Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (epub ebook reader TXT) 📖

back to San Francisco from the Eastbay, taken a different job, just to be near me. Who wouldn't be flattered, and touched? But I finally had to lay down the law. It was a fight, physically, to make him behave. I caught a taxi home."

The waitress came back. Corinna picked up her second glass and sipped slowly. "He apologized the next day," she said, "but I told him I couldn't go out with him any more. He seemed to take it pretty well, said he would go back to Chicago—he'd spent a lot of time there once—but he asked for some kind of send-off. I—I spoke to Bruce. Gene had always been an admirer of Bruce. Odd, that big, husky, world-tramping fellow, admiring Bruce. We couldn't just drop him like that. We arranged a double date for a weekend early in December, a trip down to Carmel. I knew Bruce was in love, he couldn't hide that, but I asked him to take a friend of mine from the theater. It would make the atmosphere different. Safer, I thought."

Corinna stared into her drink. "We got a couple of hotel rooms down there," she said flatly. "We did a little drinking. Gene did more than a little. He made several open passes at me. I was afraid of a fight, but this girl and I got to bed at last. Back in their room, Gene's and Bruce's, Gene kept on drinking. He urged Bruce to come with him, into our room. Well, what would you expect? Bruce lost his temper and threw a punch at him. It couldn't have hurt—outside—but I wonder what it did to Gene, really. He started screaming about how we were all against him. I could hear him through the wall. We'd come down in his car. He said we could all find our own way home, he staggered out to his car and drove back along the highway—drunk."

Corinna brought her voice under control again. "That's all. We heard of the accident after we got home next day on the bus. We went to see him in the hospital as soon as we could. How he cursed us! Bruce was crying too, when we left."

"I know," said Kintyre. "I saw him a day or so later." And, briefly, he told her what Margery had done.

She seemed to thaw before his eyes. "If there could be such a thing as a blessed sin—"

"Now let's return to business," said Kintyre. "I want to get the nightmare off your back. Imprimis, how sorry are you for Gene? Actually?"

She hesitated. At last: "That's impossible to answer."

"He got what he asked for. It's pure luck the man in the other car wasn't killed."

"I suppose so." Hardness grew along her jawline. "And if he murdered my brother—how does the saying go? God may forgive him, but I never can."

"Good. However, secundus: He was not involved in Bruce's death."

"What makes you so certain?" she demanded, almost belligerently.

"Let me tell you what happened last night." Was it only last night?

He related it in a few words. She looked at him so strangely that he was puzzled, until it came to him that not many college professors enter waterfront tenements and throw people around.

"I hope you don't think I asked for the brawl," he finished. "I'm ashamed of it. But it gave me the proof I needed."

Her hand stole out, toward the plaster on his forehead. "Is that how you got hurt?" she asked softly.

"No." He continued hastily: "A strong possibility is that Bruce was killed by professionals. Imported murderers are likeliest, since the police will be seining all local toughs."

"Gene lived in Chicago," she murmured through tightened lips.

"Gene and his father are stonkering poor. Even if Gene has a murderer friend, such a job would not be done just as a favor."

"Then they could have done it themselves, father and son."

"Look, we had a minor scrap, the three of us. Those walls are like paper. Half the building heard it and came pounding on the door. Bruce could not have been—hurt, as he was—in that place. It would have to be somewhere else. Consider all the practical difficulties, finding an abandoned warehouse or whatever. Getting an automobile, for heaven's sake! Where would paupers like those two find the money to rent a car, even for a day?

"Oh, well, if we stretch our reasoning all out of shape, we can say they might have done all that. But one thing they could never have managed, and that was to capture Bruce in the first place. He would have tied them in bowknots."

"Bruce?" She was openly bewildered.

"Yes. Stop thinking of him as a mere bookworm. Bruce and I were going to pack into Kings Canyon, which is still pretty wild. And he was taking up judo, and doing quite well. A gun could have taken him prisoner, of course, but the Michaelises don't have a gun; they'd have gone for it last night if one were on the premises. So Bruce would have had to be slugged from behind. But there was no mark of a club on his body, no anesthetic—I have that from the police. Weaponless, neither Gene nor his father could have held Bruce for ten seconds. They're both strong, but they fall over themselves. I threw them with baby techniques."

"That's right," she said, "you do go in for judo, don't you? But Bruce said you were an expert."

"I only wear a brown belt so far. Bruce, of course, was a white. He could not have coped with one or two men who knew how to handle themselves—not necessarily judo men, just experienced fighters." Consider Terry Larkin. "However, he could certainly have thrown two unarmed Michaelises. Take my word for it. I know."

"Oh."

She studied her hands for a while.

"They'll be released in a few days at the outside," said Kintyre. "The most elementary procedures will show they're innocent. I can think of a dozen lines of proof myself. To be sure, you may be subjected to some publicity before that happens, but it will never get as far as a grand jury. Believe me."

"Thank you." When she smiled, he could see no other thing in all that dingy building. "I always seem to be thanking you."

"Which I find pleasant enough," he bowed.

"Why don't we go down to the station and explain it right now?" she asked hesitantly. "You're not afraid of being arrested for the fight, are you? That wasn't your fault."

"Oh, no. But my testimony and my reasoning aren't legally conclusive," he evaded.

"It would help a lot. It might get them out, tip the scales. I feel so sorry for them now. That poor old man!"

Kintyre looked straight into the green eyes. "Will you trust me a little bit?" he said. "Will you take my word that we can't do it immediately?"

Because the police would inquire further. Did I indeed hurt my arm and my head in that fracas? No, say the Michaelises. Where, then? I do not think their search would end short of Guido, your brother.

She bit her lip. "I hate to think of them locked up for something they haven't done."

"At the present time," he said, "my story would compromise someone else whom I also know to be innocent."

Like hell I do.

She sighed. "All right. That's good enough for me." And then, with the morning of her smile upon him again: "You've done enough for one day's knight errantry. Let's go eat."

13

The restaurant was small and quiet. Corinna and Kintyre had a corner table, where the light fell gently.

"By rights we should have a Genever apéritif," he said, "but I'm convinced Dutch gin is distilled from frogs. On the other hand, Dutch beer compares to Hof, Rothausbräu, or Kronenbourg."

"You've traveled a lot, haven't you?" she said. "I envy you that. Never got farther than the Sierras myself."

A little embarrassed—he had not been trying to play the cosmopolite—he fell silent while she glanced at her menu. "Will you order for me?" she asked finally. "You know your way around these dishes."

He made his selections, pleased by the compliment. When the beer came, in conical half-liter glasses, he raised his: "Prosit."

"Salute." She drank slowly. "Wonderful. But this may not be wise on top of two whiskies."

"It's all right if you go easy. Take the word of a hardened bowser." He searched out an inward weariness on the strong broad face. "You could use a little anesthesia."

"Well—" She set her glass down. "Bear with me. I promise not to blubber, but I may get sentimental. Or maybe even hilarious, I don't know. I've never lost anyone close to me before now."

"I understand," said Kintyre.

"And please help me steer clear of myself," she added. "I would like to talk about Bruce, and otherwise about wholly neutral things." She managed a smile. "I've been meaning to ask you something. You're the Machiavelli specialist. Our theater did Mandragola last year. Tell me, how could the same man write that and Il Principe?"

"Actually," said Kintyre, "I would be surprised if the author of The Prince—or, rather, the Discourses on Livy, since The Prince is really just a pamphlet—I'd be surprised if he had not done sheer amusement equally well. One of the more damnable heresies of this era is its notion that a man can only be good at one thing. That versatility is not the inborn human norm."

"I've often thought the same," she said. "I suppose you know Bruce changed his major to history because of you. He took one of your classes as a freshman. Now I see why."

"Well," he stalled, and hoisted his beer.

She shifted the conversation with a tact he appreciated: "But how did you happen to get interested in it, in the Italian Renaissance yet, with a name like yours?"

"I served time in one of those private schools back East," he said. "The Romance languages master got me enthusiastic."

He paused, then continued slowly: "I entered Harvard, but Pearl Harbor happened in my sophomore year. I was in the Navy the whole war, the Pacific; fell in love with the Bay Area on my shore leaves, which is why I came here to live afterward. But during the war I had a lot of time to read and try to think where this world was going. To the wolves, I decided—like Machiavelli's world—I suppose that's why I feel so close to him. He was also studying the problem of how the decent man can survive. He spoke the truth as he saw it, because he didn't think that civilization should be encumbered with nice-nellyisms that the barbarians had already discarded. Wherefore he became the original Old Nick, and the very people—us, the free people, whom he could warn—won't listen, because we think he speaks for the enemy!"

He braked. "Sorry. I didn't mean to orate at you."

"I wish more men had convictions," she said. "Even when I don't agree. Everybody respects everybody else's sensibilities so much these days, there's nothing left to talk about but football scores."

"You're very kind," he said. "Ah, here come the appetizers. Pay special attention to the characteristically Dutch delicacy, Russian eggs, but don't ask me how they came by that name."

Later, after much talk, some of it with enough laughter to tell him she was a merry soul in better days:

A ruby spark lay in their glasses of Cherry Heering. "This isn't Dutch either," said Kintyre. "However."

"Do you know," she said, "I begin to understand the old idea of a wake. Getting the clan together and having one fine brawling celebration. It's more an act of love, really, than drawing the parlor curtains and talking in hushed voices."

"That's the Latin who speaks," he said. "We Protestant races are cursed with the tradition that misery is a virtue."

"But you, you Bostonian Scot or whatever you are—I hear a trace of accent—you approve."

"I left Boston for the Pacific at the arthritic age of nine."

"What was the reason for that?"

"My father was a marine architect. He was laid