Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  He drummed his fingers over and over on the arm of his chair and listened to the every-day sounds of a normal day at the Homicide Bureau. A new day, a new set of problems, and why knock yourself out over something that doesn't concern you? Thing to do was go down to the corner tavern and have a couple of fast ones and watch an old movie on television. Yes sir, that's exactly what he'd do!

  He went back to the mimeographed pages.

  For the fourth time he read through Cordell's testimony of what had happened that October afternoon. And it was there that he came across the first possible break in the stone wall.

  Once more Martin Kirk went over the few lines, although by this time he could have come close to reciting them from memory. It was an excerpt from Arthur Kahler Troy's cross-examination of the defendant after Cordell's counsel, in a last desperate effort to swing the tide of a losing battle, had placed him on the stand.

  Q: (by Troy): Now, Mr. Cordell, I direct your attention to the point in your testimony at which first entered Professor Gilmore's outer office. At what time was this?

  A: At about 5:45 p.m.

  Q: Who was in the office at that time?

  A: Alma Dakin, the Professor's secretary. And a couple of students--although they were at the other end of the room and I didn't pay much attention to them.

  Q: But you did pay attention, as you call it, to Miss Dakin?

  A: Well, I spoke to her, if that's what you mean.

  Q: That's exactly what I mean, Mr. Cordell. And what was it you said to her?

  A: Something about it was too late in the day to be working so hard.

  Q: That was all?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: Remember, Mr. Cordell, you're under oath. Now I ask you again: Was that all you said to her at that time?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: It isn't possible you've forgotten some additional remark? Think carefully, please.

  A: No, sir. That's all I said. I swear it.

  Q: Very well. Now how well do you know Miss Dakin?

  A: Just to speak to.

  Q: Have you ever seen her outside Professor Gilmore's office?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Ever ask her for a date?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Did you ever have an argument with her? A discussion of any kind that may have become a bit heated?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Then to your knowledge she'd have no reason to dislike you?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Very good. Now, Mr. Cordell, I want to read to you an excerpt from the testimony given by Miss Dakin in this court. "Mr. Cordell was looking very angry when he came in. He came up to me and bent down over the desk and said so low I could hardly hear him: 'Hi, Alma. You think the Prof's through making love to my wife?'" I now ask you, Paul Cordell, isn't that what you said to Alma Dakin? Not that she was working too hard, or whatever it was you claimed to have said.

  A: No, sir. I didn't say anything like she said I did. I wouldn't insult my wife by saying such a thing to a third--

  Q: Just answer the questions, Mr. Cordell. Then you contend that Miss Dakin deliberately lied in her testimony.

  A: She was mistaken.

  Q: Oh, come now! Miss Dakin is an intelligent girl; she couldn't misunderstand or twist your words to that extent. Now could she?

  A: Then she lied. I never said anything like that.

  Q: What reason would she have for lying, Mr. Cordell? By your own statement she hardly knew you, always greeted you pleasantly on the times you came to the office, never got into any arguments with you, and never saw you outside the office. She had worked for Professor Gilmore for five or six months, has excellent references, and is well liked by her friends. Yet you're asking us to believe that she coldly and deliberately lied to get you into trouble. Is that true?

  A: All I know is she lied.

  * * * * *

  The break was there all right, Kirk thought grimly. For if Cordell was innocent, then he had told the truth during the trial. And if he had told the truth about his remark to Alma Dakin, then, automatically, Alma Dakin's testimony was untrue.

  Kirk ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of bafflement. What possible reason could Gilmore's secretary have for going out of her way to lie about Cordell's remark? Was it because she was so certain he had killed her employer that she wanted to make sure he would be punished?

  Or was it because she wanted to shield the real killer? Maybe she was a friend of Naia North's and had known the blonde girl was in Gilmore's laboratory all along. She might even have deliberately steered everyone out of her office after Cordell discovered the bodies, making it possible for Naia to slip out unseen.

  It was a slender lead, but the only one large enough to get even a fingernail grip on. He drew the phone over in front of him and began a series of calls designated to give him more information about Alma Dakin.

  A call to the University took him through a couple of secretaries before he reached the right person. Her name was Miss Slife, personnel director of all non-teaching employees. Miss Dakin? Why, of course! A lovely girl and very dependable. She had come to the University in search of a position only a day or two before Miss Collins, Professor Gilmore's previous secretary, had resigned. Since Miss Dakin's references showed that she had worked for a short time as secretary to Dr. Karney, one of the co-discoverers of the atom bomb (according to Miss Slife), she had been engaged to take Miss Collins' place. Professor Gilmore, poor man, had been very pleased with the change and everybody was happy: Miss Collins at inheriting a vary large sum of money from a relative she'd never even heard of, Miss Dakin at being able to get such a nice position, and dear Professor Gilmore at finding such a satisfactory replacement.

  When Miss Slife had run down, Kirk said, "This Dr. Karney. Why did Miss Dakin leave him?"

  The woman at the other end of the wire seemed astonished by Kirk's ignorance. "Why, I assumed everybody knew about Dr. Karney. He died of a heart attack about eight months ago."

  "What!"

  "Goodness, there's no need to shout, Mr. Kirk. He was connected with Clement University, out in California, and suffered a stroke of some kind while at work."

  Kirk thanked her dazedly and broke the connection. This, he told himself, is too much a coincidence to be a coincidence! Two prominent nuclear scientists dying suddenly within seven months of each other at opposite ends of the country--and both of them with the same secretary at the time of their deaths!

  A sudden thought sent him leafing rapidly through the trial transcript to the place where Paul Cordell had told of the disjointed phrases he claimed to have heard before he pushed into Professor Gilmore's laboratory. The words he sought seemed to stand out in letters of fire: "... three in the past five months...."

  * * * * *

  Again he caught up the telephone receiver, aware that his heart was pounding with excitement, and dialed a number.... "Bulletin? Hello; let me talk to Jerry Furness.... Jerry, this is Martin Kirk at Homicide. Look, do something for me. I want to find out how many top nuclear fission boys have died in the past four or five months.... No, no; nothing like that. Some of the boys down here were having an argument about.... Sure; I'll hold on."

  He propped the receiver between his ear and shoulder and groped for a cigar. In the office beyond the partition of his cubbyhole a woman was sobbing. Chenowich went past his open door whistling a radio commercial.

  The receiver against his ear began to vibrate. "Yeah, Jerry.... Four of 'em, hey? Let's have their names." He picked up a pencil and took down the information. "Uh-hunh! Three heart attacks and one murder. Check.... You mean all of them? Tough life, I guess.... Yeah, sure. Anytime. So long."

  He replaced the receiver with slow care and leaned back to study the list of names. Not counting the last name--Gilmore's--three world-renowned men in the field of nuclear physics had dropped dead from heart failure within the designated span of months.

  Coincidence? Maybe. But he was in no mood for coincidences. If the deat
hs of these four scientists was the result of some sinister plan, who was responsible? Some foreign power, concerned about this country's growing mastery of nuclear fission? Was it his duty to notify the FBI of his findings and let them take over from here?

  He shook his head. Too early for anything like that. He needed more evidence--evidence not to be explained away as coincidence.

  Once more Lieutenant Martin Kirk went back to analyzing the broken phrases Cordell had picked up while eavesdropping that October afternoon. Twelve times zero made no sense at all ... unless it could be the combination of a safe...? Hardly possible; no combination he'd ever heard of would read that way. The next one, then ... chained to two hundred thousand years.... Another blank; could mean anything or nothing. Next: A: ... sounded like the Professor said something like his colleges had no idea and he'd see they were warned right away.

  Kirk bit thoughtfully down on a corner of his lip. Gilmore didn't own any colleges and how do you go about warning one? Maybe the word was college, meaning the one where he had his laboratory. But actually it wasn't a college at all; it was a university. Not much difference to the man in the street, but to the Professor.... Wait a minute! Not colleges! Colleagues! It was his colleagues Gilmore had promised to warn. And the word meant men and women in the same line of work as the Professor--nuclear physics. Things, Kirk told himself with elation, were looking up!

  The business about "three in the past five months" was next, but he felt sure of what that had meant. But the last of the quotations went nowhere at all.

  "Something about taking in washing--" Under less tragic circumstances, a nonsense line. But Cordell hadn't actually heard the words clearly enough to quote them with authority. That could mean he had heard words that sounded like "taking in washing."

  Taking, baking, making, slaking, raking--the list seemed endless. "Washing" could have been the first two syllables of Washington--and Washington would be the place where the Atomic Energy Commission hung out.

  Still too hazy. He leaned back and put his feet up and attacked the three mysterious words from every conceivable angle. No dice.

  * * * * *

  Sight of the ambling figure of Patrolman Chenowich passing the office door caught his eye, reminding him that two heads were often better than one. "Hey, Frank."

  Chenowich came in. "Yeah, Lieutenant. Somethin' doin'?"

  "I'm trying to figure out a little problem," Kirk explained carelessly. "Let's say you hear a guy talking in the next room. You can't really make out the words he's saying, but right in the middle of his mumbling you hear what sounds like 'taking in washing.' Now you know that can't be right, so you try to think out what he actually did say...."

  It was obvious Chenowich had fallen off on the first curve, so completely off that Kirk didn't bother finishing what was much too involved to begin with. The patrolman was staring at him in monstrous perplexity.

  "Jeez, Lieutenant. I don't get it. 'Less the guy's goin' to open up one of these here laundries. That way he'd be takin' in washin'. But I don't know what else--"

  Kirk's feet hit the floor with a solid thump and he grabbed Chenowich's wrist with fingers that bit in like steel. "Say that again!" he shouted. "Say it just that way!"

  The patrolman recoiled in alarm. "What's got into you, Lieutenant? Say what?"

  "Taking in washing!"

  "Takin' in washin'? What for?"

  Kirk's grin threatened to split his face, "The same words," he said, "but you say them different. Only your way's the right way! Thanks, pal. Now get out of here!"

  Chenowich went. His mouth was still open and his expression still troubled, but he went.

  The last of the killer's cryptic remarks was now clear. For Kirk realized that "takin'" rhymed with words you'd never associate with "taking." "Bacon", for instance--or "Dakin"! Alma Dakin, former secretary to two widely separated, and now dead, nuclear scientists. Her name had been mentioned by the slayer of Professor Gilmore only seconds before she had clubbed the savant to death.

  But now that "taking" had come out "Dakin"--what did the rest of the phrase mean? Dakin in washing made no sense. What sounded like washing? Washing; washing ... watching? It was close; in fact nothing he could think of came closer.

  All right. Dakin in watching; no. Dakin is watching--that made sense. But Alma Dakin hadn't been watching anything at the time of the killing; she, according to Cordell, was at her desk in the outer office. That would leave Dakin was watching as the right combination. Watching for the right opportunity for murder!

  What did it mean? Well, assuming from her past record that Alma Dakin was mixed up in the deaths of two prominent men of science, it argued that she and Naia North were accomplices in a scheme to rid America of her nuclear fission experts. The nice smooth story of killing Gilmore because of unrequited love was probably as much a lie as the personal information Naia North had given Arthur Kahler Troy.

  The North girl had confessed to murdering Gilmore and Juanita Cordell. As a confessed killer she must be taken into custody and booked on suspicion of homicide. Taking her was Martin Kirk's job--and it seemed he had a contact that would lead him to her. Namely Alma Dakin.

  Lieutenant Kirk grabbed his hat and went out the door.

  Chapter V

  The address for Alma Dakin turned out to be a small three-story walk-up apartment building on a quiet residential street near the outskirts of town. At two in the afternoon hardly anyone was visible on the sidewalks and only an occasional automobile passed.

  Kirk parked his car half a block further on down and got out into the chill November air. He entered the building foyer and looked at the name plates above the twin rows of buttons. The one for Alma Dakin told him the number of her apartment was 3C.

  He pushed the button several times but without response. The foyer was very quiet at this time of day, and he could hear the faint rasp of her bell through the speaking tube.

  Kirk was on the point of shifting his thumb to the button marked SUPERINTENDENT when a sudden thought stayed his hand. It was not the kind of thought a conscientious, rule-abiding police officer would harbor for a moment. The lieutenant, however, was fully aware he had no business working on a closed case to begin with--and when you're breaking one set of rules, you might as well break them all.

  He rang four of the other bells before the lock on the inner door began to click. Pushing it open, he waited until a female voice floated down the stairs. "Who is it?"

  "Police Department, ma'am. You folks own that green Buick parked out in front?" There was no Buick, green or otherwise, along the street curbing, but Kirk figured she wouldn't know that.

  "Why, no. Officer. I can't imagine--"

  "Okay. Sorry we bothered you, lady," Kirk let the door swing into place hard enough to be heard upstairs. But this time he was on the right side of it.

  There was a moment of silence, then he caught the sound of retreating feet and a door closed. Without waiting further, the Lieutenant mounted the stairs to the third floor, his feet soundless on the carpeted treads.

  The entrance to 3C was secured by a tumbler-type lock. From an inner pocket Kirk took out a small flat leather case and a thin-edged tool from that. Working with the smooth efficiency of the expert, he loosened the door moulding near the lock and inserted the tool blade until it found the bolt. This he eased back, turned the door handle and, a moment later, was standing in a small living room tastefully furnished in modern woods.

  His first action was to enter the tiny kitchen and unbolt the door leading to the rear porch. In case Alma Dakin arrived at an inopportune moment, he could be half way down the outer steps while she was still engaged with the front door lock. Since he had pressed the moulding back into place, there would be nothing to indicate his presence.

  * * * * *

  Within ten minutes Kirk had ransacked every inch of the living room in search of something, anything, that would point to Alma Dakin as being more than a nine-to-five secretary. And while he found nothing,
no one, not even the girl who lived here, could tell that an intruder had been at work.

  The bedroom seemed even less promising at first. Dresser drawers gave up only the pleasantly personal articles of the average young woman. Miss Dakin, it turned out, was almost indecently fond of frothy undergarments and black transparent nightgowns--interesting but not at all important to the over-all problem.

  Kirk, his search completed, sat down on the edge of the bed's footboard and totaled up what he had learned. It didn't take long, for he knew absolutely no more about Alma Dakin than he had before entering her apartment. No personal papers, no letters from a yearning boy friend in the old home town, no savings or checking-account passbook. Not even a scrawled line of birthday or Christmas greetings on the fly leaves of the apartment's seven books.

  To Kirk's trained mind, the very lack of such things, the fact that Alma Dakin lived in a vacuum, was highly significant. It smacked of her having something to hide--and his already strong suspicion of her was solidified into certainty of her guilt. But certainty was a long way from rock-ribbed evidence--and that was something he must have to proceed further.

  He was ready to leave when it dawned on him that he had not yet looked under the bed. Kneeling, he pushed up the hanging edge of the green batik spread and peered into the narrow space. Nothing, not even a decent accumulation of dust. The light from the window was too faint, however, to reach a section of the floor near the footboard. Kirk climbed to his feet and attempted to shove that end to one side.

  The bed failed to move. He blinked in mild surprise and tried again. It was only by exerting almost his entire strength that he was able to shift the thing at all, and then no more than a few inches.

  He felt his pulse stir with the thrill of incipient discovery. Once he made sure nothing was anchoring the bed to the floor, he began to tap lightly against the wood in an effort to detect a possible false panel.

  Within two minutes he located an almost microscopic crack in the headboard cleverly concealed by a decorative design running along the base. He ran his fingers lightly along the carvings until they encountered a small projection which gave slightly under pressure.