Lloyd Biggle Jr. - The Chronocide Mission

So the colonel had taken Egarn. He and several of his friends would play musical chairs with him, passing him from car to car—when they weren’t passing someone else from car to car as a decoy—until they were certain they had lost any pursuit. They would do the job thoroughly, and Brock hoped “thoroughly” would be sufficient. He had no idea how efficiently “they” could spy on such manipulations with the time-peeper Egarn had described. Eventually Egarn would be taken to a motel in a neighborhood where traffic and business congestion would make any kind of a surreptitious attack difficult.

The colonel and his friends were delighted to have a pseudo-military operation to relieve the tedium of their retirements. They were capable of being ruthless themselves, and they would keep Egarn under constant guard until the problem was resolved or until Brock had convinced himself the whole thing was the figment of someone’s very active imagination.

Brock also had to account for the young old-looking man who rode so stoically in the back seat. Arne had been a combination prime minister and business manager of a sovereign state, Egarn said, and he had married a girl who would have been the state’s next ruler if war hadn’t struck. He also had been an important general in that war. None of this seemed believable, but if Brock accepted Egarn, he also had to accept Arne. This certainly was the night for implausible stories.

Driving back to Penfield by the most devious route he could think of, he politely addressed an occasional remark to Arne, but he might as well have been talking to himself. Arne not only didn’t understand; he was lost in his own thoughts and didn’t seem to hear, either.

When they arrived, he led Arne to a guest room, showed him where the bathroom was—and hoped he understood how it was—said, “Sleep,” and closed the door. He needed sleep himself. They had a strenuous day ahead of them, and there wasn’t much left of the night.

When he awoke—shortly after eight o’clock—his wife had breakfast ready for them. He called Arne, and they went to the dining room and watched her load the table with generous portions of scrambled and fried eggs, ham and sausages, hash brown potatoes, toast with butter, various jams and jellies, coffee, orange and tomato juice. Arne contemplated this profusion of food with deep puzzlement. When he finally understood he was welcome to eat whatever food he chose, Brock was fascinated by his reactions.

The ham and scrambled eggs he accepted readily; the sausages he eyed with deep suspicion and finally refused. He took potatoes and a fried egg but after a tentative taste of each left them on his plate. Neither coffee nor juices appealed to him, but he accepted milk readily. The toast obviously seemed strange at first, but he managed to eat three slices. He rejected the orange marmalade firmly; the strawberry preserves were a great success.

When they had eaten, they went to the living room and waited, Brock tense, Arne completely relaxed. Finally the telephone rang. Brock answered, wrote down a number. Then he made a call of his own and talked with his former student, Dr. Jeff Mardell.

“Now we can go to work,” he told Arne. “Egarn is in a motel room with a private phone. We don’t know where it is, nor does anyone else, but we can get in touch with him whenever we need to. We are going to assume ‘they’ are watching everything we do, but I don’t think they can trace telephone calls by peeping through time.”

Arne listened politely and said nothing.

Brock told his wife, “You had better invite your nephew and his wife over to spend the day with you.” He didn’t think there would be any danger once he left, but it did seem wise to take a few rudimentary precautions. He also telephoned several of his neighbors to ask them to be alert to strange goings on in the vicinity, and he arranged for the police to check his house periodically until further notice.

When they reached DuRosche Court, Mr. Kernley was at work trimming the shrubs around the mansion’s front door. His more than ample waistline created a problem in reaching the lower branches. The handyman Hy may have done very little work, Brock reflected, but he must have been useful for jobs that required stooping.

Brock introduced himself, and Kernley said, “Doctor Mardell just telephoned about you. He said you were coming.”

“Several of us are highly concerned about the strange things that have been happening here,” Brock said. “We are afraid they will go right on happening if we don’t figure them out.”

“We are worried, too,” Kernley confessed. “We can’t understand what those men were trying to do. Poor Hy—he wasn’t worth much, he was just about the laziest critter under the sun, but he could do good work when he wanted to. Certainly he never harmed anyone. To die like that—but the police said one of the thugs had quite a bruise on his arm, so Hy got in at least one good lick. He was a lot braver than any of us gave him credit for, guarding the house with a piece of pipe.” Kernley shook his head.

“When is the funeral?”

“Day after tomorrow. We don’t plan anything formal. Just Mrs. Kernley, and me, and the maids. As far as we know, no one else knew him. Since he was sort of an employee here, and since in a manner of speaking he was killed on the job, the DuRosche Estate will pay his funeral expenses. Which is fortunate—he had no relatives we know of and of course no insurance.”

“Do you mind if I look around and ask questions?”

“Not at all. The police don’t seem to be doing a thing, and we would like to have this over and done with. Right now we feel like we are sitting on a bomb that may go off again any minute.”

He called his wife to the door and introduced Brock to her. Brock introduced Arne after first rescuing him from the car. Arne kept forgetting how the door handle worked. He nodded politely when he heard his name.

Mr. Kernley returned to his clipping. Mrs. Kernley, who looked sadly subdued and grief-stricken from the continuing tragedy that had enveloped her, asked bitterly, “Have the police figured out what those men were after?”

“No,” Brock said. “That is partly why I’m here. We are concerned someone else may try to finish what they started.”

“Gracious!”

“I would like to look around and ask you and the maids some questions.”

“We certainly have had plenty of experience with that,” she said. “The police went through the whole house, but they didn’t find anything. Most of it has been closed off for years.”

“The police didn’t know what to look for,” Brock said. “I have to confess I don’t, either, but I have a better idea than they did.”

“It beats me what those thugs were trying to do. We keep very little money in the house—just enough to pay the paperboy and things like that. Otherwise, I write checks for everything because there has to be a record. It couldn’t have anything to do with Mr. DuRosche. He hasn’t had any mind at all for years. He is completely helpless. We put him in his chair, and we put him to bed. He has to wear a diaper. Such a pity. He was a wonderful man—so nice. Lots of fun, always making jokes. Everyone liked him. He was invited everywhere. Back in those days I was his cook, and he used to have big dinner parties here. When a man’s mind goes, suddenly he is nothing.”

“Have you gone through Hy’s things?” Brock asked.

“The police did, and it didn’t take them long. Hy didn’t own much. He lived in the furnace room except when he was off on a bender. Sometimes he would disappear for days or weeks and come back looking a mess. We didn’t pay him anything, just gave him a little spending money. He was a quiet type and never made any trouble. Once in a while he was really useful—especially during the winter when there was snow. He mostly did his benders in warm weather. We figured he earned his keep, and all of us liked him. It can get lonely in this big house, and he was company. Once in a while he would come up in the evening and watch TV with us. But land sakes, there was nothing about Hy that anyone needs to investigate! He just happened to be out there guarding the house when the thugs came.”