Lloyd Biggle Jr. - The Chronocide Mission

“Every possibility has to be looked into,” Brock said.

The jumble of personal effects Hy left behind him certainly didn’t seem worth an investigation. He had lived in the basement, going upstairs only for his meals, which he carried back downstairs and ate at an old oak table that an antique dealer would have prized, or to watch TV. He had slept on a camp cot behind the furnace—it was neatly made up with army blankets—and he kept his possessions in a splendid antique oak bureau with a broken mirror and in a rather battered old wardrobe that contained only a worn jacket, a much more severely worn winter coat, and a number of dirty white shirts.

He had worn nothing but the cast-offs he picked up around the neighborhood. Brock wondered how they would dress him for his funeral. Probably the undertaker would provide something appropriate.

There were no books or writing materials among his possessions, so Hy neither read nor wrote. Neither did he look at pictures—there wasn’t a single girlie magazine guiltily concealed in the bureau’s bottom drawer. He did no drinking at DuRosche Court unless he had a bottle cached somewhere in the depths of the cellar.

Brock sat down on the bed and looked around. Arne did the same, but he was studying the furnace and hot water heater as though he had never seen such contrivances before. Probably he hadn’t. The possibility of a primitive far future was something Brock had never contemplated.

The present seemed perplexing enough. If he understood Egarn correctly, the only way he could solve this riddle was by connecting a Johnson with it, and the difficulty was compounded by the fact that the Johnson he sought might not show up for years. Egarn hadn’t been too explicit about that, but Brock sensed his worry that he had sent his emmissaries too far back in time. Perhaps the vital connection didn’t yet exist.

Nevertheless, it had to be searched for.

He asked himself how Hy—that worthy but lazy man—had passed the time when he wasn’t downstairs eating or upstairs watching TV. He had no radio. Did he simply lie on his cot and daydream?

The basement was as large as the enormous house and divided into rooms. Its outer walls were built of stones in the fashion of 19th century basements. Several rooms were packed with old furniture—much of which would have interested antique dealers—plus an accumulation of junk that also looked antique. This told Brock something about Calvin DuRosch without helping him in the least.

“I suppose we will have to search the cellar,” he said resignedly. “It would help immensely if we knew what we were looking for.” Already it was evident he had taken on a considerable job of work. Before he finished, it might even be a career.

Arne’s face remained blank, but he quickly grasped what Brock was doing and joined in.

It was Arne who found it—an old foot-locker type of chest that was buried under a stack of empty cardboard boxes in a small, whitewashed room next to the furnace room. Probably the room had been had been a coal bin in the days before oil and gas furnaces. Arne may have noticed the dark green shape under the boxes. He methodically removed one at a time until the chest was uncovered. Brock, passing the door at that moment, helped him solve the puzzle of the latch and open it. It was empty.

As Arne closed it again, Brock noticed faint lettering on the lid. He carried the chest into the furnace room where a lightbulb dangled, wiped dust from it, and stared down at a line of stenciled letters.

It read, “HYACINTH JOHNSON.”

“So,” Brock said with grim satisfaction. “At last we have a Johnson.” He pointed to the word. “Johnson!” he said to Arne.

Arne’s face brightened. That was one English word he knew.

“First we telephone Egarn,” Brock said. “Then we go over the whole house as thoroughly as possible.”

They hurried back up the stairs.

In the hallway outside the invalid’s room, they met Dr. Jeff Mardell and Alida Brylon, who greeted Brock warmly. The invalid’s room stood open; Calvin DuRosche sat in a chair, bib around his neck, staring straight ahead. Mrs. Halmer, the nurse, was trying to feed him. Mrs. Kernley was watching.

“It is so hard to make him eat,” Mrs. Halmer said. “It is as though he keeps forgetting how. We are feeding him constantly, but he chews and swallows so slowly that he hardly takes in enough to keep him alive.”

“May I examine him?” Mardell asked.

“I forgot you were a doctor,” Mrs. Halmer said. “Go right ahead. Every other doctor in town has had a crack at him. Send the bill to his estate, he can afford it. Unfortunately, any doctor who has seen him once has seen him. The poor man’s condition hasn’t changed for years.”

“I didn’t have anything that formal in mind,” Jeff said. “It’s just that I thought his eyes looked peculiar.” He stepped close to DuRosche, scrutinized his face, and then took a penlight from his pocket and shined it into one eye and then the other.

“Strange,” he said. “His pupils don’t respond to light.”

Arne suddenly pushed forward. He, too, stared into DuRosche’s face.

“Is this another doctor?” Mrs. Halmer asked in surprise.

Before Brock could answer, Arne turned to him and gripped his arm. “Egarn,” he said.

“Yes—I must make that telephone call,” Brock said. “We have finally found the mysterious Johnson. It was Hy.”

None of them wanted to believe that, not even after Brock described the chest. “Are you saying those two thugs killed him just because his name was Johnson?” Mrs. Kernley demanded. “That isn’t possible! How could two strangers he met in the dark for a few seconds find that out? We didn’t know it, and he lived here off and on for years. We thought he was Hy Hyatt.”

“I don’t know,” Brock said, “but his name must have been Hyacinth Johnson. He kept the ‘Hyacinth’ a secret by calling himself Hy—and who would blame him for that? The ‘Hyatt’ must have been a nickname, or maybe it was his middle name, and for some reason he came to use it instead of ‘Johnson.’”

“Then those thugs were looking for all over Rochester for him,” Alida said wonderingly. “When they finally found him, they killed him.”

“About that, I simply don’t know. I am just getting started. I must make my telephone call.”

He dialed the number he had been given and asked to speak with Egarn. “We have found the Johnson,” he said.

“Thank God!” Egarn exclaimed.

“If you are still worrying about having to murder him, you can stop. It is Hy, the handyman here, and he is already dead. Now I’ll see what more I can find out.”

He was about to hang up when Arne gripped his arm again. “Egarn!”

“I think Arne wants to talk with you,” Brock said. He handed him the telephone. Then he had to show him how to hold it.

Egarn was feeling comfortable and at peace with the world except for the fact that he still felt terribly tired. He was in a spacious motel room, and his guardians treated him royally. The only drawback was the uneasiness he felt in being surrounded by alert men with assault rifles. It reminded him that neither he nor Arne could be safe anywhere.

The news that a link had finally been discovered between the DuRosche house and a Johnson was an enormous relief to him, but the added realization that the Johnson was already dead, that he had been killed by Roszt and Kaynor, had set his mind reeling. Had the scouts from Slorn fulfilled their quest before they died? What, if anything, was supposed to happen when they did? He needed to think.

“What is it?” he asked Arne.

“There is a man here—a rich man who owns this house—”