Something occurred to me. I opened the door again and called down the hall, “Mr. Maddigan!”
He turned pompously, as though not used to being called after. “Yes?”
“Could I borrow that book you were reading from?” I walked down the hall to them as he reached into his coat pocket for it.
“Certainly. Here you are, Mr. Knight. Don’t bother to return it; I shall secure another copy.”
I returned to the office and to my desk, and sat there a long time before doing anything more than getting the old brier out of my coat and relighting it. The tobacco was stale by now and tasted as if I was burning soft coal, but I didn’t have the gumption to get out a fresh pipe and load it.
Finally, I opened the top drawer and took out the two twenties and the ten and looked them over carefully before grunting my acceptance of their genuineness. I put them carefully into my battered wallet and took up the pocket book that Maddigan had given me.
I skimmed through Life on Other Worlds for about fifteen minutes, then let it drop again. I wasn’t up to wading through the astronomy gobbledygook just at present. Besides, there were a lot of other things to do if I was going to make those detailed reports look authentic enough to keep myself on the payroll of the Scylla Club.
I picked up the phone receiver and dialed the Daily Chronicle and asked for editorial. Somebody grumbled, “City desk,” and I asked for Marty Rhuling.
A new voice came on after a minute or so. “Rhuling speaking.”
“Jeb,” I told him, and cut off his flood of amiable insults. “Listen, Marty,” I said. “I’ve got a new job with an awful screwy angle. I thought maybe you could give me a little dope to begin with.”
He chortled, “You mean as a private eye? Who is there in this town far enough around the corner to hire you after the way you’ve handled that agency since Lee died?”
“Quiet,” I growled. “Don’t forget I owe you dough, sadsack.”
He pretended sudden meekness. “Fire away with the questions, old comrade-in-arms,” he said humbly. “What can I do for you, O debtor of mine?”
“Well, to begin with,” I said earnestly, “what and why is a science fiction club?”
CHAPTER TWO
I awoke in the morning from no deep dream of peace, seeing as how I’d spent the evening before at Sam’s Bar drinking up the better part of five of the fifty dollars of my retainer fee. I can’t remember dreams two minutes after opening my eyes, but I had a vague recollection of green characters scooting around my head in saucer-shaped spaceships. Evidently, no matter what Maddigan’s protests, these men from Mars were going to be green to me.
Groaning audibly, I forced myself to sit up and throw my legs over the side of the bed. A shave and a shower helped some. Not much. This was strictly guano for the condors.
I got into shorts, shirt and pants and wobbled my way to the pint-size kitchenette that opens off my combination living and bedroom. Investigation of the aged refrigerator reminded me that I’d forgotten to buy the eggs and ham I was going to treat myself to this morning. There was half a bottle of milk. I tasted it to see if it was sour. It wasn’t, so I put it on the table and got corn flakes, sugar, a soup plate and a cup and spoon from the cupboard.
I put water on to boil for coffee and then located the powdered coffee extract. In spite of years of trying, and the expense of a dozen different types of foolproof coffee pots, adding a teaspoon of extract to hot water is still the nearest I can get to making a decent cup.
After breakfast, I felt a little better. Not much. I told myself nastily that if I’d had any sense I would have refused the job. If I had, I would have been forced into looking for another way of making a living that much sooner and would have left the detective business to those who knew something about it.
As it was, the fifty bucks was going to let me hang on another week, at least. Well, only until the rent was due. I’d never be able to meet even the pittance charged by the Kroll Building, and that would be the end of Lee and Knight, Private Investigations. And good riddance.
I got my shoes and the rest of my clothes on, searched around for my battered felt, finally finding it in the bathroom where I by no means remembered leaving it, and made my way down three flights of squeaking steps to the street.
The brightness of the morning sun had me blinking and squinting. I peered up at the sky in irritation. It was going to be a hot day, plenty hot; lousy weather for a hangover. I walked down Greene Avenue, crossed Seventh Street and entered Tiny’s.
Tiny’s is one of those wedged in little magazine shops that carry all the publications you’ve ever heard of and a multitude more. About eleven feet wide, and three times that long, it’s crowded between the State Theater, the neighborhood movie house, to the west, and Fred ’n’ Beth’s Lunch to the east. As you enter, you have thirty feet of magazine racks on your right, beginning with comics and working on down through westerns, love pulps, sport pulps, digest magazines, true detectives, and on into the recesses. On your left you have about ten feet of pocket books, a popcorn outfit, and then the candy and cigarette counter. Halfway down the room, Tiny sits atop a high stool behind the counter. To his left is the cash register; nestled beside it, a box of the king size cigars he smokes and a carton of book matches.
I squeezed myself through eight or ten kids in front of the comic stands. They gave way passively, unnoticingly, and flowed back into their former positions as soon as my passage was complete. Tiny, as usual, was smiling amiably and smoking a cigar that could have been described as half as big as himself without too much exaggeration.
I was still hanging over, but good. “How can a cash customer get through those kids, Tiny?” I grumbled.
An ex-carny midget who’d got tired of being gawked at by the marks and had carefully saved himself enough money to go into business, Tiny didn’t actually care whether or not his stand made more than just enough to keep him going. The thing was that it hadn’t done him any good; they gawked at him here too. Somehow or other, it seemed to make a difference to him that he wasn’t getting paid for it.
He took his cigar from his mouth and grimaced at me. “Jeb,” he said, “you owe me a dollar eighty-five for newspapers and mags; none of them kids owe me a red cent. The kind of detective you are, I’ll probably never collect the one eighty-five. You can see I’m better off with the kids.”
I get it everywhere. Even the newsboys know I couldn’t trail an elephant through fresh fallen snow.
I brought out some money and handed him his dollar eighty-five. “All right, here you are,” I growled. “You want interest?”
We insulted each other back and forth a while, and then I asked him, “Got any science fiction magazines, Tiny?”
A grimace on Tiny’s already impossibly wizened face was something to see. He snorted, “Science fiction mags, yet. There’s getting to be as many of them as comics; all over the place, couple new ones start up every month. Since the atom bomb an’ the rockets and the flying saucers, everybody’s reading science fiction. Not that I mind, of course.”
He got down from his stool, came around the end of the counter and led me over to a section of his racks. He waved one of his miniature hands. “There you are, Jeb — science fiction — take your pick.”
There must have been a good twenty-five. I ran a hand over my chin and scowled at them. “Which is which?” I asked him.
Tiny hunched up his little shoulders. “They got science fiction mags for everybody, from kids to college perfessors.”
He picked one out and handed it to me. “Now this mag is Planet Stories. It’s pretty strong on action. The guys who read the more serious ones stick their noses up and call it space-opera; you know, wild west stuff. Only the hero isn’t a sheriff in Nevada; he’s a space-man on Jupiter. It’s got a pretty good following, though; one of the oldest mags in the field.”
He picked up another. “This here’s Startling Stories. Guess you could call it the average science fiction mag. It ain’
t as slick as one or two of the others, but it’s for — well, you might say maybe a more advanced reader than Planet.”
“All right,” I said agreeably. “I’ll take those. Which of them would the members of the most exclusive science fiction club read?”
“You mean Scylla?”
I eyed him. “How did you know?”
He waved his cigar airily. “Why, Jeb, I been a fan myself for years. Read ’em all. Wish I had time to be more active. Most of them highbrow fans read Galaxy, Mag of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and this here Astounding.” He picked up a digest-size magazine and offered it to me. “Astounding puts a lot of science in its yarns — the editor and most of the writers are engineers and technicians.”
I took up two or three more of the magazines and paid him for the works, saying casually, “Listen, Tiny, what chance do you think there is that the Martians or Venusians have figured out space travel?” I steeled myself, waiting for him to accuse me of being short some marbles. Tiny pulls no punches, especially with his friends.
The little fellow took his cigar from his mouth and pointed it at me seriously. “I’m more inclined to think they’re from Alpha Centauri or some other nearby star.”
I blinked at him. “Who?” I asked.
He said impatiently, “The aliens. I don’t think they’re from Mars or Venus; I think they’re from some other solar system. But I’m willing to argue about it. What makes you think they’re from Mars?”
I stared at him for a long moment, wondering whether he was ribbing me. His wizened little face is so wrinkled that half the time you can’t make out his expression. “Let’s drop that part of it,” I told him finally. “What makes you think there are aliens here on earth?”
He hunched his thin shoulders impatiently. “Anybody could tell you that — anybody with half a brain who’d done any looking into the matter. What do you think these flying saucers are?”
Tiny wasn’t kidding. The wrinkled little runt was dead serious.
I said, “Listen, Tiny, I’ll see you later. We’ll talk about it then. I don’t know enough now to have any opinions.”
He walked off to wait on another customer. “Okay,” he told me over his shoulder, “it was you who brung it up.”
CHAPTER THREE
I got out to the Scylla Club affair about an hour or so after it was scheduled to begin, wanting to be sure that Maddigan, or at least Shulman or Roget, was there before I made my appearance.
The house was situated in an outlying section of town known as Brentwood after old Thomas W. Brent, our fair city’s first multimillionaire, who had made his dough back when millionaires did it the hard way. Brentwood was still in there pitching, but it had really been tops thirty or so years ago. The heavy moola crowd had moved further out; the almost-rich were left behind.
The Brentwood streetcar had taken me down East First Street to Gates Avenue; from there I walked over to number 404. It wasn’t one of those gigantic old relics — mansions, they called them — but it was larger than the average family lives in any more. It looked as though it had eight or nine rooms, probably three baths; a half-acre of lawn stretched out before and a tremendous hedge-walled garden occupied the rear. There were only two other houses in the block. As I sauntered up the neatly graveled walk to the door, I could hear the noises of the party coming from the garden.
A big, clean cut, easygoing-looking guy of about thirty came to the door a minute or so after I rang. He was wearing a West Coast type sport coat, slacks and heavy sport shoes. You don’t see jackets that loud this far East. On him it looked fine. He had a smile of welcome as he opened up, but it faded when he saw that he didn’t recognize me. He waited for me to say something.
I didn’t know if he was in on the deal or not. I said, “I’m a friend of Jim Maddigan’s. This is where the Scylla Club meeting is being held, isn’t it?” I was assuming that even a pompous stuffed shirt gets James shortened to Jim among his friends.
The smile came back — he looked better that way — and he held out his hand. There was a heavy gold ring on one finger. “I’m Ross Maddigan.” There was genuine warmth in his voice. “Come on in. What was your name?”
I shook the hand; he had a firm, dry clasp. “Knight,” I told him, “Jeb Knight.”
“Jeb, like in Jeb Stuart, the Confederate general?” He led me back into the house, taking my hat and tossing it absently to the top of a pile on a hall table.
“The middle name is Custer,” I confessed. “One grandfather was in the Northern cavalry, the other in the Southern.”
A library opened off to one side of us, a large living room to the other. The hall stretched back into the rear where all the guests seemed to be congregated. The place was well done but carelessly kept up. I got the impression that Ross Maddigan didn’t give a hoot about the mundane things — at least so long as he had a hundred thousand or so in the bank.
I followed him down the hall. He said, “How could the Northern one stand the fact that your first name is Jeb?”
“He didn’t know it. Whenever he was visiting, the family called me Custer. We didn’t want to start the war over again.”
Ross Maddigan pushed open a swinging door and we entered a large kitchen. He motioned vaguely at cupboards, a tremendous refrigerator and a laden table, saying, “I never serve things at one of these Scylla Club brawls. Science fiction fen are the most informal characters you’ve ever met. I just load up the icebox with cold cuts and odds and ends, put the liquor out on the kitchen table, and everybody makes their own. You do the same, Jeb.” He reached for a glass. “You can’t make spaghetti sauce, can you?”
“No,” I told him.
He said, pointlessly as far as I was concerned, “Stan Mullen isn’t going to be here tonight.”
Two of the party, a couple of earnest-looking youngsters in their early twenties, were mixing themselves drinks and squabbling over somebody named Bradbury. All I caught was one of them insisting that his stories were good but they weren’t science fiction. The other one let him know he was crazy. They were both deadly serious about it.
“What’ll you have, Jeb?” Ross Maddigan asked me. “Bourbon, rye, Irish, Scotch, applejack …”
My eyebrows went up. “Apple? Where’d you pick it up? I haven’t seen any apple for years.”
“You can get it,” he said. “I used to drink it up in the Catskills before repeal; this store-boughten stuff isn’t as good.” He picked up the bottle and frowned at it. “It’s bonded,” he complained, “but somehow it doesn’t taste aged.”
I had some applejack with ginger ale and a twist of lemon. Nobody seems to know it any more, but it makes one of the best highballs you can wrap yourself around. I gave an inward sigh for yesteryear.
Ross mixed himself a drink, too, and we started working on them. The others left, still squabbling about Bradbury.
“I suppose you’re a relative of Jim Maddigan’s,” I said, taking the time now to size him up over the rim of my glass. He was in his early thirties, nearly six feet tall and was probably pushing two hundred, although you had to look twice to notice it. He carried his weight easily, caring no more about it than he did about his already receding hairline. Ross Maddigan took life easily, and he liked living it.
“Nephew,” he answered, and somehow I got the impression that he and his uncle weren’t particularly close. “How long have you been a fan, Jeb?”
I had to watch myself here. “Not very long,” I told him. “Got interested when atom bombs and rockets started doing things the science fiction magazines have been predicting for the past twenty years.” I wondered if twenty years was the correct figure.
“Ummm,” he said, jerking his head slightly in amused memory. “We’ve got a member of Scylla — a writer — who did up a story back in 1944 and sent it to one of the magazines. They day after the issue hit the stands two F.B.I. men came around — real tough, understand — and wanted to know who on the Manhattan Project had been shooting off his mouth. Hell, C
leve had never even heard of the Manhattan Project; he didn’t know what they were talking about.”
“Well, where’d he get the dope?” I asked.
Ross Maddigan stirred his shoulders and grinned. “Science fiction writers, just as you said, have been writing about the atom bomb for the past twenty years and more. Cleve just happened to pick an embarrassing time to write his story. Hiroshima came a few months later.”
A girl wearing swash horn-rimmed glasses came wandering in, empty tumbler in her hand. “I’m beginning to feel ignored,” she said with mock petulance.
She was somewhere short of twenty-five, with blue eyes, less than spectacular brownish hair and a figure it was hard to take your eyes from. She was probably medium-sized, but constructed so neatly that she seemed small. Her face was oval and the skin drawn a shade too tightly over the bone underneath, putting faint hollows under her cheekbones. Her lips were on the thick side, giving her somewhat of a sulky look. One eyebrow had a way of twitching slightly when she spoke, which did something to you that another woman couldn’t have accomplished with everything she had.
She saw that she didn’t know me and her eyebrows went up questioningly.
The doorbell was ringing. Ross Maddigan said, “Sorry, darling, I’ll have more time after everybody gets here.” He looked a little harassed. “Julie Sharp — Jeb Knight. See you both later,” he finished over his shoulder, and bustled back toward the front door.
I felt like saying, “Well, helloooo,” in that tone of voice, and when our eyes met, she knew it. Her eyes had just a faint hint of violet in the blue, and there was a cautious dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before,” she said conversationally.
“I’m new to fandom,” I told her, clearing the lump that had come up into my throat with a quick slug of the highball.
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 2