6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction

by Edited by Groff Conklin

  “May I see the picture?”

  “Certainly.” Voisier took out a fine-tooled Moroccan wallet and leafed through it. He pulled out a four-by-five print and handed it to her.

  “It is Robin,” she said instantly, shakily; and then she pored over the picture, her eyes tearing down into it. A slight sound from Voisier made her look up; he was regarding her with a quizzical grin. She went back to the picture.

  It was Robin, all right; and he stood before a flat table obviously in a loft which was converted to a meeting hall. He was half-leaning against the table, and his head and one arm were raised, and his face was turned to the right of the camera.

  Yes, it was Robin, all right; but Robin subtly changed. His features were—was it older? They were the features of a young man; but there was a set of purpose about the profile that was unfamiliar to her. Two slightly out-of-focus faces in the background, watching him with something approaching raptness, added to the completely authoritative, unselfconscious pose of the speaker. And Peg knew that from that picture alone, something within her would never again let her speak of Robin as “that child.” It was a jarring realization, for “Robin” and “Childishness” were all but inseparable associations in her mind.

  She became conscious of Voisier’s long white hand hovering in front of her. She looked up and clutched the picture. “You want it back?”

  “I’d… oh, I have the negative. Go ahead.” The quizzical smile appeared again.

  ~ * ~

  Peg slipped the picture into her pocketbook, closed it tightly, and only when she felt Voisier’s amused eyes on her hands did she relax her grip on the clasp. She said, “How do you think I can help you locate him?”

  Voisier put the tips of his fingers together and eyed her over them. “In that book of yours,” he said, indicating the thick binder of prognosis carbons, “you probably have information which would help us to predict at least what sort of surroundings Robin English would find for himself. I know what businesses he’s in, and pretty much how he’s conducting them. Certainly we could draw some pretty shrewd conclusions.” He paused, and looked thoughtfully at the second joints of his fingers, one after the other. “All I have to do is see him once. Just once,” he said as if to himself. When I do, I can find out where he is living, what he is doing every hour, where he is liable to str… ah… jump next.”

  “You almost said ‘where he will strike next,’ “ Peg said.

  “Did I? I didn’t know. That’s ridiculous, of course.”

  “I suppose it is,” she said slowly, watching his face. “Mr. Voisier, you have a remarkably easy way about you.”

  “I? Thank you.”

  “You’re easy to talk with, and you talk easily. You divert the conversation to your chosen ways so very easily. You have still not told me why you want to locate Robin English.”

  “Everyone wants to know where Robin English is. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I doubt, somehow, that you are motivated by intellectual curiosity. I don’t think you want to produce another play of his, particularly, or sell a story to the press and scoop the town, or—obviously not this—give him pointers on his new business ventures. I hate to be blunt with anyone,” she said with a sudden rush of warmth, “but I must ask you—what are you after?”

  He spread his hands. “I like the boy. Brilliant as he is, he is getting himself into a little hot water with certain of the interests with which he is competing. In the business world, as in the world of nations, there is room enough for everybody, providing everybody will co-operate. It is impossible to co-operate with a man who cannot be reached.”

  “It is impossible to retaliate, also.”

  Voisier held up a deploring hand. “Retaliate is too strong a term. Active as he is, it is inconceivable that he can keep himself hidden much longer. It is infinitely more desirable that I get to him before any of the others—I who have demonstrated so conclusively that I have his interests at heart. I like the boy.”

  “You like the boy.” The picture of Robin in the union hall rose before her eyes. That was no boy. “Mr. Voisier, you are telling me that he is in danger, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “He is playing a dangerous game.”

  “Dangerous game? Danger from what?”

  “I have not made up a roster, doctor.”

  She stared at him. “Mr. Voisier—just what business are you in?”

  “I’m a producer. Surely you know that.”

  “Yes. I have just remembered that I heard you once mentioned in connection with the trucking business, and again, there was something to do with drugs—”

  “You have a proclivity,” said Voisier casually, “of connecting yourself, in one way or another, with remarkable people. I, like Robin English, am a man of some diversification.”

  She sat quietly for a moment, and thought. As Voisier had predicted, little pieces were beginning to fit here and there. Robin’s progress had been so carefully charted, and prognosis made in such detail, that the information Voisier had given her was highly indicative. If she could talk it over with Mel—

  “I can’t piece all this together on the spot,” she said.

  “Why don’t you get in touch with your associate, Dr. Warfield?”

  “You must be psychic,” she said wryly. “Let me phone him.”

  Without seeming to move quickly, Voisier was on his feet and assisting her out of the chair before she knew she was moving. “By all means,” he said. “And if you can impress the urgency of the matter on him, it will be to Robin’s benefit.”

  “I’ll see,” she said.

  She went to the phone booth and called, and Mel was out, and when she returned to the table Voisier was gone. So was his limousine. So was Robin’s case history.

  ~ * ~

  “Mel, I don’t know how I could have been such a fantastic idiot,” she said brokenly.

  She was in his office, hunched up in a big wing chair, and for the first time in years looking small and childish and frightened.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Peg,” said Warfield gently. “No one would expect that kind of prank from a man like that.”

  “It w-was awful,” she almost whispered. “He made such a fool of me! I called the waiter immediately, of course, and he acted surprised to see me at all. He absolutely denied having seen such a thing as that case book at all. So did the head waiter. So did the doorman. They simply looked at me as if I were crazy, exchanging wondering glances at each other in between times. Mel… Mel, I don’t like that man, that Voisier!”

  “I wouldn’t wonder.”

  “No—aside from that slick little piece of larceny. There’s something evil about him.”

  “That’s an understatement, if ever I heard one,” Mel said. “I don’t know much about that man—no one does—but the things I know aren’t too good. I wonder if you knew that Chickering Chemical was his?”

  “That drug firm that was peddling hashish as a tonic?”

  “Not a tonic. A facial—mud pack, I think it was. It didn’t harm the skin. Didn’t do it any good, either. It was sold in small and adulterated quantities at a fantastic price, but it was hashish all right.”

  “But all the officers of that company are in jail?”

  “All they could get anything on.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “One of their lab assistants went to pharmaceutical school with me. Silly fool, he was, but a very likable character. He could be bought, and he was. He was paid well, and he didn’t care. I did what I could to help him when the whole mess happened, but he was in too deep. He had no cause to lie to me, and he told me that Voisier was the man behind the whole rotten deal.”

  “Why didn’t he give some evidence against Voisier?”

  “No evidence. Not a scrap. Voisier’s much too clever to leave loose ends around. Witness the trick he pulled on you. And besides—my imbecile of a friend rather admires him.”

  “Admires him—and Voisier got him into
the penitentiary?”

  “He blames only himself. And it seems that Voisier has a certain likable something about him—”

  Peg thought of that saturnine face, and the compelling eyes of the man. She remembered his tactile glance, and the incredible flexibility of his voice. “Oh.” She shook herself. “I can’t afford the luxury of sitting here and saying how awful it all is,” she said firmly, putting away her handkerchief. “What are we going to do?”

  “Why do anything? Robin English is no longer our responsibility, if it’s Robin you’re worried about. As far as the book is concerned, I have the original, so that’s a small loss.”

  “When does your responsibility to a person end?” she demanded hotly.

  “That depends,” he said, looking at the ceiling, “on what the person in question means to you. If it’s a patient, and that patient, of sound mind, decides to go to another doctor or to stop treatment altogether, there is no law or ethic which demands that I try to hold him. If, on the other hand, the person is a… well, of personal interest, it’s a different matter.”

  “And you feel that Robin can look out for himself?”

  “He’s demonstrated that pretty well so far. He must include self-preservation and the ability to act on it among his other talents.”

  “Mel—this isn’t like you!”

  “Isn’t it, though!”

  “Mel!” she cried, shocked, “If it weren’t for us he wouldn’t be in this trouble! He’s hooked up with Voisier in some way, and—”

  Mel put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back in her chair. He looked at her somberly and then sighed. “Peg,” he said finally, “I’ve got to say this. I deeply regret the day I ever set eyes on Robin English. You haven’t been yourself since the day you met him.”

  She thought of the extraordinary statement Robin had made at tea that day, about Mel Warfield’s desire to kill him. She looked up at Warfield with horror in her face.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You’re all tangled up in your emotions, and you can’t think straight. You think Robin’s mixed up with Voisier in some business way. Isn’t it obvious what Robin is doing? You know that Voisier is mixed up in a dozen different businesses, two-thirds of which are shady in some way or another. You were told by Voisier himself that Robin is engaged in some of these same fields. I think you’ll find that Robin is engaged in all of them. I think that if you are fool enough to mix yourself into anything this big and this dirty, you’ll discover that Robin is out to undercut Voisier in everything the man is doing.”

  “Why? Why on earth should he do that?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Probably because he recognizes Voisier as his own brand of genius, with many years’ start on him. Without doubt he feels crushed by Voisier—feels that the world isn’t big enough for both of them. The ‘why’ of it isn’t important. The fact remains that if he is not doing such a fantastic thing, he isn’t in any danger and you needn’t worry about him. If he is, then he must be outdoing Voisier on the dirtiest of his rackets.”

  “No, Mel—no! Robin wouldn’t do that!”

  “Someone is. How many new addiction cases has your hospital admitted in the past three months?”

  “Well, there is a decided upswing, but what has that—”

  “Robin could be responsible. It would have to be a one-source deal—someone previously unknown, without a record that can be checked, with a tremendous organizing ability and personal compulsion, and a lot of scientific skill. Most of the drugs found on these poor devils are synthetic.”

  “But Robin never did an evil thing in his life!”

  “He has done many things recently he never did in his life. I tell you, Peg, the responsibility I feel in this matter is a far greater one than anything that could happen to Robin English. If I’m right in all this, I have been instrumental in loosing something rather terrible in the world. And if I’m right and he’s tackling Voisier by playing the man’s own game, the odds are pretty strong that Voisier’s too big for him. In which case—good riddance.” He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Peg. Truly I am. I’ve been going round and round in smaller and smaller circles over this thing, and I’ve had enough.”

  ~ * ~

  Peg was feeling absolutely bewildered. “But I have only just told you about Voisier and this—”

  “I’ve known about it for weeks, Peg. Let the thing take its course.”

  She rose, trembling. “You’re wrong, Mel,” she whispered. “You’ve got to be wrong.”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said sadly. “I sincerely wish I were.”

  “I’ve got to see him.”

  “No, Peg! He might… he… can’t you see that he’s turned into a man who takes what he wants?”

  “Does that make a difference?” Peg asked in a strange voice. “I can’t let this happen to him. I’m going to find out where he is and see him. I’m responsible for this whole horrible thing and so are you. But through your stupid mulish jealousy you’ve argued yourself into blaming him!”

  Warfield went white. “Responsible? He had the seeds of this in him all along. He simply never had the courage to do an honestly evil thing until we so generously matured him. Maturity is a strange thing, Peg. Like other riches, it is dangerous in unskilled hands. It isn’t something that can be achieved all in a lump. We gave him a kind of maturity which gathered all the loose threads of his personality into something monolinear—something productive. But we didn’t give him the power to use the years of experience he had had before we got to him. He’s a bulldozer with a skilled idiot at the controls. But he is no longer a glandular case. If you want me to change my attitude at all, prove to me that he is still suffering from imbalance of any kind. That’s in my field. That I can handle.”

  “I’ll have to see him.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Nobody does. But I’ll find him.”

  “I know where he is. But I will certainly not tell you.”

  “You know?”

  “He came to see me four months ago.” Warfield wet his lips. “He—had a word or two to say about you. He was apparently suffering from some sort of a delusion. He explained carefully to me that he had no use for you, that there was no longer any reason for me to want to… to kill him, and… you don’t seem surprised.”

  “He told me about that the last time I saw him,” she said, shaken.

  “You knew about that?”

  “Did you try to kill him, Mel?”

  “It was an accident, Peg. Really it was. And he compensated for it. Splendidly. I don’t know how he found out about it—the man’s incredibly sharp.”

  Peg felt turned to ice, and her voice was ice as she said, “It was the post-pituitrin excess, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but that couldn’t have anything to do with this Voisier business. I tell you it was an accident. I didn’t realize that I’d made a mistake in the solutions until after he’d left the office that particular day. It didn’t affect his progress, except temporarily; and when he stopped his treatments, he was practically normal.” He stopped and wet his lips again, and then suddenly ran to her. “Peg! Peg, what’s the matter?” For she had suddenly turned white, and was rocking on her feet. He put an arm about her shoulders and led her back to her chair. She slumped down, shook herself, and looked up at him with a swift, scornful glance that was almost a physical force.

  “How do you dare to call yourself a doctor?” she breathed. She opened her handbag with shaking lingers and took out the photograph Voisier had given her. She handed it to him without glancing at it. “Look at that and tell me he’s not still glandular,” she said.

  He looked, and then stared. “It’s Robin, all right,” he said, and then, with a ghost of his old grin, “Getting to be quite a glamour boy in his old age, hm-m-m?”

  “He is? Have you noticed why?”

  “What am I supposed to look for?”

  “Look at his jaw.”

  “Nice jaw.”

  �
��You don’t remember Robin. You don’t remember that round baby face?”

  “I wasn’t in love with the man,” Warfield said nastily.

  “He didn’t have much jaw,” she said, her voice quivering. “Can’t you see what’s happening? That used to be Robin, with the charming, chinless face!”

  Warfield’s breath sucked sharply. He walked over to the window and for a long moment stood with his back to her, staring out.

  “What do you diagnose, doctor?” she said acidly.

  “Ac—” he began, and couldn’t make it. He swallowed and coughed. He cleared his throat. He said, “Acromegaly.”