“Yeah, it’s straight all right. I’m out of it, and well out of it.”
“The newspapers said the Scylla Club hired you to investigate extra-terrestrials,”
“It was a gag at first,” I told him patiently. “They were going to read my reports before the convention, just for laughs. I guess this new killing pretty well louses up the AnnConn.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and I was kind of looking forward to it for months. I don’t think I’ll attend any more of the sessions, even if they hold them.” He was staring at the ash on the cigar now. “What was it at second?”
I frowned at him.
He said, “Why did they keep you on after this first kid was killed and the gag fell flat?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, they got serious by then; they thought maybe there really were aliens — ”
“Crap,” Tiny said deliberately.
I began to snap something back, but bit it off. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said instead. “Anyway, they came to the same conclusion after the first day, so I’m clientless.”
Tiny pointed the cigar at me. “Jeb, there’s something screwy going on in the Scylla Club. There’s a good reason for those killings, a damn good one.”
Everybody wants to get in the act; everybody wants to be a detective and solve the big crime. “All right,” I told him. “If you can figure it out, let the police know. It’s driving them crazy. They can’t figure out why any of the three should be killed. Nobody profits; there isn’t any motive.”
I finished that last over my shoulder as I wedged myself through the kids on my way out.
I walked down Green Avenue to Herkimer Boulevard, crossed to the other side and waited for the bus to City Center. I got out of the bus at West First and Herkimer and walked south to the Kroll Building. It didn’t look any more attractive to me this morning than it ever did.
I went in and let a complaining Mike haul me up to the fifth floor. I unlocked the door to the office of Lee and Knight, Private Investigations, tossed my hat to the dusty windowsill and sank into the swivel chair with a sigh.
After an interval, I fished the Kaywoodie out of the top drawer and loaded it. I waited until it was well lit and drawing nicely before I turned to the papers.
Tiny had been right. I’d got an awful razzing from the rags after the Holliday case, but nothing like this. They had to have somebody to hang it on, and I was it.
The phone rang and I picked it up and said, “Yeah? Jeb Knight speaking.”
It was Marty Rhuling of the Chronicle and formerly of Army Intelligence and of the drinking team of Hermie Cain, Jeb Knight, and Marty Rhuling. He said, “Hey, Jeb, what’s this about the police commission revoking your license?”
It took a moment for that to sink in. I said finally, “First I heard about it, Marty. Where’d you get it?”
“One of the boys on the police beat. Sure you can’t tell me anything I could use, old comrade-in-arms?”
“No. No, I can’t, Marty. My clients pulled me off the case yesterday, and like I said, I haven’t heard anything about my license.”
We insulted each other back and forth a while and he hung up.
I sat there staring at my further wall and at the license that proclaimed I was a private detective. That was what it said. I probably looked as though I was thinking, but I wasn’t. My mind was as near to being a blank as a mind can get. Finally I got up from the swivel chair and reached for my hat.
I went down to the street and headed, on foot, north up West First to Lafayette, crossed the street and turned right to the Justice Building. I went in the front entrance this time, up the wide marble steps to the second floor and down the corridor to Davis’s office.
Without knocking, I twisted the knob and stepped inside. Mike Quinn was sitting there, feet on the desk, a copy of Amazing Stories in his hand.
“Oh, no,” I protested. “You too?”
He looked up and grinned shamefacedly. “Hi, Buster.” He indicated the magazine. “These stories ain’t really so bad. I’m getting tired of westerns and sports.”
“I’m surprised that with your sterling mentality you haven’t tried the comic books,” I told him. “Where’s Davis?”
He ignored the crack. “He’ll be back in a minute. Sit down, Buster. What goes?”
I took one of the battered straight chairs and sat down on it, reaching for my pipe.
“That’s what I want to know,” I told him.
Lieutenant Davis entered behind me. “Hello, Knight,” he growled. There was an edge of truculence in his voice. He walked around behind his desk and took his chair.
I said, “One of the boys on the Chronicle says my license has been revoked.” I loaded the pipe, then, remembering Davis’s asthma, stuck it in my pocket. I had the feeling that I should be sore, but somehow I wasn’t; somehow I didn’t give a damn.
Davis said, “Look, Knight. You’re probably all right as a guy. Some people figure that a private dick is a crook every time, kind of an occupational disease, like; but I never heard of your agency, back when Ken Lee was alive, or even since you took over, ever doing anything deliberately out of line. Your mistakes have probably all been honest ones.”
“All right,” I said, “I don’t need the violins.”
He leveled a pale thin finger at me. “Knight, you just aren’t cut out for this game. I don’t know how you ever got into it, but it’s not for you. Take this Holliday deal, eh? A guy hires you to come to his house because he’s afraid somebody’ll take a crack at his wife’s jewels. Why he doesn’t call the police, I don’t know. He calls you. The second night you’re there, sure enough, a second story lad turns up. Everything gets exciting and what happens? The crook gets away with the jewels and you shoot your client in the leg.”
I began to protest, but he cut me off.
“Yeah, I know,” he went on. “You’ve got your side of the story and just why everything happened the way it did, but what I just said sums it up. Okay. Now then, you get into this deal with these science fiction nuts, and what happens? Two killings and an attempted killing go on right under your nose. You get under the feet of the men the department has working on the case, you even meddle around with bodies before the medical examiner sees them. All this time, you’re taking money under false pretenses.”
“Hey, wait a minute, here,” I snapped, suddenly angry.
He shook his head emphatically. “Look, Knight. These two characters, Maddigan and Roget, hired you to check on the presence of aliens from space, eh? Nuts! You know they must have been all screwed up when they offered you that job. What sane man would hire a detective to go around tagging Martians?”
I growled, “Listen, I didn’t want to take the damn job at first.”
Mike Quinn grinned over at me. “They twist your arm, Buster?”
“Shut up, Mike.” Davis shook his head negatively at me. “You even go to the point of using your personal friendship with a homicide detail man to stick your nose into affairs that have nothing to do with you.”
I didn’t like that. They’d evidently found that Hermie Cain had given me information. I wondered how much trouble he’d gotten into.
The lieutenant was shrugging. “At any rate, Knight, you’re not cut out for this line of work. It isn’t anything personal; like I said, you’re probably a nice guy. But you don’t belong in the detective game.” He was down-pitch in voice, very sincere. “The commission voted this morning to cancel your license; you’ll probably be notified by mail today or tomorrow. There’s some kind of deal under which you can request a hearing; frankly, I suggest you drop it.”
I got to my feet. “All right, Davis,” I said. “See you again sometime.” I turned to go.
He said, “So long, Knight. Good luck, eh?”
Mike Quinn looked up at me embarrassedly, “Sorry, Buster,” he said.
“So long,” I told him.
I felt like slamming it, but I closed the door quietly behind me and stood there in the corridor fo
r a minute. Then I turned to the left and walked down to the office in which I’d seen Hermie Cain the day before.
He was there alone again, typing laboriously on an old Underwood. He looked up from it when I entered and grinned sourly at me; the grin went on and developed into the Cain yawn.
“Understand I got you into trouble, Herrn,” I began apologetically.
“Aw, it wasn’t too bad,” he said. “They raked me over the coals a little, that’s all. Shucks, they can’t do anything to me, Jeb; I gotta uncle on the commission.”
I sat down on the edge of the desk, trying to think of something to say.
He yawned elaborately and resumed his careful pounding on the typewriter. “Heard you lost your license,” he said. When I didn’t answer, he added with studied off-handedness, “As a matter of fact, Jeb, it’s probably just as well. You never did make much of a go at it.”
“I’m getting tired of everybody telling me so,” I said. “But probably you’re right at that.” I looked at the sheet he was typing. “Listen,” I protested, “you don’t have a ribbon in that typewriter.”
“Haven’t you ever seen anybody cut a mimeograph stencil before?” he asked, without taking his eyes from his work.
“Stencil?” I stared down at the sheet in his typewriter. “You mean to mimeograph you have to do one of those things for each page you want to run off?”
He yawned. “Sure, that’s right.”
Something was beginning to germinate. I said, “How many times can you use one of those stencil things?”
“Only once, what d’ya think? Once you cut a stencil, it’s used.”
“All right. Now, after you make this stencil and run off the copies you want, can you take the stencil out of the mimeograph machine and maybe use it again later on?”
“Sure, why not?” He yawned again and complained, “I gotta get more sleep nights.”
“Listen, Herm, I’ll see you later,” I told him. “I just thought of something.”
“Good enough, Jeb,” he mumbled after me as I left the office. “See you later.” He had bent back over his typewriter.
I hustled my way down the corridor to the steps and down them hurriedly and into the street. I hailed a cab, missed it, hailed another and got it. I snapped the driver the address of the Shulman home.
A little more than ten minutes later, the cab pulled up to 320 West Seventh and I got out and paid it off. The cab drove away and I stood there momentarily trying to figure out my approach. Finally I shrugged impatiently and started up the concrete walk. I’d just have to play it as it came.
I knocked on the side of the screen door and waited. It was all a carbon copy of my first visit. I could see her coming down the hallway from the kitchen toward me, her every appearance screaming mother. She was small, faded, gray; stamped with the perpetual tiredness of the proletarian housewife grown old in the perpetual search for security, in a world that has none to offer.
I said, “Good morning, Mrs. Shulman.”
She squinted against the light of the sun and her tired eyes narrowed in an effort to place me.
I said, “I’m Jeb Knight, Mrs. Shulman. I was here the other day to ask you some questions about Harry.”
She remembered. “Oh, yes. You were the one that wasn’t really a policeman.” She made no motion toward unlatching the screen.
I said nervously, “Listen, Mrs. Shulman. I wonder if I could speak to you again. Something new has developed, something that possibly, just possibly, might wind up all this.”
She sighed. “The newspaper people and the officers have been here time and again, every day since — ”
“Yes, of course,” I hurried. “Actually, Mrs. Shulman, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t wish. As they told you I’m not an officer. However, I do have something very important; something that might lead to Harry’s murderer being apprehended.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and blinked at me indecisively. It reminded me of her son.
I said, “Mrs. Shulman, do you realize the importance of the fact that all of Harry’s most recent edition of his magazine were stolen?”
“I don’t believe — ”
“Mrs. Shulman,” I pursued, “there was something in that issue that the murderer couldn’t afford to have brought to light. He killed Harry, then destroyed all copies of his magazine, even one that I had in my desk.”
She flicked the latch on the screen at last. “Come in, come in, Mr. Knight,” she said. “I don’t know what you want, but we can at least talk in comfort.”
She led the way to the living room and settled herself in the uncomfortable-appearing easy chair and folded her hands in her lap. “Very well, very well, Mr. Knight. What did you want?” There was resignation in her voice.
I settled down on the couch, hat in hand, and tried to make my voice very sincere. “Mrs. Shulman, what did Harry do with his old stencils?”
“Stencils?”
“Those sheets he had to type up to make up his magazine.”
“Oh, you mean for the mimeograph?”
“That’s right. What did he do with them?” I was bending forward toward her in my excitement.
“Why, I don’t know, Mr. Knight. I suppose that he threw them away.”
I had a sinking feeling at that, but I said, “Listen, was there ever a time when Harry ran short of copies of his magazine and had to run off some more?”
She had to think about that for a minute. “Yes I believe there was. One time he had an article which stirred up quite a controversy. He had to go back and print another fifty copies.”
My mouth was dry now. I said, “Mrs. Shulman, that means that he probably kept his stencils somewhere, filed them away.”
She said, “Well, if he did, then they’re in his files in the cellar. He never — ”
“Theyre still there? His files are still in the cellar?”
“Why, yes. I’ve never touched a thing.”
I came to my feet hurriedly. “Can’t we go see?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There were twenty of them stashed away in a large brown Kraft envelope lettered “Stencils” with the current year on it. Those for the latest run-off of Off-Trail Fantasy, the September issue, were on the top, easily distinguishable.
My hand shook as I pulled them from the envelope. I turned and looked at Mrs. Shulman. “They’re here,” I told her in triumph. “We’ve got the material our murderer went to such pains to destroy.”
She said nervously, “Perhaps I’d better call the police.”
“Not yet,” I told her. “Let me read it.” I had to give her some excuse. “Possibly there’ll be nothing of real interest to the police.”
I looked around the cellar where Harry Shulman had made his “office,” seeking a desk or table. It was fitted up almost exactly like Les Zimmer’s with the exception that Zimmer had a complete printing outfit while Harry Shulman had been limited to a mimeograph machine.
She twisted her hands indecisively. “Well, if you think so.” Then: “If you’d like we can go upstairs. The light would be better in the kitchen, I suppose.”
The light was fine right here, but I followed her back up the cellar stairs and back to her large, spotlessly clean kitchen. In its center was a white, porcelain-topped table. I pulled up one of the red kitchen chairs and began scanning the stenciled page of contents. It wasn’t too difficult to read the stencils — not as easy as a printed page, of course, but possible. It went:
Editorial
Fandom Can Be Fun, by Art Cole
This Month’s Prozines, by Es Rapp
Wish I Had Written That, by A. E. Van Heinlein
Ultimate Destiny, by Harry Shulman
Insurgentism and the NFFF, by Vernon Briney
Book Nook, reviews, by Bob McCain
Mrs. Shulman was saying something about making coffee and I grunted a thanks, but my mind was on something else. I was trying to remember what Harry had told me about his magazine out there
in the garden of Ross Maddigan’s home. He’d wanted me to read something in particular. What was it?
I looked down at the table of contents again. Unless he had written some of the other pieces under a pen-name, there could be only two items of his: the editorial and the story, Ultimate Destiny. It seemed to me that the latter was the story he’d told me about. At any rate, it was as good a piece as any with which to start.
I turned the stencil pages to it and read:
* * *
ULTIMATE DESTINY
The second officer of the Bright Star looked at me quizzically. “Well,” he said, “What do you think is the ultimate destiny of the human race?”
“Suicide,” I told him.
He smiled, almost laughed. He was one of these big fellows, happy-go-lucky in appearance and more than ordinarily satisfied with the way of life. You don’t see the type very often any more.
“How do you figure that?” he asked.
I said seriously, “One day soon, we will have realized all our ambitions and conquered our instincts. When those two points are reached, we’ll see the futility of living; we’ll end the farce, this ridiculous hoax.”
“Go on,” he said, but he was only half interested. His eye caught the two comets on his right sleeve, squinted critically; he lifted the arm to his mouth and breathed gently on the gold, then rubbed the sleeve on his left one.
“That’s all,” I said impatiently. “Man has been seeking what he misnames happiness ever since he has been man. His brain — obviously a result of a mutation nature should never have allowed — makes him the only animal capable of conceiving of such nonsense. The disillusionment will strike when he finally achieves his goal. — He’s nearing that point now.”
The second officer still smiled. “Well, at least your ideas are unique.”
That wasn’t what I was trying to put over; I’m not interested in creating a new philosophy. “No, they aren’t.” I argued. “They’re been stated a thousand times before. Take Omar, for instance; he saw the futility and committed suicide.”
He rubbed his chin and looked as though he were trying to remember his schooling. “Omar Khayyam didn’t commit suicide — did he?”
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 15