“American?” my friend muttered. “Blighter.”
“But, Sir Alexander,” I protested, “the man is commonly regarded as a fool, a fanatic, if not a charlatan.”
The thin gray eyebrows went up again. “By whom, Doctor? I suggest that his critics so regard him. And those who have raised our still immature science to the pedestal and cry wrath against all who do not worship. But there are many tens of thousands of persons who regard Fort as a keen brain capable of revealing the shortcomings of many of our so-called scientific beliefs.”
“I have never bothered to read him,” I said, possibly a bit snappish in tone.
My retired detective friend’s mouth worked unhappily. He said, “You have other, eh, evidence?”
The baronet motioned to his room, cluttered as it was with a thousand manuscripts, newspaper clippings, books and pamphlets. “For years I have been gathering data which in many respects duplicates that of Charles Fort. Accounts of strange sightings, both on land and sea. Accounts of strange people seen, strange animals, impossible phenomena.”
I was becoming impatient. “And you believe them from some foreign planet?”
He frowned at me. “Don’t misunderstand, Doctor. I assume no definite position as yet. But I do wish to know. Frankly, I am willing to place the greater part of my fortune at the disposal of the World Defense Society if it can be proven to me that there is danger of invasion of our planet by aliens. Thus far, the evidence presented has been insufficient to convince me.” He turned to my friend. “That is why I wish your services. I have great confidence in you. If there are aliens in London, as my associates would have it, I wish to know. If they are dangerous to our way of life, I wish to be foremost in the defense.”
He looked down at his aged body. “Unfortunately, my years prevent my services in other than a financial manner.”
I was capable of nothing beyond staring at him. Was he asking the blind to lead the blind? My friend, who I suspected of tottering along the edge of dotardism, and I, myself, for that matter, were a good decade older than he. But here he was, suggesting he hire our services because his years prevented him from activity.
However, my companion, with a thump of his cane, came suddenly to life and pushed himself to his feet with an aggressiveness that would have done him credit twenty years earlier. “I shall take the assignment, Sir Alexander.” To me, his attitude indicated that his intention was to dash out upon the moors and begin immediate search for little green men.
It was too late now. I tried to rescue something from the debris, for the sake of young Norwood. “Under one condition, Sir Alexander.”
The baronet’s eyes pierced me. “And it is?”
“We shall guarantee to investigate to the best of our abilities. However, if it is found to our satisfaction there is no evidence of such aliens, you must pledge to drop the World Defense Society and your interests in alien life forms.”
Sir Alexander sank back into his chair and remained silent for a long moment. Finally he said, his voice low, “Very well, Doctor. I trust you both.”
* * * *
There had been practically no conversation from my companion either from or to Closton Manor. He had drowsed both ways. Indeed, on the return, exhausted from his efforts, I suppose, he had snored most atrociously so that we had the compartment to ourselves. It was not until that evening when we were seated before the fire that he discussed the case—if the farce may be called a case—with me.
Over the steeple of his fingertips, which he affected when pretending still to retain his faculties, he peered at me quizzically. “What are your opinions on this matter, my good Doctor?” he asked. “I assume you have formed opinions, eh?”
If the truth must be known, I was somewhat surprised that he remembered the events of the morning. Anything out of the ordinary routine had a tendency to magnify his growing signs of senile dementia, in my professional observation.
I shrugged deprecation. “Sir Alexander seems an admirable enough man, but I am afraid he has—” I hesitated.
“Slipped around the bend? Very good, eh? His own term. Very good, eh? We used to say balmy. The blue Johnnies, the pink spiders. Slipped around the bend. Very good, heh, heh.”
“Unfortunately,” I said coolly, at his senile levity, “I feel sorry for young Norwood, his son. Frankly, I think his only recourse is to the courts, unless you are able to convince his father to forgo this fantastic hobby.”
He eyed me slyly, with what I can only call that cunning you sometimes find in those failing with age. “Doctor, I am afraid young Norwood has anticipated you.” He chuckled to himself, as though over some secret knowledge. “Thinks I’m pulling chestnuts out of the fire for him.”
“What?” I said, cutting off his prattle. My face must have mirrored my lack of understanding—if, indeed, there was understanding to be found in his maunderings.
He shook a finger at me in puerile superiority. “If that whelp attempted to have his father committed merely on the grounds that he collected books and magazine articles on a rather fanciful subject, he would be rejected by the courts, eh? However, if he could prove that his father, ah, squandered money by hiring an over-aged detective, then I submit that few courts of law would do other than turn the estate over to our young friend.” He chortled sourly. “Imagine hiring an old-timer such as myself to stalk Bug Eyed Monsters.”
“Bug Eyed Monsters?” I said.
No chuckles, and I began to suspect his moment of lucidity had passed. But then he said, cryptogrammatically, “Your reading has been neglected, Doctor.”
I got back to the point. “Then you believe that Peter Norwood is deliberately provoking his father along these lines in order to hasten the date of his inheritance?” He worked his mouth, unhappily. “Manifestly, Sir Alexander is in excellent health, considering his age. He might live another five years...”
“At least,” I muttered.
“…Which makes it understandable that young Peter might be impatient for the title and the estate.”
I became agitated at the old codger, in spite of myself. “Then, confound it, why did you accept this ridiculous case?”
My companion shrugged his bony shoulders in a petulant movement that to me accented his caducity. “Can’t you see, eh? If I had refused, the ungrateful hound would have gone elsewhere. There are private investigators in London who would gladly co-operate with him. At least I have Sir Alexander’s interests at heart.”
I suspected he was having delusions again about his abilities to perform in the manner of yesteryear. However, I merely grunted and said, “I am not too sure but that the boy is right. Perhaps his father has slipped mentally to the point where he is incapable of handling his affairs. After all—aliens from space. I ask you!”
But my aged friend had closed his eyes in either sleep or thought and so I retreated to my book.
* * * *
Approximately ten minutes later and without lifting his lids he wheezed, “Doctor, if there are aliens from space in this city, why should they have picked London, eh? Why London? Why not Moscow, Paris, Rome, New York, Tokyo, eh? Why not Tokyo?”
It had been years since I had thought him able to concentrate on one subject for so lengthy a time. I sighed, and marked my place with a finger. Usually he had drowsed off by this time of the evening, sometimes muttering in his sleep about Moriarty, or some other foe of half a century before. I said, trying to keep impatience from my voice, “Perhaps they are in those cities, too.”
He opened one eye, looked at me with a moist accusation. “No. Let us grant there are such aliens present, eh? And let us grant that they are in London.”
“Very well,” I humored him.
His wavering voice turned thoughtful. “Manifestly, they are keeping their presence here on Earth a secret for motives of their own. If this is their policy it then follows that they must limit their number, eh?”
“Why so?” I sighed, wishing to return to my tome.
“Be
cause it would be considerably more difficult to keep the presence of a hundred aliens from the attention of we Earthlings than it would be one or two. If they’re here, if they’re here, Doctor, there are but a few.”
I nodded, finding tolerant amusement in my aged friend’s mental exercises. In fact, I was quite proud of him, especially at this time of the day. “That is plausible,”
I encouraged him.
“Why then,” he muttered petulantly, “are they in London rather than elsewhere?”
I followed along with him, tolerantly. “But that is obvious. London is the largest city in the world. You might say, the capital of the world. If these extraterrestrials are investigating Earth and mankind, here would be the place to start.”
He opened his eyes fully and snorted at me. “Your patriotism overshadows your ability to appreciate statistics, Doctor. In the first instance, London is no longer the largest city. Tokyo is, and even metropolitan New York exceeds our capital.”
I began to sputter, I must admit, but he chortled what I can only describe as senile contempt of my opinions and went on. “And New York is the commercial center of the world and its largest port. Beyond that, it is Washington which has become the political center of the world. Damn Yankees.”
I was miffed at his childish know-it-all attitude. “Very well, then, you answer the question. Why should they choose London, given the ridiculously fanciful idea that such creatures exist at all?”
“Only one reason, Doctor,” he chortled, obviously inanely pleased with himself. “The British Museum.”
“I admit I don’t follow you,” I said coldly.
His rheumy eyes were once more superior. “London may not be the population leader, eh? Nor the political head. But if I were one of Sir Alexander’s BEMs...”
“BEMs?” I said.
He chortled again but went on. “...making a study of this planet, I would spend a good deal of time in the British Museum. It holds more data than any other museum or library. I submit that if there are aliens in London, investigating our customs and institutions, they are manifestly devoting considerable time to the British Museum.”
He pushed himself to his feet, yawning sleepily. “And it is there, my dear Doctor, I shall begin my investigation tomorrow.”
I suspected that by the morrow he would have forgotten the whole matter, but I humored him. “Then you plan to go through with this, to make the motions of investigating the presence of space aliens?”
“Eh? Indeed I do, Doctor.” His tone was petulant. “Pray recall, I gave my pledge to Sir Alexander.” He began toddling off toward his room, depending on his cane.
I said after him in exasperation, “Just what is a BEM?”
He cackled an inner, secret amusement. “A Bug Eyed Monster.”
* * * *
To my astonishment, I saw little of the once great detective in the next few days. In fact, such was his energy that I was prone to wonder, as I have had occasion to before, whether he had made a contact, as the Americanism has it, and found some pusher who was supplying him with a need that I had thought long since cured. Manifestly, however, he was taking his task seriously. Indeed, on two different occasions I found him leaving our rooms in disguise, once as an elderly woman, once as a professorial looking scholar. On both occasions he winked at me, but vouchsafed no explanation and no description of his supposed progress. I could but worry that my old friend, in the burden of his years, was in a fantasy of belief that this ridiculous affair was as serious as the adventures of a quarter of a century ago, and more, when his faculties were at their height.
On the fifth day, shortly after a breakfast at which he had encouraged no conversation pertinent to the case of Sir Alexander Norwood, but had sat trying to impress me by pretending to be in deep thought, he asked to borrow my exposure meter. This was a device I had acquired but recently, after having received a rather complicated German camera as a birthday gift from a near relative. I was a bit nervous about his absent-mindedly leaving the gadget somewhere, but couldn’t find it in me to refuse the old duffer.
To my relief, he returned it that night and then, before maundering off to bed, requested that if in the morning I was able that I locate Alfred, the captain of his group of street gamins which he was amused to name his Baker Street Irregulars, and have him at our rooms by noon.
At that, I could but stare blankly at the door to his bedroom through which he had just passed.
Alfred, rest his soul, had fallen in His Majesty’s service at Mons in 1915, and the balance of my friend’s Irregulars had gone their way, largely to prison, if the truth be told.
My conscience now struck me. I had allowed my companion—my ward might be the better term—to become so overwrought in his belief that he was again working on a major case, that his mind had slipped over the edge of dotardism to the point where he was now living in a complete world of fantasy. Alfred indeed.
By morning I had resolved to make an ending of the whole affair, to bring matters to a head and to wind up insisting that my companion return to the sedentary existence that we had become resigned to before the appearance of Peter Norwood.
To accomplish this, I took me to the streets, in the late morning, and accosted the first ten-or eleven-year-old I spied. He was a ragged, wise looking chap, his voice considerably more raucous even than that of his ragamuffin companions. If the truth be known, and if my memory served me correctly, he somewhat resembled the Alfred of long ago, who had, in his time, played on these very same streets.
I said, “See here, young fellow, would you like to make half a crown?”
He looked at me for a long, calculating minute. “Doing wot?” he said, his tone implying, I’ve ’eard about your type gent, I ’ave.
I refrained from giving him the back of my hand and explained what I had in mind, and after jacking up the price to three shillings he agreed.
So it was that when the retired detective appeared at noon, swinging his cane, rather than hobbling upon it, he bid me a cheery afternoon and clapped the boy on the back. He looked every bit as though he had shed twenty years in the excitement of his endeavors, and came immediately to the point.
“Alfred,” he said, “do you think you might find three or four other boys for an assignment this afternoon?”
The lad had been standing, his arms akimbo, his bright eyes flashing, before the other. Now he touched his cap and said, “I thinks so, sir. Right away, sir?”
“Right away, Alfred. Scamper now.”
Manifestly, I was taken aback. “Just a minute!” I rapped, thinking to spring my trap. I turned accusingly to the companion of my declining years. “See here, just who do you think this young chap is?”
The former detective blinked his rheumy eyes, as though it were I who had slipped over the precipice of puerility. “Why, it’s Alfred. Surely, my good Doctor, you must remember his grandfather who was so often of service to us in the old days. We have managed to become friends during my morning strolls along the street.”
I closed my eyes and counted slowly. When I reopened them, the boy was gone in a rattle of shoes upon the stairs.
“And how,” I asked, perhaps testily, “goes the investigation of the men from Mars?”
He had sunk wearily into his chair. Some of his èlan of but a moment ago dropped away and I could see him working his slack mouth. However, his thin eyebrows raised and he asked, “Why do you think them from Mars, Doctor, eh?”
His matter-of-fact inquiry unsettled me. “Really,” I said. “I was but jesting, you know.”
“Oh.” He mumbled something, in his old manner, and closed his eyes and I assumed his morning exertions had exhausted him to the point of putting him a-napping.
So, though burning with curiosity, I sat down in my own chair and took up a medical digest I had been perusing.
However, he was not asleep. Without opening his eyes he said in what I can only call the blathering tone I had become used to in the past few years, “Doctor, do you
realize how blasted difficult an alien, far in advance of our own science, could make it to detect him, eh? How blasted difficult?”
“I rather fancy he could,” I agreed, encouraging him in a way simply to find out what in the world he had been up to, but at the same time still a bit peeved over the Alfred misunderstanding.
“One chink in the armor,” he prattled. “One chink in the armor, eh?”
“A chink?” I said.
He opened his eyes, as though accusingly. “Gadgetry, Doctor. Couldn’t keep him using his gadgetry.” He closed his eyes and chuckled.
I was exasperated, I must admit. “I am not sure I follow you,” I said coldly.
This time he didn’t bother to raise his lids. “Simple deduction, Doctor. Suppose he is making records of some of the books and manuscripts, eh? In the library section of the British Museum. And to use a camera of our culture, he must carry heavy volumes a distance in order to get sufficient light. He would be tempted, sorely tempted, to use a camera or some device, of his own culture. One that would photograph in an impossibly poor light.”
“Good heavens,” I ejaculated. “You borrowed my light meter this morning!”
He chortled his senile pose of superiority for a moment, then nodded with an irritating air of accomplishment. “Doctor, there is a…ah…person daily appearing at the library. According to your light meter, and according to the most advanced works I could find on photography, there is no lens or film of such speed now manufactured that could take such photos in the light he was using.”
Before I could assimilate his words, there was a rush and a clatter on the stairs coupled with our good landlady’s indignantly raised voice; the door was thrown open without ceremony and young Alfred burst into the room followed pell-mell by a trio of grinning urchins.
The Second Mack Reynolds Megapack Page 20