The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales Read online

  Bowles raised himself on his elbow, trying desperately to talk his way back into Carstairs’ good graces. His voice was husky, and all the pugnacity had gone out of him.

  “I lost my head when you swung at me,” he muttered. “I’ve nothing against you, Carstairs, but when you came at me like that I had to defend myself, didn’t I? I’m hot-tempered, sure. But I didn’t kill Gleason. It was that little hyena there.”

  Mentally Carstairs docketed for reference the astonishing fact that everyone referred to Gleason’s nephew as a hyena, skunk, or snake. He gnawed at his underlip, and fixed Bowles with an accusing stare.

  “You blasted before I clipped you,” he said. “You tried to shoot me down in cold blood. You tried to shoot Showalter down. Why did you crouch in darkness outside that window and try to drill him?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Bowles choked. “I took my job here seriously. I like flowers. That may seem sort of screwy to you, but I mean it.”

  “It doesn’t,” Carstairs assured him.

  “Well, you’ve seen Gleason’s orchids. Glass-encased, sure, with air pumped in. Tropical terrestrial plants—nothing fancy about ’em. But I took a personal pride in them.”

  “You did a good job,” Carstairs admitted. “Raising perfect plants under artificial sunlight is a tough assignment.”

  “That’s it—perfect,” Bowles cried eagerly. “My orchids were perfect. Perfect, you hear? I liked my job, and I wanted to keep it. But he didn’t want me too.”

  He gestured toward the shadows where Gleason’s nephew stood. Showalter had lit a cigarette and was puffing on it furiously.

  “He came stumbling into the greenhouse last night as high as a kite,” Bowles muttered accusingly. “He tore my flowers up by the roots. He upset trays, and turned a hose on my finest bed. Did you ever see fine blooms flattened into a mud soup?”

  Carstairs nodded sympathetically. “I would have perhaps killed him myself. We’re all savages when something rasps us in a vital spot. But you had a few hours to calm down in.”

  “Yeah, but he ran to his uncle like a dirty little schoolboy sneak. He accused me of tanking up, and throwing my own trays around. Gleason gave me my notice before he turned in at midnight. He called me a liar, refused to hear me out.”

  “He wouldn’t listen to any honest man or woman,” shrilled a quavering voice from the doorway. “He deserved to die. He was a hard man—cold and unjust. There was no compassion in him. I’m glad he’s dead!”

  Carstairs swung about. A frail, white-haired old woman had slipped into the room and was standing by Vera’s side. As Carstairs stared at her in consternation she raised a clawlike, veined hand and pointed at the still figure on the bed.

  “May you rest in torment, James Gleason,” she shrilled.

  Carstairs had had about enough. He crossed to the door in three long strides, turned the old woman about, and guided her gently but firmly into the corridor.

  “Go back to your room,” he said. “And stay there. If I need you, I’ll send for you. You’ve been a good housekeeper to James Gleason. Why should you hate him so much?”

  The old woman shook her head. “It’s not for me to be telling you,” she muttered. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Returning to the sleeping turret, Carstairs swabbed sweat from his forehead and spoke crisply to Vera Dorn.

  “I said that something diabolic had occurred here. I’m afraid it’s worse than that. Listen carefully, Vera. I’m going to take one of the wobblies up to my turret. I want you to bring me Gleason’s notes. All of them, you understand? His day-by-day observations, the complete record of what he saw on the mountains when he studied the wobblies from behind a blind. His speculations as to their feeding habits, the chemical and osmotic tests which he made on the three specimens which are now our guests.”

  “But you’ve almost memorized those notes,” Vera protested.

  “I know, but there are minor details I may have overlooked. One thing more—give me fifteen or twenty minutes’ leeway before you snap to it.”

  Twelve minutes later Vera Dorn tapped apprehensively on the door of Carstairs’ sleeping turret.

  “Come in,” a grim voice said.

  Vera obeyed, shivering. She knew John Carstairs. He was never so unpredictable as when he asked her to do something for him when he had all the pieces in an unspeakably terrifying case. She knew that he was at the crucial stage. The glint in his eyes, his air of repressed excitement, and his willingness to permit four vengeful people to remain at liberty indicated that he was prepared to act swiftly and inexorably. Vera Dorn had steeled herself to encounter an unusual manifestation of Carstairs’ genius at work, but the sight which she saw when she shut the door firmly and turned to face her employer was so completely ludicrous that it chilled her more than a gruesome exhibit would have done. In a way, it was a little gruesome—comically so, perhaps, like a child’s rag doll dangling from a hangman’s noose—but unspeakably nightmarish in its implications.

  One of the wobblies was sitting upright in a chair by the window, its tendril-arms bound by thin wires and its stumpy legs interlocked. The anesthetic vapor which Vera had sprayed over it had worn off, and it was squirming about and emitting shrill ululations.

  Clamped to its rugose, tapering head was a semi-circular metal disk, somewhat resembling an aluminum eye-shield. From the disk a thin glass tube descended to the creature’s “waist” and branched off at right angles to its body-root. A few inches beyond the bent section of the tube the glass terminated in a flexible rubber extension which carried the tubular portion of the apparatus across the floor to Carstairs’ hand. Carstairs was sitting on the edge of his bed, pressing a large rubber bulb at five-second intervals. Every time he gave the bulb a squeeze a pale, greenish fluid bubbled and frothed in the glass portion of the tube, occasionally ascending to the half-disk on the plant creature’s head.

  “Good Lord!” Vera Dorn choked.

  “Quiet, Vera,” Carstairs cautioned. “If the pressure goes any higher we’ll have a dead wobbly on our hands.”

  “John, are you out of your mind? Why did you truss that poor thing—pressure! John, what do you mean?”

  “I’m taking its blood pressure,” Car-stairs said. “To be strictly accurate, its sap pressure, although the fluid which circulates in its veins contains actual blood-plates, and mononuclear cells containing basophilic granules. Its blood pressure is unbelievably high now. So high that—” He stared at her steadily. “Well, it will be labeled Exhibit A, Vera. And I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of a certain party when I lay my findings before a jury.”

  Vera Dorn’s jaw sagged. “John Carstairs, how can you take the blood pressure of a plant? I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Vera, I thought you majored in botany at college,” Carstairs said acidly. “Perhaps you’d better go back for another semester of intensive osmotic research. You know, summer course for girls with low I.Q.s who can’t quite make the grade.”

  Vera flushed scarlet. “What has osmosis to do with taking the blood pressure of a plant?”

  “Plenty,” Carstairs grunted. “Most plants, as you know suck nourishment from the soil through their roots by osmosis, and draw it up through the woody part of their stems by capillary attraction and a process known as transpiration. All these processes are accelerated by the pressure of sugar and salt in the sap.”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish, Vera. In terrestrial plants the nutrient fluid is an amalgam of common minerals. But in lunar plants a different kind of nourishment is sucked up, and their veins are filled with specialized chemicals capable of accelerating its absorption.

  “When osmosis is accelerated to an abnormal extent a plant’s blood pressure begins to rise. It may reach twenty or thirty atmospheres. On Earth many plants exhibit the symptom
s of high blood pressure, but leaf or tendril evaporation drains off the excess nourishment and keeps them from going into convulsions.

  “Here on the moon there is no such safety valve. Plants scarcely perspire at all, due to environmental factors. They have to eat sparingly, or else.”

  “But no plant or animal ever eats sparingly,” Vera protested. “A dog, for instance, never knows when to stop, and the same rule applies all down the biological scale.”

  Carstairs nodded. “True. But you’re forgetting that living creatures gorge themselves only when there is an abundance of nourishment. Wobblies feast on a substance which is rare on Luna. Being perambulating plants, they have to suck it in from the nearly airless vacuum which is the moon’s atmosphere through their body roots, and it costs them a tremendous effort. Ordinarily their blood pressure remains low because they have adapted themselves to an environment in which nourishment is scarce.

  “But nourishment wasn’t scarce here in the tower last night. I’ve a very sick wobbly on my hands, a wobbly that is going to put a noose around somebody’s neck. That wasn’t Gleason we heard screaming last night. It was three wobblies with high blood pressure, ululating together in his sleeping turret.” Vera’s lips were white. “Whose neck, John?”

  Carstairs shook his head. “No, you don’t. Vera. You’ll know when I’m sure. I’ve got to get answers to a couple of space-o-grams first. If what I suspect is true, the murderer is no ordinary criminal. He—or she—must possess a mind of the first order of malign cunning.”

  He shuddered. “It gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

  “It does me, too,” Vera flared, biting her lip. “Although you won’t tell me a darned thing about it. I’m that way—sympathetic when my boss gets a tummyache.”

  Carstairs scowled. “All right, Vera, I asked for it. You’re hard and unsympathetic, but you understand me. I feel sort of helpless when I close in for the kill. I like to be—well, coddled.” Vera kissed him, patting his cheek. “Sure, I know. That’s why I’m supposed to be in love with you.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I think maybe I am.” She looked at him hopefully.

  Carstairs’ eyes narrowed. “All right, then you can do something for me. I want you to get them all together in Gleason’s turret—Bowles, Showalter, the Chinese butler, Mona Clayton, and that sweet, white-haired grandmother, Miss Newton. Get them together, and give me twenty more minutes. When I come down I’ll try to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “John Carstairs, if you got romantic for once in your life and whispered sweet nothings to me without an ulterior motive,” Vera declared, “do you know what I’d do?”

  “No, what?”

  “Turn into a wobbly. I’d have to do that to keep my blood pressure down.” She went out, slamming the door so violently that the wobbly emitted a long-drawn ululation, and squirmed violently in its chair.

  CHAPTER IV

  Botanical Stoolpigeon

  When John Carstairs appeared in the doorway of Gleason’s sleeping turret the five white-lipped people gathered there stared at him as though he were a visitor from Saturn. His expression was utterly inscrutable, and an almost godlike detachment seemed to emanate from him. He hoped that none of the five suspected that he felt like a scared kid with one exploratory thumb poised above a high-voltage electric wire.

  Nodding at Vera, he crossed in silence to the bed where Gleason’s sheet-covered body lay, made sure that the cold light did not fall directly on his head and shoulders, and swept the five suspects with his gaze.

  He began to talk at once, fixing Henry Showalter with an accusing stare. The nephew began instantly to tremble. His air of vicious cynicism had dropped from him, like a cloak that he had found much too costly to wear.

  “If there is any crime you would not have committed to get your hands on your uncle’s wealth, Showalter,” Carstairs said, “it would have to be mentioned in whispers by anyone with an ounce of decency in him. You were quite capable of killing your uncle, and you would have experienced no remorse. I’ve a pretty complete account here of your—well, I’ll be charitable, and call them escapades—on Earth.

  “I sent a space-o-gram to the New York Police Department, Mr. Showalter. You’ve a record of seven arrests, ranging from drunkenness to arson. You’re a thorough rotter, but—” He frowned. “You did not kill him. You are neither a chemist or a genius.” Carstairs turned his gaze to Gleason’s housekeeper with a shudder of disgust. The white-haired old woman quivered. “Why are you staring at me like that? Do you think I killed him?”

  “No,” Carstairs said. “But you are suffering from the same disease, I’ll be charitable and call it ungratefulness. Gleason raised your salary every time you came to him with a hard luck story. The last time you rasped his patience a little, and he didn’t give you as much as you thought you deserved. Consequently, you hated him.”

  He shrugged, turning to the Chinese butler. “You’re a pretty good guy,” he said. “You didn’t kill him, did you, Lee Chan?”

  The yellow man shook his head. “He was a pretty good guy himself,” he singsonged. “The kindest man I’ve ever known.”

  “Yes, there are still a few kindly people left in the world,” Carstairs agreed, swinging suddenly toward George Bowles and Mona Clayton. They were standing close together, their faces drained of all color, their eyes fastened on Carstairs.

  “Sulphuretted hydrogen, Bowles,” Carstairs said softly, “causes symptoms which end rapidly in death. It is one of the deadliest gases known, comparable only to cyanide fumes in the swiftness with which it acts. If the concentration is marked, fatal effects by inhalation are immediate.” His jaw muscles tightened. “Oh, you were clever, Bowles. Posing as a humble lover of flowers, an eccentric with only one consuming passion in life. A simple gardener, living for his plants.”

  “You’re crazy, Carstairs,” Bowles choked. “What are you driving at?”

  “You were not only interested in orchids, Bowles,” Carstairs continued relentlessly. “You were interested in wobblies, and you persuaded Gleason to let you see his notes. Your thumbprints are on the sheets Miss Dorn brought to me. You are also a toxicologist, Bowles. You worked in a chemical laboratory on Earth, and you knew that sulphuretted hydrogen has one disadvantage as a killing agent.

  “It leaves an odor, the strongest odor of any lethal chemical, one which hovers in the air and impregnates the flesh of the victim.”

  Mona Clayton’s agitated voice rang out across the chamber. “He lies! Oh, darling, defend yourself, tell him—”

  “Darling, is it?” Carstairs rasped. “I thought so. Bowles, you knew that sulphuretted hydrogen leaves an unmistakable odor, but you also knew that the wobblies feast on it. It is their natural source of nourishment. It clings to the walls of deep gulches in the mountains, and they suck it in by osmosis through their permeable body-roots!”

  * * * *

  Mona Clayton uttered a faint moan. But the botanical detective went on relentlessly.

  “Last night you treated the three wobblies which Gleason had captured to a feast. You smashed the glass herbarium and released them, after pumping sulphuretted hydrogen into Gleason’s sleeping turret through a sprayer from outside the window to kill him. You knew that wobblies can scent sulphuretted hydrogen half across the moon, and you figured they would streak like starved bloodhounds to Gleason’s turret.

  “They did. Vera Dorn encountered one in the corridor and one in her sleeping turret, but wobblies are like that. They know that a roundabout way is often the quickest distance between two points on the Moon. They climbed down outside, and entered through the window which you had purposely left open. When their blood pressure rose and they ululated, Miss Dorn and I raced downstairs, to discover they had sucked up all the sulphuretted hydrogen in the air leaving it crisp and odorless.

>   “Gleason usually slept with his windows thrown wide, but last night you must have had to raise the pane to pump the gas in. Although we found the casement the way you had left it, there was still air in the room. The wobblies would have sucked that giveaway odor out of Gleason himself, but we got to him in time, and a little of it lingered when I bent over him. You thought the wobblies would clear away every trace of the gas, and make it look as though Gleason had died of natural causes.” Carstair’s eyes were steely slits. “When you saw I had it tabbed as murder you tried to throw suspicion on Showalter by accusing him of upsetting your trays last night, and subtly hinting that maybe Gleason hadn’t quite believed his nephew’s version of the affair either. In other words, you implied that Showalter was in danger of being cut off without a cent.”

  “That’s a lie,” Bowles muttered hoarsely. “You’re trying to frame me, Carstairs.”

  “Think so? I’ve got a space-o-gram here from Earth which says that you and Miss Clayton have been partners in crime for a decade, and are wanted for blackmail and homicide by the San Francisco police.

  “It was beautifully planned, Bowles. All you had to do was murder Gleason and the rest would unwind like a carefully oiled spring. Showalter would inherit a fortune, Mona would marry Showalter, and then you and Mona would take a vacation together, with Showalter’s inheritance in an overnight bag to brighten the trip.”

  Carstairs looked straight at Mona Clayton. Her hands were clenched and her features seemed all wrenched apart. “You should have picked a less allergic partner, Mona. I suspected him from the first, but what really clinched it was his aversion to nettles. He plucked most of the nettles out of the wobblies with tweezers before releasing them.