The Chronocide Mission

22. PROFESSOR MARCUS BROCK (1)

Brock, too, was worried about Egarn, but his concern was for the incredible tale Egarn had told. He wondered if he were the biggest fool in the universe for believing it. The weapon Arne carried in his pocket fully explained what had happened to the dead handyman and the police car. Unfortunately, it was an explanation that couldn’t be used, and no one would believe him without it. Egarn had furnished plenty of detail—including descriptions of the tools missing from Brock’s workbench after the strange lens had mysteriously disappeared—but no one would believe that, either.

Brock had no worries at all about Egarn’s safety. His friend was Colonel Jacques Lobert, a former army officer with police connections, and Brock had told him Egarn was a scientist connected with an ultra top-secret project. Espionage agents would certainly try to assassinate him if they got a chance. They had already killed two of his colleagues—maneuvered them into a police chase, and then, when that didn’t finish them off, cut their throats, as the colonel no doubt had read in the papers. A third man, the handyman Hy Hyatt, was also murdered, but Brock wasn’t at liberty to talk about that or about the method the fugitives had used to disable a police car. He didn’t have to—one of the newscasts had made a highly publicized reference to a death ray.

“They,” the espionage agents, were clever, fantastically competent, and completely ruthless. Egarn had to be taken to a hiding place with all of the slight-of-hand the colonel could manage, or he certainly would be followed. Then he had to be guarded, not by one man, but by several, with automatic weapons. “They” were capable of marshalling a small army if that quantity of brute force was required.

Brock and the colonel were were long-time friends and not given to practical joking, but the colonel still might have accused the tee-totaling professor of drinking too much had he not known how mystified the police were about those three deaths and the damage to the police car. “I’ll take the situation as you describe it,” he said. “But when this is over, I want a complete explanation.”

“You shall have it,” Brock promised. “There simply isn’t time for that now. This really is urgent.”

So the colonel had taken Egarn. He and several of his friends would play musical chairs with him, passing him from car to car—when they weren’t passing someone else from car to car as a decoy—until they were certain they had lost any pursuit. They would do the job thoroughly, and Brock hoped “thoroughly” would be sufficient. He had no idea how efficiently “they” could spy on such manipulations with the time-peeper Egarn had described. Eventually Egarn would be taken to a motel in a neighborhood where traffic and business congestion would make any kind of a surreptitious attack difficult.

The colonel and his friends were delighted to have a pseudo-military operation to relieve the tedium of their retirements. They were capable of being ruthless themselves, and they would keep Egarn under constant guard until the problem was resolved or until Brock had convinced himself the whole thing was the figment of someone’s very active imagination.

Brock also had to account for the young old-looking man who rode so stoically in the back seat. Arne had been a combination prime minister and business manager of a sovereign state, Egarn said, and he had married a girl who would have been the state’s next ruler if war hadn’t struck. He also had been an important general in that war. None of this seemed believable, but if Brock accepted Egarn, he also had to accept Arne. This certainly was the night for implausible stories.

Driving back to Penfield by the most devious route he could think of, he politely addressed an occasional remark to Arne, but he might as well have been talking to himself. Arne not only didn’t understand; he was lost in his own thoughts and didn’t seem to hear, either.

When they arrived, he led Arne to a guest room, showed him where the bathroom was—and hoped he understood how it was—said, “Sleep,” and closed the door. He needed sleep himself. They had a strenuous day ahead of them, and there wasn’t much left of the night.

When he awoke—shortly after eight o’clock—his wife had breakfast ready for them. He called Arne, and they went to the dining room and watched her load the table with generous portions of scrambled and fried eggs, ham and sausages, hash brown potatoes, toast with butter, various jams and jellies, coffee, orange and tomato juice. Arne contemplated this profusion of food with deep puzzlement. When he finally understood he was welcome to eat whatever food he chose, Brock was fascinated by his reactions.

The ham and scrambled eggs he accepted readily; the sausages he eyed with deep suspicion and finally refused. He took potatoes and a fried egg but after a tentative taste of each left them on his plate. Neither coffee nor juices appealed to him, but he accepted milk readily. The toast obviously seemed strange at first, but he managed to eat three slices. He rejected the orange marmalade firmly; the strawberry preserves were a great success.

When they had eaten, they went to the living room and waited, Brock tense, Arne completely relaxed. Finally the telephone rang. Brock answered, wrote down a number. Then he made a call of his own and talked with his former student, Dr. Jeff Mardell.

“Now we can go to work,” he told Arne. “Egarn is in a motel room with a private phone. We don’t know where it is, nor does anyone else, but we can get in touch with him whenever we need to. We are going to assume ‘they’ are watching everything we do, but I don’t think they can trace telephone calls by peeping through time.”

Arne listened politely and said nothing.

Brock told his wife, “You had better invite your nephew and his wife over to spend the day with you.” He didn’t think there would be any danger once he left, but it did seem wise to take a few rudimentary precautions. He also telephoned several of his neighbors to ask them to be alert to strange goings on in the vicinity, and he arranged for the police to check his house periodically until further notice.

When they reached DuRosche Court, Mr. Kernley was at work trimming the shrubs around the mansion’s front door. His more than ample waistline created a problem in reaching the lower branches. The handyman Hy may have done very little work, Brock reflected, but he must have been useful for jobs that required stooping.

Brock introduced himself, and Kernley said, “Doctor Mardell just telephoned about you. He said you were coming.”

“Several of us are highly concerned about the strange things that have been happening here,” Brock said. “We are afraid they will go right on happening if we don’t figure them out.”

“We are worried, too,” Kernley confessed. “We can’t understand what those men were trying to do. Poor Hy—he wasn’t worth much, he was just about the laziest critter under the sun, but he could do good work when he wanted to. Certainly he never harmed anyone. To die like that—but the police said one of the thugs had quite a bruise on his arm, so Hy got in at least one good lick. He was a lot braver than any of us gave him credit for, guarding the house with a piece of pipe.” Kernley shook his head.

“When is the funeral?”

“Day after tomorrow. We don’t plan anything formal. Just Mrs. Kernley, and me, and the maids. As far as we know, no one else knew him. Since he was sort of an employee here, and since in a manner of speaking he was killed on the job, the DuRosche Estate will pay his funeral expenses. Which is fortunate—he had no relatives we know of and of course no insurance.”

“Do you mind if I look around and ask questions?”

“Not at all. The police don’t seem to be doing a thing, and we would like to have this over and done with. Right now we feel like we are sitting on a bomb that may go off again any minute.”

He called his wife to the door and introduced Brock to her. Brock introduced Arne after first rescuing him from the car. Arne kept forgetting how the door handle worked. He nodded politely when he heard his name.

Mr. Kernley returned to his clipping. Mrs. Kernley, who looked sadly subdued and grief-stricken from the continuing tragedy that had enveloped her, asked bitterly, “Have the police figured out what those men were after?”

“No,” Brock said. “That is partly why I’m here. We are concerned someone else may try to finish what they started.”

“Gracious!”

“I would like to look around and ask you and the maids some questions.”

“We certainly have had plenty of experience with that,” she said. “The police went through the whole house, but they didn’t find anything. Most of it has been closed off for years.”

“The police didn’t know what to look for,” Brock said. “I have to confess I don’t, either, but I have a better idea than they did.”

“It beats me what those thugs were trying to do. We keep very little money in the house—just enough to pay the paperboy and things like that. Otherwise, I write checks for everything because there has to be a record. It couldn’t have anything to do with Mr. DuRosche. He hasn’t had any mind at all for years. He is completely helpless. We put him in his chair, and we put him to bed. He has to wear a diaper. Such a pity. He was a wonderful man—so nice. Lots of fun, always making jokes. Everyone liked him. He was invited everywhere. Back in those days I was his cook, and he used to have big dinner parties here. When a man’s mind goes, suddenly he is nothing.”

“Have you gone through Hy’s things?” Brock asked.

“The police did, and it didn’t take them long. Hy didn’t own much. He lived in the furnace room except when he was off on a bender. Sometimes he would disappear for days or weeks and come back looking a mess. We didn’t pay him anything, just gave him a little spending money. He was a quiet type and never made any trouble. Once in a while he was really useful—especially during the winter when there was snow. He mostly did his benders in warm weather. We figured he earned his keep, and all of us liked him. It can get lonely in this big house, and he was company. Once in a while he would come up in the evening and watch TV with us. But land sakes, there was nothing about Hy that anyone needs to investigate! He just happened to be out there guarding the house when the thugs came.”

“Every possibility has to be looked into,” Brock said.

The jumble of personal effects Hy left behind him certainly didn’t seem worth an investigation. He had lived in the basement, going upstairs only for his meals, which he carried back downstairs and ate at an old oak table that an antique dealer would have prized, or to watch TV. He had slept on a camp cot behind the furnace—it was neatly made up with army blankets—and he kept his possessions in a splendid antique oak bureau with a broken mirror and in a rather battered old wardrobe that contained only a worn jacket, a much more severely worn winter coat, and a number of dirty white shirts.

He had worn nothing but the cast-offs he picked up around the neighborhood. Brock wondered how they would dress him for his funeral. Probably the undertaker would provide something appropriate.

There were no books or writing materials among his possessions, so Hy neither read nor wrote. Neither did he look at pictures—there wasn’t a single girlie magazine guiltily concealed in the bureau’s bottom drawer. He did no drinking at DuRosche Court unless he had a bottle cached somewhere in the depths of the cellar.

Brock sat down on the bed and looked around. Arne did the same, but he was studying the furnace and hot water heater as though he had never seen such contrivances before. Probably he hadn’t. The possibility of a primitive far future was something Brock had never contemplated.

The present seemed perplexing enough. If he understood Egarn correctly, the only way he could solve this riddle was by connecting a Johnson with it, and the difficulty was compounded by the fact that the Johnson he sought might not show up for years. Egarn hadn’t been too explicit about that, but Brock sensed his worry that he had sent his emmissaries too far back in time. Perhaps the vital connection didn’t yet exist.

Nevertheless, it had to be searched for.

He asked himself how Hy—that worthy but lazy man—had passed the time when he wasn’t downstairs eating or upstairs watching TV. He had no radio. Did he simply lie on his cot and daydream?

The basement was as large as the enormous house and divided into rooms. Its outer walls were built of stones in the fashion of 19th century basements. Several rooms were packed with old furniture—much of which would have interested antique dealers—plus an accumulation of junk that also looked antique. This told Brock something about Calvin DuRosch without helping him in the least.

“I suppose we will have to search the cellar,” he said resignedly. “It would help immensely if we knew what we were looking for.” Already it was evident he had taken on a considerable job of work. Before he finished, it might even be a career.

Arne’s face remained blank, but he quickly grasped what Brock was doing and joined in.

It was Arne who found it—an old foot-locker type of chest that was buried under a stack of empty cardboard boxes in a small, whitewashed room next to the furnace room. Probably the room had been had been a coal bin in the days before oil and gas furnaces. Arne may have noticed the dark green shape under the boxes. He methodically removed one at a time until the chest was uncovered. Brock, passing the door at that moment, helped him solve the puzzle of the latch and open it. It was empty.

As Arne closed it again, Brock noticed faint lettering on the lid. He carried the chest into the furnace room where a lightbulb dangled, wiped dust from it, and stared down at a line of stenciled letters.

It read, “HYACINTH JOHNSON.”

“So,” Brock said with grim satisfaction. “At last we have a Johnson.” He pointed to the word. “Johnson!” he said to Arne.

Arne’s face brightened. That was one English word he knew.

“First we telephone Egarn,” Brock said. “Then we go over the whole house as thoroughly as possible.”

They hurried back up the stairs.

In the hallway outside the invalid’s room, they met Dr. Jeff Mardell and Alida Brylon, who greeted Brock warmly. The invalid’s room stood open; Calvin DuRosche sat in a chair, bib around his neck, staring straight ahead. Mrs. Halmer, the nurse, was trying to feed him. Mrs. Kernley was watching.

“It is so hard to make him eat,” Mrs. Halmer said. “It is as though he keeps forgetting how. We are feeding him constantly, but he chews and swallows so slowly that he hardly takes in enough to keep him alive.”

“May I examine him?” Mardell asked.

“I forgot you were a doctor,” Mrs. Halmer said. “Go right ahead. Every other doctor in town has had a crack at him. Send the bill to his estate, he can afford it. Unfortunately, any doctor who has seen him once has seen him. The poor man’s condition hasn’t changed for years.”

“I didn’t have anything that formal in mind,” Jeff said. “It’s just that I thought his eyes looked peculiar.” He stepped close to DuRosche, scrutinized his face, and then took a penlight from his pocket and shined it into one eye and then the other.

“Strange,” he said. “His pupils don’t respond to light.”

Arne suddenly pushed forward. He, too, stared into DuRosche’s face.

“Is this another doctor?” Mrs. Halmer asked in surprise.

Before Brock could answer, Arne turned to him and gripped his arm. “Egarn,” he said.

“Yes—I must make that telephone call,” Brock said. “We have finally found the mysterious Johnson. It was Hy.”

None of them wanted to believe that, not even after Brock described the chest. “Are you saying those two thugs killed him just because his name was Johnson?” Mrs. Kernley demanded. “That isn’t possible! How could two strangers he met in the dark for a few seconds find that out? We didn’t know it, and he lived here off and on for years. We thought he was Hy Hyatt.”

“I don’t know,” Brock said, “but his name must have been Hyacinth Johnson. He kept the ‘Hyacinth’ a secret by calling himself Hy—and who would blame him for that? The ‘Hyatt’ must have been a nickname, or maybe it was his middle name, and for some reason he came to use it instead of ‘Johnson.’”

“Then those thugs were looking for all over Rochester for him,” Alida said wonderingly. “When they finally found him, they killed him.”

“About that, I simply don’t know. I am just getting started. I must make my telephone call.”

He dialed the number he had been given and asked to speak with Egarn. “We have found the Johnson,” he said.

“Thank God!” Egarn exclaimed.

“If you are still worrying about having to murder him, you can stop. It is Hy, the handyman here, and he is already dead. Now I’ll see what more I can find out.”

He was about to hang up when Arne gripped his arm again. “Egarn!”

“I think Arne wants to talk with you,” Brock said. He handed him the telephone. Then he had to show him how to hold it.

Egarn was feeling comfortable and at peace with the world except for the fact that he still felt terribly tired. He was in a spacious motel room, and his guardians treated him royally. The only drawback was the uneasiness he felt in being surrounded by alert men with assault rifles. It reminded him that neither he nor Arne could be safe anywhere.

The news that a link had finally been discovered between the DuRosche house and a Johnson was an enormous relief to him, but the added realization that the Johnson was already dead, that he had been killed by Roszt and Kaynor, had set his mind reeling. Had the scouts from Slorn fulfilled their quest before they died? What, if anything, was supposed to happen when they did? He needed to think.

“What is it?” he asked Arne.

“There is a man here—a rich man who owns this house—”

“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.”