THE NINTH DAY:

Friday, November 7, 1941

HUGO CHANTRELLE told the story of his rocket party so often to the police that he came to know it by heart, came even to believe that he had in fact felt a sensation of dread premonition from the start of the evening. This sensation he accounted for with manifold references to Extra Sensory Perception, the Serial Universe, the common reaction of I-have-been-here-before, and the free movement of the mind in dreams along either direction of the time stream. It was an impressive explanation, even though the premonition was strictly after the fact, and emphatically a characteristic one.

For Hugo Chantrelle was an eccentric scientist. In working hours at the California Institute of Technology he was an uninspired routine laboratory man; but on his own time he devoted himself to those peripheral aspects of science which the scientific purist damns as mumbo-jumbo, those new alchemies and astrologies out of which the race may in time construct unsurmised wonders of chemistry and astronomy.

The rocketry of Pendray, the time-dreams of Dunne, the extra sensory perception of Rhine, the sea serpents of Gould, all these held his interests far more than any research conducted by the Institute. He was inevitably a member of the Fortean Society of America, and had his own file of unbelievable incidents eventually to be published as a supplement to the works of Charles Fort. It must be added in his favor that his scientific training automatically preserved him from the errors of the Master. His file was carefully authenticated, and often embellished with first-hand reports. And this was one reason why he had so gladly acceded to D. Vance Wimpole’s notion of turning the rocket launching into a party for Hilary.

For locked rooms fit into the Fort pattern, if pattern it can be called, and Hugo Chantrelle looked forward to meeting Hilary much as he might to an encounter with a survivor of the Mary Celeste or with Benjamin Bathurst, the British diplomat who once walked around a team of horses and was never seen again.

So expectancy was Chantrelle’s dominant emotion that night, expectancy of the meeting with Hilary and the success of the demonstration of his model rocket. The premonition of disaster came later, in his account to Sergeant Kello of the Pasadena police.

Too great expectancy must always involve anticlimax, which is possibly only a pedantic way of rephrasing the idea of the song I’m building up to an awful let-down. Chantrelle’s let-down was double: He never had a chance to talk with Hilary alone, and nobody seemed to give much of a damn about his beautiful rocket. It was turning into just another party, and the host began to regret that Wimpole had talked him into serving liquor, a disturbing element which ordinarily never entered his life.

There were some of his own friends present, of course: several faculty members from the Institute, where he seemed to get on better with representatives of the departments of English and mathematics than with his own colleagues. There were some of the fantasy writers whom he cultivated: Anson MacDonald and Austin Carter and that promising newcomer Matt Duncan and Anthony Boucher and their several wives and Joe Henderson inevitably wifeless.

Ordinarily these might have been tractable guests, who listened with absorbed interest and occasionally contributed stimulating ideas of their own. Chantrelle was wont to maintain that the company of fantasy writers is invaluable to a scientist; they are the prophets of the future even as Verne and Foulkes were the prophets of today. Only occasionally did he admit to himself that he enjoyed their company because they received his heterodox views on the borderlands of science far more courteously than did his laboratory associates.

But even they were not receptive tonight. There were too many others. There was Hilary Foulkes, who had invested his entrance with wife and cousin with the air of a potentate leading a cortege, and who had thenceforth held court, in the chair most nearly approaching his own body in comfortable plumpness, dispensing anecdotes of his Immortal Father and of his own providential escape from death.

There was Veronica Foulkes, who had prowled about commencing a tête-à-tête with each available unattached male. Yes, even with Chantrelle, though women interested him as little as did liquor, and the nebulous stupidity of her egocentric mysticism had disgusted him; for his mind, though eccentric, was stringently logical.

There was the agent Phyn. He was unobtrusive enough save for his fruitless endeavors to wangle a private conference with Hilary Foulkes and for an oddly dominant, whip-hand quality in his attitude toward Vance Wimpole; but Hugo Chantrelle disliked the presence, even the existence of agents. They reminded him that writers (even, or perhaps especially, writers of science fantasy) are commercial workers, when he preferred to think of them as free souls, as soaringly independent as, thanks to the canny marriage of his grandmother, was he himself.

There were two people whom he faintly remembered meeting once at the Carters, but whom he could not successfully place. The man named Marshall seemed not to fit in anywhere. Five minutes’ conversation showed him up as neither scientist nor science-fictionist; and his suit, though good enough and well pressed, certainly proved that he did not belong to the circles in which the Foulkes moved. And yet he seemed in some curious way closely attached to the Foulkeses; his alert eyes hardly ever left Hilary, even for his own attractive wife.

Then there was the odd little man named Truncheon or Runtle or something equally unlikely. A fan, Chantrelle decided; Austin Carter was apt to have such satellites. He felt sorry for the lonely little man at one point, and went over to him to enlighten him with some details about the by now almost forgotten rocket. But Vance Wimpole came up at the same time, and Trundle’s eyes lit up with the true fan’s glow in the presence of An Author.

Wimpole, of course, was everywhere. He tended bar, he told stories, he introduced to each other with the most intimate charm people whom he had himself met five minutes earlier, he heckled Hilary’s levee, he plagued his sister, he made casual love to the cousin, who seemed to be his fiancée—in short, he had by now turned a serious gathering of odd-minded men of scientific interests into the start of a first-rate brawl.

If Hugo Chantrelle’s Extra Sensory Perception (or his awareness of past phases of seriotemporal existence; he had not definitely decided which) had been as keen as he liked later to suppose, he might indeed have had premonitions.

He might have had a premonition when young Duncan was introduced to the comfortably enthroned Hilary Foulkes.

“Ah yes,” Hilary murmured. “Duncan. Duncan. Oh yes, the daring young man with the audacity to write new Dr. Derringer stories. Most daring of you, Duncan. Delighted to meet you. Delighted. You know, I feel that I’ve been most generous to you. I really should have refused permission for your series. Duty to my father’s memory and all that, you know. But I’m not such an ogre as some people make me out. After all, you pulp writers have to live, don’t you?”

Duncan’s pretty, Spanish-looking little wife had drawn him away, though not before he had uttered an ugly and threatening phrase. The scowl on his face was blacker than her hair.

He might have had a premonition when Veronica Foulkes, after having had no more success with several of the guests than she had had with her host, disappeared into the garden for some time with Joe Henderson.

She does rather resemble one of Joe’s villainesses physically, Chantrelle had thought; but, their minds are always astutely evil. Hers is merely commonplace and silly.

He was rather surprised to notice that Henderson returned with lipstick smudged on his face, so badly that the cousin caught hold of him and drew him aside for repairs before he met Hilary’s eyes.

He might have had a premonition when Wimpole eventually, being (as Chantrelle’s Scots grandfather would have said) under drink taken, gradually ceased making casual love to his fiancée and began to bestow tentative but certainly not casual advances upon others.

He had an enviable field to choose from. Carter and Marshall and Boucher and Duncan were all men blessed beyond the average with attractive wives. And of them all it was the long-legged Leona Marshall, whose red hair blended so notably with Vance’s own, who seemed most to attract him.

Chantrelle missed the climax of this development; but its nature was not hard to deduce from Wimpole’s nose-bleed and the quiet, earnest, and somewhat apologetic conversation of the Marshalls in a corner.

He might most appositely of all have had a premonition when he went down to the shed to check up on preparations for the rocket test; for he was going to hold that test come hell or high water. Some few of his guests, he was sure, were still interested; and the others could . . . Well, after all, consider the shape of a rocket.

There were three figures standing by the workshed. They were on the edge of the pool of light cast by the shed’s window, and they gave in the dark night a curious effect of optical illusion. The central figure was a woman. The others were men; or rather, and this was what was perturbing, they were the same man. It was as though the woman were being escorted by a man and his Doppel-ganger.

There is a pleasure in being deceived by our eyes. Perhaps it provides us with the consolatory thought that our senses are not perfect and that therefore things need not be quite so terrible as they seem. Chantrelle watched this double apparition with the same uneasy satisfaction that he had once felt when he stared too long at a waterfall and the very earth and rocks began to move as though serenaded by Orpheus his lute.

Then at the same time Chantrelle’s assistant Gribble opened the door of the shed and the tall and sturdy Marshall stepped from somewhere out of the shadows. In the light the three figures were simply Hilary Foulkes, abandoning his throne at last for a breath of air, his cousin Miss was it Green?, and that Frangible individual.

“All ready any time you say, boss,” Gribble announced.

And the extra-sensitive and serial-living Hugo Chantrelle had still not felt a premonition.

2.

Gribble turned a switch, and bright lights picked out the course which the rocket was to follow. This was a carefully constructed trench four feet deep and extending some hundred yards down the arroyo, making a slight arc twice in its meanderings and ending in a spring-backed shock cushion of raw cotton.

Leona Marshall let out a loud sigh of disappointment. “The rocket just goes along there? But that’s no fun. I thought rockets went up in the air boom!”

“And maybe off to Mars,” Concha added. “Or leastways to the moon.”

“Hush,” Matt advised. “Austin’s going to make a speech; I think that’ll clear up your confusions.”

The party was gathered on either side of the trench in front of the workshed. They had split more or less involuntarily into two groups: those who were in some way connected with Hilary Foulkes and those who led carefree and innocent lives.

On the western lip of the trench were the Bouchers and the MacDonalds and the several Caltech men. On the eastern lip were the Marshalls and the Duncans, Henderson and Phyn, D. Vance Wimpole, and the Foulkes-Green family. Hugo Chantrelle was in the pit of the workshed beside the rocket, and the Carters stood in the doorway of the shed facing both groups of auditors.

“Let there be silence,” said Austin Carter. “I will have hush.” And the mumblings of the party slowly died down, leaving nothing but the voice of Vance Wimpole saying “. . . marry the chief’s daughter. Of course she was attractive enough, in a lard-laden sort of . . .” He sensed the silence, and let the phrase trail off.

“Thank you,” Carter smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen . . . scientists, writers, housewives, and detectives . . . Hugo has asked me to say a few dedicatory words on rockets. You don’t expect me to resist that, do you?”^*

The murderer shifted restlessly. There were other matters more pressing than rockets. The murderer began to regret ever having come to this party.

“Most people,” Carter went on, “know that a rocket is fun to shoot off on the Fourth. A few know that it’s useful for signal flares. And for a very few, our host and me among them, the rocket is something to which to pin our hopes for the human future.

“Its origin goes back into legend, and almost inevitably Chinese legend at that. It was first used in warfare, chiefly as a creator of panic, as at the battle of Pienking. The rocket became known in Europe late in the fourteenth century. By 1405 von Eichstadt was writing of its military value, and by 1420 Joanes de Fontana was constructing fantastically shaped rockets and drafting plans for a never-constructed rocket car. To Fontana belongs the honor of first realizing that the rocket was not an end, but a means.”

A means . . . The murderer frowned down at the rocket in the pit. Could this creation of the eccentric Mr. Chantrelle conceivably be a means of necessary elimination?

“For the next four centuries, the development of the rocket was at a standstill, until Sir William Congreve had the genial notion of encasing the gunpowder, not in paper, but in iron. The success of this device set inventors everywhere to fretting over rockets as a motive power of flight.

“But the modern history of rocketry begins with Konstantin Eduardovich Ziolkovsky, who in 1903 made the first scientific application of the rocket principle to the problems of space travel.

“Man has always aspired to reach the stars. But when he finally sprouted wings, he knew that they would be futile as those of Icarus in interplanetary space. Wings must beat against air. So must propellers. In the vacuum of space they would be helpless. But the force of an explosion is as strong a motive power in a vacuum as in air.”

Force . . . Force exerted, not in a vacuum, but against a . . . Yes . . . Yes.

“It’s a popular misconception that this force requires air for the exhaust gasses to push against. This is arrant nonsense. See Newton’s third law of motion. A gun, for instance, fired in a vacuum, has the same recoil as in the air. And a rocket fired in space would, by the reaction from the explosion, propel a space ship, which nothing else known to us could do.

“This Ziolkovsky concept of rockets in space gave the necessary impetus at last to serious rocket research. I don’t need to do more than mention the first great names in the field: Goddard, Oberth, Esnault-Pelterie; or refer to the the more important societies: the pioneer Verein fur Raumschiffahrt, the British Interplanetary Society, the American Rocket Society, to remind you of the vast amount of practical work which has been going on especially in the past twenty years.”

The murderer gazed from the rocket to the plump victim and back again to the rocket. The plans were ripening nicely.

“Among these workers is Hugo Chantrelle. If the name of Chantrelle does not ring down with the ages with those of G. Edward Pendray and Willy Ley, it will be because our heterodox host, even within this heterodox pursuit of rocketry, has followed his own doubly heterodox path. For what absorbs him is not the rocket ship, but the rocket car.

“For both theoretical and technical reasons, the rocket car has been neglected by the societies. But Chantrelle has persevered, because he believes in its value as an icebreaker. Man rejects anything too new and startling. He would have rejected the miracle of radio if it had not snuck up on him gradually through the telegraph and the simple signaling of wireless telegraphy. He may reject the miracle of space travel unless he is first accustomed to the rocket as a means of terrestrial transport. Thus Chantrelle’s first goal in rocket tubes connecting major cities, through which freight and mail may be sent even more rapidly and far more cheaply than by air. He envisions a network of such tubes, spidering all over the continent.”

But has he, the murderer thought, envisioned the notably practical use to which this tube is about to be put?

“One main problem is the difficulty of steering these pilotless transports in tubes which can rarely be built in a straight line. To solve this, Chantrelle has contrived a robot governor based on the principle of the reflection of sound-waves, and this is what we are to see tried out tonight. You will notice that the walls of this trench curve twice. The rocket should, in theory, keep itself always a certain distance from each wall and thereby negotiate the curves readily. The rocket used for this test is a slow one. There has been no attempt to attain maximum exhaust velocity. It will move at only about fifty miles an hour. The final commercial rockets for the tubes will, of course, move at between two and three hundred miles per hour.”

But fifty, the murderer thought, should do beautifully for this occasion. The murderer’s eyes glistened, and a pink tongue licked dry lips. A certain pleasure can be derived from sheer necessity.

Austin Carter’s normally assured voice grew a trifle hesitant. “There’s just one point about rockets I‘d like to venture on my own before we start the demonstration. I don’t know if Hugo agrees with me on this; he probably hasn’t even bothered himself about it. But it’s this: That the rocket carries in its zooming path the hopes of all men of good will. By leaving this planet, man may become worthy of his dominion over it, and attain dominion over himself. The realization that there is something beyond this earth, if only in a purely physical sense, may unite this earth, may change men from a horde of wretchedly warring clans to a noble union of mankind.

“I may be deluded in my hopes. The discovery of new worlds may be as futile as the discovery of the New World. It may mean only further imperial wars of conquest, new chapters in the cruel exploitation of subject native races. But it may mean new unity, new vigor, new humanity, and the realization at last of all that is best in mankind. I hope so anyway,” he ended, quietly and anti-climactically.

The murderer has heard little of this idealistic peroration. The murderer’s eyes were fixed with a smiling glint upon Marshall. That detective, the murderer mused; this will give him to think.

3.

Hugo Chantrelle had added a few words of his own, chiefly technical details which only his colleagues seemed to follow. He had spoken affectionately of his long months of work on the Aspera IX. All his model rockets, he explained, were named Aspera, for per aspera, eventually, itur ad astra, and he deplored the tendency of the facetious to refer to them as Aspidistra.

The group at the shed end of the trench crowded forward close to the lip and peered into the pit beneath the shed. The Aspera IX was some five feet long and a trifle under a foot in diameter. The gleam of light on her dull copper gave her the quality of a living thing forcibly holding itself back from motion. Chantrelle and Carter and the assistant Gribble conferred in the pit in voices too low to be heard. Then Chantrelle held up his hand.

There was silence. Gribble bent over the rocket. There was a flare of exhaust and a loud explosion. All eyes turned, tennis-wise, to watch the rocket shoot past. But those eyes saw something else.

They saw a plump figure topple over the lip of the trench into the immediate path of the Aspera IX. The ears heard a crunch of bone and flesh, and sharp ringing screams.

The Aspera IX righted herself from the shock. She adjusted herself admirably to the curves in the trench and plunged undamaged into the cotton bales at the end. But no one heeded her epochal performance.

“Hilary!” Veronica Foulkes was screaming. “Hilary!” And Jenny Green was saying the same word softly and intensely.

“So they got him,” Marshall swore with feeling. “Got him at last and right under my very exceedingly goddamned eyes . . .”

“Heavens!” a voice murmured. “Heavens!” The voice was shocked and trembling with terror and relief, but there was no mistaking its deep round tones.

Marshall whirled and stared at Hilary Foulkes. He followed Hilary’s gaze down to the bleeding mass in the trench. “Then who . . . ?” he demanded loudly.

No one answered him.

4.

From then on it was Lieutenant Marshall’s party.

It was Marshall who ordered Chantrelle and Carter to let no one climb down into the trench. It was Marshall who sent Gribble to the house to phone the Pasadena police. It was Marshall who delegated his wife, aided by Concha Duncan, to minister to the women present and prevent hysterics. It was Marshall who himself descended into the trench, identified the plump pulp as that of the fan Runcible, made certain that it was dead (as though anyone beholding that impact could have had any doubt), and covered it with a tarpaulin (which is after all the same word as pall) from the shed.

Now it was Marshall who addressed the group gathered in Chantrelle’s vast living-room. “The police,” he began, “will be here in five or ten minutes.”

“But Lieutenant,” Hilary protested, “I thought you were the police.”

“I am in Los Angeles. Here in Pasadena, I’m just another civilian. But a civilian with specialized knowledge and experience, and that I’m putting at your disposal now. We’re going to spend those minutes before the Pasadena boys arrive in trying to get this business straight.”

He looked about the group. They were sober enough now, in either meaning of the word. Nothing less like a triumphant rocket-launching party could be imagined. Social gaiety and scientific fervor were both obliterated by the sudden emergence of death.

But it was an impersonal sort of sobriety. As was, indeed, natural enough. No one here had known Runcible more than casually. He was an extra, a hanger-on, a spear-toter. His death had been terrible to see, but it had stirred only physical response; there was no mourning, no personal sorrow at his passing. And with Hilary and his cousin, perhaps even with his wife, the emotion of relief so effectively drowned out any casual regret for Runcible’s death that they looked almost jubilant.

It was one of the Caltech men who spoke up. “But why is there any need for the police? It was a most tragic accident, and there will doubtless be a highly unpleasant inquest; but the police . . .”

“Accident, hell,” Marshall snorted. “Maybe some of you read the papers; but most of you must know that there has recently been a series of attempts on the life of Mr. Foulkes here. You also know, from your own observation, that Mr. Foulkes and the dead man were much of a build. In fact, both Mrs. Foulkes and I, seeing that body hurtle into the trench, thought at once that it was her husband. So. I think the conclusion’s obvious.”

“That poor man!” Hilary sighed, his sorrow serving as an inadequate mask for his relief. “To think that he laid down his life for mine!”

“Involuntarily, no doubt; but what Mr. Foulkes says is nonetheless true. The bright lights were focused on the trench. We on the edge were in half-darkness. And the curiously inefficient murderer who has previously made five unsuccessful attempts on Mr. Foulkes’ life tonight made his sixth and most spectacularly unsuccessful.”

There was another sigh of relief, this time from Hugo Chantrelle, who followed it with a fervent “Thank God.”

“And why, sir?” Marshall demanded.

“Because, Lieutenant, if this is murder, there can be no public furor about the dangers of rocket experimentation. After Valier’s sad death in 1930, there were shortsighted but rabid demands throughout Germany for the legal prohibition of all further work on rockets. But in this case . . . You can see why I thank God for your murderer.”

“So. All right: Now did anyone see clearly what happened? I know that all of us (save one) had our attention firmly fixed on the Aspera IX. The murderer knew his principles of stage conjuring. I’m not expecting anybody to produce a diagram of just where each person was; but did anyone see any sudden movement that might have been the fatal shove?” Marshall paused, mentally biting his tongue for such a banal utterance as that last phrase.

There was silence.

“All right I know how you might feel. You say to yourself, ‘After all, I’m not too sure of what I saw, and I’m not going to send a man to the gas chamber on my guess.’ But remember that this is a clumsy murderer, an ineffectual, frustrated murderer. He’ll strike again when he gets the chance. And we’ve got to see that he never gets it. So come on. Tell anything that might help.”

Matt Duncan rose, hesitantly, as one might to recite an unprepared lesson. He shoved his tousled black hair away from his brow, and the freakish white streak in it seemed to emphasize the bitter torsion of his features. “O.K., Terence,” he said.

“So. Yes, Matt? You saw who shoved Runcible?”

Matt gulped audibly. “Saw, hell! I shoved him.”

Concha’s reaction was more a squeak than a scream. She put out one small hand as though to halt her husband’s confession. Hilary was on his feet and booming something about Justice and At Last.

Marshall cut him short. “You shoved him, Matt?” he said gently.

“I couldn’t help it. I was standing behind him. I’m a head taller than he is . . . was . . . so he didn’t obstruct me. Then just as the rocket went off, I got a hell of a sharp jab in the back. I started to fall forward, so I put out my hands. You know how you do . . . I hit what’s-his-name. I saw him stagger and then go forward and over and straight into . . .”

No one had noticed Leona slip away from the group, but now she stood beside Matt with a tumbler half full of whisky. “This’ll help,” she said.

He took it at a gulp and his body was unshaken. “Thanks,” he nodded. “There. I’ve done it now. I’ve confessed. According to the notions of my wife’s church, it ought to be clear sailing from here on in. But I still . . .”

“Lieutenant,” Hilary demanded, “arrest this man! A sharp jab in the back, indeed! He’s afraid someone else saw him, and he’s trying to beat them to it. Arrest him, I say!”

“In the first place,” said Marshall slowly, “I can’t arrest anybody outside the city limits of Los Angles; and despite all gags as to their extent, we’re outside them now.

“In the second place, I believe him. Go on, Matt. Can you tell us anything more about this jab?”

Matt’s voice was unsure and wavering. “I can’t, Terence. I didn’t look around because all I could see was Whoozis falling and falling and then . . .” He shuddered and covered his face with his hands.

“Pull yourself together,” said Marshall, feeling as futile as the phrase.

Matt lowered his hands. “Sure. Pull myself together. With these hands, no doubt. These hands that killed a man . . .”

A harsh dry voice spoke from the doorway. “Hot stuff!” it said. “A confession already!” Its uniformed owner grinned, then called over his shoulder, “Come on in, boys. We’ve got it all cleaned up.”

The officer strode into the middle of the room. “Kello’s the name, folks. Sergeant Kello. K, e, l, l, O-O-O-O-O, like they sing on the radio. And it looks like we’re going to have a short and easy time of it, don’t it? All right, big boy,” he addressed Matt, “what’s your name and who’d you kill?”

“I’m afraid, Sergeant,” Marshall interposed, “you’re plunging in too fast. It isn’t a question of handcuffs yet.”

“Hell, brother, a confession’s a confession, ain’t it? And who’re you anyway to tell me where I get off?”

Marshall showed his badge. “Marshall, Lieutenant, Homicide.”

Sergeant Kello’s round red face narrowed unpleasantly. “Marshall, huh? Quite the big shot in L.A., ain’t you? Well, brother, this is Pasadena. Keep your nose clean.”

5.

“Hell of a mess, ain’t he, doc? Anyways there can’t be much doubt about cause of death. Die right away?”

“Instantly.”

“Never knew what hit him, huh? Serves the poor bastard right for playing around with rockets. The whole kit and caboodle of ’em’s screwy if you ask me. Rockets . . . You identify this man, Mr. Carter?”

“As best I can from what’s left of him. At any rate, that’s the suit Runcible was wearing, you found his draft card in it, and he’s the only member of the party not accounted for. His dentist can probably identify him more positively than I could.”

“Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Carter. Look at it this way: Would I try to tell you how to write a story?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s see: Runcible . . . First name, William? Address . . .”

“So this list, Mr. Chantrelle, is the people who were on the same side of the trench as Runcible, and these were on the other side?”

“Yes. My assistant Gribble, Mr. Carter and his wife, and I were in the pit.”

“So, it’s just these ten who could’ve . . . But hell, what are we wasting time for? We know who did it.”

“You ever have any trouble with this Duncan, Mr. Foulkes?”

“Trouble? I don’t know that you’d call it trouble. But perhaps . . . One never knows how these pulp writers will react to the most ordinary business proposition. One never knows. We did have a . . . I suppose you might call it a financial disagreement. I referred to it casually this evening and Duncan burst forth into wild threats and gave me a look as though he . . . why, as though he wanted to murder me. And by Jove, he did!”

“Threats, huh? What kind of threats, Mr. Phyn?”

“You understand I wouldn’t ordinarily talk like this about a friend, Sergeant, but under the circumstances . . .”

“Sure. Never does no harm to stand in good with the law. Shoot, brother.”

“Before this evening, I mean. I think before he’d ever met Mr. Foulkes.”

“What sort of threats?”

“Well, not threats exactly. Maybe just a lot of loose talk. But I do know that Duncan was all shot to hell when he learned about this financial finagling of Foulkes’, and one night at Carter’s when we were talking about the Perfect Crime he said he had at least the Perfect Victim. It sounded as though he meant it. He meant something anyway.”

“You saw this push, Mr. Boucher?”

“I’m afraid so. Something bit me and I happened to jerk up my head just as the rocket started. I noticed Duncan because that odd white streak in his hair took the light. And it did look as though he himself was being shoved too.”

“You saw him shoved?”

“I can’t quite say that. He’s tall, and whoever was behind him must have been shorter; I couldn’t see anyone. But Duncan’s body lurched forward as though—”

“You’d swear in court that you saw him shoved and that he didn’t do the shoving himself?”

“I couldn’t swear to that, no. But it’s my firm impression that—”

“That’s enough, Boucher.”

“O.K., Marshall. We’re smart in Pasadena too, but if somebody else does the spadework it’s oke by us. You’ve been investigating these other attacks on Foulkes?”

“Yes.”

“Duncan included among your suspects? Come on, brother. Talk. If you won’t, I can go over your head and get an order from your chief for you to cooperate or else. Did you investigate Duncan?”

“Yes. Inevitable routine. He was one of the many business enemies that Hilary Foulkes had a habit of making.”

“Find anything to tie him up with the attacks?”

“Nothing.”

“But did you find anything that cleared him? It was possible for him to make every one of the other attacks on Foulkes, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t possible for anybody to make the last one.”

“Yeah. I read about that. You boys just didn’t go over the room careful enough. But Duncan hasn’t got any alibis?”

“None.”

“That’s all I wanted to know, brother.”

Sergeant Kello looked at his wristwatch. “We’ve been here an hour, boys. That’s what I call making time. Sixty-minute Kello, that’s me. And I didn’t need that much. The more I talk to these dopes the surer I am of what I knew right the minute I came in that door. ‘Somebody shoved me, officer . . .’ Nuts! He knew somebody must’ve spotted him from across the trench, so he tried a fast one to clear himself. They can’t get away with it, not with Kello on the job.”

Hugo Chantrelle peered into the study which Kello was using. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant—”

“Sergeant right now, brother. But you wait till the papers get hold of this. Pasadena Sergeant Frustrates Attacks on Celebrity after L.A. Police Star Fails. Lieutenant Kello . . . Sounds kind of good, don’t it?”

“Yes indeed, Sergeant. But what I wanted to ask: My guests are getting exceedingly worried and tired. I simply can’t put them all up for the night. And Mrs. Marshall and Mrs. Boucher are fretting about their children, who are in the charge of high school girls who apparently expect to go home long before this hour. And Mr. Wimpole—”

“Tell ’em they can go home now,” said the future Lieutenant Kello expansively. “Tell ’em they can all go home. All but one.” He jangled a pair of handcuffs playfully.

6.

Leona Marshall clicked on the light of her living room, crossed to the couch, and shook the shoulder of the sleeping high school girl. The girl sat up, rubbed her eyes, and said, “Oh. Have a nice party?”

Leona didn’t try to answer that one. She just said, “I’m sorry we’re so late, Doris. Here’s your money, with the extra for the hours after midnight. Mr. Marshall’s out in the car. He’ll take you home.”

“Sit down, Concha,” she added when the girl had left, “I just want to take a look at the children to make doubly sure. Be right back.”

Concha sat. It was easy to obey simple commands. This must be the way zombies feel, a sort of relief at just having to obey, after all the living problems of trying to shape life because now there isn’t any life to shape any more. She sat and stared blankly in front of her until Leona returned.

Leona stood looking at her for a moment, then laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I prescribed whisky for Matt,” she said quietly, “but I don’t think it’d help you. Nothing could at the moment but maybe sleep. Here’s some phenobarbital. Take another one later if you still toss, but one ought to do it.”

“He didn’t, Leona.” Concha’s voice was little and frightened.

“Of course he didn’t. It’s just that stupid Sergeant trying to do the job in record time and get a promotion.”

“I know. That sounds so safe and simple. But first it’s a Sergeant that wants a promotion. Then it could be a prosecutor that’s coming up for reelection. Then it could be a jury that wanted to get home. It could all be so simple and commonplace only Matt . . . Matt’d be dead.”

“Nonsense. They haven’t got any kind of a case. Why, even Sergeant Kello only dared arrest him on a manslaughter charge. He admitted he’d have to have more evidence on the other attempts to prove premeditation before he could make it murder.”

“But when they know what they’re looking for they can find it even if it isn’t there . . . Oh Leona . . .” The girl’s sobs were dry and aching.

“There,” Leona said soothingly. “You hear a lot about miscarriages of justice, convictions of innocent people. But they’re one in a million. That’s why you hear so much about them, just because they are so rare. He’ll be all right.”

Concha tried to choke back her sobs and force a smile. “You’re sweet, Leona, trying to whistle in the dark for me. But how much of this do you believe yourself? Oh,” she added with a gasp, before Leona could answer. “Hilary!”

“What about him?”

“He thinks Matt did it. And Hilary has money, ever so much money, and he can . . .”

“If it comes to fighting that way, you have money too, haven’t you? And I’ll tell you what you have to do with it first thing tomorrow. Go to your lawyer and have him get Matt out on bail. Since the present charge is only manslaughter, that’ll be easy.”

“But it’ll be . . . murder as soon as that dreadful Sergeant . . .”

“Well,” said Leona, “there’s one certain and sure way of seeing to it that Matt is proved innocent. And that is to prove beyond any doubt who did it.”

Marshall came in just then. “Applause,” he observed. “And that, I promise you, Concha, is what I’m out to do. Quite aside from the fact that it’s the job I’m paid for.”

Concha Duncan lifted a damp face. “Have you any ideas, Lieutenant? Any at all?”

Marshall grunted. “I did have one. And it stood in the pit beside Chantrelle. In this case we’re strictly limited to the group on our side of the trench. Outside of the four Marshalls and Duncans, that leaves Mrs. Foulkes, the cousin, Vance Wimpole, Henderson, and the agent. And on the bomb,” he mused aloud, “it has to be a man. No woman could get away with the Derringer get-up, especially feminine women. That leaves us Wimpole, Henderson, and Phyn. See how easy it is, Concha?”

The note of blithe confidence in his voice did not quite ring true.

* For much of the following material, Mr. Carter asks me to acknowledge his indebtedness to P. E. Cleator’s Rockets Through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel, New York, Simon, 1936. (The British edition, London, Allen, 1936, has even more fascinating pictures.)