Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (130 page)

“Did he have any visitors?” He extracted Letheren’s photograph. “Someone like this, for example?”

“Officer Clinton showed me that picture yesterday. I don’t know him. I never saw Mr. Jones talking to another person.”

“Hm-m-m!” Harrison registered disappointment. “We’d like a look at his room. Mind if we see it?”

Begrudgingly she led them upstairs, unlocked the door, departed and left them to rake through it at will. Her air was that of one allergic to police.

They searched the room thoroughly, stripping bedclothes, shifting furniture, lifting carpets, even unbolting and emptying the washbasin waste-trap. It was Patrolman Clinton who dug out of a narrow gap between floorboards a small, pink, transparent wrapper, also two peculiar seeds resembling elongated almonds and exuding a strong, aromatic scent.

Satisfied that there was nothing else to be found, they carted these petty clues back to the station, mailed them to the State Criminological Laboratory for analysis and report.

Three hours afterward William Jones walked in. He ignored Rider, glowered at the uniformed Harrison, demanded. “What’s the idea of having me dragged here? I’ve done nothing.”

“Then what have you got to worry about?” Harrison assumed his best tough expression. “Where were you last Friday morning?”

“That’s an easy one,” said Jones, with a touch of spite. “I was in Smoky Falls getting spares for a cultivator.”

“That’s eighty miles from here.”

“So what? It’s a lot less from where I live. And I can’t get those spares anyplace nearer. If there’s an agent in Northwood, you find him for me. ”

“Never mind about that. How long were you there?”

“I arrived about ten in the morning, left in the mid-afternoon.”

“So it took you about five hours to buy a few spares?”

“I ambled around a piece. Bought groceries as well. Had a meal there, and a few drinks.”

“Then there ought to be plenty of folk willing to vouch for your presence there?”

“Sure are,” agreed Jones with disconcerting positiveness.

Harrison switched his desk-box, said to someone, “Bring in Mrs. Bastico, the Cassidy girl and Sol Bergman.” He returned attention to Jones. “Tell me exactly where you went from time of arrival to departure, and who saw you in each place.” He scribbled rapidly as the other recited the tale of his Friday morning shopping trip. When the story ended, he called the Smoky Falls police, briefed them swiftly, gave them the data, asked for a complete check-up.

Listening to this last, Jones showed no visible alarm or apprehension. “Can I go now? I got work to do.”

“So have I,” Harrison retorted. “Where have you stashed that leather cash-bag?”

“What bag?”

“The new one you bought Thursday afternoon.”

Eying him incredulously, Jones said, “Hey, what are you trying to pin on me? I bought no bag. Why should I? I don’t need a new bag.”

“You’ll be telling me next that you didn’t hole-up in a rooming house on Stevens.”

“I didn’t. I don’t know of any place on Stevens. And if I did, I wouldn’t be seen dead there.”

They argued about it for twenty minutes. Jones maintained with mulish stubbornness that he’d been working on his nursery the whole of Thursday and had been there most of the time he was alleged to be at the rooming house. He’d never heard of Mrs. Bastico and didn’t want to. He’d never bought a Dakin-type bag. They could search his place and welcome—if they found such a bag it’d be because they’d planted it on him.

A patrolman stuck his head through the doorway and announced, “They’re here, chief.”

“All right. Get a line-up ready.”

After another ten minutes Harrison led William Jones into a back room, stood him in a row consisting of four detectives and half a dozen nondescripts enlisted from the street. Sol Bergman, Hilda Cassidy and Mrs. Bastico appeared, looked at the parade, pointed simultaneously and in the same direction.

“That’s him,” said Mrs. Bastico.

“He’s the man,” indorsed the Cassidy girl.

“Nobody else but,” Sol Bergman continued.

“They’re nuts,” declared Jones, showing no idea of what it was all about.

Taking the three witnesses back to his office, Harrison queried them for a possible mistake in identity. They insisted they were not mistaken, that they could not be more positive. William Jones was the man, definitely and absolutely.

He let them go, held Jones on suspicion pending a report from Smoky Falls. Near the end of the twenty-four hours legal holding limit the result of the check came through. No less than thirty-two people accounted fully for the suspect’s time all the way from ten to three-thirty. Road-checks had also traced him all the way to that town and all the way back. Other witnesses had placed him at the nursery at several times when he was said to have been at Mrs. Bastico’s. State troopers had search the Jones property. No bag. No money identifiable as loot.

“That’s torn it, growled Harrison. “I’ve no choice but to release him with abject apologies. What sort of a lousy, stinking case is this, when everybody mistakes everybody for everybody else?”

Rider massaged two chins, suggested, “maybe we ought to try checking on that as well. Let’s have another word with Jones before let him loose.”

Slouching in, Jones looked considerably subdued and only too willing to help with anything likely to get him home.

“Sorry to inconvenience you so much, Mr. Jones,” Rider soothed. “It couldn’t be avoided in the circumstances. We’re up against a mighty tough problem.” Bending forward, he fixed the other with an imperative gaze. “It might do us a lot of good if you’d think back carefully and tell us if there’s anytime you’ve been mistaken for somebody else.”

Jones opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. “Jeepers, that very thing happened about a fortnight ago.

“Give us the story,” invited Rider, a glint in his eyes.

“I drove through here nonstop and went straight on to the city. Been there about an hour when a fellow yelled at me from across the street. I didn’t know him, thought at first he was calling someone else. He meant me all right.”

“Go on," urged Harrison, impatient as the other paused.

“He asked me in a sort of dumbfounded way how I’d got there. I said I’d come in my car. He didn’t want to believe it."

“Why not?”

“He said I’d been on foot and thumbing a hitch. He knew it because he’d picked me up and run me to Northwood. What’s more, he said, after dropping me in Northwood he’d driven straight to the city, going so fast that nothing had overtaken him on the way. Then he’d parked his car, started down the street, and the first thing he’d seen was me strolling on the other side.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said it couldn’t possibly have been me and that his own story proved it.”

“That fazed him somewhat, eh?”

“He got sort of completely baffled. He led me right up to his parked car, said, ‘Mean to say you didn’t take a ride in that?’ and, of course, I denied it. I walked away. First I thought it might be some kind of gag. Next, I wondered if he was touched in the head.”

“Now,” put in Rider carefully, “we must trace this fellow. Give us all you’ve got on him.”

Thinking deeply, Jones said, “He was in his late thirties, well-dressed, smooth talker, the salesman type. Had a lot of pamphlets, color charts and paint cans in the back of his car.”

“You mean in the trunk compartment? You got a look inside there?”

“No. They were lying on the rear seat, as though he was in the habit of grabbing them out in a hurry and slinging them in again.”

“How about the car itself?”

“It was the latest model
Flash,
duotone green, white sidewalls, a radio. Didn’t notice the tag number.”

They spent another ten minutes digging more details regarding appearance, mannerisms and attire. Then Harrison called the city police, asked for a trace.

“The paint stores are your best bet. He’s got all the looks of a drummer making his rounds. They should be able to tell you who called on them that day.”

City police promised immediate action. Jones went home, disgruntled, but also vastly relieved. Within two hours this latest lead had been extended. A call came from the city.

“Took only four visits to learn what you want. That character is well known to the paint trade. He’s Burge Kimmelman, area representative of Acme Paint & Varnish Company of Marion, Illinois. Present whereabouts unknown. His employers should be able to find him for you.”

“Thanks a million!” Harrison disconnected, put through a call to Acme Paint. He yapped a while, dumped the phone, said to Rider, “He’s somewhere along a route a couple of hundred miles south. They’ll reach him at his hotel this evening. He’ll get here tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Or is it?” asked Harrison, showing a trace of bitterness. “We’re sweating ourselves to death tracing people and being led from one personality to another. That sort of thing can continue to the crack of doom.”

“And it can continue until something else cracks,” Rider riposted. “The mills of
man
grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.”

Elsewhere, seven hundred miles westward, was another legworker. Organized effort can be very formidable but becomes doubly so when it takes to itself the results of individual effort.

This character was thin-faced, sharp-nosed, lived in an attic, ate in an automat, had fingers dyed with nicotine and for twenty years had nursed the notion of writing the Great American Novel but somehow had never gotten around to it.

Name of Arthur Pilchard and, therefore, referred to as Fish—a press reporter. What is worse, a reporter on a harum-scarum tabloid. He was wandering past a desk when somebody with ulcers and a sour face shoved a slip of paper at him. “Here, Fish. Another saucer nut. Get moving!”

Hustling out with poor grace, he reached the address given on the slip, knocked on the door. It was answered by an intelligent young fellow in his late teens or early twenties.

“You George Lamothe?”

“That’s me,” agreed the other.

“I’m from the
Call.
You told them you’d got some dope on a saucer. That right?” Lamothe looked pained. “It’s not a saucer and I didn’t describe it as such. It’s a spherical object and it’s not a natural phenomenon.”

“I’ll take your word for it. When and where did you see it?”

“Last night and the night before. Up in the sky.”

“Right over this town?”

“No, but it is visible from here.”

“I’ve not seen it. So far as I know, you’re the only one who has. How d’you explain that?”

“It’s extremely difficult to see with the naked eye. I own an eight-inch telescope.”

“Built it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“That takes some doing,” commented Art Pilchard admiringly. “How about showing it to me?”

Lamothe hesitated, said, “All right,” led him upstairs. Sure enough a real, genuine telescope was there, its inquisitive snout tilted toward a movable roof-trap. “You’ve actually seen the object through that?”

"Two successive nights,” Lamothe confirmed. “I hope to observe it tonight as well.”

“Any idea what it is?”

“That’s a matter of guesswork,” evaded the other, becoming wary. “All I’m willing to say is that it’s located in a satellite orbit, it’s perfectly spherical and appears to be an artificial construction of metal.”

“Got a picture of it?”

“Sorry, I lack the equipment.”

“Maybe one of our cameraman could help you there.”

“If he has suitable apparatus,” Lamothe agreed.

Pilchard asked twenty more questions, finished doubtfully, “What you can see anyone else with a telescope could see. The world’s full of telescopes, some of them big enough to drive a locomotive through. How come nobody yet has shouted the news? Got any ideas on that?”

With a faint smile, Lamothe said, “Everyone with a telescope isn’t staring through it twenty-four hours per day. And even when he is using it he’s likely to be studying a specific area within the starfield. Moreover, if news gets out it’s got to start somewhere. That’s why I phoned the
Call.'’

“Dead right!” agreed Pilchard, enjoying the savory odor of a minor scoop.

“Besides,” Lamothe went on, “others
have
seen it. I phoned three astronomical friends last night. They looked and saw it. A couple of them said they were going to ring up nearby observatories and draw attention to it. I mailed a full report to an observatory today, and another to a scientific magazine.”

“Hells bells!” said Pilchard, getting itchy feet. “I’d better rush this before it breaks in some other rag.” A fragment of suspicion came into his face. “Not having seen this spherical contraption myself, I’ll have to check on it with another source. By that, I don’t mean I think you’re a liar. I have to check stories or find another job. Can you give me the name and address of one of these astronomical friends of yours?”

Lamothe obliged, showed him to the door. As Pilchard hastened down the street toward a telephone booth, a police cruiser raced up on the other side. It braked outside Lamothe’s house. Pilchard recognized the uniformed cop who was driving but not the pair of burly men in plainclothes riding with him. That was strange because as a reporter of long standing he knew all the local detectives and called them by their first names. While he watched from a distance, the two unknowns got out of the cruiser, went to Lamothe’s door, rang the bell.

Bolting round the corner, Pilchard entered the booth, called long distance, rammed coins into the box.

“Alan Reed? My name’s Pilchard. I write up astronomical stuff. I believe you’ve seen a strange metal object in the sky. Hey?” He frowned. “Don’t give me that! Your friend George Lamothe has seen it, too. He told me himself that he phoned you about it last night.” He paused, glowered at the earpiece. “Where’s the sense of repeating, ‘No comment,’ like a parrot? Look, either you’ve seen it or you haven’t—and so far you’ve not denied seeing it.” Another pause, then in leery tones, “Mr. Reed, has someone ordered you to keep shut?”

He racked the phone, shot a wary glance toward the corner, inserted more coins, said to somebody, “Art here. If you want to feature this, you’ll have to move damn fast. You’ll run it only if you’re too quick to be stopped.” He listened for the click of the tape being linked in, recited rapidly for five minutes. Finishing, he returned to the corner, looked along the street. The cruiser was still there.