Murder Comes First (27 page)

“Would you be?” Dr. Preson demanded.

“I don't know,” Gerald North said. He sounded dazed. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He sought to pull himself together. “Could you begin,” he said, and paused. “That is, could you begin some place?”

“The
New York Herald Tribune
,” Dr. Preson said. “Some newspaper I never heard of out on Long Island. That was the dog boarding one and, apparently, the pony. Then one up in Westchester. The tree surgeon. And what do the police say?”

The question was clearly rhetorical, but Gerald North was tempted to answer it. He thought of the second volume of
The Days Before Man
and did not. Also, in a fashion, he liked the jumping little man. Also, Dr. Orpheus Preson was in some sense a great man. Or, Jerry North amended, had been.

“I don't know,” Jerry said. “What did the police say?”

“Change my telephone number,” Dr. Preson said. “I suppose the next step would be to move. That's what the police say.”

“Oh,” Jerry said. “You mean you think somebody is sending these—these people.”

“I should,” Dr. Orpheus Preson said, “think that obvious, Mr. North. Entirely obvious. For an obvious reason. What use would I have for a pony?”

The point was well, if obscurely, taken. Jerry North nodded to show he realized the validity of the point. He removed his hand from the vicinity of the push-button, put his elbows on his desk and cupped his chin in his hands, and explored. He was patient, and Dr. Preson grew calmer. It was not so complicated as Dr. Preson had made it seem, but it remained bizarre.

Among the want ads in a White Plains newspaper on the morning of Monday, November 26, there had appeared a statement that Dr. Orpheus Preson, of Apartment 3C, at the Greeley Arms, in West Twenty-second Street, Manhattan, desired to offer permanent employment to a qualified tree surgeon. Applications were to be made in person. Reimbursement would be made for railroad fare to New York from a distance of not over fifty miles.

Since it was a slack season in tree surgery, the response had been brisk. At a little before noon the first tree surgeon had knocked on the door of Dr. Preson's apartment. Dr. Preson was then engaged in writing a description of Daphaenus, the “bear dog,” which in the end became a bear—was, in fact, in the middle of a discussion of the relative plasticity of mammals, using Daphaenus as an example—and was unprepared for a tree surgeon who, apparently anticipating an emergency, had brought a saw. The interview had been confusing to both mammalogist and arboriculturist, and had degenerated in the end into a somewhat sharp discussion of the railroad fare from Goldens Bridge to New York. Dr. Preson had paid. With amicability thus restored, the two had agreed that it was somebody's idea of a joke, and not a good one. The surgeon had summed it up by saying that there were a lot of nuts around.

There were also, as it turned out, a good many unemployed tree surgeons. Three more applied in person during Monday afternoon and several telephoned. Tuesday morning there were letters from half a dozen more—two of whom suggested that Dr. Preson advance the railway fare if he wanted them to appear—but by then Dr. Preson had begun to have bushelmen, in response to an advertisement in the
New York Herald Tribune
. The bushelmen were much more numerous than the tree surgeons had been, and several of them were indignant in various languages. One of them had said, flatly, that people like Dr. Preson were crazy and ought to be locked up and had insisted, at considerable length, that he “had a right.” A right, Dr. Preson supposed, mentioning the matter to Gerald North, to see personally to the locking up. The discussion of the plasticity of the Canoidea progressed no further.

The subject was not, however, entirely changed. On Wednesday, there was active response to Dr. Preson's request—this time in a Long Island newspaper—for someone to board his Doberman bitch, who, according to the advertisement, needed homelike surroundings, not the institutionalism of a kennel. Long Island proved well-filled with men and women anxious to provide foster homes for Dobermans and, while many of them telephoned, four appeared in person. (One, who had read the advertisement only casually, brought with him a Doberman male, having misunderstood the nature of the need.) By midafternoon of Wednesday, the pony people had begun to mingle with the dog people and Dr. Preson, although in theory all out for mammals, was beginning to fly apart. (He had almost kicked the Doberman but, on looking more carefully, restrained himself.)

It had, he told Jerry North, become more and more difficult to adopt a sympathetic attitude toward the various applicants. It was one thing to realize that they, also, were victims of this—“this
depravity!
”—but it was another to resist a human temptation to hold them, individually as well as collectively, responsible.

“I,” Dr. Preson told Jerry North, “am an even-tempered man. You know that.”

“Well—” Jerry said, compromising.

“You're thinking of Steck,” Dr. Preson said. He jumped up and then, in almost the same motion, jumped down again. There was, Jerry thought, no other way to describe his movements. “There are limits,” Preson said, and grabbed his hair. “On the taxonomy of the felids, Steck—!” Words failed him; comprehension failed Jerry North.

“It is entirely untrue that I threatened to hit the last bushelman with part of Smilodon,” Dr. Preson said. “For one thing, it's very brittle, of course. For another thing, it isn't mine and—” He paused, seemingly having lost his place.

“You're an even-tempered man,” Jerry North told him.

“Certainly,” Dr. Preson said. “I am a scientist, Mr. North.”

“Look,” Jerry said. “To get back. They wanted to sell you a pony? Was that it?”

“Well trained, broken to saddle and cart,” said Dr. Preson. “
A pony!
” He almost screamed, and jumped up again, and clutched at his beard. “All day Thursday they kept coming—coming, telephoning, writing letters. Ponies, dog people, bushelmen. The tree surgeons stopped, but what good did that do?”

“Well—” Jerry said.

“The next day—
masons!
” Dr. Preson said. He gripped the edge of Gerald North's desk, and struggled obviously for control. “Masons,” he repeated, more quietly, but with a kind of desperation. “I wanted a stone chimney built. I wanted to be sure it would draw.” He laughed, a little hysterically. “I left, then.”

He had, he said, done precisely that—he had fled his apartment. He had gone to the home of his brother, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and there had found sanctuary. He had also, it appeared, found sympathy; he had been urged to remain until, as his brother had said, “This crackpot gets tired of it.” But on Monday, he had returned to his apartment.

“Got to get this book done,” Dr. Preson told Gerald North. “Can't work out there. People all the time.”

He had returned rather cautiously, but on Monday morning it did seem to have blown over. Until evening there had been nothing to interrupt Dr. Preson, and he had begun to get on with the plasticity of the Canoidea. It had been hard to settle down to it, of course; a sense of insecurity remained; Dr. Preson was conscious of listening always for a ring on the telephone, for a knock at the door. But all day nothing happened, and he was beginning to compose himself. Then, at nine-thirty in the evening, it started again.

It was butlers this time—butlers coming in response to an advertisement in the early edition of the
New York Herald Tribune
—butlers needed immediately, to apply in person, bringing references. They had done so until after midnight. The next morning—that morning—he had telephoned the police. He told Jerry of his interview with Detective Anstey. “Who isn't going to do anything,” Dr. Preson told Jerry.

“Well,” Jerry North said, “it is a crackpot, of course.” Dr. Preson glared at him. “I realize how upsetting it is,” Jerry said. “How—”

“
Upsetting?
” Dr. Preson repeated, and jumped up again. “Upsetting, you call it?”

“More than that, I know,” Jerry said. “But—”

“I tell you, somebody's trying to drive me crazy,” Dr. Preson said. “Don't you see that? Making it impossible for me to work, to think, to—to—”

The spare, wiry little man was very excited again. Excitement seemed to come and go, in waves. He leaned forward, now, on Jerry North's desk, and banged the desk with small, hard fists.

“I'm not making it up!” he said. “You think I am? I'm—imagining it?”

“No,” Jerry said. “Of course not.”

“Putting these advertisements in myself?”

“No,” Jerry said again. “Take it easy, doctor.”

“Then,” Dr. Preson said, “somebody is trying to do something to me. I think to drive me mad—to—to—I don't know. Can't you see what it is? There's—hatred there. Something you can't reach—something out of sight, out of touch—hating. Something—”

“Wait,” Jerry said. “Listen to me, Dr. Preson. It's what the police say, what your brother says. It's some crackpot. It's not directed against you—not against you personally. It isn't hatred. Somebody found your name somewhere. That's easy, you're well known. It's just—just crazy malice. Surely you understand that?”

“Would you?” Dr. Preson said. “Would you—” He broke off. “Maybe you think it's funny?” he asked.

“Well,” Jerry North said, “in a way it is, isn't it?”

“I suppose,” Dr. Preson said, with great but artificial calm, “it will be very—very comical when this ‘crackpot' kills me? Because don't you see—”

Jerry leaned across the desk, put his hands on Dr. Preson's shoulders and gripped firmly. The little man was hysterical; it wasn't pleasant. Jerry managed to laugh.

“Kills you?” he said, and managed to laugh again. “It's a practical joke, Dr. Preson. Nothing but—some kind of crazy humor.” He shook the older man, just perceptibly. “Get hold of yourself,” Jerry said, spacing the words.

To Jerry's own surprise, it seemed to work. Dr. Preson looked at him for a few seconds and then, only then, began to see him.

“All right,” Dr. Preson said. “I'm upset. I realize that, of course. I've—I've been working hard, lately. Trying to get the book done by the time I said. I suppose I'm—”

“Of course you are,” Jerry said. “I'll tell you. We'll go out and have a drink and—”

But then the telephone rang, and when Jerry answered it was for Dr. Preson.

“Told them I'd be here,” he said. “If the police actually found out—yes?”

He listened. Above the scraggling beard his face reddened; with his free hand he clutched his hair. Suddenly, he thrust the telephone at Gerald North. “You listen!” he commanded.

Jerry North listened. There were four men in the lobby of the apartment hotel in West Twenty-second Street. They were there to see Dr. Preson; they intended to remain there until he returned. They were large men, and stubborn, and the hotel management wanted to turn them over to Dr. Preson as soon as possible.

“Dr. Preson will not be back this evening,” Gerald North said. “Tell them that. If they don't leave, call the police.” He hung up; he looked at Dr. Preson, who was sitting again in the chair across the desk. He had his face in his hands.

Dr. Preson had masseurs, now. He had advertised for them.

2

T
UESDAY
, 10:15
P.M.
TO
W
EDNESDAY
, 12:15
A.M.

Mr. and Mrs. North looked at the chair in which Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., curator of Fossil Mammals of the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, author of
Tertiary Mammalian Dispersal
(1941);
Felid Myology
(1943);
Taxonomic Memoirs
(1948) and
The Days Before Man
, Vol. I (1950), had been sitting.

“My!” Pamela North said. She looked at Martini, who sat on the floor in front of her and blinked up. “Felid,” Pam said to Martini. “There are irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding your phylogeny.” She looked at Jerry North. “Why badger a mammalogist?” she asked. “I'd think they had enough to bear. And speaking of bears. Do you believe they used to be dogs?”

On that subject, and on subjects which were related, Jerry North was, he told his wife, willing to take Dr. Preson's word, assuming he could understand it. They were, he told her, away from the point. Pam agreed that they were, but pointed out that it was Dr. Preson who had taken them there.

“Because he was as excited about Dr.—what's his name?—Stick?”

“Steck,” Jerry told her. “He—”

“As about the bushelmen,” Pam said. “What does he want you to do?”

“Among other things, he's an author,” Jerry told her. “He wants me to hold his hand. Or—” He broke off. “As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I know,” he said. “I suppose he needed an audience. It is a damn funny thing. Damn irritating, too, of course.”

“I keep thinking of the Doberman,” Pam said. “It ought to be—funny. It all ought to be funny.”

“In a way it is,” Jerry said. “As I told Preson. But—”

“But you brought him home for a drink,” Pam said. “Because it wasn't—well, only funny. It isn't, is it?”

Somebody, it had to be presumed, thought it was funny, Jerry told her. What other reason could there be for all of it, for any of it? It was a crackpot's idea of a rousing joke; on that the man from the precinct was right. There was nothing much to be done about it; on that the man from the precinct was right again.

“Why Dr. Preson?” Pam asked.

Presumably, Jerry said, and made them drinks—presumably there was no “why” to it, any more than there was a “why” to the direction lightning took, the victims it chose. Any object which stood above its immediate environment—even if it stood no higher than a small boy, playing with a puppy—was enough “why” for lightning. The small boy died; the puppy lived. Prominence was relative—a towering tree, a little boy on a level field. He brought the drinks back.