THE EGG HEAD
by Rog Phillips
Copyright © 1961, H.S.D. Publications Inc.
eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-27-02 [v1.0]
I should have kept my big mouth shut, but I was tired that night. When I got home there was a letter from our oldest, Doris, telling us she had married the scientist. Maybe I was a little put out that she hadn't brought him home to meet us first. Mostly, though, I was disappointed that she hadn't married a cop.
Anyway, I snorted, "Marrying an egg head? Huh!"
Donald and Billie and Joanne and Patricia, who had been excited at the news, sobered at once. Mom—that's my wife, Janet, but I've called her Mom or Mama since the day Doris was born—said, "Now John! That's no way to talk."
"I'm just tired," I said. "Had a rough day." I'm Captain Provident, Chief of Homicide for the past eight years. Sometimes I'm hanging onto my job by the skin of my teeth, but I never let my family know that. My kids are sure that I'm the greatest brain since Sherlock Holmes.
Hoping to find something to cheer me up, I read on in the letter. "Born and raised in Boston?" I said in dismay. This meant he was a Harvard or Yale graduate, and brought to my mind the endless string of fuzz-faced college boys assigned to the Department, who tried to tell me my business—and sometimes succeeded.
My dismay was so ludicrous that Billie started to laugh. Then they were all laughing at me, and I felt better about Doris getting married.
"I guess it's okay," I said in better humor, giving the letter back to Mom.
But it wasn't. We'd been a close-knit family, until Doris left for California two years ago. Her absence had been almost like a death in the family, and her frequent letters hadn't helped much. We missed her.
She had been twenty-five then and a good secretary. She hadn't found anyone in Central City to marry (plenty of them had wanted her, including some mighty fine boys on the force, but she had turned thumbs down on all of them), so she had moved to San Francisco, though God knows why San Francisco.
She'd worked at a couple of jobs she didn't like too well, and had been on the point of coming back home when she hooked onto a job at the Lawrence Radiation Labs in Berkeley. She'd been enthusiastic about it in her letters for six months, then had seemed to get bored. Mom had suspected it wasn't boredom but secretiveness, and she'd been right. Doris had met Bob Nichols, the egg head from Boston, judging from this letter.
During the next two weeks we got postcards from Niagara Falls, Starved Rock, Mammoth Caves. . . . They were doing their honeymoon up right. Then came the telegram. They would arrive Saturday afternoon. I kept my mouth shut this time. It was an effort.
Doris had grown up. I kept looking at her, trying to get used to it. Her husband seemed like a kid—or rather, a mixture of kid and old maid. His movements were fussy. He fussed with his pipe, he adjusted the ashtray on the coffee table, he fidgeted when he sat on the davenport, then crossed his legs. He cleared his throat.
He had taffy-colored hair. Ours is dark brown. He was big boned without being muscular. Donald and Billie take after me in being small boned but wiry, with quick, sure movements and biceps that can ball up like a fist, even under a shirt.
We looked at him and he looked at us, while Doris chatted happily about all the places they'd been on their honeymoon. When there were silences, Mom or Pat or Joanne would say something quick to get Doris going again about Niagara Falls or some other part of the trip.
It was up to me, so in one of the silences I said, "Doris tells us you're a scientist, Bob."
He puffed blue smoke from his pipe. "I guess you could call me that," he said. "I'm a research chemist."
"Oh," I said.
"What does a research chemist do, Bob?" Joanne asked.
"Well . . ." He uncrossed his legs. "It's a little like what your father does. Something happens—a murder, for instance. He and his men, working as a team, gather all the evidence. Then, using the evidence, they try to identify the unknown quantity. X. The murderer. But maybe the evidence isn't enough. Then they have to figure out what X will do under certain circumstances, and arrange those circumstances, to trap him. I do much the same thing, but with chemicals instead of murderers."
"Oh," Joanne said.
"Well," Mom said with forced cheerfulness, "the Swiss steak should be done now. Pat, Joanne, set the table. Doris, Bob, I know you want to wash up after your long drive. There's towels laid out for you in the bathroom." She smiled at Bob, gave me a helpless look, then fled to the kitchen.
"Donald," I said, "why don't you and Billie bring in their suitcases."
Bob Nichols opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Donald and Billie had fled. With a sigh Bob followed Doris upstairs, and half an hour later we were all sitting around the table.
Bob sampled the Swiss steak, smacked his lips, and said, "This is delicious, Mother." The word caught me completely by surprise, and I choked.
Mom—Janet—turned the brightest shade of pink I'd seen on her since the days I courted her, almost thirty years ago. "It's just Swiss steak," she said.
"It's far more than just Swiss steak," Bob plunged on. "I hope Doris has the recipe—"
"Tell me, Bob," Billie came to the rescue, "if being a research chemist is so much like being a detective, do you think you could solve a crime?"
"I've never had the opportunity to try," Bob said. "I'm sure your father is far more—"
"Give him a crime, pop," Billie said. "You've got lots of unsolved ones." He was suckering Bob into making a fool of himself.
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Donald said, disgusted at Billie.
A case popped into my head. It had happened a year ago. We'd "solved" it but never found out who the killer was. It had sort of bothered me at the time, and that's why I thought of it now. "Why not?" I said. "I'll give you the case of Byron Jacks."
"Byron Jacks," I said, "checked into the Roosevelt Hotel, was taken to his room by a bellboy, and two minutes later he was dead. Shot through the head. The chambermaid was still in the room, so she was an eyewitness to the whole thing. The phone rang, Byron Jacks picked it up to answer it, the bullet came through the window, entered the back of his head, and did a rather ugly job coming out his left cheek. We were able to trace the flight of the bullet quite accurately, thanks to the maid's testimony. It came from a fire exit window of the Medical Building across the alley, a distance of twenty-three feet by actual measurement.
"As with most crimes, the obvious answer is the right one. The previous occupant of the room, a Chicago underworld character by the name of Joe Brady, was the intended victim. Byron Jacks had a reservation. Joe Brady had objected to moving out, right up to the last minute. We found him in the Congress Hotel three blocks from the Roosevelt where he had just checked in after trying three other hotels without success. He had been in the room at the Roosevelt for a week, which gave the killers plenty of time to make their plans. He was still sore—until he learned that being evicted from the Roosevelt had saved his life. He was more willing to talk then. He admitted being the scout for a Chicago syndicate interested in getting a foothold in Central City by muscling in on the slot-machine concessions and other businesses. When we wouldn't give him permission to leave town, he asked for protective custody. We held him for forty-eight hours while we checked into his activities. When we released him he demanded a police escort to the airport." I chuckled and added, "Those Chicago mobsters aren't as brave as they're made out to be. And, of course, it was impossible to find out who had killed Byron Jacks. Any one of a dozen men we know of could have given the order, and the trigger man could have been anyone. No fingerprints, witnesses, or gun."
Bob Nichols frowned in thought. I watched him. He was shorter than my five feet ten but weighed more than Donald or Billie, who were six feet tall. Doris, sitting beside him, had a secret smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Bob said, "Hmm," now and then at some thought, opened his mouth as though about to say something, then clamped his lips together.
After ten minutes of this, Bob grinned at me suddenly and said, "It's like deducing the nature of a particle from its path through a cloud chamber."
"A what through a what?" I grunted, but he had already retreated back into his thoughts and didn't answer.
The rest of us began eating again. Even Doris. Bob sat there staring into space, saying, "Hmm," now and then. It was awe-inspiring in a way, like watching a Univac would be, maybe. Like Donald said later, "I could almost smell the bakelite and banana oil." You know, like new equipment smells fresh from the factory.
I finished my Swiss steak and wiped my plate clean with a last slice of bread, soaking up the gravy. In our house the garbage man gets only the cans and bottles—on my salary. ...
Finally I couldn't stand it any more. "Don't you have any questions, Bob?" I asked.
"Huh?" He blinked his eyes like he was waking from a nap. "Questions? Two. Was Byron Jacks from Chicago? Do you know where Joe Brady lives now?"
"Byron Jacks lived in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago," I said. "Joe Brady lives in a swanky penthouse apartment on Rush Street in Chicago."
Bob nodded. He looked down at his plate and looked surprised, as though just discovering it. Taking a bite of the now cold Swiss steak, he chewed on it, frowned at his water glass and moved it a quarter of an inch.
"Your dinner is cold," Mom said. "Let me warm it for you."
"No. That's all right," Bob said. "The true test of Swiss steak is, is it still delicious when cold? This is even better cold than hot!"
"I've never tried it cold," Mom said doubtfully.
"Have you given up, Bob?" Billy said, winking at me.
"Given up?" Bob said, taking another slice of bread and buttering it. "Oh. I see what you mean. Well, why shouldn't I finish my dinner—now that I know who killed Byron Jacks." He bit into his freshly buttered bread in the startled silence.
I looked at Doris. She was using every ounce of will power to keep from busting out laughing. She was three shades pinker from the effort, and it made her about five shades prettier. I was beginning to see why she had snagged Bob— but a sneaking suspicion was entering my mind that maybe he had snagged her instead! The way he had just pinned Billie's ears back with Why shouldn't I finish my dinner now that I know who killed Byron Jacks!
"The only trouble is proving it," Bob added, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. He glanced across the table at me. "Are you willing to let me try something?" he asked me. "It would be an experiment in arranging circumstances to trap the murderer."
"I don't know," I said cautiously. "What do you have in mind?"
Bob grinned. "I believe," he said, "that this is where the classic detective in fiction becomes secretive and mysterious."
"You don't want anyone arrested or picked up for questioning?" I asked.
"No. Lord no!" Bob said.
"In that case—why not?" I said. I glanced at Billie, who winked at me and nodded. Billie was thinking the same thing I was thinking—that it was unlikely that Bob actually knew who the killer was. Billie wanted Bob to stick his neck out and make a fool of himself. I had something else in mind. Something entirely different. So I gave Billie a deadpan wink and said to Bob, "Go ahead. I'll play along."
Bob nodded, frowned at Billie, then said to Doris, "Doris, call up the airport and find out when the next plane to Chicago leaves and when it arrives there." He took another bite of Swiss steak and chewed on it as though nothing but food was on his mind, while Doris called the airport.
"How many tickets should I get?" was the only question Doris asked her new husband.
"None," Bob said, drooling a little gravy in the process and wiping it off with his napkin. I began to love that boy!
"Flight five oh nine," Doris called from the phone, "takes off here at seven-twenty and arrives at the Municipal Airport in Chicago at nine-seventeen. It's on time, too."
We all glanced at the clock. It was ten to six. Doris came back to the table and sat down. Bob looked toward me and said, "Can you get the Chicago police to see if Joe Brady meets that plane and follow him if he does?"
"I guess so," I said. "They've always cooperated with me before."
"Find out," Bob said. "I'll pay for the call. And let me talk to them before you hang up. Find out first if they'll cooperate."
"You don't need to pay for the call, Bob," I said half-heartedly. Then I thought of how he had set Billie back on his heels and added, "No, by golly! This is on me!"
I finally got Lieutenant Wilson on the phone. He was glad to do the favor. I turned him over to Bob.
"There won't be anyone on the plane for him to meet," Bob said on the phone, "but if Joe Brady shows up there, he'll do one of three things. Go back home, in which case you might keep a watch on him for a day or so, take a plane, in which case I hope you can find out his destination and report back to us, or go see somebody, which is what I think he will do. We want to know who he goes to see, and whoever it is, you'd better interrupt him right after he goes in or you might have a murder on your hands." He listened for a minute, then said, "No matter how it turns out, call us here and reverse the charges," and hung up.
I winced and decided I wouldn't refuse if Bob offered to pay for the calls. He probably made more money than I did anyway, and only had Doris to support.
Then Bob looked up a number in the phone book and dialed it.
"Western Union?" he said. "I want to send a straight wire to Joe Brady." He gave the address and phone number I'd given him. "Mr. Brady," he said. "I'll break if I have to take any more of this. Meet me. Flight five oh nine, nine-seventeen tonight, from Central City." Bob listened, then said, "No. He'll know who it is." More listening. "Okay, sign it Desperate." More listening. "Yes, you can call back." He hung up. A few seconds later the phone rang and I took it and okayed the telegram.
"Now," Bob said apologetically, "all we can do is wait."
We waited. Bob Nichols sat restlessly, fussing with his knife, moving his glass of water back the quarter of an inch to where it had been before. Joanne, who usually couldn't wait to get up from the table, showed no inclination to leave. Patricia yawned, then got up and went to the kitchen and came back with the coffee pot—something she had never done before. Mom winked at me and I winked back. Donald seemed immersed in thought, and since he never thought about anything except cars I knew he must be thinking about Bob's car and how it had sounded when it came up the driveway. You got to know your own kids, so I knew what Donald was going to say when he opened his mouth.
"You and Doris can use my car tomorrow, Bob," Donald said. "I'll drive yours to work in the morning and give it a tuneup."
Billie was dying to ask Bob who the murderer was and how he knew. So was I, though I had a pretty good idea. Bob wasn't as much of an egg head as I'd taken him to be. He had to know a lot more about the Byron Jacks killing than I'd told him. That meant that Doris (who should have been a boy and would have been on the police force if she had been) had kept up on doings in Central City and had filled Bob in on things from the minute she fell in love with him.
I was dying to ask Bob how he figured, myself, but I was damned if I was going to break first. I waited for Billie to break.
Mom started to clear the table, all except the coffee cups, "Joanne, help your mother," I said, like I always do.
She frowned with annoyance and pouted defiantly like she always did, then got up and helped clear the table.
The ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantel got awfully loud. It was like a pulse beating in the room. It does that sometimes. It's the way it sets, I think. It actually gets louder. Right now it was having an effect on Billie. I knew he was about to break, so I relaxed. Bob caught my eye and winked. It startled me. I suddenly realized he knew the tick of the clock had actually gotten louder and that it was affecting Billie. I suddenly realized Bob was waiting for Billie to break and ask him how he figured!
I also suddenly realized that Bob knew he was in with the family, all except Billie. All his "solving the crime" had been to play along with Billie and win him over.
"You're going to look awfully silly," Billie sneered, "when it turns out you're all wet…"
Bob grinned. "I've been wrong before," he said, picking up his spoon and examining it closely. "As a matter of fact, on the project I've been working on for the past two years, I've been wrong every time—but over thirty egg heads like me have been working on it, and one of us is bound to be right sooner or later. Then the U.S. has a nuclear ram jet engine that can take a manned missile into outer space." He frowned and seemed to bring his thoughts back to the present. "I don't think I'm wrong now, though."
"How do you figure?" Billie said, the sneer still in his voice. He was advertising that he was going to be hard to sell, which meant that underneath he was reluctantly being sold. Billie had rheumatic fever when he was little, so he's the spoiled member of the family. During the years when he should have been getting whacked on the hind end like the others, we had to coddle him.
The corners of Bob's lips quirked. "Nothing mysterious about it," he said. "Joe Brady killed Byron Jacks."
"Now wait a minute!" I said in spite of my determination to keep my mouth shut and let Billie stick his neck out.
"You think Pop doesn't know his business?" Billie said triumphantly.
"Of course he knows his business," Bob said. "So does Joe Brady. He's a professional killer."
"Now we get to it," I said. "What do you know about him that I don't?" I was beginning to see the light. Bob, being in a government project, had intimate contact with the F.B.I. and a lot of their secret files that local law-enforcement agencies don't know about.
"Not a thing," Bob said, toying with his fork. "In fact, I don't know a thing more than you told me. Why did Joe Brady stay in that hotel? So he could set up the murder. Putting myself in his place, I would rent a room at the Roosevelt, put a blue light in one of the table lamps and place it where the phone is, then go over to the Medical Building and find out the place where I could see that blue light and the telephone. I'd study the whole thing out, including timing myself on getting from the hotel room to that window in the Medical Building.
"Byron Jacks obviously was attending a convention of some sort. The fact that he had a reservation and Joe Brady had to move to another hotel proves that. How Joe Brady maneuvered Byron Jacks into that particular hotel room is a little in doubt, but not much. I would say that Byron Jacks was the last conventioneer to arrive at the hotel, and since Joe Brady stalled until the last minute before giving up his room, automatically Byron Jacks would be the one to get it. Joe Brady probably hung around the desk to make sure it was Byron Jacks who was waiting to get the room, before he consented to check out of the room. The fact that the chambermaid was changing the bed when Byron Jacks took the room indicates that Joe Brady had just left. The maid wouldn't come in until he checked out.
"So all Joe Brady had to do was stop in the lobby long enough to phone whoever had hired him, so that person could phone Byron Jacks and get him to answer the phone and set himself up as a target. Then Joe Brady hurried over to the Medical Building, shot Byron Jacks, and went hunting for another room. It took maybe five minutes. Or the person who called Byron Jacks could be anyone, and say anything. The only object of the call was to get Byron Jacks to the phone, where he could be shot.
"So the person who hired Joe Brady only had to make sure that Byron Jacks was the last conventioneer to reach the hotel, so that Joe Brady's objections to giving up his room would result in Byron Jacks' moving into the same room.
"It isn't anything that can be proved in court. A pro knows all those angles, or he wouldn't be a pro. The only point of attack is the person who hired Joe Brady. The telegram I sent to Joe Brady should point that person out.
Why? Because it came from Central City, because a year has passed since the killing, and because Joe Brady will think the police have been working on the case, bringing this unknown person—this neutron that doesn't leave a visible track in the cloud chamber—into visibility."
"Then you didn't have anything more than what I said to go on?" I asked, unbelievingly.
"Of course not!" Bob said, picking up his knife and examining it closely. "This sort of thing is out of my line, ordinarily. In fact, I might be sorry I got mixed up in it. But damn it!" He scowled.
"Now darling, don't get upset," Doris said to Bob.
"I'm not upset," Bob said petulantly. "I just don't like it." The little boy in Bob was visible. Suddenly I realized that Bob was high voltage, no matter how you looked at him. Even with the little boy showing in his make-up, I felt in awe of him.
It took time for the plane to reach Chicago. I visualized that plane several times, boring through the stratosphere toward Chicago, with X, our neutron, on it. It was the sort of thing an egg head would conjure up to solve a crime—a neutron in a cloud chamber, whatever that was....
Meanwhile we moved to the living room and I found out Bob's taste in alcoholic beverages was bourbon on the rocks. I prefer Chianti, of course, but I felt sort of humble tonight, and drank bourbon on the rocks with Bob, and got slightly drunk. Even if he was all wet, I loved him like a son. I was glad Doris had moved to California and found Bob to marry. He was a fine addition to the family, and if Donald and Billie and Joanne and Patricia did half as well I could die happy when my time came! Maybe I had a little too much to drink.
In fact, I know I did, because once I was crying in my drink and Mom was patting me on the shoulder and saying, "Now John, now John, now John." But it's awfully hard, raising five kids and hoping they turn out right, and seeing all the kids that didn't turn out right down at the Station. . . .
Anyway, the ringing of the phone sobered me up in a hurry. I looked around and everyone was expecting me to answer it, so I got up and started weaving toward the dining room. Donald came to my rescue and helped me steer my course. He's a good boy, even if he is an automobile mechanic.
It was Lieutenant Wilson of the Chicago Police on the phone. He told me what had happened. I thanked him and hung up, and Donald helped me back to the living room. I sat down.
"Well, Pop?" Billie said. Bob Nichols was fussing with his napkin, trying to get it to drape over his knee.
"Brady didn't show up," I said.
Billie snickered, then retreated behind his can of beer when I glared at him. Bob sighed deeply.
"Look, Bob," I said slowly, "who did you think was behind it?"
Bob shrugged, his lips curving down. "Byron Jacks' wife," he said. "That's why I signed the telegram, Desperate. A man wouldn't sign that way."
I nodded, then said, "Why did you put in the telegram— I'll break if I have to take any more of this?"
"To make Brady think the police had been questioning her," Bob said. "That would worry him because she might break down and tell the police she had paid him to kill her husband. That would force him to meet the plane—but it didn't."
"I see," I said. I went back to the phone and called Lieutenant Wilson in Chicago. "Look," I said when they located him, "find out if Joe Brady made any calls to Central City after six this evening, or sent any telegrams here. Also check on Byron Jacks' widow and see if she's okay."
"Will do," Lieutenant Wilson answered.
I got the dial tone and dialed the direct wire to my own office, getting Lieutenant McGrory. "Look, Ed," I said, "get out the Byron Jacks file. Something may be cooking. Check any shootings this evening against the names in that file. If you find a connection, let me know. I'll call you later. I'm expecting a call from Chicago that may give something more." I hung up and went back to the living room. They had all heard my end of the phone calls.
"What was that all about?" Billie asked.
I shrugged and busied myself freshening my bourbon on the rocks. I just got comfortable when the phone rang. It was Lieutenant Wilson in Chicago. He gave me a phone number. I thanked him and hung up. Before I could lift the phone, it rang again. It was McGrory.
I listened to what he had to say, then said, "Okay, now check out this phone number and pick up everyone. Check out any guns with ballistics. If that works, we have a tight case."
I hung up and went back to the living room and sat down. I grinned at Bob and picked up my bourbon on the rocks. Bob had a questioning scowl on his face, but he didn't say anything.
I swirled the ice cubes around in my glass and said, "You're okay, Bob. I'm beginning to get a picture of what you do. Your m.o. You take known substances and combine them to make a new substance. You're good at that. Right?"
"That's what I do as a research chemist," Bob said. "But what . . . ?"
"What does that have to do with this?" I said. "Let me ask you something. Do the new substances sometimes have powers you didn't expect?"
"Almost always," Bob said.
"That's what I mean," I said. "You sent a telegram to Joe Brady. You expected it to have a certain effect on him, based on a theory you had. Your theory was one hundred percent wrong, but your telegram was real and had an effect you couldn't predict. You see, not only was Joe Brady the intended victim of that bullet, he also knew who ordered the bullet, who fired it, and who fingered him. We thought he did at the time, but there was no way we could prove it, or make him talk. All he wanted was OUT. The party that fingered him—put a blue light next to the phone or something—was a girl he got cozy with when he was there. When Byron Jacks got killed, Joe Brady knew the girl had been the finger. He wanted no part of her. When he got your telegram, he thought she had sent it—not Mrs. Jacks, as you expected. He immediately called the man who had wanted him murdered. You see, Brady thought she was coming to Chicago to rat on her boss, or at least be a nuisance to him. The locals got to her before the plane took off. Of course, she denied planning to run out, but who would believe her after the call from Brady? They took her for a ride. She was found a half hour ago in the ditch on U.S. 41. The local boys don't know we have a fix on them, so we may catch them with the gun that did the job. We still won't have solved the Byron Jacks case—technically —but we'll have them cold for the murder of Shadi Dell, a local stripteaser." I chuckled. "Imagine Shadi Dell's surprise when the local hoods showed up at her apartment about six-forty-five and accused her of planning to catch a plane to Chicago. Of course, she denied it, but who would believe her?" I chuckled again, and swirled the ice cubes in my drink. "The timing was perfect!" I concluded.
"You mean my telegram caused the death of ... ?" Bob said. He was turning green around the gills.
"That's a by-product, you might say, of this experiment in arranging circumstances," I said.
Bob staggered to his feet and started toward the stairway, retching.
It was Billie who leaped up to help him. Billie's always been the sensitive member of the family.
-end-
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