The Collection (62 page)

Yes, it was Willem Deem. And
this time, Rod Caquer knew, it
was
Willem Deem. .. .

"I thought,
^"
Jane Gordon said, "that you were going to leave for Callisto City without
saying goodbye to us."

Rod Caquer threw his hat in the
general direction of a hook.

"Oh, that,
^"
he said.
^"
I
^'
m not even sure I
^'
m going to
take the promotion to a job as police coordinator there. I have a week to
decide, and I'll he around town at least that long. How you been doing,
Icicle?"

^"
Fine, Rod. Sit
down. Father will be home soon, and I know he has a lot of things to ask you.
Why we haven
^'
t seen you since the big mass meeting."

Funny how dumb a smart man can
be, at times.

But then again, he had proposed
so often and been refused, that it was not all his fault.

He just looked at her.

^"
Rod, all the
story never came out in the newscasts," she said. "I know you'll have
to tell it all over again for my father, but while we're waiting for him, won
^'
t
you give me some information?"

Rod grinned.

^"
Nothing to it,
really, Icicle," he said. "Willem Deem got hold of a Blackdex book,
and found out how to make a Vargas Wheel. So he made one, and it gave him
ideas.

^"
His first idea
was to kill Barr Maxon and take over as Regent, setting the helmet so he would
appear to be Maxon. He put Maxon's body in his own shop, and then had a lot of
fun with his own murder. He had a warped sense of humor, and got a kick out of
chasing us in circles."

^"
But just how
did he do all the rest?" asked the girl.

^"
He was there as
Brager, and pretended to discover his own body. He gave one description of the
method of death, and caused Skidder and me and the clearance men to see the
body of Maxon each a different way. No wonder we nearly went nuts.
^"

^"
But Brager
remembered being there too,
^"
she objected.

^"
Brager was in
the hospital at the time, but Deem saw him afterward and impressed on his mind
the memory pattern of having discovered Deem
^'
s body," explained
Caquer.
^"
So naturally, Brager thought he had been there.

"Then he killed Maxon's
confidential secretary, because being so close to the Regent, the secretary
must have suspected something was wrong even though he couldn
^'
t
guess what. That was the second corpse of Willim Deem, who was beginning to
enjoy himself in earnest when he pulled that on us.

"And of course he never
sent to Callisto City for a special investigator at all. He just had fun with
me, by making me seem to meet one and having the guy turn out to be Willem Deem
again. I nearly did go nuts then, I guess."

"But why, Rod, weren't you
as deeply in as the others-I mean on the business of conquering Callisto and
all of that?" she inquired.
^"
You were free of that part of
the hypnosis.
^"

Caquer shrugged.

"Maybe it was because I
missed Skidder
^'
s talk on the televis,
^"
he suggested.
"Of course it wasn't Skidder at all, it was Deem in another guise and
wearing the helmet. And maybe he deliberately left me out, because he was
having a psychopathic kind of fun out of my trying to investigate the murders
of two Willem Deems. It's hard to figure. Perhaps I was slightly cracked from
the strain, and it might have been that for that reason I was partially
resistant to the group hypnosis."

"You think he really
intended to try to rule all of Callisto, Rod?" asked the girl.

^"
We'll never know,
for sure, just how far he wanted, or expected to go later. At first, he was
just experimenting with the powers of hypnosis, through the wheel. That first
night, he sent people out of their houses into the streets, and then sent them
back and made them forget it. Just a test, undoubtedly.
^"

Caquer paused and frowned
thoughtfully.

"He was undoubtedly
psychopathic, though, and we don't dare even guess what all his plans
were," he continued.
^"
You understand how the goggles
worked to neutralize the wheel, don
^'
t you, Icicle?"

^"
I think so.
That was brilliant, Rod. It
^'
s like when you take a moving picture of
a turning wheel, isn
^'
t it? If the camera synchronizes with the
turning of the wheel, so that each successive picture shows it after a complete
revolution, then it looks like it
^'
s standing still when you show
the movie."

Caquer nodded.

^"
That's it on
the head," he said.
^"
Just luck I had access to those
goggles, though. For just a second I could see a man wearing a helmet up there
on the balcony-but that was all I had to know."

^"
But Rod, when
you rushed out on the balcony, you didn't have the goggles on any more. Couldn
^'
t
he have stopped you, by hypnosis?"

"Well, he didn't. I guess
there wasn
^'
t time for him to take over control of me. He did flash
an illusion at me. It wasn't either Barr Maxon or Willem Deem I saw standing
there at the last minute. It was you, Jane."

“I?”

"Yep, you. I guess he knew
I'm in love with you, and that's the first thing flashed into his mind; that I
wouldn
^'
t dare use the sword if I thought it was you standing there.
But I knew it wasn't you, in spite of the evidence of my eyes, so I swung
it."

He shuddered slightly,
remembering the will power he had needed to bring that sword down.

"The worst of it was that I
saw you standing there like I've always wanted to see you-with your arms out
toward me, and looking at me as though you loved me.
^"

^"
Like this,
Rod?"

And he was not too dumb to get
the idea, that time.

Charlie Wills shut off the alarm clock and kept right on
moving, swinging his feet out of bed and sticking them into his slippers as he
reached for a cigarette. Once the cigarette was lighted, he let himself relax a
moment, sitting on the side of the bed.

He still had time, he figured, to sit there and smoke
himself awake. He had fifteen minutes before Pete Johnson would call to take
him fishing. And twelve minutes was enough time to wash his face and throw on
his old clothes.

It seemed funny to get up at five o'clock, but he felt
swell. Golly, even with the sun not up yet and the sky a dull pastel through
the window, he felt great. Because there was only a week and a half to wait
now.

Less than a week and a half, really, because it was ten
days. Or-come to think of it-a bit more than ten days from this hour in the
morning. But call it ten days, anyway. If he could go back to sleep again now
_,
darn it; when he woke up it would be that much closer to the time of the
wedding. Yes, it was swell to sleep when you were looking forward to something.
Time flies by and you don
^'
t even hear the rustle of its wings.

But no-he couldn
^'
t go back to sleep. He'd
promised Pete he'd be ready at five-fifteen, and if he wasn
^'
t, Pete
would sit out front in his car and honk the horn, and wake the neighbors.

And the three minutes
^'
grace were up, so he
tamped out the cigarette and reached for the clothes on the chair.

He began to whistle softly: "I'm going to marry Yum
Yum, Yum Yum
^"
from "The Mikado." And tried-in the
interests of being ready in time-to keep his eyes off the silver-framed picture
of Jane on the bureau.

He must be just about the luckiest guy on earth. Or anywhere
else, for that matter, if there was anywhere else.

Jane Pemberton, with soft brown hair that had little wavelets
in it and felt like silk-no, nicer than silk-and with the cute go-to-hell tilt
to her nose, with long graceful sun-tanned legs
_,
with . . . damnit,
with everything that it was possible for a girl to have, and more. And the
miracle that she loved him was so fresh that he still felt a bit dazed.

Ten days in a daze, and then-

His eye fell on the dial of the clock, and he jumped. It was
ten minutes after five, and he still sat there holding the first sock.
Hurriedly, he finished dressing. Just in time! It was almost five-fifteen on
the head as he slid into his corduroy jacket, grabbed his fishing tackle, and
tiptoed down the stairs and outside into the cool dawn.

Pete's car wasn't there yet.

Well, that was all right. It'd give him a few minutes to
rustle up some worms, and that would save time later on. Of course he couldn
^'
t
really dig in Mrs. Grady
^'
s lawn, but there was a bare area of border
around the flower bed along the front porch, and it wouldn't matter if he
turned over a bit of the dirt there.

He took his jackknife out and knelt down beside the flower
bed. Ran the blade a couple of inches in the ground and turned over a clod of
it. Yes there were worms all right. There was a nice big juicy one that ought
to be tempting to any fish.

Charlie reached out to pick it up.

And that was when it happened.

His fingertips came together, but there wasn't a worm
between them, because something had happened to the worm. When he'd reached out
for it, it had been a quite ordinary-looking angleworm. A three-inch juicy, slippery,
wriggling angleworm.
_,
It most definitely had
not
had a pair
of wings. Nor a-

It was quite impossible, of course, and he was dreaming or
seeing things, but there it was.

Fluttering upward in a graceful slow spiral that seemed
utterly effortless. Flying past Charlie's face with wings that were
shimmery-white, and not at all like buttery-wings or bird wings, but like-

Up and up it circled, now above Charlie
^'
s head
_,
now level with the roof of the house, then a mere white-somehow
a shining
white-speck
against the gray sky. And after it was out of sight, Charlie
^'
s eyes
still looked upward.

He didn't hear Pete Johnson's car pull in at the curb, but
Pete
^'
s cheerful hail of "Hey!" caught his attention, and
he saw that Pete was getting out of the car and coming up the walk.

Grinning. "Can we get some worms here, before we start?
^"
Pete asked. Then: " 'Smatter? Think you see a German bomber? And don
^'
t
you know never to look up with your mouth open like you were doing when I
pulled up? Remember that pigeons- Say, is something the matter? You look white
as a sheet."

Charlie discovered that his mouth was still open, and he
closed it. Then he opened it to say something, but couldn’t think of anything
to say-or rather, of any way to say it, and he closed his mouth again.

He looked back upward, but there wasn
^'
t anything
in sight any more, and he looked down at the earth of the flower bed, and it
looked like ordinary earth.

"Charlie!" Pete's voice sounded seriously
concerned now. "Snap out of it! Are you all right?
^"

Again Charlie opened his mouth, and closed it. Then he said
weakly, "Hello, Pete.
^"

"For cat's sake, Charlie. Did you go to sleep out here
and have a nightmare, or what? Get up off your knees and- Listen, are you
sick?
Shall I take you to Doc Palmer instead of us going fishing?"

Charlie got to his feet slowly, and shook himself. He said,
"I . . . I guess I'm all right. Something funny happened. But- All right,
come on. Let's go fishing.
^"

^"
But what? Oh
_,
all right, tell me
about it later. But before we start, shall we dig some-Hey, don't look like
that! Come on, get in the car; get some fresh air and maybe that
^'
ll
make you feel better."

Pete took his arm, and Pete picked up the tackle box and led
Charlie out to the waiting car. He opened the dashboard compartment and took
out a bottle.
^"
Here, take a snifter of this."

Charlie did, and as the amber fluid gurgled out of the
bottle's neck and down Charlie's the felt his brain begin to rid itself of the
numbness of shock. He could think again.

The whiskey burned on the way down, but it put a pleasant
spot of warmth where it landed, and he felt better. Until it changed to warmth,
he hadn't realized that there had been a cold spot in the pit of his stomach.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said,
"Gosh."

^"
Take another,
^"
Pete said
_,
his eyes on the road.
^"
Maybe, too, it'll do you good to tell me
what happened and get it out of your system. That is, if you want to."

"I . . . I guess so,
^"
said Charlie.
"It . . . it doesn
^'
t sound like much to tell it, Pete. I just
reached for a worm, and it flew away. On white, shining wings."

Pete looked puzzled.
^"
You reached for a
worm, and it flew away. Well, why not? I mean, I'm no entomologist
_,
but maybe there are worms with wings. Come to think of it, there probably are. There
are winged ants, and caterpillars turn into butterflies. 'What scared you about
it?"

"Well, this worm didn't have wings until I reached for
it. It looked like an ordinary angleworm. Dammit, it
was
an ordinary
angleworm until I went to pick it up. And then it had a . . . a-Oh, skip it. I
was probably seeing things.
^"