Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

But confound it, he would have to put something down.

Instead, he reached for the visiphone button and a moment later Jane Gordon was looking at him out of the screen. And Rod Caquer looked back, because she was something to look at.

“Hello, Icicle,” he said. “Afraid I’m not going to be able to get there this evening. Forgive me?”

“Of course, Rod. What’s wrong? The Deem business?”

He nodded gloomily. “Desk work. Lots of forms and reports I got to get out for the Sector Coordinator.”

“Oh. How was he killed, Rod?”

“Rule Sixty-five,” he said with a smile, “forbids giving details of any unsolved crime to a civilian.”

“Bother Rule Sixty-five. Dad knew Willem Deem well, and he’s been a guest here often. Mr. Deem was practically a friend of ours.”

“Practically?” Caquer asked. “Then I take it you didn’t like him, Icicle?”

“Well—I guess I didn’t. He was interesting to listen to, but he was a sarcastic little beast, Rod. I think he had a perverted sense of humor. How was he killed?”

“If I tell you, will you promise not to ask any more questions?” Caquer asked.

Her eyes lighted eagerly. “Of course.”

“He was shot,” said Caquer, “with an explosive-type gun and a blaster. Someone split his skull with a sword, chopped off his head with an axe and with a disintegrator beam. Then after he was on the utility stretcher, someone stuck his head back on because it wasn’t off when I saw him. And plugged up the bullet-hole, and—”

“Rod, stop driveling,” cut in the girl. “If you don’t want to tell me, all right.”

Rod grinned. “Don’t get mad. Say, how’s your father?”

“Lots better. He’s asleep now, and definitely on the upgrade. I think he’ll be back at the university by next week. Rod, you look tired. When do those forms have to be in?”

“Twenty-four hours after the crime. But—”

“But nothing. Come on over here, right now. You can make out those old forms in the morning.”

She smiled at him, and Caquer weakened.

“All right, Jane,” he said. “But I’m going by patrol quarters on the way. Had some men canvassing the block the crime was committed in, and I want their report.”

But the report, which he found waiting for him, was not illuminating. The canvass had been thorough, but it had failed to elicit any information of value. No one had been seen to leave or enter the Deem shop prior to Brager’s arrival, and none of Deem’s neighbors knew of any enemies he might have. No one had heard a shot.

Rod Caquer grunted and stuffed the reports into his pocket. He wondered, as he walked to the Gordon home, where the investigation went from there. How did a detective go about solving such a crime?

True, when he was a college kid back on Earth a few years ago, he had read detective stories. The detective usually trapped someone by discovering a discrepancy in his statements. Generally in a rather dramatic manner, too.

There was Wilder Williams, the greatest of all the fictional detectives, who could look at a man and deduce his whole life history from the cut of his clothes and the shape of his hands. But Wilder Williams had never run across a victim who had been killed in as many ways as there were witnesses.

He spent a pleasant—but futile—evening with Jane Gordon, again asked her to marry him, and again was refused. But he was used to that. She was a bit cooler this evening than usual, probably because she resented his unwillingness to talk about Willem Deem.

And home, to bed.

From the window of his apartment, after the light was out, he could see the monstrous ball of Jupiter hanging low in the sky, the green-black midnight sky. He lay in bed and stared at it until it seemed that he could still see it after he had closed his eyes.

Willem Deem, deceased. What was he going to do about Willem Deem? Around and around, until at last one orderly thought emerged from chaos.

Tomorrow morning he would talk to the Medico. Without mentioning the sword wound in the head, he would ask Skidder about the bullet hole Brager claimed to have seen over the heart. If Skidder still said the blaster burn was the only wound, he would summon Brager and let him argue with the Medico.

And then—Well, he would worry about what to do when he got there. He would never get to sleep this way.

He thought about Jane, and went to sleep.

After a while, he dreamed. Or was it a dream? If so, then he dreamed that he was lying there in bed, almost but not quite awake, and that there were whispers coming from all corners of the room. Whispers out of the darkness.

For big Jupiter had moved on across the sky now. The window was a dim, scarcely discernible outline, and the rest of the room in utter darkness. Whispers!

“—kill them.”

“You hate them, you hate them, you hate them.”

“—kill, kill, kill.”

“Sector Two gets all the gravy and Sector Three does all the work. They exploit our corla plantations. They are evil. Kill them, take over.”

“You hate them, you hate them, you hate them.”

“Sector Two is made up of weaklings and usurers. They have the taint of Martian blood. Spill it, spill Martian blood. Sector Three should rule Callisto. Three the mystic number. We are destined to rule Callisto.”

“You hate them, you hate them.”

“—kill, kill, kill.”

“Martian blood of usurious villains. You hate them, you hate them, you hate them.”

Whispers.

“Now—now—now.”

“Kill them, kill them.”

“A hundred ninety miles across the flat plains. Get there in an hour in monocars. Surprise attack. Now. Now. Now.”

And Rod Caquer was getting out of bed, fumbling hastily and blindly into his clothing without turning on the light because this was a dream and dreams were in darkness.

His sword was in the scabbard at his belt and he took it out and felt the edge and the edge was sharp and ready to spill the blood of the enemy he was going to kill.

Now it was going to swing in arcs of red death, his unblooded sword—the anachronistic sword that was his badge of office, of authority. He had never drawn the sword in anger, a stubby symbol of a sword, scarce eighteen inches long; enough, though, enough to reach the heart—four inches to the heart.

The whispers continued.

“You hate them, you hate them, you hate them.”

“Spill the evil blood; kill, spill, kill, spill.”

“Now, now, now, now.”

Unsheathed sword in clenched fist, he was stealing silently out the door, down the stairway, past the other apartment doors.

And some of the doors were opening, too. He was not alone, there in the darkness. Other figures moved beside him in the dark.

He stole out of the door and into the night-cooled darkness of the street, the darkness of the street that should have been brightly lighted. That was another proof that this was a dream. Those street-lights were never off, after dark. From dusk till dawn, they were never off.

But Jupiter over there on the horizon gave enough light to see by. Like a round dragon in the heavens, and the red spot like an evil, malignant eye.

Whispers breathed in the night, whispers from all around him.

“Kill—kill—kill—”

“You hate them, you hate them, you hate them.”

The whispers did not come from the shadowy figures about him. They pressed forward silently, as he did.

Whispers came from the night itself, whispers that now began to change tone.

“Wait, not tonight, not tonight, not tonight,” they said.

“Go back, go back, go back.”

“Back to your homes, back to your beds, back to your sleep.”

And the figures about him were standing there, fully as irresolute as he had now become. And then, almost simultaneously, they began to obey the whispers. They turned back, and returned the way they had come, and as silently…