The Undetected by George O. Smith (mobi reader TXT) 📕

twenty grand per annum, in such a way that the manipulation is never discovered.

"At first our Psi-man plans meticulously. But soon this process seems unnecessary because the poor ignorant homo saps don't even know they're being conned. He has no hard surface against which to whet his nervous edge, and so he begins to play games. He leaves clues, at first to ascertain the true level of his fellow man's intelligence and ability. Next he leaves conflicting clues to see which way the poor dopes will jump. In a world that scoffs at parapsychic phenomena, he leaves clues to support the theory that only an extra-sensory criminal could have done the dastardly deed. Will one of the ignorant apes recognize the truth? If he does, will he be in a high position, or will he be one of the diligent ones who fetch coffee for the guy in the upper office? If the work of a Psi-man is recognized, how will our bright policeman go about it, and what will he do with the evidence after it's been shown to him?

"And so, Mr. Wood, our Psi-man criminal has become bored because there is no one in the world to challenge him, and he gets sloppy through his growing contempt for the antlike activities of his fellow creatures. At last he shows himself, deliberately taunting them to take action against him. And that," I concluded, with a nod at him, "might be the 'perfect crime' in which your extra-sensory criminal finally exposes himself."

"But why," Mrs. Wood asked in perplexity, "would such a talented person turn to crime—or do you think that all extra-sensory people—"

I turned to smile at her. "Mrs. Wood, I was not speaking of extra-sensory people as a statistical body. I was referring to one particular character."

"I find him hard to believe in."

"On the contrary, my dear," said Mr. Wood, "Captain Schnell has drawn an amazingly accurate thumbnail sketch of our Psi-man, and I daresay that he could go on and on, filling in more minute details."

"Oh, yes, indeed," I said. "But I must leave it up to the professional writer to tell what the brilliant policeman does when he recognizes the work as that of an extra-sensory. For instance, does he become bold enough to mention it to Chief Weston, or to Commissioner Stone? Or will he confine his discussion to the company of a rain-soaked young woman so circumstantially available and coincidentally willing to discuss Psionics?"

"Captain Schnell," breathed Florence Wood, "what on Earth are you talking about?"

"Your father," I said.

Mr. Wood stepped into the breach. "Captain Schnell was dramatizing for your benefit, I'm sure. Because Captain Schnell knows very well how impossible it is to surprise a telepath into revealing himself."

Florence Wood's expression changed to a mildly bothered smile. "It certainly sounded as if he were accusing you of something."

"You mean—like—mind reading?" he asked with a big belly laugh that closed the subject.

IV

By most of the rules of society, both Mr. Wood and I were guilty of gross gentility. He greeted me overtly as the welcome guest and needled me with a show of patronizing tolerance as he implied that my basic interest was in Florence.

To match him, I accepted his hospitality and made use of the proximity to spy on him and his family.

There are ways and means of making a pretended deaf-mute reveal himself—the human being does not live who will not leap halfway out of his skin at the shock of an unexpected revolver shot, no matter how well trained he is at feigning deafness.

As for surprising a telepath, I knew it wouldn't work, but I had to try it anyway. I put both Mrs. Wood and Florence through a number of mental hurdles. To this, Mr. Wood took a quietly tolerant attitude. He understood and was prepared to accept as healthily normal a certain amount of lust and carnal conjecture in the minds of males who were interested in his daughter. He forgave me for mentally insulting his wife because he knew that my mental peregrinations were only aimed at determining whether his wife was telepathic. Finally he came out flatly and told me to stop wasting my effort, because neither Florence nor Mrs. Wood had a trace of extra-sensory power. Their lack of shocked or outraged response was not a case of the well-trained telepath divining my intention and planning a blank response.

Furthermore, Mr. Wood asserted that neither of them knew of his extra-sensory faculty, that he fully intended to keep it that way, and that I should know damned well that such stunts wouldn't work in the first place.

And so I continued to enjoy a dinner now and then, and occasionally the company of Florence.

Ultimately the lack of progress brought Chief Weston's nervous system to the blowup point. He called me in and I went, knowing that trouble cannot always be avoided, and when it can't, it's just plain sense to kick out the props and have done with it.

He plowed right in: "And what in hell have you been doing?"

"Chief, I've been—"

"You put a make-team on some half-baked writer named Wood."

"Edward Hazlett—"

"Because," he yelled, "the first person you saw when you stuck your nose outside of Gordon Andrews' apartment was Florence Wood!"

"Well, Chief, you see—"

"You perhaps suspected that she'd just walked through the wall of that apartment? And naturally you pulled out your hip-pocket crime laboratory and checked that umbrella tip for bloodstains before you threw it aside."

"Well, you see—"

"Schnell, would you have been so damned gallant if she'd been an ugly old hag in a ratty dress carrying a dead halibut wrapped in an old newspaper?"

"But you see—"

"So you leap into gallant action, and after you've rescued the fair maiden from her watery grave, you suddenly find it desirable to use a department automobile to deliver the damsel home."

"But—"

"Schnell, I'll bet that Wood girl wasn't any wetter than you were. And that's how you put the long arm of coincidence to work?"

It was more than coincidence. Florence Wood had been in that soaking rain and whipping wind for more than an hour. Any housewife would have corroborated my statement that only a prolonged soaking can achieve a truly wet-through-the-seams condition. Oh, Daddy Wood was just the guy to think of a stunt like saturating the seams and fibers of his daughter's clothing by agitating the water supersonically at high amplitude, but, let's face it, that would have beaten hell out of her soft white skin.

As for the umbrella, the wound could indeed have been made by a rapierlike thrust. But a comparison between the depth of the wound and the length of the tip showed that the bottom of the wound could not have been reached without forcing part of the umbrella itself into the victim's body. The face of the wound showed no such outsize penetration, hence the umbrella was not the sought-for weapon.

At this point, Chief Weston's telephone interrupted him and he snatched it up, bellowed his name, and then listened. Finally he snarled that it was for me and fairly hurled the handset at me.

I caught it at the end of its cord and said: "Captain Schnell, Special Detail—"

"Oh, I know it is you, Captain Schnell," said the suave voice of Edward Hazlett Wood. "I just wanted to tell you that your analysis of the umbrella's uselessness as evidence was quite brilliant. Also your logic in the matter of my daughter's rain-soaked clothing was clever. I really don't regret the chewing out you are getting. You deserve it. I was hoping to find you bright enough to avoid it. Anyway, can we expect you for dinner this evening?"

"Yes," I snapped, and hung up, thinking a few things that would have called for a terse reprimand about foul and abusive language if telepathy were administered by the Federal Communications Commission.

"Wood?" snapped Chief Weston.

"Yes."

"Date?" he snarled.

I groaned. Wood did have the nasty telepath's ability to maneuver me into a situation that I could not conveniently avoid.

"When they start calling the office to pester you for dates—"

"I know what I'm doing!"

"So do I!" he yelled. "You're doing nothing!"

"Listen, Chief, I'll admit the long arm of coincidence, but you'll have to admit that when there's trouble, I'm usually the first one to smell it."

"So how do you connect them up?"

"Chief, I walk out of that apartment with your own words ringing in my ears. 'Looks like the classical setup for a "perfect crime,"' you said. And then I meet this girl who just happens to have a father who writes whodunits and is planning a series of books based upon the 'perfect crime.'"

"Maybe," sneered Chief Weston, "the guy is a mind reader."

"I've given even that some consideration."

"So I hear tell."

"Any objections?" I asked.

"Objections? I've got a lot of objections!" he howled. "This is a police department, not a soothsayers' convention! We're subject to enough criticism as it is. You needn't have added the act that makes us look like a bunch of damned fools."

"But, Chief, I—"

"So what do I hear tell?" He hauled the tray drawer of his desk open and pulled out one of the tabloids, opened to one of its hate-everything columnists. "Listen! 'In recent years the legality of the famous witchcraft trials of the past has been subject to debate, with the result that these past convictions have now been declared "miscarriages of justice." Posthumously, I must unhappily add. However, there has been little or no amendment to the laws against witchcraft, wizardry, charms, amulets and spells.

"'But brace yourselves, citizens. One of our younger and more brilliant captains of detectives has shown an interest recently in parapsychics and may be training to track down criminals by the application of extra-sensory detection. If this be true, the laws will have to be ruptured to permit him to secure evidence, since it is a tenet of the law that evidence must be secured through legal methods and processes.

"'Fortune Tellers of the World, Arise! You have nothing to lose but your crystal balls!'"

Chief Weston slapped the paper down. "What do you think of that?"

I said, "He's just making noise. Telepathy has nothing in common with—"

"I wish I could stop you from even thinking about telepathy!"

"If you could," I said calmly, "you'd have to be telepathic to determine when I had violated your dictum—and if you were telepathic, Chief, you'd have been on my side from the beginning."

He merely glared at me. At this moment I should have been expecting the worst, and prepared to meet it. But please remember that there's always that mental block against prying, especially when the United States mail is concerned. But now Edward Hazlett Wood was about to show me how a real extra-sensory sharpshooter clobbers his enemies.

Weston's secretary entered, carrying a package.

I saw it, knew at once what it was, and groaned with despair. The only chance I saw of getting out of this was the forlorn hope that Weston would believe the package was a dig, probably mailed by the sniping columnist.

It was cleverly contrived. The addressee's name had been blurred and half-obliterated so that it couldn't have been quietly dropped on my desk where I could have disposed of its damning contents quietly. It had, of course, come special delivery, urgent, immediate handling. If I were a believer in amulets, witches and spells, I'd have been of the opinion that an aura of urgency had been created about the box.

Chief Weston's secretary handed it to him with a mumbled suggestion that it seemed to be important, and perhaps it should be opened in hopes that the contents would convey information as to the identity of the owner.

I said nothing.

Inside the package was a fine crystal ball, a set of tarot cards with a thick book of explanations, and a second deck of cards the like of which most people have heard but few have actually seen. These were the square, circle, wiggly line cards used in parapsychic research.