Lloyd Biggle Jr.: The Chronocide Mission

“Calvin DuRosche. He is an invalid, isn’t he? He had a stroke, and he has been sick for years. Is that the one you mean?”

“He isn’t sick at all,” Arne said flatly. “He is a no-namer.”

Jeff and Alida, Brock, and the Kernleys were being served coffee and hot pecan rolls in the dining room by Mrs. Jefferson. The rolls, fresh from the oven, were delicious. It seemed sad indeed that DuRosche, who was paying for all of this, was apparently unable to taste food.

Arne couldn’t taste food either—or wouldn’t. He refused with a shake of his head, and now he was walking in widening circles about the house and grounds.

“He looks,” said Alida, who was watching him through the window, “like a general planning a battle. You said he was a general, didn’t you?”

“Yes—in addition to those other things,” Brock said. Egarn had given him permission to tell his story to a few others whose discretion could be trusted and whose help was needed.

“He seems young for it,” Alida said, “but he also seems so overwhelmingly serious. Maybe that is the explanation. Do we really have to believe this?”

“Egarn insisted there was a Johnson connected with this house when everyone said there wasn’t, and he was right. DuRosche’s condition has baffled specialists from around the world, and Egarn immediately knew all about it. Everything that has happened has fit perfectly with what he has told me. Yes, I think we have to believe this. The weapon Arne has in his pocket would stand the Pentagon on its head—if the Pentagon knew about it. Which it must not do. Do you understand? None of us must ever breathe a word of this. Even though we don’t understand how these things are possible—I’m a specialist and a presumed expert, and I can’t begin to understand—a careless remark might give a clue to someone who would find a way to make use of it, and the whole terrible scenario of repeated destructions of Earth and humanity would follow.”

Jeff said slowly, “And the weapon that will cause the destruction was—or will be—invented right here in Rochester?”

“Was invented, I think, and here in this house. DuRosche had some connection with it—he received brain damage from that strange lens. We must find out what the connection was. This house has to have the most thorough search possible without tearing it down. We not only will have to look around and under and in everything, but we also will have to look for all those things mystery writers are so fond of—secret panels, and hinged openings in the floor, and false partitions, and whatever. That is where I thought you two could help. Those students who organized themselves to find Janie’s killers—would any of them be available for this?”

“If I tell them it is important, they will all be available,” Alida said. “Anyone who doesn’t have a class, that is. And some who do.”

“It is a big house, but we don’t want so many they would get in each other’s way. Perhaps fifteen or twenty?”

“I’ll telephone,” Alida said.

“I have another call to make. Let me go first.”

Brock telephoned his wife and sent her out to his laboratory to search the files. When she returned, she told him, “C. DuRosche is the name on the card. Dated twenty-five years ago. Shall I read your summary?”

“Please do.”

“’Lens with undulating surfaces. Thinks it is the philosopher’s stone of lenses with all kinds of unlikely potentialities.’ Then you wrote the word ‘crackpot’ with a question mark.”

“’Unlikely potentialities’ was an understatement, and I was the ‘crackpot.’ Anything happening there?”

“Not a thing,” his wife said cheerfully. “We are watching an old movie.”

“One that would interest me?”

“No. You don’t like Charles Boyer.”

“He gives me an inferiority complex. I want you to do something right away. Immediately. This instant. Then come back and tell me you have done it. Take that card to the fireplace and burn it. Pulverize the ashes. Make sure nothing is left. And forget what you just read.”

“If you say so.”

He waited. Finally she returned. “Done. Burned, ashes pulverized. I don’t remember anything about it. I wouldn’t have anyway. Do you want me to sprinkle the ashes on the geraniums?”

“It wouldn’t hurt a bit. Enjoy Charles Boyer.”

Five carloads of students arrived. Arne watched with a disapproving frown as they piled out, laughing and joking, and hurried into the house, but they went to work seriously enough. An hour later, Alida, who was helping Charlie and Shirley in the attic, turned and saw Detective Sergeant Fred Ulling standing on the stairs and eying them perplexedly.

“Hello, Sergeant,” she said. “Couldn’t you find anyone downstairs?”

“Someone told me Professor Brock was up here. What is going on?”

“The Kearneys gave us permission to search the house provided we leave things more or less the way we found them. We are doing our best.”

“You certainly have plenty of help. What do you expect to find that the police didn’t?”

“It’s complicated,” Alida said. “I’ll let Professor Brock explain it. Did you know Hy was the mysterious Johnson.”

“That’s what the professor said on the telephone. He didn’t explain why it mattered. He also didn’t say he was bringing in a wrecking crew to tear the house apart.”

“Come, now. We haven’t wrecked a thing—yet. I’ll see if I can find him for you.” She said to Shirley and Charlie, “If you two need a hand with anything, shout.”

She and the detective vanished down the stairway. Charlie applied weight and muscle and shoved a massive old bureau aside. An enormous pile of magazines had been stacked behind it.

He dusted his hands with satisfaction. “That just about does it up here. There is nowhere else to look unless you want the floorboards ripped up.”

“We are just getting started,” Shirley told him. “Now we’ve got to go through every one of those magazines, page by page— the secret plans, or the stolen treaty, or the missing will, or the formula for poison gas, or whatever it is could be hidden in one of them. After that, we’ve got to move everything back where it was.”

“You’re kidding! What does it matter which side of the attic this junk is on?”

“You are here to supply the muscle. Leave the philosophy to me. Alida said we have to put things back back where we found them.”

“You mean—all the stuff we just moved from this end to that end we have to move back to this end?”

“Right. But first we tackle these magazines.”

Charlie wearily slumped to the floor and picked up a magazine.

In a room below, Alida and the detective found Brock and Jeff Mardell. B rockwas watching while Jeff wielded a yardstick from the top of a ladder.

“Just what is it you expect to find?” the detective wanted to know.

“If we knew, it might be a lot easier,” Brock said. “I finally got around to taking a look at DuRosche’s background. Elderly eccentric millionaire. Tinkered with things. Called himself an inventor. Years and years ago, when Mrs. Kernley was his cook, he made a few telescopes. Ground the lenses himself.”

“You figure that’s important?”

“Very. In the years before his illness, he suddenly got secretive about what he was doing. People were calling him a crackpot and making fun of him, and he resented that. He also resented the fact that experts he consulted—including myself—were too thick-headed to recognize his ability. So no one knows what he was doing at the time his illness struck. He had an elaborate workshop in the basement, but after he became disabled, a nephew—who has since died—cleaned the place out and took everything. Curse him.”