by Gene Wolfe
“I’ve already given you a retainer,” Miss Dodson said, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent St. Louis’s taking the envelope, “and I just stopped by here on my way to the bank.”
“Confound it, madame, I conceded that you had given us a retainer, and I have no time for drollery. Tell us about the most recent apparition.”
“Since my ‘father’ disappeared I have entered his laboratory at least once every day—you know, to dust and sort of tidy up.”
“Pfui!” Wide said.
“What?”
“Ignore it, madame. Continue.”
“I went in this morning, and there he was. It looked just like him—just exactly like him. He had one end of his mustache in his mouth the way he did sometimes, and was chewing on it.”
“Dr. Westing,” Wide said, turning to me, “you knew Dodson; what mood does that suggest? Concupiscent? (We must remember that he was looking at Miss Dodson.) Fearful?”
I reflected for a moment. “Reflective, I should say.”
Miss Dodson continued: “That’s all there was. I saw him. He saw me—I feel certain he saw me—and he started to rise (he was always such a gentleman) and”—she made an eloquent gesture—“puff! He disappeared.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Mr. Wide, I’ve been paying you for a week now, and you haven’t gone to look at the ghost yet. I want you to go in person. Now. Tonight.”
“Madame, under no circumstances will I undertake to leave my house on business.”
“If you don’t I’m going to fire you and a hire a lawyer to sue for every dime I’ve paid you.”
“However, it is only once in a lifetime that a man is privileged to part the curtain that veils the supernatural.” Wide rose from his huge chair. “Arch, get the car. Doctor, my dinner for tonight must be postponed in any event; would you care to accompany us?”
During the drive to Dodson’s laboratory I ventured to ask Miss Dodson, with whom I damply shared the rumble seat of Wide’s Heron coupe, her age. “Eight,” she replied, lowering her eyes demurely.
“Really? I had observed that your attire is somewhat juvenile, but I would have taken you for a much older girl.”
“Professor Dodson liked for me to be as young as possible, and I always tried to make him happy—you know, for a robot you’re kind of a cuddle-bear.”
It struck me then that if Miss Dodson were, in fact, to take Wide off the case, I might recommend my friend Street to her; but since for the time being Wide was still engaged, I contented myself with putting an arm gently across her shoulders and slipping one of my professional cards into her purse.
“As you see, Doctor,” Wide explained when we had reached the three thousand and twelfth floor, “Dodson both lived and worked in this building. This floor held his living quarters, and Miss Dodson’s—they shared most facilities. The floor above is his laboratory, and to preserve his privacy, is inaccessible by elevator. As this is your home, Miss Dodson, perhaps you should lead the way.”
We followed the girl up a small private escalator, and found ourselves in a single immense room occupying the entire three thousand and thirteenth floor of the building. Through broad windows we could see the upper surface of the storm raging several miles below; but this was hardly more than a background, however violent and somber, to the glittering array of instruments and machines before us. Between our position by the escalator and the large clock on the opposite wall three hundred feet away, every inch of floor space was crammed with scientific apparatus.
“I left the lights off,” Alice Dodson remarked in a shaken voice, “I know I did. You don’t suppose that he—”
“There!” St. Louis exclaimed, and following the direction indicated by his outthrust finger, I saw a black-clad figure bent over a sinister machine in the center of the laboratory. While St. Louis muttered something about never going out on a murder case without a gun again, I seized a heavy isobar from a rack near the door.
“You won’t need that, Westing,” a familiar voice assured me.
“Street! What in the world are you doing here?”
“Earning my pay as a consulting detective, I hope. I am here at the instigation of Mr. Noel Wide.”
Miss Dodson, still apparently somewhat shaken, looked at Wide. “Is this true?”
“Certainly. Madame, because you found me at my desk when you called, you supposed me inactive; in point of fact I was, among other activities, awaiting Street’s report.”
“You were working the crossword in the Times! Your house told me.”
“Confound it! I said among other activities.”
“Here, now,” Street intervened. “Quarreling lays no spook. From the fact that you are here, Wide, I assume there has been some recent development.”
“There has been another apparition. Miss Dodson will tell you.”
“Since my ‘father’ disappeared,” Miss Dodson began, “I have entered his laboratory at least once every day—you know, to dust and sort of tidy up.”
“Pfui!” Wide interjected.
Seeing that both Street and Wide were giving Miss Dodson their complete attention, I took the opportunity to speak to Wide’s assistant. “St. Louis,” I asked, “why does he make that peculiar noise?”
“Every once in a while he gets too disgusted for verbal, and wants to write out a comment on his printer—”
“Why? Interior printers are fine for notes, but I’ve never heard of using them to supplement conversation.”
“Oh, yeah? Did you ever try to say: °#@&!°!!?”
“I see your point.”
“Anyway, he doesn’t like women mucking around a house, but his printer don’t work; he got clarified butter in it one time when he was trying to make Currie Con Carne mit Pilz à la Noel Wide, so when he tries to feed out the paper he makes that noise.”
“You say,” Street was asking Miss Dodson, “that when you saw him he was sitting? Where?”
“Right there,” she said, indicating a low casual chair not far from us.
“But, as I understand, in both the earlier apparitions he was lying down?”
The girl nodded voicelessly.
“May I ask precisely where?”
“The f-first time—pardon me—the first time over on a day bed he kept over there to rest on. The s-second—”
“Please try and control yourself. Dr. Westing can administer medication if you require it.”
“The second time, he was on a chaise longue he had put in for me near his favorite workbench. So I could talk to him there.”
“And his behavior on these two occasions?”
“Well, the first time I had been so worried, and I saw him lying there on the bed the way he used to, and without thinking I just called out, ‘Snookums!’—that’s what I always used to call him.”
“And his behavior? Give me as much detail as possible.”
“He seemed to hear me, and started to get up …”
“And disappeared?”
“Yes, it was terrible. The second time, when he was on the chaise, I was carrying some dirty beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks over to the sink to wash. When I saw him there I dropped them, and as soon as I did he disappeared.”
Street nodded. “Very suggestive. I think at this point we had better examine the day bed, the chaise longue, and that chair. Tell me, Miss Dodson, of the five of us, which is closest in height to the professor?”
“Why …” She hesitated for a moment. “Why, Dr. Westing, I suppose.”
“Excellent,” said Street. We all trooped after him as he crossed the huge laboratory to the day bed Alice Dodson had indicated. “Westing,” Street murmured, “if you will oblige me.”
“But what is it you wish me to do?”
“I want you to lie down on that bed. On his back, Miss Dodson?”
“More on his side, I think.”
“And try,” St. Louis put in, “to look like a genius, Doc.” Wide shushed him.
“Don’t hesitate to arrange h
is limbs, Miss Dodson,” Street told her; “this is important. There, is that satisfactory?”
The girl nodded.
Street whipped a tape rule from his pocket and made a series of quick measurements of my position, jotting down the results on a notepad. “And now, Miss Dodson, please give me the date and time when you saw the professor here—as exactly as possible.”
“October twelfth. It was about ten-twenty.”
“Excellent. And now the chaise.”
At the chaise longue we repeated the same procedure, Miss Dodson giving the date and time as October 18th, at ten minutes to eleven.
When I had been measured in the chair as well, Street said, “And today is October twenty-fifth. At what time did you see the professor?”
“It was about one o’clock this afternoon.”
While Street scribbled calculations on his pad, Wide cleared his throat. “I notice, Street, that the time of this most recent apparition would seem to violate what might earlier have appeared to be an invariable rule; that is, that Dodson’s ghost appeared at or very nearly at ten-thirty in the morning.”
Street nodded. “If my theory is correct, we shall see that those significant-looking times were mere coincidences, arising from the fact that it was at about that time each day that Miss Dodson entered this room. You did say, did you not, Miss Dodson, that you came every day?”
The girl shook her head. “I suppose I did, but actually the first apparition frightened me so much that I didn’t come again until—”
“Until the eighteenth, when you saw him the second time. I suspected as much.”
“Street,” I exclaimed, “you understand this dreadful business. For heaven’s sake tell us what has been happening.”
“I shall expound my theory in a moment,” Street replied, “but first I intend to attempt an experiment which, should it succeed, will confirm it and perhaps provide us with valuable information as well. Miss Dodson, your ‘father’—like myself—dabbled in every sort of science, did he not?”
“Yes, at least … I think so.”
“Then is there such a thing as a wind tunnel in this laboratory? Or any sort of large, powerful fan?”
“He—he was interested in the techniques air-conditioning engineers use to make their systems as noisy as possible, Mr. Street. I think he had a big fan for that.”
After a ten-minute search we found it, a powerful industrial-grade centrifugal fan. “Exactly what we need,” Street enthused. “St. Louis, you and Westing take the other side of this thing. We want to set it up on the lab bench nearest the escalator.”
When we had positioned it there, Street turned to the girl and said, “Miss Dodson, at this point I require your fullest cooperation—the success of this experiment depends primarily upon yourself. I have placed the fan where you see it, and I intend to spike the base to the top of the bench and permanently wire the motor to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to disconnect. I want your solemn oath that you will not disconnect it, or interfere with its operation in any way; and that you will exert your utmost effort to prevent any other person whatsoever from doing so before November seventh.”
“You think,” the girl said in so low a tone that I could scarcely make out the words, “that he is still alive, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“If this fan runs all that time, will it bring him back to us?”
“It may help.”
“Then I promise.”
“Even should the professor be restored to you, it must remain in operation—do you understand? It might be wise, for example, to persuade him to take a brief holiday, leaving the fan untouched.”
“I will do my best,” the girl said. “He likes the seaside.”
Street nodded, and without another word walked to the wall, threw one of the main circuit breakers, and began soldering the fan-motor leads into a 220-volt utility circuit. Under Wide’s direction St. Louis and I found hammers and a gross of heavy nails, with which we secured the base to the benchtop.
“Now,” Street announced when all our tasks were complete, “once again I shall require cooperation—this time from every one of you. I shall stand here at the circuit breaker. The rest of you must scatter yourselves over this entire laboratory, each taking a section of it as his own responsibility. When I turn on the fan, things will begin to blow about. What we are looking for will, I think, be a slip of notebook paper, and when you observe it, it will be at a distance of about seventy-six centimeters from the floor. Seize it at once—if you wait for it to settle we are lost.”
We did as he asked, and no sooner was the last of us in position than the huge fan sprang into life with hurricane force. A tremendous wind seemed to sweep the entire laboratory, and several pieces of light glassware went over with a crash.
Keeping my eyes fixed, as Street had suggested, at a height of seventy-six centimeters about the floor, I at once observed a sheet of paper fluttering in the machine-made wind. I have often observed that a scrap of paper, blown about, will seem to appear when its surface faces me and disappear when it is edge-on, and for an instant I assumed that the peculiar character of this one stemmed from a similar cause; then I realized that this was not the case—the sheet was, in fact, actually disappearing and reappearing as it danced in the gale. Street and I both dived for it at once. He was a shade the quicker; for a split second I saw the tips of his fingers vanish as though amputated by some demonic knife; then he was waving the paper overhead in triumph.
“Street!” I exclaimed, “you’ve got it! What is it?”
“There is no need to shout, Westing. If you’ll step back here behind the inlet we can talk quite comfortably. I was relying upon a brilliant scientist’s habitual need to reduce his thoughts to paper, and it has not failed me.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Can I see it?”
“Certainly,” Street said, handing me the paper. Miss Dodson, Wide, and St. Louis crowded around.
The note read:
160 cm-4:00
159.5—2:00
159.0—12:00
d = 14,400 sec/cm x h
“Brief,” Street remarked, “but eminently satisfying. The great scientist’s calculations agree astonishingly well with my own.”
“But, Street,” I protested, “it doesn’t tell us anything. It’s only a formula.”
“Precisely the way I have always felt about those prescriptions of yours, Westing.”
Wide said, “I think it’s time you reported, Street.”
“It will take only a few moments now for me to begin the rescue of Professor Dodson,” Street told him. “And then we will have some minutes in which to talk. Have you ever practiced yoga, Mr. Wide? No? a pity.”
Before our astonished eyes Street proceeded to stand on his head, assuming the posture I believe is known as “The Pole.” We heard him say in a distinct voice, “When you grow tired of this, Professor, you have only to use the escalator. Use the escalator.” Then with the agility of an acrobat he was upright again, slightly red of face.
“I believe, sir,” Wide said, “that you owe us an explanation.”
“And you shall have it. It occurred to me today, while I sat in the lodgings I share with Dr. Westing, that Professor Dodson’s disappearance might be in some way connected with his membership in the Peircian Society. That he was a member was stated in the dossier you passed on to me, Wide, as you may recall.”
Wide nodded.
“I began my investigation, as Dr. Westing can testify, by rereading the complete works of Peirce and Knight, keeping in mind that as a Peircian Dodson ardently believed that the persecuted philosopher had arranged his own supposed death and reappeared under the nom de guerre of Knight; certainly, as the Peircians point out, a suitable one—and particularly so when one keeps in mind that a knight’s chief reliance was upon that piercing weapon the lance, and that Knight was what is called a freelance.
“I also, I may say, kept before me the probability that as both a
Peircian and as a man of high intellectual attainments Dodson would be intimately familiar with what is known of the life and work of both men.”
“Do you mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that your reading led you to the solution of this remarkable case?”
“It pointed the way,” Street acceded calmly. “Tell me, Westing, Wide, any of you, what was Charles Sanders Peirce’s profession?”
“Why, Street, you mentioned it yourself a moment ago. He was a philosopher.”
“I hope not. No, poor as that shamefully treated scholar was, I would not wish him in so unremunerated a trade as that. No, gentlemen—and Miss Dodson—when his contemporaries put the question to Peirce himself, or to his colleagues, the answer they received was that Peirce was a physicist. And in one of Knight’s books, in an introduction to a piece by another writer, I found this remarkable statement: It deals with one of the most puzzling questions in relativity, one to which Einstein never gave an unequivocal answer: If all four space-time dimensions are equivalent, how is it that we perceive one so differently from the rest? That question is sufficiently intriguing by itself—conceive of the fascination it must have held for Dodson, believing, as he did, that it had originated in the mind of Peirce.”
“I begin to see what you are hinting at, Street,” Wide said slowly, “but not why it affected Dodson more because he thought Peirce the author.”
“Because,” Street answered, “Peirce—Peirce the physicist—was the father of pragmatism, the philosophy which specifically eschews whatever cannot be put into practice.”
“I see,” said Wide.
“Well, I don’t,” announced St. Louis loudly. He looked at Miss Dodson. “Do you, kid?”
“No,” she said, “and I don’t see how this is going to help Sn—the professor.”
“Unless I am mistaken,” Street told her, “and I hope I am not, he no longer requires our help—but we can wait a few moments longer to be sure. Your ‘father,’ Miss Dodson, decided to put Knight’s remark to a practical test. When you entered the room this evening, I was in the act of examining the device he built to do it, and had just concluded that that was its nature. Whether he bravely but foolhardily volunteered himself as his own first subject, or whether—as I confess I think more likely—he accidentally exposed his own person to its action, we may never learn; but however it came about, we know what occurred.”