17
I arrived at my trailer in the middle of the afternoon. My feet were tired and blistered, although I had managed to pick up a pair of sandals along the way. The swami's temple had been a good mile from the nearest elevated station. I wasn't used to that much walking, particularly in my bare feet.
Just as I turned into the walk leading up to my trailer, the girl next door appeared. She ran down the steps toward me and halted abruptly. For a change her eyes were not cast down or averted but intent on my face, wide with concern. I had a startlingly clear sense of her anxiety, followed by an apprehension of acute relief.
"You're—you're all right?" she asked breathlessly.
She was staring at the bandage around my head. My coverall concealed the larger bandage extending from my left shoulder to the elbow.
"Banged up a little," I said with forced cheerfulness. "Nothing serious."
"I was afraid—" She caught herself. "When you didn't return home, I—"
I looked at her sharply and she blushed. Her head turned away quickly, but not before I saw the creeping stain of red under her skin. For a moment, I was too astonished to reply. The girl's next words made me forget all about her odd behavior.
"The police were here," she said, her glance brushing mine for only an instant. "They wished to see you."
I felt a quick stab of warning. My gaze narrowed, trying to read her expression. The police had not been satisfied with my story, then. And this girl had backed up my alibi.
"Were they questioning you again—about the other night?" I asked with an attempt at casualness.
"Oh, no!" She shook her head in a terse, firm negative. "They were very nice. They said they would stop back to see you later."
"You didn't—tell them anything else?"
A faint smile touched her lips and I seemed to see her face revealed for the first time without the mask of shyness. It was a face that mirrored warmth and a hidden humor, a sensitive, lovely face.
"There was no need," she said. "I do not think they are interested any more."
"But they didn't say why they wanted to see me?"
All at once she appeared to become aware of my close scrutiny and she took a step back. "Nothing," she said quickly. "They—they told me nothing."
She started to turn away and I stepped quickly toward her, catching her arm. "Wait!" I said urgently. I could feel a faint trembling under my fingers, a current of—what? Excitement? Fear? "I want to thank you—for being worried about me."
Her eyes met mine briefly and I was surprised to see that they reflected none of the timidity or apprehension that seemed to vibrate in her body.
"It is only natural that I would be concerned," she said, and even her voice held a different tone, a note of surprising tenderness.
And while I stared, she pulled away from me and ran lightly up the steps and into her trailer. The door closed firmly behind her.
I took a step after her. Her words came back to me, her news about the police. They would be back. And there could be only one reason for their wanting to talk to me again.
It took all the control I had to keep from turning and running.
I let myself into my trailer. It seemed stuffy inside, the clean, cool, filtered air slightly stale after a day without human smells to combat. An impulse of caution made me go through the trailer quietly. In the compact, carefully planned rooms, it would have been impossible for anyone to hide. I felt the absurdity of expecting to find police lurking in the closet or under the bed, but I was not acting very rationally. The desire to flee followed me through the empty rooms.
A woman had been killed and the police had reason to think that I might be involved. And I had lied. Why else should I lie unless I was guilty? From their point of view the conclusion was obvious. And then it occurred to me that they might have even more reason than I knew to find me a prime suspect. Evidence could have been planted to incriminate me. Why not? It would be one way to muffle the listener's ears. Modern forces of justice were quick and unsentimentally ruthless in dealing with a murderer. They had to be in an overcrowded world.
Restraint snapped. I ran into the bedroom and fumbled hastily in the closet for my one small suitcase. Tossing it onto the bed, I began to pull a few clothes out of the closet and the chest. I snatched a razor from the washstand and a windproof jacket from its hook. When I had jammed everything into it and slammed it shut, I stood over the suitcase, panting. It seemed to me that I could smell my own fear, sharp and acrid, soiling the conditioned air. I felt an unexpected revulsion.
I sat on the bed. For a long moment I didn't move. My mind seemed frozen. The trailer was very silent and I listened to my own strained breathing. And at last I held up my fear and examined it, and I knew that I could not run.
I was not guilty. Flight, in any event, would be more incriminating than anything I could possibly do, and if they were really after me I would be picked up within hours.
Besides, I thought without humor, I could always plead insanity.
I had less than an hour to wait. I heard the helicopter whirring overhead and was at the window when it dropped gently onto the landing strip across the street. The two policemen came directly toward my trailer, moving unhurriedly. I recognized the chunky sergeant who had questioned me before. The same lean partner was with him. I opened the door as they reached the steps.
Sgt. Bullock looked up mildly. "Glad we caught you in, Mr. Cameron."
"I heard you were looking for me."
"Yeah, we thought you might be a little worried about the case we talked to you about."
I stared at him, puzzled. His attitude was not that of the aggressive policeman. He seemed almost apologetic.
"We have our job to do, Mr. Cameron, and we have to run down every possibility just as a matter of routine."
"Sure. I understand."
He grinned. The square face which had appeared so mean and hard acquired the pudgy friendliness of a well-fed puppy.
"You have to admit it looked kind of funny, your asking about the girl and her being killed a couple of hours later. It's the kind of thing we can't ignore."
"Yes, of course. Have you—discovered anything new? I mean, do you know who did it?"
"Oh, yeah, we got him. The owner of the restaurant where she worked."
"Harry?"
"That's his name. Seems like he's been crazy about the girl and there's been a little trouble before. She was the friendly type. I guess she's been servicing half the college crowd."
I shook my head. "Harry," I repeated blankly.
"Yeah. Well, he's caused trouble before this when he caught her with some kid. He hangs around her place and he beat her up a couple of times. So it looks like he was jealous and they had a battle and he lost his head." The sergeant shrugged. "Happens every day."
Still stunned, I stared at the two officers. The full implications of what Sgt. Bullock had said were just beginning to penetrate. If Harry was the killer—
"Are you sure?" I asked.
The sergeant appeared surprised. "Oh, he hasn't confessed yet. We picked him up a few hours ago and he wouldn't say anything. Stubborn guy. But we'll have the results of the lie detector and serum tests within a few hours and that'll wrap it up. He did it, all right. He was seen near her place that night, and the neighbors heard them quarreling. We'll be digging up more stuff on him, now that we got it pinned down."
I felt a numbing cold settling at the base of my neck. "Thanks for taking the trouble to tell me this," I said thickly.
"No trouble, Mr. Cameron. This is our patrol area anyway. We're around here pretty regular. Just thought we'd drop by and take a load off your mind."
"Thanks."
The thin, silent partner spoke for the first time. "Never thought you did it anyway," he said laconically.
I tried a smile. My lips felt like stiff rubber. "You had me worried. I'm glad it's all cleared up."
"Yeah," the sergeant said heavily. "So are we."
They turned away. I managed to utter a reply to their casual goodbyes. They crossed the street and climbed into the helicopter. A moment later, it rose slowly into the air. I watched it until it had dwindled out of sight, lost in the afternoon haze.
All over, I thought. The mystery all cleared up. No mystery at all. There never had been one. Lois Worthington's murder had been the one tangible proof I had that the aliens were real and dangerous. But she had been killed by a jealous lover.
There were no more threads to cling to.
I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly. With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman, I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So there were no suspects. Better take another look at the crime, a close look. Question the witnesses, see if their testimony is reliable, make sure it stands up. This time there was only one witness who claimed that a crime had been committed, an attempt at murder. The victim himself, Paul Cameron. Queer duck, a bastard, mother's dead so he lives alone, keeps pretty much to himself, no close friends. Got a vivid imagination. Keeps hearing things. Is he the only witness to the fact that there was a crime? Yes. Well, how do we know he's not lying? How do we know it's not all in his mind?
And that was it. Investigation completed. There was no crime. There were no aliens.
For long, painful, unaccounted minutes I confronted this inevitable conclusion. Then, in one of those odd mental leaps that seem to have no apparent motive, like the sudden sideways jump of a grasshopper, I thought of Swami Fallaninda, the Exalted One. I could hear the vibrant echo of his voice. "Know that when your mind is opened to truth the powers of darkness can hold no influence over you." A wise platitude, I thought. When you examined with the cold objectivity of distance any of the little man's pompous phrases, they resolved themselves into very ordinary statements. His devoted circle of followers thought he was a man apart, a special being in touch with the Cosmic Consciousness, a man one with God. The brief episode with the little mystic had left an unusually deep impression on me—but the message he brought back from his astral plane could not save me.
There was another god left to me, one I had not turned to, the last one who stood between me and the powers of darkness which sought to possess my mind—the man of science.