From the Jaws of Defeat

Illustration by Arthur George

The day dawned like any other June morning, which is to say that Martin swatted the alarm when it went off, pulled the covers over his head, and was back asleep before the echoes died.

Mind you, it had nothing to do with the fact that it was June—he has the same problem during the other eleven months of the year. Martin’s father was a mattress; his mother was a pillow… and he was clearly reluctant to leave the bosom of his family.

My thankless task was to get him out of bed in spite of himself. Unfortunately, he had grown inured to my usual methods. A fresh approach was needed.

Anything by Sousa had become a cliche. The William Tell Overture was out for the same reason. There are certain portions of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth that work wonders when reproduced at maximum volume, but I needed something less lengthy than a hill symphony. Wagner was capable of writing rousing brass lines into his work, but I was beginning to worry that I might permanently damage Martin’s hearing if I continued blaring fortissimo trumpets into his ears.

Softly, I began. Using Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain, I conjured a quiet village nestled in a valley. Slumbering spirits awoke, drifting through the night air to summon others from their graves. Infernal demons gathered, disjointed bones came together and danced by bonfires, the very mountain itself joining in…

And Martin awoke, sitting bolt upright, eyes staring. Sweat threaded down his temple.

He stared at me, eyes wide. “Victor! You wouldn’t believe the nightmare I just had! I was—”

Perhaps I was trying to look overly innocent. Perhaps he had finally learned to read my alien facial expressions. Perhaps it was the fact that I was still rendering the music, using my tympanum to recreate all the proper orchestral selections; alas, I am limited to monophonic reproduction, as I have only one set of vocal apparatus.

He scowled darkly at me, then used a corner of the sheet to mop his brow. “Victor…” he began, then paused to regain his composure. “I know you mean well, little buddy, but can’t you just imitate the sound of an alarm clock, or something?”

“I tried that one time,” I reminded him. “You tried to turn me off—the bruise lasted nearly three weeks.”

He had the grace to look guilty. “Uh, right.” He shook his head in defeat. “Maybe I ought to get a normal nine to five job where I could punch a time card like everybody else.”

“The result would be the same. You would oversleep, get to work late, and be fired. Then you would have to go back to being a private detective because that’s all you know how to do. Since you already are a private detective, why don’t you pry yourself out of bed and we’ll go down to the office and see if anyone needs any privates detected.”

He flopped backwards on the mattress, arms spread wide. ‘You go without me. Call me if there’s anything doing.”

“As you’re well aware, Martin, I can’t drive a car. They don’t give extraterrestrials driver’s licenses. In addition to that, my legs are scarcely longer than your hands… certainly nowhere near long enough for me to reach the pedals. Besides,” I added maliciously, “I’d have to steer using my tongue and the wheel would be covered with slime—”

“Say no more!” Martin cried, bounding off of the bed. “Ten minutes to shower and shave. We’ll pick up doughnuts on the way in to work.”

He was as good as his word, almost, and we arrived only three minutes late. Even so, we were clearly not there early enough to satisfy the man impatiently tapping his foot on the worn linoleum outside the office door bearing Martin’s name. Frankly, I was amused to see someone tap his foot in real life. After all, you hear the phrase often, but never see anyone do so.

Martin mounted the stairs carrying me much the way another man might carry a briefcase to work. Since I lack a handle, he had me tucked under his right arm.

The man at the door stopped tapping, blinked and asked, “Can’t Victor walk? Is he all right?”

I looked at him from my sideways perspective and replied, “I’m fine, thank you, but with legs no longer than pencils, stairs are difficult.”

“Perhaps it would help if your legs weren’t so fat, Victor,” Martin said. “Then they would bend more easily.”

“Fat?” I cried indignantly.

“Yeah. I think it’s real cute the way you’ve got those little dimples where your knees are supposed to be. Reminds me of a baby’s legs,” Martin offered, reaching for his keys. He gently placed me on the floor, then unlocked the door, motioning our client through.

I kicked his ankle. “My legs are supposed to look that way, you idiot. Tomorrow I’ll just let you sleep in and be late.”

Martin did not give me the satisfaction of acknowledging that he had heard me. Just as well—it’s unseemly to bicker in front of potential clients.

The potential client himself was dressed in a three piece suit, impeccably tailored. The suit alone was probably worth more than the archaic collection of chrome and corrosion that Martin chose to call a car. Then there were the accessories. What he had paid for the shoes would have bought a month’s worth of groceries. The watch would have fed two for a year. No doubt our visitor’s car was equal to the gross domestic product of a small third world country. I could practically hear the cash register in Martin’s head as he tried to decide how much the traffic would bear.

Martin promptly ushered the man into his inner office. I stayed out in the front room, ready to take up my secretarial duties for the day. The man stopped just inside the door into Martin’s office and gestured back towards me. “Is Victor not going to hear what I have to say?”

Sometimes I am present at the initial briefing, sometimes not. I leave it up to Martin to decide what is appropriate. Some people are uncomfortable around aliens, although I am told that, of the extraterrestrial races currently resident on Earth, I am one of the least repulsive to human eyes. Naturally, this must be taken in context—it took me the better part of twenty years to get used to the way humans look, much less become adept at telling them apart.

Actually, I was a bit surprised to hear the man ask if I was going to listen in. I had already come to the same conclusion as Martin. He had the look of one who has been pampered and sheltered. Not like the kind of person who was used to dealing with the less prosperous members of his own race, much less a member of one of the alien species.

Without comment, I waddled into Martin’s office and took up a position next to the desk. Martin, for his part, gestured towards the visitors’ seat, then sat behind the desk. As he sat, the springs in his dilapidated office chair gave off a horrendous metallic shriek. It sounded like nothing so much as the sound effect for a pterodactyl in a cheap science fiction movie.

Our visitor began apologetically, “I hope this doesn’t disrupt your normal mode of operations. It’s just that I had heard that Victor had been of material assistance in several of your other cases and I wanted to be certain that the two of you bent every effort to help me.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Martin assured him. “Why don’t you start at the top? Tell us everything.”

“My name,” he said, “is Sebastian Michael Grombaugh III. And I am afraid that I have been… shall we say, indiscrete.”

“Then there’s a woman involved?” Martin prompted.

Ruefully, Grombaugh nodded. “No ordinary woman, this one. Hair the color of summer sun. Eyes to put sapphires to shame. A smile to make you forget all your troubles. Unfortunately, it seems that she also has the fingers of a pickpocket, the heart of a barracuda, and the scruples of a snake.”

“I take it that you had a falling out,” Martin said.

“Not so much a falling out as a skipping out, so to speak. With the money, naturally.”

“How much?” I asked.

Grombaugh looked distinctly pained. “Nearly nine hundred thousand.”

Martin’s face went carefully bland, but I could see the effort that it was costing him not to let his jaw sag. “That’s quite a sum of money—grand larceny, and then some. Have you filed a report with the police?”

“I’m afraid not. You see, there’s a slight complication.”

“Uh, oh,” I muttered, knowing what was coming.

“The young lady in question is not my wife.”

It was really quite a simple case. He had married a woman who had gradually grown distant and cold. By the time Elaine Hinds had popped onto the scene, he was ripe for the plucking. She apparently had wasted little time reaching for the fruit.

In a matter of weeks she had a full set of keys. One to the Ferrari, one to the house, and one to a guest house that stood away from the main house. It seemed that they had met there often.

Grombaugh had made his crucial mistake when he told her the combination to the safe in his study. Like the keys, he had given it to her willingly. In retrospect, he wished he had bitten off his tongue instead.

It was not unusual for the safe to contain as much as five or ten thousand dollars, but, by coincidence, Elaine had timed things such that the proceeds from the sale of a piece of real estate were on hand. Not so coincidentally, Grombaugh had told her about it, in the usual way that human men try to impress women by mentioning large sums of money. Shortly thereafter, Elaine, the Ferrari, and the cash were all missing.

Grombaugh had covered the loss of the car by telling his wife that the cylinder head was cracked, and that it might be some time before it was repaired, as certain other necessary parts had to be ordered from Italy. The money, however, was a different matter. His wife, who went by the improbable nickname of Bird, knew that it was there. In fact, they had planned to use it to buy a house on the coast of Maine as a summer getaway. Considering that they had already made an offer on an attractive cottage, its loss was likely to be noticed sooner rather than later.

The police, of course, were out of the question. They would undoubtedly do something gauche, like mention his lover to his wife, which would complicate his life beyond all hope of recovery. That meant that Grombaugh had few options, and little time in which to exercise them. Our job was to locate Elaine of the summer hair and sapphire eyes. Presumably the Ferrari and whatever portion of the money remained would be nearby.

The trick, of course, would be to find her. Unsurprisingly, she had left no forwarding address, and, with that much cash on hand, was unlikely to be using a charge card to put fuel in the Ferrari.

We were able to get a few potentially useful bits of information out of Grombaugh, such as the fact that Elaine had mentioned a mother in New Orleans. The main problem was that the usual ways of tracking a person take time, and that was in short supply.

As soon as Grombaugh left, we got to work. I began finessing the telephone company out of copies of Elaine’s last three phone bills while Martin called the owner of the house she had been renting. He was pretending to be an agent of a moving company who needed to see her possessions before giving an estimate as to how much it would cost to move them to Chicago.

The phone bill copies would arrive by mail; there was nothing we could do to speed that process. However, Martin obtained permission to enter the house where she had been living.

Martin shook his head, looking worried. “Victor, I’ve got a feeling that we’ve lost her. With that much money and a silver Ferrari, she’s probably hallway across the country by now. Los Angeles or Miami… somewhere where there are dozens of high class sports cars and loads of pretty blondes with money.”

“Oh, we’ll find her all right. It’s just that we may not have time to do so before Bird figures out that something is amiss.”

“The most efficient thing to do would be to bring in the police. They could issue an alert for the Ferrari. That kind of car sticks out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, that’s the one thing we can’t do.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get a move on. There’s just enough time to get over to Elaine’s house for our appointment.”

As Martin was strapping me into the front seat of the car with the seat belt, I said, “By the way, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve eaten. Do you think we could stop by the dump on the way home tonight?”

Martin shuddered. “What’s this we stuff, dumpster breath? Just because you think a half-rotted head of lettuce is a delicacy doesn’t mean that I intend to eat garbage with you. I prefer my food fresh.”

“But it might… bleed on you!” I croaked, my imagination reeling at the very concept.

Just as Martin has trouble with my dietary requirements, his cause my mind to derail. The idea of eating anything without a nice, healthy coating of slime is anathematic. Humans are on the right track with the idea of aged beef—they just don’t take it far enough.

Martin got in on the driver’s side and inserted the key, then looked my way. “Victor, I like you a lot, but I don’t think we’ll ever eat from the same plate.”

“You can say that again,” I muttered.

As we neared the house where Elaine Hinds had lived, the lawns got larger and greener. Weeds were fewer. Other, more subtle clues to wealth presented themselves to the trained eye. For instance, what few childrens’ toys were to be seen weren’t made of that cheap, hollow plastic that fades in the sun the first year and wears out entirely the second; more substantial steel toys took their place.

Martin slowed, squinting at the house numbers, then finally stopped. “Looks like this is the one.”

The house was smaller than most on the block, but just as tidy. There was a car in the driveway with a man leaning against the fender. As soon as he saw us pull to the curb, he began walking towards us.

Martin came around to my side of the car and began to unwind the seat belt, which he had looped loosely around my body. Were we ever to be in a serious wreck, it would more likely strangle me than save my life, but it does help me stay erect when Martin attempts to make the car corner on two wheels.

“That tickles,” I hissed.

Martin eyed me. “Do you want to stay in the car?”

“What? And let you miss all the important details?”

“Then stand still. They didn’t design this belt to hold aliens with no laps.”

“I can’t sit, as you well know. My body doesn’t bend that way.”

Martin lifted me from the seat and placed me on the ground just as Elaine’s landlord walked up. “You from the moving company?”

“That’s correct,” I said firmly before Martin could open his mouth. “This is the head of my work crew. We’re here to look over the contents of the house. See how many rooms’ worth there are, and so forth.” I began to stomp purposefully across the yard towards the front door, ignoring the horrified look that Martin was giving me.

Not hearing footsteps behind me, I turned. My arms are only wizened approximations of human arms, but I put them about where my hips would be, if I had any. “Well? I haven’t got all day, you know. Let’s get this over with.” I considered tapping my foot, but decided that it would be a little too much.

The landlord looked at Martin’s rusty derelict from a junkyard, then at Martin, then at me. Clearly we were having a credibility crisis. “For heaven’s sake, my car’s in the shop, so I had Martin drive us here in his. I know it’s an eyesore, but at least it runs.” I turned my one eye on Martin and tried to give him a contemptuous look. “And before you start in on me about wanting a raise so you can buy a better car, you’d just better think again. Next time I’ll get Harry to drive me and I’ll send you to clean out the warehouse.” I turned back to the landlord and made a snorting noise, as though to say that you just couldn’t get good help these days.

This time when I turned and started towards the house, they fell in line, like baby ducks behind their mother. Having established my authority in such an over-the-top manner, I would be expected to remain in character. I relished the thought.

As the landlord unlocked the door, he ventured to ask, “The lady isn’t planning on breaking her lease, is she?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I snapped. “When does her lease expire?”

“Two more months. It was a six month lease.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a problem, then. She’s talking about moving to Baltimore in late August or early September.”

After that, he was silent. Human psychology being what it is, he followed Martin from room to room to make certain that he didn’t steal anything. After all, it’s always the underlings who have sticky fingers—never the boss.

While Martin led him as far away as possible, I quickly rummaged through desk drawers and closets. I looked under the refrigerator and behind the sofa. I thudded down the hallway. “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough to fix up the estimate.”

He nodded.

As we were preparing to go out the door, the landlord asked, “Uh, do you have a card? We ought to leave something so that she’ll know you’ve been here.”

I snorted again. “I don’t carry cards because I don’t have pockets. People don’t usually have trouble remembering me—I don’t look like any other mover in town. Thanks for letting us in. Tell Miss Hinds we’ll be in touch.”

With that, I stalked back out into the grass, Martin hurrying to catch up. As he lifted me into the car, he gave me a very strange look indeed, part anger, part confusion.

As we pulled away from the curb, he started in on me, “Victor, don’t you ever pull a setup out from under me that way again! If I had—”

“Martin, shut up,” I said quietly.

He shut up.

“What would you have done when he asked you for a business card? Given him some lame excuse about having given out your last one an hour ago? How did you expect to explain me? As your accountant? Hardly. A mover? Even worse. Clearly I have more brains than muscle—”

“That’s not saying much,” Martin muttered under his breath as he negotiated a turn.

“—So my only possible role would be as the boss.”

“But what if he had recognized you?”

“In a manner of speaking, I’m sure he did.”

“What?”

“He’s probably seen my picture in the paper from time to time, but it’s a truism that all aliens look alike. He probably just assumed that I’m a different one from the one he’s seen in the paper. You were safe because they never run your picture. Who wants to see a picture of a human when they can have a picture of an alien, instead?”

Martin grumbled and growled, snarled and snorted. “All right, all right, but warn me before you do that again, OK?”

“I didn’t know until I saw him that he was the business card type. After that, it was just a question of improvising.”

He sighed. “Victor, you’ll be the death of me.”

“Don’t die yet. You have to take me by the dump first.”

“So what did you discover while I was leading him on a wild goose chase through the house?”

“Nothing.”

“What!”

“Believe it. Nothing. No receipts in the drawers, no unpaid bills on the kitchen counter. Nothing. The furniture was rented, just like the house. She took one suitcase full of essentials and left everything else behind. No question about it, the bird has flown the coop.”

“Bird’s the other one—his wife,” Martin pointed out.

I ignored him. “The conclusion is obvious. Elaine, if that’s really her name, which I am beginning to doubt, is a pro.”

“Pro?”

“A beautiful woman with no visible means of support comes out of nowhere, gloms on to a lonely rich man, gets friendly, gets the goods, gets out of town.”

Martin nodded as he saw my point. “And at this very moment, somewhere in Palm Springs, a beautiful blonde in a silver Ferrari is renting a place to live while she seeks out another victim.”

“Precisely.”

He grimaced. “That is one cold woman.” He glanced over at me. “Any ideas as to where to go from here?”

“We could go through her trash on the off chance that there might be something useful in there.”

“Ugh!” he grunted. “I hate going through peoples’ trash.”

“I volunteer.”

“You would,” Martin growled, as he turned the car around.

Needless to say, there was nothing useful in the trash, either. The can was as empty as the house. Clearly, she had left quickly, but not in haste; all according to a predetermined plan. Elaine Hinds was nothing if not thorough. I was beginning to doubt that the duplicate phone bills would give us anything we could use. She was not the type to leave us access to a telling long distance charge. I grudgingly raised my estimation of her another notch.

While we were out and about, Martin swung by the city dump and dropped me off, saying he had an errand to run. Actually, I suspect that he simply doesn’t want to be seen in the presence of an extraterrestrial who licks out the insides of discarded cans of sauerkraut.

He was back in half an hour, as promised, but as I approached the door to the car he began shaking his head. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re greasy, smelly, and sticky from head to toe. You’re riding home in the trunk. Then I’m going to rinse you off with a hose before you go inside. You smell awful!”

“Probably the oranges,” I mused aloud. “A whole crate of moldy oranges. Oh, and the fish heads! That was the best part—”

Martin turned a pasty color. “Uh, Victor, could we change the topic? I’m not really all that interested in what you ate out there, you know.”

“But you tell me about what you eat—for that matter, I even watch you eat.”

“That’s different,” he grumbled, as he unlocked the trunk. “I eat real food, not leftovers.”

“Just think of me as part of the recycling effort,” I told him.

“I’d rather not,” he replied, as he lifted me into the trunk, wearing the rubber gloves that he kept in the car. “To me, being green means helping the environment, not trying to keep from throwing up.”

Sure enough, he sprayed me down with the hose when we got home. Some would see a shower in the yard as insulting—not me. Happily, I turned to and fro, making sure that all parts of my skin got wet. Water is one of the most sensuous pleasures available anywhere in the known Universe, and I made the most of it. Aside from the purely physical pleasure, it evoked fond memories of rainstorms back on my home world.

Since we had been out of the office all afternoon, Martin called and tapped in the code that caused the recording machine to regurgitate its accumulation of messages. Grombaugh had called, wanting to know if we had made any progress tracking down Elaine.

Martin turned to me after hanging up the phone. He looked troubled. “Victor, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to find Elaine in time to save Grombaugh.” He slumped into a chair. “I absolutely hate losing, but…” He shook his head in resignation.

Martin, depressed, is of no use to anyone, especially himself. Left to his own devices, he will sink into a swamp of despair. His mind ceases to function, leaving me in charge by default. My mind is fully capable of handling any deductive work that should fall my way, but my diminutive size and relative lack of strength tend to hamper my investigative efforts. In short, I need Martin in top form, if for no other reason than to do the sweat work. Of course, to give him his due, he does comes up with the occasional clever idea.

What I needed was to get him stirring. Inaction would create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unfortunately, I was not able to think of anything that would spark his inner fires, and he spent the evening moping.

The next morning was a contest of wills. Getting Martin out of bed was only the first of many hurdles. He moved at a glacial pace, often stopping entirely for minutes at a time, staring vacantly into space.

When he entered this near-comatose state in the shower, I played a dirty trick on him. I reached inside with my tongue, which, being as long as Martin’s arm, was ideal for the purpose, and turned off the hot water. His shriek was instantaneous. Frantically, he grabbed for the knob. When his hand contacted my tongue, he let out a howl of anguish and bolted from the shower, shivering. He then proceeded to threaten me with dire consequences if I ever so much as thought of doing such a thing again.

Getting him dressed was a comparative improvement, although he kept a wary eye on me the whole time. Breakfast was the easiest of all—we simply skipped that part. I think he was afraid of what I might do to his food if he didn’t eat quickly enough.

The first indication of life I saw in Martin occurred as we were turning into our parking space at the office. There was a stunning redhead with green eyes just getting out of a small Ford as Martin parked his car. His eyes automatically fastened on her… unfortunately neglecting the concrete stop in front of us. The car hit the stop, canted sharply upwards, then slammed back down as the wheels dropped over the other side. The shock absorbers were unequal to the task; the car bounced violently.

“Excellent way to make a good first impression on a woman,” I noted calmly.

Martin delivered me a withering glare. “Listen, torpedo-head, next time you want to drive, just say so.” He shifted the car into reverse and was about to try to undo the damage when the redhead appeared at his window. “Goodness, are you all right?”

“Just testing the suspension,” Martin answered breezily. “It’s been squeaking a bit, and I wanted to see if I could get it to do it again.”

“I wish I had known about that trick a month ago. My car was making a funny noise, but I couldn’t make it do so when I took it to the dealership.”

Martin looked faintly embarrassed. “Um, actually, I wouldn’t try that on any of the newer cars. They don’t have enough ground clearance.”

She nodded in understanding. “I see. Listen, could you tell me which of these buildings Martin Crofts works in?”

He abandoned his efforts to get the car back across the stop. “I’m Martin Crofts.”

She leaned down further to look across at me, practically inviting Martin to stare down the top of her blouse. “Then you must be Victor,” she said.

“I am,” I answered gravely.

If I expected a reply, I was destined to wait in vain. She and Martin were staring raptly into one another’s eyes from six inches distance.

I think I neglected to mention that Martin has this unholy effect on women. Something to. do with the fact that he is slightly over six feet tall, athletically built, with black hair and intense green eyes. He is a north magnetic monopole, and all women are south.

Unfortunately, by definition, the attraction is mutual.

“Um, folks, can we go on inside?” I asked, after giving them sufficient time to plumb the depths of each other’s souls.

“Oh… sure,” Martin answered, stepping out of the car.

I let them get a good ten feet before I called out, “Forgetting something, Martin?”

He stopped dead in his tracks, then scurried back and unwound me from the seat belt, apologizing profusely. “I don’t know what I was thinking, little buddy—”

“I know precisely what you were thinking, and the way you were staring, chances are that she does, too.”

That earned me a dirty look.

“She’s waiting for you,” I observed blandly.

His eyes widened. “Oh, yeah.” He unceremoniously dumped me on the asphalt and hurried back to her, leaving me to close the car door myself. Having had trouble getting the door to close in the past, I hit it with everything I had.

Naturally, it swung noiselessly shut without even a hint of resistance, and I fell flat on my face in the parking lot. Martin must have oiled the hinges without telling me.

After sorting through various affronts to my bodily health and dignity, I pushed myself to my feet and went galloping after Martin and the drop-dead redhead. Fortunately, they were too busy getting acquainted to have noticed my momentary loss of equilibrium.

Martin did remember his manners long enough to carry me to the top of the stairs, but, once at the top, I was left to fend for myself. By the time I waddled into the office, they had sequestered themselves in Martin’s inner office, and the door was firmly closed.

No problem. There was enough to do out front to keep me occupied for a while. If all else failed, I could read a book. Reading is one of the best ideas humans have come up with; no other species has anything that even remotely compares.

It was just past noon when they came back out of Martin’s office. As they passed, Martin informed me that they were going out for lunch.

“Ah, Martin, we have a case pending,” I reminded him.

I might as well have saved my breath. The door had already closed behind them.

I fully expected Martin to take a two-hour lunch. I was wrong. It was only an hour and a half—but he brought her back with him and they sealed themselves in his office again.

I passed the time by working my way through the few remaining leads we had pertaining to Elaine. I tried to find the mother in New Orleans, but failed. Either her mother’s last name wasn’t Hinds, or, more likely, there simply wasn’t a mother anywhere in the state of Louisiana.

Dead ends multiplied like dead flies on the window sill. Some petered out immediately, others lay there twitching feebly for a bit before expiring.

Several times I was tempted to interrupt Martin, but there really wasn’t anything he could do about the situation. Barring a call from Grombaugh to tell us that he had remembered something new, we were rapidly reaching the end of what we could do for him.

Just on the off chance that Bird, by some unforeseen circumstance, did not find out about the missing money within the next few days, I started a few new lines of inquiry. I didn’t expect them to bear fruit, at least not in time, but it was worth a try.

At a quarter till five, Martin and the redhead came out of his office. His eyes were shining. He escorted her to the door, then stood there watching her walk down the corridor.

After she was out of sight, he turned to me and sighed, “God, did you see those legs?”

I affected a snort of derision. “I don’t recall that you gave me the opportunity to see much of her at all.”

He leaned against the door frame, smiling dreamily. “I’m taking her out to dinner tonight.”

“I’m overjoyed,” I said sarcastically. “I don’t suppose that you remember that we have a case, Martin. One with severe time constraints. By any chance, did the young lady with the red hair happen to bring us a paying case? Because if she didn’t, you’re going to have trouble meeting your rent, since we haven’t been able to produce Elaine for Grombaugh.”

He looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Victor.” He sighed. “No, she’s not a paying customer, but at least we’ll get some free publicity out of this. Her name is Nancy Gillis and she’s interviewing for a magazine called Curious Casebook. We’re going to be featured in the next issue. It seems that our partnership is quite unusual—”

“So you’ve finally decided to admit that I’m a full partner instead of a short, leathery, monocular secretary?”

“—And she’s going to give full coverage to your contributions. After all, alien detectives aren’t found on every street corner.”

“So how long will this interview process take? Grombaugh needs answers posthaste.”

He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be too much longer, Victor. We’re going to talk some more over dinner. That should get us somewhere.”

“Hunh! Somehow, I have a feeling that where it will get you has more to do with sheets than table cloths.”

Martin looked shocked. “Victor!”

“At the rate things are going, I’m going to end up running this case by myself.” I was hitting below the belt, I confess, but since that seemed to be where the majority of his thinking was taking place, it seemed the best way to get his attention.

His face took on a grim expression. “All right. I promise you that I’ll be back on top of things tomorrow.”

“At the rate you’re going, you’ll be on top tonight,” I retorted sharply.

Actually, I wasn’t as angry as I sounded. Once Martin decides that something is a matter of honor, then the deed is as good as done. It was simply a matter of keeping him from getting into a habit of ignoring things.

Martin acted properly chastened on the way home that afternoon, so I let him off the hook, even going so far as to tell him a ribald joke I had chanced to overhear. It was in my, and Grombaugh’s, best interest that Martin get his wild oats sown as quickly as possible so he could then turn his undivided attention back to the case at hand.

When we got to the apartment, I immediately made myself as inconspicuous as possible by picking up a book I had been reading. Martin went about the arcane rituals that men practice when they are trying to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex. I could have told him that it was unnecessary effort—that the situation was analogous to shooting fish in a barrel—but why spoil the fun? If Nancy Gillis wanted to be chased, then, by all means, chase away.

I had read three chapters by the time the doorbell rang. I didn’t bother answering it, which was wise as Martin pelted towards the door at a dead run. Had I been in his way, I would have been trampled.

He pulled himself up short, composed his face, and opened the door calmly, just as though beautiful redheads were on the other side every time he opened it.

“Hi, Nancy,” he said, ever the master of witty opening lines.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

He nodded and they were off without even a backwards glance. I went back to my book, settling in for a quiet evening.

Shortly after twelve-thirty, they returned. Clearly the fish had been shot, as they stopped in the doorway for a long, lingering kiss, complete with roaming hands and sound effects. Just as I began to fear anoxia, they came up for air, smiled brightly at me, and disappeared into the bedroom, trailing an aura of pheromones.

In their haste, they had forgotten to close the front door. I padded over and pushed it closed, noting idly that the front bumper on Nancy’s car sported a sticker from a local rental agency.

By one o’clock, I had finished my book. That was when I discovered that I had carelessly allowed my reading pile to dwindle away to nothing. I now had nothing to help me while away the night hours.

Humans, for some reason, sleep. I have never understood this, as it seems to me to be a tragic waste of time. However, there is nothing to be done about it, so I spend the time while Martin is unconscious reading. It has tremendously increased my understanding of the human race, as well as teaching me a great deal about the physical sciences, something I had known little about before coming to Earth.

Over the years, I have covered many topics, going into some only lightly, others in depth. Oddly, I had never taken time to read up on the detective industry. A case of being too close to the trees to see the forest.

Considering the hour it was too late to go to the library, but I could at least consult the card catalog, as all the local libraries maintain that information on computers that are available via modem around the clock.

Martin’s computer, like his car, was a relic of better days. In fact, like me, it had belonged to his late uncle, so it was anything but a state of the art machine. However, it had a modem, and, for the moment, that was enough.

I began searching for books by topic, noting the ones that looked most interesting. I then let my curiosity travel where it would. I soon had more titles than I could read in a month, and was about to log off the system when it occurred to me to see if the library carried issues of Curious Casebook. They did not.

This didn’t surprise me, since the city library has always been comparatively weak on periodicals. Just for fun, I dialed into the county library, but with the same result. The state library, while less convenient to get to, could be counted upon to have most things, but, again, I drew a blank.

The usual way to access the card catalog of the state library yields only information on what they actually have, but it is possible to access the data in a different way, which lists the title of every item in print, whether the library has it or not. This is done so that interlibrary loans may be arranged. When this avenue produced no results, I began to get very curious, indeed. Time to think things through.

It did not take long.

I made a fast phone call, then, as quietly as I could, I slipped back into the living room and stood near the front door. Concentrating deeply, I recreated the sound of fast footsteps approaching.

Loudly, I simulated a fist pounding on the door. I even threw in the sound of the loose security chain rattling against the door panels as it vibrated.

“Open up, Martin! Let me in!” I bellowed, taking pains to produce a precise imitation of an angry human male voice.

Imitating the sound of someone kicking the door hurt my tympanum, but it was in character and would help create the atmosphere I wanted.

“I know she’s in there!” I shouted at the top of my lung, not neglecting to add the muffling tonal distortions of someone speaking through an inch and a half of wood.

Then an amazing thing happened. The door to Martin’s bedroom was flung open, and Nancy bounded out, stark naked. She glanced frantically around the room, her expression like that of a cornered animal. She froze when she saw me.

“There she is!” I shouted, still as though through the door.

The frozen glare of hatred she gave me was sufficient to make me fear for my life. Fortunately, at that moment, Martin came up behind her.

“Victor?” Martin demanded in confusion. “I thought I heard Grombaugh at the door. Was that you?”

“Yes, me! I was imitating Grombaugh’s voice!” I shouted, adding imitation pounding on the door for emphasis.

He stared at me as though I had lost my mind. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

I reverted to my normal voice and bowed as best as I was able, given the limitations of my body. “Martin, please allow me to introduce you to Elaine Hinds, also known as Nancy Gillis, and who knows how many other names.” To her, I added, “Say hello, Elaine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said frostily.

Martin stared hard at her, but the expression on his face was quite unlike the looks he had been giving her earlier in the day. “Elaine?”

“My name is not Elaine—” she began.

“Just as it’s not Nancy, I’m sure,” I put in.

Her green eyes sparked, and she spun on her heel and stalked back into the bedroom. Without a word, she began to don her discarded items of clothing.

Martin walked half as far and was reaching out towards her when he stopped and looked back at me. “All right, Victor. Let’s have it. And it damn well better be good, or you’re in a world of trouble.”

“To begin with, there’s no such publication as Curious Casebook. It’s a name she made up, probably on the spur of the moment. She wanted an excuse to get close to you so she could quiz you about current cases. Hers, in particular. That way she would know how much danger she was in.”

“But Elaine had blonde hair,” Martin protested. “And the Ferrari.”

“The red hair was just a red herring. She could just as easily have been a brunette, the bottles are on the same shelf at the drug store,” I pointed out. “Either the green eyes are contacts, or the blue ones were. Perhaps both, for all I know. The Ford is a rental car. It’s a great deal less conspicuous than a Ferrari.”

Elaine, or Nancy, or whatever her name was, was ignoring us. Moving efficiently, she pulled on her blouse, buttoned it, and reached for the various items of jewelry on the nightstand.

“But why stay in town? Why come after me?” Martin cried.

“Call it Tom Sawyer watching his own funeral. Call it a thrill seeker wanting the adrenaline rush of taunting fate. Call it a pro wanting to keep tabs on the progress of the search for herself. My guess is that she was in the process of setting up a new persona, and decided that, as long as she was in the area, she might as well see how close you were getting.”

Martin frowned. “But why set up an alias here? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Certainly, but it does have a few points going for it. One is that this is the last place anyone would think to look for her. After all, everyone immediately assumed that she had hit the road—not once did we even consider that she might be under our very noses. Another benefit of staying here is that if someone wants a previous address, she can give one that will actually check out, should anyone bother to call.”

Martin rubbed his temples wearily. “Nancy, do you have anything to say?” Poor Martin was torn. On one hand, he didn’t want to be wrong; didn’t want to have been played for a fool. On the other hand, he was beginning to see the logic behind what I was saying.

She carefully applied fresh lipstick, checked her hair in a mirror, and turned to face us. “Really, there’s nothing to say. I’ve been tried and convicted by that,” here she gestured disdainfully at me, “one-eyed kangaroo court from some hellhole planet.” She swept past Martin, but paused at the bedroom door, smiled provocatively back at him and said, “Besides… you can’t prove a thing.”

She began walking rapidly towards the front door, heels clicking briskly. Unable to resist the parting gesture, she paused with her hand on the knob and said, “It’s been nice knowing you, Martin—you’re actually kind of sweet. I wish I could say the same for your pet fire hydrant.”

She opened the door, turned… and ran face first into the broad chest of Sebastian Michael Grombaugh III.

He looked down at the improbably perfect lip prints on his immaculately tailored shirt, then back at her and raised an eyebrow sardonically. “Going somewhere, Elaine?”

Late the next afternoon, Grombaugh dropped by the office, smiling broadly, if a bit wistfully. “Good afternoon, Victor. I hope you’re doing well.”

“Quite well. And you?” I responded formally.

The sad smile he gave me spoke volumes. “To be frank with you, I rather wish that things had turned out differently. I really was quite taken with her, you know.”

Martin appeared in his office door. “Ah, there you are,” Grombaugh said. “I thought I would drop by and pay my bill in person. It would be difficult to explain to Bird if it were to come to the house.”

“So the Ferrari was where she said it was?” Martin asked.

Grombaugh nodded. “In a rental garage across town, yes. And the vast majority of the money was in the trunk, just as she claimed. She had spent a few thousand, but I can make up that much without trouble. As of this moment, it is safely back in the safe, so to speak.”

“You remembered to change the combination?” I asked.

“The first thing I did,” he assured me. “All the locks have been rekeyed, too. I told Bird that I had heard something about thieves.” Again, he smiled ruefully. “Rather closer to the truth than I care to admit.”

“What did you do with Elaine after you retrieved the car and the money?” Martin asked.

“Turned her loose, unfortunately. There wasn’t much else I could do without bringing the law into the picture.”

“So she’s free to do it again.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. However, I’m confident that some day she’ll meet her match. For the moment, I’m content to have come that close to the fire without being burned—at least not seriously, anyway. It was a learning experience, and for that I should be grateful, I suppose.”

He slipped his hand inside his jacket and brought out an envelope, which he gave to Martin. “There’s your fee, as we discussed. I would like to express my gratitude for the prompt and professional job that you did on this matter.” He reached back into his jacket and brought out another envelope, which he placed in Martin’s other hand. “This is a little bonus, for which I would like to ask a favor.”

Martin, eyes wide, said, “Of course.”

“Due to the delicate nature of the situation, should Bird ever find out that I was acquainted with Miss Hinds, I would appreciate it if you would assure her that I met Elaine through you—that Elaine was your, er, friend, rather than mine.”

Martin, blushing furiously, nodded, clearly not trusting himself to speak.

“We’ll be more than happy to do so,” I told Grombaugh.

“Good. I’ve followed you two for quite some time and, as Bird will attest, I am sometimes given to prattling on about your exploits. I’m just lucky that she never found out that anything was amiss, as she would have known who I would turn to. Shortly thereafter she would have been asking embarrassing questions. Still might, should I have unwisely left any loose ends. For that reason, I thought that it would be wise to arrange our stories ahead of time.”

“If Bird should get in touch, we’ll simply explain that you wanted to meet Victor in person and that Elaine chanced to be there at the time,” Martin said.

“And never let on that the meeting was at your apartment in the wee hours of the night, following a call from Victor,” Grombaugh said, winking. “I think that will do admirably.” He smiled again and turned towards the door. “I’ll be going now. I wish you both well.”

And with that, he was gone.

I looked at Martin. “Well, that clears up my one remaining question.”

“And that was?” he prompted.

“How Elaine knew to come after you, as opposed to any other detective in town. Clearly, Grombaugh must have talked about us to her, the same way he does to Bird.”

“And I thought it was my good looks,” he said dejectedly.

“Just be glad that you didn’t have anything worth taking. If she had done the same job on you that she did on Grombaugh, it would have set you back ten years just to buy another car.”

“I suppose you want me to thank you for saving me from her,” he groused.

“It was a near thing,” I agreed, rubbing it in. “Realistically speaking, we were dead in the water as far as tracking her. That would have cost us Grombaugh’s case. And there you were, about to become the barracuda’s next meal.”

“I was not,” he said hotly.

“Well, considering that you’re a financial lightweight compared to Grombaugh, she probably thought of you more as an after-dinner mint.”

He held up his hands in defeat. “All right, all right. I admit it. You snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.”

“Victor always snatches victory from the jaws of defeat,” I said smugly.