The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 14

  “But—” Sil-Chan shook his head.

  “There’s another new government,” said Coogan. “Leader Adams was booted out because he told people they couldn’t have something. That’s bad policy for a politician. They stay in office by telling people they can have things.”

  Sil-Chan said, “Well, where does—”

  “Right after you came stumbling in here,” said Coogan, “I received a general order from the new government which I was only too happy to obey. It said that Leader Adams was a fugitive and any person encountering him was empowered to arrest him and hold him for trial.” Coogan arose, strode around to Sil-Chan, who also got to his feet. “So you see,” said Coogan, “I did it all by obeying the government.”

  The Mundial native glanced across Coogan’s desk, suddenly smiled and went around to the control wall. “And you got me with a tricky thing like this lever.” He put a hand on the lever with which Coogan had forced his submission.

  Coogan’s foot caught Sil-Chan’s hand and kicked it away before the little man could depress the lever.

  Sil-Chan backed away, shaking his bruised hand. “Ouch!” He looked up at Coogan. “What in the name of—”

  The director worked a lever higher on the wall and the panel made a quarter turn. He darted behind the wall, began ripping wires from a series of lower connections. Presently, he stepped out. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead.

  Sil-Chan stared at the lever he had touched. “Oh, no—” he said. “You didn’t really hook that to the grav unit!”

  Coogan nodded mutely.

  Eyes widening, Sil-Chan backed against the desk, sat on it. “Then you weren’t certain obedience would work, that—”

  “No, I wasn’t,” growled Coogan.

  Sil-Chan smiled. “Well, now, there’s a piece of information that ought to be worth something.” The smile widened to a grin. “What’s my silence worth?”

  The director slowly straightened his shoulders. He wet his lips with his tongue. “I’ll tell you, Toris. Since you were to get this position anyway, I’ll tell you what it’s worth to me.” Coogan smiled, a slow, knowing smile that made Sil-Chan squint his eyes.

  “You’re my successor,” said Coogan.

  RAT RACE

  In the nine years it took Welby Lewis to become chief of criminal investigation for Sheriff John Czernak, he came to look on police work as something like solving jigsaw puzzles. It was a routine of putting pieces together into a recognizable picture. He was not prepared to have his cynical police-peopled world transformed into a situation out of H. G. Wells or Charles Fort.

  When Lewis said “alien” he meant non-American, not extraterrestrial. Oh, he knew a BEM was a bug-eyed monster; he read some science fiction. But that was just the point—such situations were fiction, not to be encountered in police routine. And certainly unexpected at a mortuary. The Johnson-Tule Mortuary, to be exact.

  Lewis checked in at his desk in the sheriff’s office at five minutes to eight of a Tuesday morning. He was a man of low forehead, thin pinched-in Welsh face, black hair. His eyes were like two pieces of roving green jade glinting beneath bushy brows.

  The office, a room of high ceilings and stained plaster walls, was in a first-floor corner of the County Building at Banbury. Beneath one tall window of the room was a cast-iron radiator. Beside the window hung a calendar picture of a girl wearing only a string of pearls. There were two desks facing each other across an aisle which led from the hall door to the radiator. The desk on the left belonged to Joe Welch, the night man. Lewis occupied the one on the right, a cigarette-scarred vintage piece which had stood in this room more than thirty years.

  Lewis stopped at the front of his desk, leafed through the papers in the incoming basket, looked up as Sheriff Czernak entered. The sheriff, a fat man with wide Slavic features and a complexion like bread crust, grunted as he eased himself into the chair under the calendar. He pushed a brown felt hat to the back of his head, exposing a bald dome.

  Lewis said, “Hi, John. How’s the wife?” He dropped the papers back into the basket.

  “Her sciatica’s better this week,” said the sheriff. “I came in to tell you to skip that burglary report in the basket. A city prowler picked up two punks with the stuff early this moring. We’re sending ’em over to juvenile court.”

  “They’ll never learn,” said Lewis.

  “Got one little chore for you,” said the sheriff. “Otherwise everything’s quiet. Maybe we’ll get a chance to catch up on our paperwork.” He hoisted himself out of the chair. “Doc Bellarmine did the autopsy on that Cerino woman, but he left a bottle of stomach washings at the Johnson-Tule Mortuary. Could you pick up the bottle and run it out to the county hospital?”

  “Sure,” said Lewis. “But I’ll bet her death was natural causes. She was a known alcoholic. All those bottles in her shack.”

  “Prob’ly,” said the sheriff. He stopped in front of Lewis’s desk, glanced up at the calendar art. “Some dish.”

  Lewis grinned. “When I find a gal like that, I’m going to get married,” he said.

  “You do that,” said the sheriff. He ambled out of the office.

  It was about 8:30 when Lewis cruised past the mortuary in his county car and failed to find a parking place in the block. At the next corner, Cove Street, he turned right and went up the alley, parking on the concrete apron to the mortuary garage.

  A southwest wind which had been threatening storm all night kicked up a damp gust as he stepped from the car. Lewis glanced up at the gray sky, but left his raincoat over the back of the seat. He went down the narrow walk beside the garage, found the back door of the mortuary ajar. Inside was a hallway and a row of three metal tanks, the tall kind welders use for oxygen and acetylene gas. Lewis glanced at them, wondered what a mortuary did with that type of equipment, shrugged the question aside. At the other end of the hall the door opened into a carpeted foyer which smelled of musky flowers. A door at the left bore a brass plate labeled OFFICE. Lewis crossed the foyer, entered the room.

  Behind a glass-topped desk in the corner sat a tall blond individual type with clear Nordic features. An oak frame on the wall behind him held a colored photograph of Mount Lassen labeled PEACE on an embossed nameplate. An official burial form—partly filled in—was on the desk in front of the man. The left corner of the desk held a brass cup in which sat a metal ball. The ball emitted a hissing noise as Lewis approached and he breathed in the heavy floral scent of the foyer.

  The man behind the desk got to his feet, put a pen across the burial form. Lewis recognized him—Johnson, half owner of the mortuary.

  “May I help you?” asked the mortician.

  Lewis explained his errand.

  Johnson brought a small bottle from a desk drawer, passed it across to Lewis, then looked at the deputy with a puzzled frown. “How’d you get in?” asked the mortician. “I didn’t hear the front door chimes.”

  The deputy shoved the bottle into a side pocket of his coat. “I parked in the alley and came in the back way,” he said. “The street out front is full of Odd Fellows cars.”

  “Odd Fellows?” Johnson came around the desk.

  “Paper said they were having some kind of rummage sale today,” said Lewis. He ducked his head to look under the shade on the front window. “I guess those are Odd Fellows cars. That’s the hall across the street.”

  An ornamental shrub on the mortuary front lawn bent before the wind and a spattering of rain drummed against the window. Lewis straightened. “Left my raincoat in the car,” he said. “I’ll just duck out the way I came.”

  Johnson moved to his office door. “Two of our attendants are due back now on a call,” he said. “They—”

  “I’ve seen a stiff before,” said Lewis. He stepped past Johnson, headed for the door to the rear hall.

  Johnson’s hand caught the deputy’s shoulder. “I must insist you go out the front,” said the mortician.

  Lewis stopped, his mind setting up a b
attery of questions. “It’s raining out,” he said. “I’ll get all wet.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Johnson.

  Another man might have shrugged and complied with Johnson’s request, but Welby Lewis was the son of the late Proctor Lewis, who had been three times president of the Banbury County Sherlock Holmes Round Table. Welby had cut his teeth on logical deduction and the logic of this situation escaped him. He reviewed his memory of the hallway. Empty except for those tanks near the back door.

  “What do you keep in those metal tanks?” he asked.

  The mortician’s hand tightened on his shoulder and Lewis felt himself turned toward the front door. “Just embalming fluid,” said Johnson. “That’s the way it’s delivered.”

  “Oh.” Lewis looked up at Johnson’s tightly drawn features, pulled away from the restraining hand and went out the front door. Rain was driving down and he ran around the side of the mortuary to his car, jumping in, slammed the door and sat down to wait. At 9:28 A.M. by his wristwatch an assistant mortician came out, opened the garage doors. Lewis leaned across the front seat, rolled down his right window.

  “You’ll have to move your car,” said the assistant. “We’re going out on a call.”

  “When are the other fellows coming back?” asked Lewis.

  The mortician stopped halfway inside the garage. “What other fellows?” he asked.

  “The ones who went out on that call this morning.”

  “Must be some other mortuary,” said the assistant. “This is our first call today.”

  “Thanks,” said Lewis. He rolled up his window, started the car and drove to the county hospital. The battery of unanswered questions churned in his mind. Foremost was—Why did Johnson lie to keep me from going out the back way?

  At the hospital he delivered the bottle to the pathology lab, found a pay booth and called the Banbury Mortuary. An attendant answered and Lewis said, “I want to settle a bet. Could you tell me how embalming fluid is delivered to mortuaries?”

  “We buy it by the case in concentrated form,” said the mortician. “Twenty-four glass bottles to the case, sixteen ounces to the bottle. It contains red or orange dye to give a lifelike appearance. Our particular brand smells somewhat like strawberry soda. There is nothing offensive about it. We guarantee that the lifelike—”

  “I just wanted to know how it came,” said Lewis. “You’re sure it’s never delivered in metal tanks?”

  “Good heavens, no!” said the man. “It’d corrode them!”

  “Thanks,” said Lewis and hung up softly. In his mind was the Holmesian observation: If a man lies about an apparently inconsequential thing, then that thing is not inconsequential.

  He stepped out of the booth and bumped into Dr. Bellarmine, the autopsy surgeon. The doctor was a tall, knobby character with gray hair, sun-lamp tan and blue eyes as cutting as two scalpels.

  “Oh, there you are, Lewis,” he said. “They told me you were down this way. We found enough alcohol in that Cerino woman to kill three people. We’ll check the stomach washings, too, but I doubt they’ll add anything.”

  “Cerino woman?” asked Lewis.

  “The old alcoholic you found in that shack by the roundhouse,” said Bellarmine. “You losing your memory?”

  “Oh … oh, certainly,” said Lewis. “I was just thinking of something else. Thanks, Doc.” He brushed past the surgeon. “Gotta go now,” he muttered.

  * * *

  Back at his office Lewis sat on a corner of his desk, pulled the telephone to him and dialed the Johnson-Tule Mortuary. An unfamiliar masculine voice answered. Lewis said, “Do you do cremations at your mortuary?”

  “Not at our mortuary,” said the masculine voice, “but we have an arrangement with Rose Lawn Memorial Crematorium. Would you care to stop by and discuss your problem?”

  “Not right now, thank you,” said Lewis, and replaced the phone on its hook. He checked off another question in his mind—the possibility that the tanks held gas for a crematorium. What the devil’s in those tanks? he asked himself.

  “Somebody die?” The voice came from the doorway, breaking into Lewis’s reverie. The deputy turned, saw Sheriff Czernak.

  “No,” said Lewis. “I’ve just got a puzzle.” He went around the desk to his chair, sat down.

  “Doc Bellarmine say anything about the Cerino dame?” asked the sheriff. He came into the room, eased himself into the chair beneath the calendar art.

  “Alcoholism,” said Lewis. “Like I said.” He leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the desk and stared at a stained spot on the ceiling.

  “What’s niggling you?” asked the sheriff. “You look like a guy trying to solve a conundrum.”

  “I am,” said Lewis and told him about the incident at the mortuary.

  Czernak took off his hat, scratched his bald head. “It don’t sound like much to me, Welby. In all probability there’s a very simple explanation.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Lewis.

  “Why not?”

  Lewis shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t think so. Something about that mortuary doesn’t ring true.”

  “What you think’s in them tanks?” asked the sheriff.

  “I don’t know,” said Lewis.

  The sheriff seated his hat firmly on his head. “Anybody else I’d tell ’em forget it,” he said. “But you, I dunno. I seen you pull too many rabbits out of the hat. Sometimes I think you’re a freak an’ see inside people.”

  “I am a freak,” said Lewis. He dropped his feet to the floor, pulled a scratchpad to him and began doodling.

  “Yeah, I can see you got six heads,” said the sheriff.

  “No, really,” said Lewis. “My heart’s on the right side of my chest.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” said the sheriff. “But now you point it out to me—”

  “Freak,” said Lewis. “That’s what I felt looking at that mortician. Like he was some kind of a creepy freak.”

  He pushed the scratchpad away from him. It bore a square broken into tiny segments by zigzag lines. Like a jigsaw puzzle.

  “Was he a freak?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Not that I could see.”

  Czernak pushed himself out of his chair. “Tell you what,” he said. “It’s quiet today. Why’ncha nose around a little?”

  “Who can I have to help me?” asked Lewis.

  “Barney Keeler’ll be back in about a half hour,” said Czernak. “He’s deliverin’ a subpoena for Judge Gordon.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “When he gets back, tell him to go over to the Odd Fellows Hall and go in the back way without attracting too much attention. I want him to go up to that tower room and keep watch on the front of the mortuary, note down everybody who enters or leaves and watch for those tanks. If the tanks go out, he’s to tail the carrier and find out where they go.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” asked the sheriff.

  “Find a place where I can keep my eye on the back entrance. I’ll call in when I get set.” Lewis hooked a thumb toward the desk across from his. “When Joe Welch comes on, send him over to spell me.”

  “Right,” said Czernak. “I still think maybe you’re coon-doggin’ it up an empty tree.”

  “Maybe I am,” said Lewis. “But something shady about a mortuary gives my imagination the jumps. I keep thinking of how easy it could be for a mortician to get rid of an inconvenient corpse.”

  “Stuff it in one of them tanks, maybe?” asked the sheriff.

  “No. They weren’t big enough.” Lewis shook his head. “I just don’t like the idea of the guy lying to me.”

  * * *

  It was shortly after 10:30 A.M. when Lewis found what he needed—a doctor’s office in the rear of a building across the alley and two doors up from the mortuary garage. The doctor had three examining rooms on the third floor, the rear room looking down on the mortuary backyard. Lewis swore the doctor and his nurse to secrecy, set himself up in the back room with a pair of f
ield glasses.

  At noon he sent the nurse out for a hamburger and glass of milk for his lunch, had her watch the mortuary yard while he called his office and told the day radio operator where he was.

  The doctor came into the back room at five o’clock, gave Lewis an extra set of keys for the office, asked him to be certain the door was locked when he left. Again Lewis warned the doctor against saying anything about the watch on the mortuary, stared the man down when it appeared he was about to ask questions. The doctor turned, left the room. Presently, a door closed solidly. The office was silent.

  At about 7:30 it became too dark to distinguish clearly anything that might happen in the mortuary backyard. Lewis considered moving to a position in the alley, but two floodlights above the yard suddenly flashed on and the amber glow of a night light came from the window in the back door.

  Joe Welch pounded on the door of the doctor’s office at 8:20; Lewis admitted him, hurried back to the window with Welch following. The other deputy was a tall, nervous chain-smoker with a perpetual squint, a voice like a bassoon. He moved to a position beside Lewis at the window, said, “What’s doing? Sheriff John said something about some acetylene tanks.”

  “It may be nothing at all,” said Lewis. “But I’ve a feeling we’re onto something big.” In a few short sentences he explained about his encounter with the mortician that morning.

  “Don’t sound exciting to me,” said Welch. “What you expecting to find in those tanks?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Lewis.

  Welch went into the corner of the darkened room, lighted a cigarette, returned. “Why don’t you just ask this Johnson?”

  “That’s the point,” said Lewis. “I did ask him and he lied to me. That’s why I’m suspicious. I’ve been hoping they’d take those tanks out and we could trail them to wherever they go. Get our answer that way.”

  “Why’re you so sure it’s the tanks he didn’t want you to see?” asked Welch.