Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

Confound it, why hadn’t he taken that post on Ganymede when it was offered to him? Ganymede was a nice orderly moon. Persons there did not get murdered twice on consecutive days. But Jane Gordon did not live on Ganymede; she lived right here in Sector Three and he was on his way to see her.

And everything was wonderful except that he felt so tired he could not think straight, and Jane Gordon insisted on looking on him as a brother instead of a suitor, and he was probably going to lose his job. He would be the laughing stock of Callisto if the special investigator from headquarters found some simple explanation of things that he had overlooked…

Jane Gordon, looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her, met him at the door. She was smiling, but the smile changed to a look of concern as he stepped into light.

“Rod!” she exclaimed. “You do look ill, really ill. What have you been doing to yourself besides forgetting to eat?”

Rod Caquer managed a grin.

“Chasing vicious circles up blind alleys, Icicle. May I use your visiphone?”

“Of course. I’ve some food ready for you; I’ll put it on the table while you’re calling. Dad’s taking a nap. He said to wake him when you got here, but I’ll hold off until you’re fed.”

She hurried out to the kitchen. Caquer almost fell into the chair before the visiscreen, and called the police station. The red, beefy face of Borgesen, the night lieutenant, flashed into view.

“Hi, Borg,” said Caquer. “Listen, about those seven screwballs you picked up. Have you—”

“Nine,” Borgesen interrupted. “We got the other two, and I wish we hadn’t. We’re going nuts down here.”

“You mean the other two tried it again?”

“No. Suffering Asteroids, they came in and gave themselves up, and we can’t kick them out, because there’s a charge against them. But they’re confessing all over the place. And do you know what they’re confessing?”

“I’ll bite,” said Caquer.

“That you hired them, and offered one hundred credits apiece to them.”

“Huh?”

Borgesen laughed, a little wildly. “The two that came in voluntarily said that, and the other seven—Mars, why did I ever become a policeman? I had a chance to study for fireman on a spacer once, and I end up doing this.”

“Look—maybe I better come around and see if they make that accusation to my face.”

“They probably would, but it doesn’t mean anything, Rod. They say you hired them this afternoon, and you were at Deem’s with Brager all afternoon. Rod, this moon is going nuts. And so am I. Walther Johnson has disappeared. Hasn’t been seen since this morning.”

“What? The Regent’s confidential secretary? You’re kidding me, Borg.”

“Wish I was. You ought to be glad you’re off duty. Maxon’s been raising seven brands of thunder for us to find his secretary for him. He doesn’t like the Deem business, either. Seems to blame us for it; thinks it’s bad enough for the department to let a man get killed once. Say, which was Deem, Rod? Got any idea?”

Caquer grinned weakly.

“Let’s call them Deem and Redeem till we find out,” he suggested. “I think they were both Deem.”

“But how could one man be two?”

“How could one man be killed five ways?” countered Caquer. “Tell me that and I’ll tell you the answer to yours.”

“Nuts,” said Borgesen, and followed it with a masterpiece of understatement. “There’s something funny about that case.”

Caquer was laughing so hard that there were tears in his eyes, when Jane Gordon came to tell him food was ready. She frowned at him, but there was concern behind the frown.

Caquer followed her meekly, and discovered he was ravenous. When he’d put himself outside enough food for three ordinary meals, he felt almost human again. His headache was still there, but it was something that throbbed dimly in the distance.

Frail Professor Gordon was waiting in the living room when they went there from the kitchen. “Rod, you look like something the cat dragged in,” he said. “Sit down before you fall down.”

Caquer grinned. “Overeating did it. Jane’s a cook in a million.”

He sank into a chair facing Gordon. Jane Gordon had sat on the arm of her father’s chair and Caquer’s eyes feasted on her. How could a girl with lips as soft and kissable as hers insist on regarding marriage only as an academic subject? How could a girl with—

“I don’t see offhand how it could be a cause of his death, Rod, but Willem Deem rented out political books,” said Gordon. “There’s no harm in my telling that, since the poor chap is dead.”

Almost the same words, Caquer remembered, that Perry Peters had used in telling him the same thing.

Caquer nodded.

“We’ve searched his shop and his apartment and haven’t found any, Professor,” he said. “You wouldn’t know, of course, what kind—”

Professor Gordon smiled. “I’m afraid I would, Rod. Off the record—and I take it you haven’t a recorder on our conversation—I’ve read quite a few of them.”

“You?” There was frank surprise in Caquer’s voice.

“Never underestimate the curiosity of an educator, my boy. I fear the reading of Graydex books is a more prevalent vice among the instructors in universities than among any other class. Oh, I know it’s wrong to encourage the trade, but the reading of such books can’t possibly harm a balanced, judicious mind.”

“And Father certainly has a balanced, judicious mind, Rod,” said Jane, a bit defiantly. “Only—darn him—he wouldn’t let me read those books.”

Caquer grinned at her. The professor’s use of the word “Graydex” had reassured him.

Renting Graydex books was only a misdemeanor, after all.

“Ever read any Graydex books, Rod?” the professor asked. Caquer shook his head.

“Then you’ve probably never heard of hypnotism. Some of the circumstances in the Deem case—Well, I’ve wondered whether hypnotism might have been used.”

“I’m afraid I don’t even know what it is, Professor.”

The frail little man sighed.

“That’s because you’ve never read illicit books, Rod,” said Gordon. “Hypnotism is the control of one mind by another, and it reached a pretty high state of development before it was outlawed. You’ve never heard of the Kaprelian Order or the Vargas Wheel?”

Caquer shook his head.

“The history of the subject is in Graydex books, in several of them,” said the professor. “The actual methods, and how a Vargas Wheel is constructed would be Blackdex, high on the roster of lawlessness. Of course I haven’t read that, but I have read the history.”

“A man by the name of Mesmer, way back in the Eighteenth Century, was one of the first practitioners, if not the discoverer, of hypnotism. At any rate, he put it on a more or less scientific basis. By the Twentieth Century, quite a bit had been learned about it—and it became extensively used in medicine.”

“A hundred years later, doctors were treating almost as many patients through hypnotism as through drugs and surgery. True, there were cases of its misuse, but they were relatively few.”

“But another hundred years brought a big change. Mesmerism had developed too far for the public safety. Any criminal or selfish politician who had a smattering of the art could operate with impunity. He could fool all the people all the time, and get away with it.”

“You mean he could really make people think anything he wanted them to?” Caquer asked.

“Not only that, he could make them do anything he wanted. With the use of television one speaker could visibly and directly talk to millions of people.”

“But couldn’t the government have regulated the art?”