Fredric Brown - Homicide Sanitarium

"Then we'll worry about Monday when Monday comes," Randall said. "If, as you think, Cole is going to stay around town, we'll probably have him before then.

Do you mind Sebastian staying with you?"

"Not at all."

"And I'm going to assign two men to watch the outside of your place--at least for the next forty-eight hours. We won't plan beyond that until we see what happens.

Right now, every policeman in town is looking for Cole, and every state policeman is getting his description. Tomorrow's newspapers and the Sunday papers will carry his photograph, and then the whole city will be on the lookout for him. You have your gun, Sebastian?"

Jack shook his head. "Just this twenty-two I borrowed from Winton."

"You better run home and get it, and whatever clothes and stuff you'll need for a couple of days."

"I'll go with him," I said.

"You'll wait here," Jack told me. "It's only a few blocks. I'll be right back." He went out.

"While he's gone, Carter," Randall said, "I want to ask a few things he already knows, but I don't. About the set-up at the university, the exact relationship between you and Roth and between Roth and Alister Cole, what kind of work you do--things like that."

"Dr. Roth was head of the Department of Psychology," I said. "It's not a big department, here at Hudson U. He had only two full professors under him. Winton, who stays where I do, is one of them. Dr. Winton specializes in social psychology.

"Then there are two instructors. I'm one of them. An instructor is somewhere between a student and a professor. He's taking post-graduate courses leading to further degrees which will qualify him to be a professor. In my own case, I'm within weeks of getting my master's. After that, I start working for a doctorate. Mean-while, I work my way by teaching and by helping in the research lab, grading papers, monitoring exams--well, you get the idea.

"Alister Cole was--I suppose we can consider him fired now--a lab assistant.

That isn't a job that leads to anything. It's just a job doing physical work. I don't think Cole had even completed high school."

"What sort of work did he do?"

"Any physical work around the laboratory. Feeding the menagerie--we work with rats and white mice mostly, but there are also Rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs--cleaning cages, sweeping--"

"Doesn't the university have regular cleaning women?"

"Yes, but not in the lab. With experiments going on there, we don't want people who don't know the apparatus working around it, possibly moving things that shouldn't be moved. The lab assistants know what can be touched and what can't."

"Then, in a way, Dr. Roth was over both of you?"

"More than in a way. He didn't exactly hire us--the Board of Regents does all the hiring--but we both worked under him. In different capacities, of course."

"I understand that," Randall said. "Then you could say Dr. Roth's job was something like mine, head of a department. Your relationship to him would be about that of your friend, Sebastian, to me, and Alister Cole would be--umm--a mess attendant over on the jail side, or maybe a turnkey."

"That's a reasonably good comparison," I agreed. "Of course I was the only instructor who worked directly under Dr. Roth, so I was a lot closer to him than Jack would be to you. You have quite a few detectives under you, I'd guess."

He sighed. "Never quite enough, when anything important happens."

There was a knock on the door and he called out, "Yeah?" The detective named Wheeler stuck his head in. "Miss Roth's here," he announced. "You said you wanted to talk to her. Shall I send her in?"

Chief Randall nodded, and I stood up. "You might as well stay, Carter," he told me.

Jeanette came in. I held the chair I'd been sitting in for her, and moved around to the one Jack had vacated. Wheeler had stayed outside, so I introduced Jeanette and Randall.

"I won't want to keep you long, Miss Roth," Randall said, "so I'll get right down to the few questions I want to ask. When did you see Alister Cole last?"

"This afternoon, around three o'clock."

"At your house?"

"Yes. He came then and asked if Dad was home. I told him Dad was downtown, but that I expected him any minute. I asked him to come in and wait."

"Did he and you talk about anything?"

"Nothing much. As it happened, I'd been drinking some coffee, and I gave him a cup of it. But we talked only a few minutes--not over ten--before Dad came home."

"Do you know what he wanted to see your father about?"

"No. Dad took him into the library and I went out to the kitchen. Mr. Cole stayed only a few minutes, and then I heard him leaving."

"Did it sound as though he and your father were quarreling? Did you hear their voices?"

"No, I didn't hear. And Dad didn't say, afterwards, what Mr. Cole had wanted to see him about. But he did say something about Mr. Cole. He said he wondered if the boy was--how did he put it?--if he was all right. Said he wondered if maybe there wasn't a tendency toward schizophrenia, and that he was going to keep an eye on him for a while."

"Had you noticed anything strange about Cole's actions or manner when you talked to him before he saw your father?"

"He seemed a little excited about something and--well, trying to hide his excitement. And then there's one thing I'd always noticed about him--that he was unusually reticent and secretive about himself. He never volunteered any information about his--about anything concerning himself. He could talk all right about other things."

"Do you know if Cole knew your mother would not be there tonight?"

"I don't believe--Wait. Yes, he did. I forget just how it came into the conversation when I was talking with Mr. Cole, but I did mention my aunt's being sick. He'd met her. And I think I said Mother was staying with her a few nights."

"Was anything said about the ladder in your yard?"

"He asked if we were having the house painted, so I imagine he saw it lying there. It wasn't mentioned specifically."

"And tonight--what time did you last see your father?"

"When he said good-night at about ten o'clock and went up to bed. I finished a book I was reading and went upstairs about an hour later. I must have gone right to sleep because it seemed as though I'd been asleep a long time when I heard the phone ringing and went to answer it."

"You heard nothing until--I mean, you heard nothing from the time your father went to sleep at ten until you were wakened by the phone--which would have been at a quarter to eleven?"

"Not a sound."

"Did your father usually lock the door of his room?"

"Never. There was a bolt on the door, but he'd never used it that I know of."

Chief Randall nodded. "Then Cole must have bolted the door before he went back down the ladder," he said. "Is there anything you can add, Miss Roth?"

Jeanette hesitated. "No," she said. "Nothing that I can think of." She turned and smiled, faintly, at me. "Except that I want you to take good care of Brian."

"We'll do that," Randall told her. He raised his voice, "Wheeler!" The big detective opened the door and Randall said, "Take Miss Roth home now. Then take up duty at Forty-five University Lane--that's where Carter here lives. Outside. Jack Sebastian'll be inside with him. If the two of you let anything happen to him--God help you!"

Pulling the car to the curb half a block from my place, Jack said, "That looks like Wheeler in a car up ahead, but I'm not taking any chances. Wait here."

He got out and walked briskly to the car ahead. I noticed that he walked with his hand in his right coat pocket. He leaned into the car and talked a moment, then came back.

"It's Wheeler," he said, "and he's got a good spot there. He can watch both windows of your room, and he has a good view of the whole front of the place besides."