The Amber Effect (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Oh, yes,Lindstrom said.

  Would you mind expanding on that a little? Does it mean you’re agreeing with me, or —

  Agreeing, yes. Definitely. I assumed, as soon as your words convinced me that Norman truly was dead, he had been murdered. It was something I had difficulty allowing myself to believe.He ran a hand through his tangled hair again, his expression grave. But I have refrained from looking directly at many obvious truths for a long time now. You will better understand this, and much more besides, when I have related to you certain incidents.

  I hope you’re going to include your reasons for thinking Amber was murdered. And why. Do you know, or think you know, who killed him?

  To the last part of your question, no. Not specifically. Why he was killed? Yes, I’m sure I know the reason for that. But all in good time, Mr. Scott. I must have certain assurances from you.

  He stood up, moved out from behind his desk. Then, with his hands clasped behind his back, Lindstrom walked slowly to the far wall, back again, kept pacing while he spoke.

  Since your visit here yesterday, Mr. Scott, I have made certain inquiries about you. Further, I have observed you closely. I believe there is in you an almost disturbing force, perhaps not sufficiently disciplined but capable, given minimal direction, of thrashing through to the solution of a problem, a dilemma, that has long faced me.

  Thrashing through, eh?

  He went right on, turning to pace toward the wall. And I expect if you give me your promise to act, or refrain from acting, in a specified manner, you will honor that promise. I believe there is in you a kind of raw, ebullient integrity —

  Couldn’t you try a little harder to win me over?

  He stopped pacing, returned to his swivel chair, and sat down. I am usually more decisive, Mr. Scott. But I have been avoiding this moment for nearly five years, and it is difficult to suddenly overcome that conditioning.

  He was silent for a few seconds, then looked at me and said briskly, I have certain information — I cannot call it evidence — of monstrous and unique fraud and deception, the ingenious theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars, soon inevitably hundreds of millions — completely unsuspected by anyone other than the conspirators themselves until now. Worse, the corruption of truth, the bastardization of genius. And the murder of at least one man, perhaps others.

  He paused, and I said, That’s quite a mouthful. If you can back it up.

  I can. And I am willing to tell you everything I know and suspect about this conspiracy, this monstrosity, but solely for your information, as a possible guide to your actions. You must give me your word that you will not reveal to anyone else — without my express permission — what I am prepared to tell you, or even reveal that I have told you anything. You must not in any way involve me personally. You may act on the information if you wish — I, of course, hope this is what you will do — and I am certain from comments you have made, Mr. Scott, that what I tell you will explain many things you desire to understand, answer many of your questions which, without what I can tell you, might forever remain unanswered.

  Forever’s quite a while — and that’s another mouthful. How can I promise not to spill any of this info when I don’t know what it is?

  You must answer that question yourself, Mr. Scott. You should also know that if it becomes necessary, I will not hesitate to deny I have told you anything whatever. I will not corroborate a single thing you might say. I will not repeat to the police or anyone else what I am prepared to tell you — when and if you agree to my conditions.

  Well, I don’t know. . . .

  I will not tell you unless you give me your word. But I hope you . . . agree. I would . . . like to tell you, tell someone.

  There was a strange note in his voice when he said that. His expression didn’t change, not a bit. But there was something in his tone, an almost tortured twisting of his words, that would normally accompany an expression of pain.

  So it seemed. Maybe I was imagining things again. However, he did have me interested. I wanted to hear his tale. I thought about it.

  Then I said, Do you mind if I smoke?

  Not at all. May I assume this means you intend to stay awhile longer, and listen to what I shall tell you?

  That’s right.

  You fully understand my conditions.

  Fully.

  And you agree? I have your word you will not violate those conditions?

  You’ve got it. You’re really putting me in a bind, you know. Especially on top of Captain Samson’s bloody — skip it.I sighed. You’ve got my word, Mr. Lindstrom.

  Fine. Fine.He folded his hands before him on the desktop, gazed at me with those penetrating eyes. We begin.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LINDSTROM Laboratories was incorporated in the State of California nineteen years ago,Gunnar Lindstrom said. In the beginning it consisted of only myself and four assistants, but it grew and prospered over the years, became quite well known, at least in the scientific community.

  He paused. But that’s all a matter of record. As is the fact that we work on many things, some developed internally, some from outside’ inventors who bring their ideas, both patented and unpatented, here for help in development and possible commercial placement — exploitation, sale of rights to appropriate manufacturers, that sort of thing. This function of ours is not unique by any means, but we’ve been very successful. Are you familiar with the tax laws as they apply to inventors, Mr. Scott?

  I shook my head.

  The essential comment I would make is that an inventor’s patent income is, in most cases, treated not as ordinary income but as a long-term capital gain. Are you acquainted with the considerable benefit that would thus accrue to the owner of a valuable patent?

  That I can understand. Instead of seeing as much as fifty percent of his net income gobbled up by the IRS, he’d pay a capital-gains tax of at most twenty percent and keep the rest of his money. Right?

  Essentially so. Only forty percent of his capital gain would be added to other income and taxed at up to fifty percent maximum rate, while sixty percent of that capital gain would be entirely tax exempt. You can understand, then, that in the case of a commercially successful product or process worth many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars, the capital-gains treatment could mean thousands or millions saved — not dissolved by taxation — for the patent owner or owners.

  I sure can. Dissolved is a good description. It melts away and is never seen again —

  I suppose it should have been obvious that such a situation would inevitably appeal to the criminal mind. The possibility of great and essentially legitimate’ profits, subject even legally to minimal taxation, would surely impress an imaginative criminal with its inherent potential for huge and continuing gain. Gain that might be assured through his natural methods of corruption, manipulation, intimidation — that is, by the employment of extra-legal techniques with which the criminal is already of necessity familiar. Including force, extortion, even murder, to ensure the criminal’s participation in this financial bonanza. Perhaps it should have been obvious, but it simply never occurred to me.

  Or to me, either, Mr. Lindstrom. I don’t quite understand how some bright hood would make it work, but his reason for trying to make it work is clear enough.

  I should say that it never occurred to me until it happened to me. About five years ago I was approached by two individuals who invited me to participate with them, and associates of theirs whom I would not meet — to my great financial benefit they assured me — in illegal and immoral activities such as I have just suggested are possible. I refused, of course. At first. However, I am able to assure you that these suggested activities are possible, Mr. Scott, and immensely profitable, since I have been involved in just such a corrupt scheme for nearly five years. I have been a key member, we might say, of a very successful criminal conspiracy.

  He fell silent briefly, but I didn’t interrupt.

  With hindsight,
I can see that from their point of view I must have appeared an almost ideal choice,he went on. Certainly it soon became clear they had decided upon me, and were determined that they should have me. My scientific credentials were impeccable, my integrity unquestioned, and I possessed an outstanding record of continuing research and invention, having had, at that time, more than seventy patents granted to me. Moreover, I was president of an already established and successful corporation, Lindstrom Laboratories. It became clear that my fellow conspirators intended to present me with plans for, and even working models of, new and potentially profitable inventions, products, processes — some already with patent protection, which would be assigned to Lindstrom Laboratories, and some for which I would make patent application in my name.

  He hesitated, frowning, then went on slowly. Quite simply, it was expected that I would apply for patents on work done by others, by scientists or inventors I might never have heard of . . . and allege that the work for which I asked patent protection was my own, the product of my own thought and researches.

  Did these characters give you any idea how they expected to come up with those goodies — patents or models, whatever they had in mind?

  No. I was assured that all of this would be taken care of by others — that word, others, was often used, but never from then until now have I been told who those others might be. I was not to be involved in that area of the conspiracy. My function was what I have already indicated, plus the exercise of any talents and abilities I possess to improve, if possible, upon the ideas presented to me, make working models if such were called for, proceed, in other words, as if the idea or concept were truly my own. And to arrange for legal protection of the ideas. Isn’t that ironic?

  He pulled his hands apart and squeezed them into fists a few times, as if he might have been clasping his fingers painfully tight during the last minute or two. But the expression on his face didn’t change as he went on. I must say, without modesty, that they chose well. I have been very successful in doing what they asked of me.

  I get the impression you must have refused to go along with these guys in the beginning. But that you did go along.

  In the end, yes. Their appeal to the human emotion most familiar to them, greed, having failed, they endeavored to appeal to another basic emotion, fear. Fear of pain, of death. I was beaten. Crudely but thoroughly beaten.

  He shook his head, a puzzled expression on his face. I am still unable to comprehend such men. Well, I was hospitalized for several days. I was warned not to protest to the authorities or the same thing, or worse, would happen to my son. I am a widower, Mr. Scott. Except for my work, my son is the only thing I love, all I have. In the hospital I could not be with him — he remained at my home, in the care of a friend. When I returned from the hospital, this friend had been called from the house — a telephone call, a ruse — and my son was gone.

  There’s something in the local police records about that,I said. Didn’t you report him kidnapped, then later claim he’d just stayed away overnight?

  He nodded. I felt he had been kidnapped, and I reported it. I was . . . terrified, not thinking clearly. And it was not until later in the evening that I was visited by the same two men who had originally approached me.

  Maybe you ought to tell me who these guys are, Mr. Lindstrom. I assume — by now — you know their names.

  Oh, yes,he said. Though at that time I did not. You are acquainted with both. It was Mr. Hauk and Mr. Werzen.

  Al the Clam and Puffer. Well, I don’t feel as bad about plugging Puffer now. Not that I was all broken up to begin with.

  I confess I was not dismayed by news of his death myself, Mr. Scott. To conclude this, they told me they held my son. If I did not cooperate with them, he would be further injured, and if necessary he would be killed.

  Something in his last sentence bothered me. At first I didn’t know what it was, but then I tagged it and said, Further injured? Had they already roughed the boy up?

  My son was at the time twelve years old. Approximately eight years earlier his left hand was injured in an accident, and the little finger of that hand failed to respond fully to treatment. It remained crooked, with a prominent bony mass at the second knuckle. When Mr. Hauk and Mr. Werzen visited me that night, they gave me my son’s finger.

  Lindstrom stopped speaking. When he went on, it was without further comment concerning his reaction, his logical conclusions, his capitulation. He merely said quietly, We live among savages, Mr. Scott. I suppose you know that better than I. I am aware of this now, but I was not then.

  After a while he added, I suppose, too, having informed me of much that they planned to do, they considered it essential that I join them in their criminal activity, become a co-conspirator with them and thus doubly silenced. Perhaps you better understand the restrictions, the conditions, I placed upon you earlier.

  Yeah, I do. And I imagine there’s a reason or two you haven’t gotten around to yet.

  Yes. I might mention that during these past five years I have applied for a total of twenty-one patents, of which seventeen have been granted or the patent is pending and will probably be allowed. Of the seventeen, eleven represent the result of my own labors.

  Does that mean your crooked associates brought only six ideas to you?He nodded, and I said, That doesn’t seem like much in five years.

  It is not quantity, but quality, that is important. To them, at least. And by quality I mean the likelihood of commercial development, with consequent financial gain. Of those seventeen ideas worthy of patent protection, five will probably prove to be extremely profitable — two of them, in fact, already are. And only one of those five was originated by me. The other four were brought to me by my associates. You would probably not appreciate the function or potential of most of them, so I will mention only one, Mr. Scott.

  You’d better keep it simple.

  I intend to. This one is a storage battery. Not merely an improvement over batteries now in use, but based upon an entirely different principle. The basic unit is a small cell I might describe as a sandwich of several metals plus a printed circuit, a rather complex marvel of solid-state microengineering about the size of a mustard seed.

  He smiled at that for some reason, and went on. I’ll not burden you with figures, but merely say it is more compact, more powerful, more efficient than any other storage battery available today. Very adaptable for use in automobiles, for example — or in flashlights, tools, kitchen appliances, and battery-operated equipment — so you can make almost any estimate you desire of its profit potential.

  This is one of the things the hoods brought you, and you’ve since gotten a patent on it?

  Yes. I had some difficulty in gaining the approval of the patent examiners. It was necessary that I make two trips to Washington, D.C., taking with me a working model of the device — originally supplied me, you understand, by my partners in criminal invention — and demonstrate that it did work, after inventing a fairly reasonable explanation of why it worked. It is a good, logical explanation, in accordance with known physical laws. But I am certain it is not the true explanation — the thing may operate in accordance with physical law not yet known. However, my theory satisfied the patent examiners, which was my purpose.

  You say the designs and a model of this battery were brought to you by Hauk and Werzen? Those two specifically?

  Yes, they are the only two individuals I have ever dealt with. I have much evidence that several others are involved, but I’ve not discovered their identities. As I indicated earlier, Mr. Scott, I have not tried very hard to learn more. Until now.

  He mussed his hair absently with first one hand, then the other. It looked neater when he got through mussing it. I preferred to know as little as possible,he went on. But it was glaringly apparent that neither Mr. Hauk nor Mr. Werzen was intellectually capable of devising a scheme of such inherent complexity, or of beginning to understand the nature of those things they brought to me for my attention.

&
nbsp; What I’m getting at, if they turned over this battery to you, do you have any idea who really put it together, invented it, and therefore knows why it works?

  He sighed. That would naturally be one of the things a man in my position would most desire not to know, wouldn’t it, Mr. Scott? However, again, certain conclusions force themselves upon us. Because I was always interested in and familiar with his work, and because the battery was brought to me three years ago, I am quite sure it is one of the inventions of Petrocini.

  I missed something. What does three years ago have to do —

  Petrocini was killed in an automobile accident three years ago. About a week before the designs and model were delivered to me.

  I grunted. That could lead to some pretty ominous conclusions about the five other —

  Perhaps,he interrupted. However, there may be a certain warped integrity among hoodlums, some of them — I have allowed myself to hope so. Because I was assured in each case, except that of the battery, that all rights to the invention had been legally secured, paid for, with cash and . . . I believe Mr. Werzen’s exact phrase in all instances was some udder inducements.’ I recall wondering where he picked up the word inducements.

  I wonder more what those inducements were. Like maybe operating on a guy’s kneecaps with a hammer? Or threatening to carve . . .I let that one ride, thinking of young Lindstrom’s little finger again.

  At any rate, Mr. Scott, my suspicions about what may have happened to Petrocini — suspicions long and deliberately suppressed but nonetheless often agonizing to me — are now reinforced by what you have today told me about Norman Amber.

  Lindstrom shifted in his swivel chair, sighed heavily. You see, Mr. Scott, I have had in my possession for three days now half a dozen of Norman Amber’s brilliantly executed inventions — I mean, the actual working models, prototypes, in various stages of development, either apparently finished, the work concluded, or else capable of completion with minimal further effort.He sighed again. Also several pages of description, design, mathematical formulae. Plus a dozen notebooks, obviously gleanings from Norman’s mind over a period of at least twenty years. Notebooks, which it is obvious to me even after only cursory examination, contain thoughts, ideas, concepts of astonishing brilliance and value.