Fredric Brown - Homicide Sanitarium

"Don't think I don't know that," I told him. "And don't think I'm not happy about it. Listen, Jack. Because Roth is dead, I'm going to be a millionaire. If he was alive, I still might be, but there'd have been a legal fight about it. 1 would have been right, but I could have lost just the same."

"You mean it would have been a case of your word against his?"

"Exactly. And he's--he was--department head, and I'm only a flunky, a little better on his social scale than Alister Cole. And it's something big, Jack. Really big."

"What?"

"What kind of rat cages did you find in the basement when you looked down there?" I asked him.

"What kind? I don't get you. I don't know makes of rat cages."

"Don't worry about the make," I said. "You found only one kind. Empty ones. The rats were dead. And disposed of."

He turned to look at me again. "Go on," he said.

Now that I'd started to tell him, I knew I wouldn't even try to go back to sleep.

I was too excited. I propped the pillow up against the head of the bed.

"Make a guess, Jack," I said. "How much food do rats eat a year in the United States alone?"

"I wouldn't know. A million dollars' worth?"

"A hundred million dollars' worth," I said, "at a conservative estimate.

Probably more than a million dollars is spent fighting them, each year. In the world, their cost is probably a billion dollars a year. Not altogether--just for one year! How much do you think something would be worth that would actually completely eliminate rats--both Mus Rattus and Mus Norvegicus - - completely and once and for all? Something that would put them with the hairy mammoth and the roc and the dinosaurs?"

"If your mathematics are okay," Jack said, "it'd be worth ten billion bucks in the first ten years?"

"Ten billion, on paper. A guy who could do it ought to be able to get one ten-thousandth that much, shouldn't he? A million?"

"Seems reasonable. And somebody ought to throw in a Nobel prize along with it. But can you do it?"

"I can do it," I said. "Right here in my basement I stumbled across it, accidentally, Jack, in the course of another experiment. But it works. It works! It kills rats!"

"So does Red Squill. So does strychnine. What's your stuff got that they haven't?"

"Communicability. Give it to one rat--and the whole colony dies! Like all the rats--thirty of them, to be exact--died when I injected one rat. Sure, you've got to catch one rat alive--but that's easy. Then just inject it and let it go, and all the rats in the neighborhood die."

"A bacillus?"

"No. Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't know exactly how it works, but it's not a germ. I have a hunch that it destroys a rat's immunity to some germ he carries around with him normally--just as you and I carry around a few million germs which don't harm us ordinarily because we also carry around the antibodies that keep them in check. But this injection probably destroys certain antibodies in the rat and the germs become--unchecked. The germs also become strong enough to overcome the antibodies in other rats, and they must be carried by the air because they spread from cage to cage with no direct contact. Thirty rats died within twenty-four hours after I innoculated the first one--some in cages as far away as six feet."

Jack Sebastian whistled. "Maybe you have got something," he said softly.

"Where did Roth come in on it, though? Did he claim half, or what?"

"Half I wouldn't have minded giving him," I said. "But he insisted the whole thing belonged to the university, just because I was working on an experiment for the university--even though it was in my own place, on my own time. And the thing I hit upon was entirely outside the field of the experiment. I don't see that at all.

Fortunately, he didn't bring it to an issue. He said we should experiment further before we announced it."

"Do you agree with that?"

"Of course. Naturally, I'm not going off half-cocked. I'm going to be sure, plenty sure, before I announce it. But when I do, it's going to be after the thing has been patented in my name. I'm going to have that million bucks, Jack!"

"I hope you're right," he said. "And I can't say I blame you, if you made the discovery here at your own place on your own time. Anyone else know about it?"

"No."

"Did Alister Cole?"

"No, he didn't. I think, Jack, that this thing is bigger even than you realize. Do you know how many human lives it's going to save? We don't have any bubonic here in this country--or much of any other rat-and-flea borne disease, but take the world as a whole."

"I see what you mean. Well, more power to you, keed. And if everything goes well, take me for a ride on your yacht sometime."

"You think I'm kidding?"

"Not at all. And I pretty well see what you mean by being glad you've got an alibi. Well, it's a solid one, if my word goes for anything. To have killed Dr.

Roth--no matter how much motive you may have had--you'd have had to have had a knife on a pole a block and a half long. Besides--"

"What?"

"Nothing. Listen, I'm worried about Wheeler. Probably he moved that car to another spot, but I wish I knew for sure."

"It's a squad car, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"With two-way radio?"

"Yes, but I haven't got a radio in here."

"We got a telephone. If you're worried about Wheeler--and you're getting me that way too--why don't you phone Headquarters and have them call Wheeler and phone you back?"

"Either you're a genius or I'm a dope," he said. "Don't tell me which."

He got up out of the chair and I could see he was still holding the gun in his hand. He went first to the door and listened carefully, then he went to the window.

He listened carefully there. Finally, he pulled back the shade a crack to look out.

"Now you're giving me the willies, and I might as well get up," I said. "For some reason, I'd rather get killed with my pants on--if I'm going to get killed." I looked at my cat. "Sorry, Beautiful," I said as I pulled my feet out from under the Siamese.

I took off my pajamas and started putting on my shirt and trousers.

"Wheeler's car still isn't anywhere I can see," Jack said.

He went over to the telephone and lifted the receiver off the hook. I slipped my feet into a pair of loafers and looked over. He was still holding the receiver and hadn't spoken. He put it back gently. "Someone's cut the wires," he said. "The line is dead."

I said, "I don't believe this. It's out of a horror program on the radio. It's a gag."

Jack snorted. He was turning around, looking from the window to the door.

"Got a flashlight?"

"Yes. In the drawer over there."

"Get it," he said. "Then sit back in that corner where you're not in direct range from the window or the door. If either opens, bracket it with your flash. I've got my flash but I'm using it left-handed. Anyway, two spots are better than one, and I want to see to shoot straight."

While I was getting the flashlight, he closed the door to the other room, leaving us in pitch darkness except for our flashes. I lighted my own way to the chair he'd pointed out.

"There's a window in that other room," I said. "Is it locked?"

"Yes," he answered. "He can't get in there without breaking that window.

Okay, turn out that light and sit tight."

I heard him move across the room to another corner. His flash-light played briefly first on the door to the hallway, then swept across to the window. Then it went out.

"Wouldn't the advantage be with us if we kept the light on?" I asked.

"No. Listen, if he busts in the window, when you aim your flash at it, hold it out from your body, out over the arm of your chair. So if he shoots at the flash, he won't hit you. Our two lights should blind him. We should be able to see him, but he shouldn't be able to see us."