paper on the street.”

  Inspector Hunter shook his head, slowly.

  “It won’t get out.”

  “Aw, hell. It’s getting out right now. There were reporters watching the house, watching the grounds. Think they heard those shots and the alarm siren without putting two and two together? They’ll have extras on the streets within an hour announcing the death, and they’ll make a pretty shrewd guess at what’s happened afterward.”

  Hunter lowered the gun slightly.

  “The department will issue flat denials. We’ll deny the death. We can’t let this get out. It would rock the city. It would start a reign of terror. This means the police are powerless.”

  “You can’t hush it up. Your denials will only get you in bad at the start, and give the other papers that much more prestige when you finally have to admit the truth.”

  Hunter shook his head.

  “This is an emergency the like of which has never faced the city before.”

  He jerked up his revolver as one in whom the last vestige of indecision has vanished.

  “Get over there and get your clothes off.”

  “Hunter Has Hysterics!” rasped Ramsay. “Intoxicated Inspector Incarnate Inefficiency!”

  “Get your clothes off!” yelled Hunter.

  There was a double knock at the door.

  His eyes squinting over the barrel of his revolver, Hunter threw open the door. Two uniformed policemen with drawn guns stood gaping on the threshold.

  “Boys, see that these men strip!”

  Nick Searle moved slowly, reluctantly.

  “You’ll strip, too, damn you,” he said, “or I’ll write an article accusing you of the murder.”

  “Examiner Evades Equal Examination,” sneered Ramsay, moving, however, toward the comer indicated by Hunter.

  “No. I’ll join you. That’s fair. That’s what I wanted these boys up here for,” said Hunter, throwing down his gun, and taking off his collar and tie as he moved to the comer.

  The police chemists found four naked men and a corpse in the room. They made a minute examination of every article in the room. They analyzed every single thing that they fancied might have played a part in the tragedy. They examined even the tobacco in the cigarettes, the paper with which they were tipped. They found nothing.

  Dawn found the men working frantically.

  It also found extras on the streets, intimating that there had been a tragedy despite the vigilance of the police. It found a crowd surging about the streets which bordered the spacious grounds of the millionaire’s mansion.

  Noon found Hunter throwing up his hands in helpless despair.

  Three o’clock found him pleading with the reporters to be reasonable and give him a break. But Searle and Ramsay, insisting upon the right of the press to print the news, were obdurate.

  They were released from custody at three fifteen.

  Searle took Swift to the Star offices. There they wrote frantically. Swift was given a rewrite man. He gave a few scientific terms covering possible causes of death, made some comment upon atmospheric poisons, and then read the proof on an article that was more wildly speculative than any thoughts he had dared to formulate or utter.

  “Celebrated Physicist Hints at Atmospheric Poisoning,” he read, then, lower down, in smaller type: “Mysterious Ray Penetrates Walls and Locked Doors. Possibility that Radio May Act as Transmitting Medium. Scientist Confirms Report that Intoxicated Inspector Delayed Transmission of News to Eager Public.”

  The cashier handed Swift a check that was three times the amount of a month’s pay at the state college.

  “We’ll want a follow-up to-morrow. You’ll get the same rates,” he said.

  “In the meantime?”

  “Do anything you want. Keep in touch with the office.”

  Swift bowed, reached for his hat.

  At that moment the telephone shrilled sharply. One of the men barked excitedly as he listened to the sounds that rasped through the receiver.

  Another reporter came in, breathless.

  “Here’s a photo of the letter,” he said, and rushed to the dark room.

  “Better stick around, Swift,” said Searle. “Hell’s to pay.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Trailing an Evil Genius

  Events of the next two hours were crowded.

  Six new letters had been mailed. Five had been to wealthy men. The sixth had been to none other than the President of the United States of America. Five of the letters contained a demand for money. The sixth letter demanded that the nation accept Zin Zandor as dictator.

  The penalty in each case for refusal was death.

  The millionaires were to begin paying tribute immediately. The government was given thirty days within which to comply with the demand. At the end of thirty days the President was to die, first of a series of martyrdoms only to be ended by surrender.

  But sheer luck had given the law a break.

  Post office employees had been instructed to note anything unusual in the mail, particularly anything unusual in the mail addressed to wealthy or prominent people.

  One Steve Roscin, a mail carrier, driving to a mail box to pick up the mail, had noticed rather a striking figure striding away from the box.

  It was a man well over six feet tall, thin, slightly stooped. The figure was muffled in an overcoat, despite the fact that the day had been oppressively warm. There was a long black beard which concealed the lower part of the face, dark glasses over the eyes, and a crush hat, pulled well down.

  But the postman had caught a good look at the right hand. It was a peculiar ring on the third finger that had caught his eye. He described the ring as being carved in some grotesque fashion in the shape of interlaced triangles of white against a background of red.

  The postman insisted that the ring was fully as large as a twenty-five cent piece, perhaps larger where it bulged out into a circle of mingled gem and design.

  At the time he had paid no great attention to the man, noting only the overcoat, the beard, and the unusual ring. But when he had opened the green box, his eye had alighted upon six letters at the top of the pile of mail.

  The uppermost letter had been addressed to the President of the United States of America. The other five letters were addressed to people of prominence in financial circles.

  The postman had acted quickly. He had slammed the mail box shut, jumped into his car and whirled about in pursuit of the strange figure.

  At the corner he was in time to see the man climb into a red roadster of speedy design, whose make the postman had been unable to determine. In the gathering dusk, the roadster had shot away from the curb and easily outdistanced the lighter car which the postman was driving.

  He had abandoned the futile pursuit, and had telephoned to headquarters at once. Experts had appeared, examined the letters for finger-prints, opened them, found their terms, and had immediately started a search for the tall man in the red roadster who wore a peculiar ring and who wrote his letters on a Remington typewriter.

  The police predicted an arrest within twenty-four hours, stating they would make a house-to-house canvass of the city if necessary.

  Arthur Swift, caught in the excitement of the investigation, remain
ed at the Star offices until nearly midnight.

  By that time the telephones were ringing constantly, giving new clews, cases of arrest of suspects. Garages were combed for red roadsters, people were asked to report any tall figure with beard and overcoat that had been seen at or about the time.

  The police adopted the theory that the beard was a disguise, that the overcoat was merely to prevent recognition, and that the man probably did not live anywhere near the place where the mail box was located, but had written the letters, then driven to some isolated section to mail them.

  By midnight there were no fewer than fifty tall suspects incarcerated at police headquarters, awaiting a complete check of their activities for the day.

  Arthur Swift caught Nick Searle for a short conference.

  “Look here, Searle, there’s one thing about this business that’s strange.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The time those letters were mailed.”

  “What of it?”

  “They must have been already written, held ready for mailing, but the mailing was to be at a certain definite time.”

  “The time?” asked Searle, smiling, rather patronizingly.

  “The time was when the person who did>the writing was certain the death of Tolliver Hemingway had taken place.”

  Searle continued to smile, the smile of calm superiority.

  “Wrong, Swift. The time was when the writer knew that the people had been advised of the death of Hemingway.”

  Swift shook his head.

  “No. You see it would have taken the letters twenty-four hours to be delivered at the very least. Therefore, had the writer been absolutely certain of Hemingway’s death, he would have mailed the letters, knowing the press would have the facts long before those letters were read by his victims.”

  The smile melted from Searle’s features.

  “By George, there’s a thought there! Then you mean the person who committed those murders wasn’t absolutely certain the murders had been committed. He only released certain agencies of destruction, knowing that they should work, but those agencies were not sufficiently certain to make him positive of their success.”

  Swift, knowing that he now held Searle’s attention, nodded.

  “That,” he said, “is one possible explanation. The other is harder to comprehend, but yet, in some respects, more logical.”

  “Shoot,” said Searle.

  “That the person who ordered the mailing of those letters was one of the persons who were in the room with Hemingway, and was, therefore, unable to communicate with his accomplices until after Inspector Hunter had released him.”

  Searle dropped into a chair, as though his knees had suddenly weakened.

  “Not that, Swift. That would make four of us suspects— and you, being of scientific training, would be the first they’d go after. They’d slam us in cells and start giving us third degrees that would make us wish we’d never been born. Why, we’ve been panning the inspector, calling him intoxicated and all that. Lord, how he’d delight in having some legitimate excuse to get us thrown in the jug and work us over.”

  Swift nodded.

  “I hadn’t thought of it from exactly that angle, but I was wondering about Ramsay.”

  “What about him?”

  “You remember I mentioned seeing something just before Hemingway’s death?”

  “That’s right, you did.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell you what that something was. It sounds incredible, but for a split fraction of a second, Ramsay’s hand vanished. The hand and the biggest part of the arm just melted into space.”

  Searle knitted his brows.

  “Listen, son, you haven’t batted around the way I have, and you don’t realize what tricks nervous strains will play on a man. They sometimes kick about the reporters being so hardboiled and calloused, but a man ain’t worth a damn as a reporter until he does get calloused. You were all worked up, and your eyes just started playing tricks on you. Even if they didn’t, how could anybody have managed to bring about the death of Hemingway without leaving any clew at all?”

  Swift was stubborn.

  “Somebody did. An4 it must have been done by unusual methods. Therefore, anything unusual—”

  Searle surrendered the point. “All right. Let’s drop around and see Ramsay. We’ll ask him what he knows about it. That’ll convince you. Ramsay’s on the square.”

  They got hats and coats, went out into the velvety midnight. They found Ramsay’s room, knocked on the door, got no answer, walked in.

  Searle turned on the light.

  Swift stood by the door.

  The click of the switch showed a scene of confusion. Drawers were pulled from the dresser. The mattress had been slit in a dozen places, and the stuffing pulled out, strewn over the floor. The bedclothes were wadded into a knot. A suitcase had been cut open. The clothes closet showed a pile of garments, the pockets pulled wrong side out.

  A letter file had been dumped in a chair, and the wind from the open window had sifted various letters about the room. All over the floor, even on the walls were drops of blood, and those blood-drops were scarcely dry.

  Searle made a wry face.

  “Another victim,” he said.

  Arthur Swift made a hurried examination of the various letters and papers while Searle was telephoning the police. Among some of the more recent letters he found a bit of paper which contained a single word: “Tonight.”

  That bit of paper was undated and unsigned, but, in the lower right hand corner was the imprint of a seal, an affair of interlaced triangles, the impression of which was visible only when the paper was held at an angle to the light.

  Swift laid the letter or note back in the pile of papers.

  “Know anything about rings?” he asked Searle.

  That individual impatiently shook his head.

  “To thunder with all that hooey. The thing that we’ve got to find out is the method of death. Then we can guard against it. And we’ve got to trace each individual victim. Imagine what it means when some individual can inflict death at will upon any certain man he may select, regardless of the precautions with which that individual is surrounded! Then he writes a letter demanding certain things of the government, threatening to take the life of the President.

  “And he can do it, too. Make no mistake about that, Swift. I’ve seen ’em come, and I’ve seen ’em go. I know the work of the fanatic and of the bluffer. But this man is different. He works too efficiently, too damned efficiently. Imagine picking a time right after midnight to bump off Hemingway! He picked the very time when everybody was the most alert. He did it to show how little he cared for us or our precautions.”

  “Maybe,” responded Swift. “But you’ve got to admit that ordinary measures get us nowhere in this case. Now there were rings made along in the fifteenth century that were known as poison rings. They were large, made especially to hold a quantity of poison, and I have a hunch such a ring figures in this case. I’m going to find out.”

  “How did the murderer get the ring in contact with Hemingway?” asked Searle.

  “Perhaps he poisoned him with a slow moving poison that was implanted in his system days before.”

  Searle grinned. “Wrong again. He gave Hemingway the option of avoiding death at any time by simply paying out money.”

  Swift made for the door.

  “Anyway, I’m going to beat it before the police arrive. After the way you’ve being panning Inspector Hunter it’ll be only a question of hours until he figures out a scheme for getting you on the inside. I don’t want to be around.”

  And he walked out, went to a nearby hotel, registered under an assumed name, took off his clothes and sank into deep slumber.

  By morning he was ready to run down his theory. He called on certain antique ring dealers and made known his wants, a poison ring of large capacity, answering a general description.

  There were five prominent dealers in such jewelry. Three of
them gave him blanks. But the fourth scratched his head, consulted his books.

  “It is possible we might get you such a ring. We sold one a little over sixty days ago to a man who makes a hobby of rings. He buys, holds for a while, then sells or trades.”

  Swift whipped out a pencil.

  “Give me his address. I’ll pay you a commission if I make a deal.”

  “Marvin is the name,” said the dealer. “I’ll give you the address in a letter of introduction.”

  Marvin was at home, genial, cordial. He was a little man with puckery eyes and perpetually smiling lips. He was hardly the type one would have picked as a murderer.

  Swift broached the subject of rings, gradually leading the way around to various poison rings.

  “I had a magnificent specimen a couple of months ago,” said the collector. “But my physician took a fancy to it and I gave it to him.”

  Art Swift nodded, as though the information were of but casual interest, talked for half an hour, purchased a small antique ring, and finally announced an obscure physical ailment which had been bothering him for some time.

  Marvin suggested a good physician.

  “Don’t know any,” remarked Swift.

  “Try mine. Dr. Cassius Zean.”

  Swift yawned.

  “Thanks, I may look him up. Well, I’ve got to be going. It’s been a pleasure to chat with you. Good morning.”

  Dr. Zean! The name filled him with curiosity. The man whose name was Zean might well have adopted a name such as Zin Zandor.

  He called a cab, went at once to the doctor’s office.

  An office girl was busy at a typewriter. Swift moved over so that he could see the make of the machine. It was an Underwood. A white-uniformed surgical nurse bustled in and out of the outer office. She had Swift fill out a card with his name, address and occupation.

  The doctor, it seemed, was in, but would see no one that day. It would be necessary to make an appointment. Art Swift made an appointment for the latter part of the week, but insisted upon an immediate interview. The nurse withdrew to take the message to the inner office. She was gone for some time. Swift felt the uncomfortable feeling which he experienced at times when he felt people were talking about him.