Futures Past Read online

  He remembered hanging around the bright window of her shop with some of his classmates, all of them flat broke and their pocket money not due for three days. It would have been very easy to create a diversion or for a few of them to keep her talking while the others loaded up with apples or chocolate or her teeth-destroying peppermint rock, but in those days boys did not often think along those lines.

  Instead they had smeared the display window with their dirty faces and even dirtier hands, wearing expressions of distress and projecting hunger for all they were worth. She had been a very soft touch and had nearly always asked them in for a handout, saying that they could pay by doing odd jobs or by tidying up.

  But the shop, the old lady herself, was always clean and tidy so that they were never overworked. She had talked to them about their lessons or the running of the shop or her long-absent husband as if they were members of her non-existent family. When they came away they had laughed and tapped their heads at some of the things she had said, but with less and less frequency. She had be- come a very pleasant and important part of their young lives.

  Michaelson had been much older when he overheard his parents discussing the old lady. His mother had wondered why she had not married after the statutory seven years had passed since her husband's desertion and he could be presumed dead by law—she had been a beautiful girl—and his father had replied that her husband must have been a good con man to make her remain faithful to his memory like that.

  It had been about that time that Michaelson had decided that the old lady was too good and kind and trusting for people to be allowed to take advantage of her. Later he realized that there were a lot of kindly, vulnerable people needing the same kind of protection, but by then he had already decided what he would do with his life.

  She must be nearly ninety, Michaelson thought. When he had visited her three years ago she had looked frighteningly old and shrunken, and he had been kept too busy to visit her since then. She had mistaken him for one of the other boys, but she had called him "son" the way she always had done and had talked about the importance of education if he wanted to get on, the necessity of cleaning his teeth after eating her candy and, inevitably, about her husband.

  Michaelson sighed and checked his headlong gallop down memory lane. He repeated, "Did she come into money?"

  "Sorry, sir," said Greer, "we won't know until we've had time to ask more questions, but she had a big screen color TV delivered three weeks ago her doctor and nurse visit her every day instead of every week or so and she has a cleaning lady coming three days a week. The man downstairs—the one who bought the shop from her —says that she did not tell him anything but that all these things began happening at once."

  "The point is," said Michaelson, "that everyone in the county thinks she has money and some of them may not want her to keep it." He opened the big envelope containing the suspect's personal possessions and tipped them on to his desk.

  There were two soiled handkerchiefs, a bunch of keys and a leather wallet. The usual junk which accumulates in pockets was absent and the wallet was unusually thin. It contained a more than adequate number of banknotes and two small photographs in transparent pockets.

  They were a little more than an inch square—too small for the windows—and showed the suspect and a girl of about the same age. The focus was soft and they had been cropped to show only the features.

  "Girl friend?" Michaelson asked.

  "Wife," said the suspect.

  The girl's face showed character, all of it good, and she was beautiful. He had no doubt about that because she was wearing little if any makeup and her face had a freshly-scrubbed look that was almost nunlike. Perhaps she, too, had strict parents.

  But he was forgetting that the suspect had no parents. He did have a beautiful young wife, though, so why was he playing Peeping Tom with an old lady if he had not intended committing a crime of some kind? And why had he removed all identification from his clothing and wallet? In short, was the suspect sick, or crazy?

  For a few seconds Michaelson tried to think like an expert witness for the defense. It was possible that the loss of this man's parents at an early age had caused serious psychological damage or, despite his prepossessing appearance, outright psychosis. The relatives or friends responsible for bringing him up might have been too strict—his tidy, well-barbered look and conservative dress were symptoms of repression. Perhaps his wife had been chosen by the people who had made him what he now was. Perhaps his condition was aggravated by the fact that his wife was not the angel she appeared to be.

  In his profession Michaelson was continually being reminded that devils were fallen angels and that few of them had had time for plastic surgery on the way down.

  This suspect did not look crazy nor, so far as Michaelson could see, was he sick, either—but he had to be one or the other. The absence of spoken or documentary identification indicated careful pre-planning. Perhaps he considered the reward worth the risk of a period under psychiatric care should he be caught.

  "What," said Michaelson again, "is your name?"

  The suspect shook his head.

  Michaelson said, "You must realize that we will learn your name sooner or later—much sooner than you expect, believe me—and that your behavior increases our suspicions and reduces any chance of sympathetic treatment when we do discover—"

  "I can't tell you anything," the suspect broke in, beginning to sound desperate. "I wasn't going to hurt the old lady. There is no crime that I'm guilty of and so you won't be able to prove that I committed one and eventually, even though I won't give my name, you'll have to let me go."

  Michaelson nodded. A tricky one ...

  He was thinking of old Mrs. Timmins, bedridden, frail and with a bone structure as fragile as a bird's and her only hold on life an innocent obsession with the blackguard who had deserted her. He thought of her being beaten into disclosing the hiding place of her money or being rolled on the floor while the suspect tore the mattress apart. He thought of the livid, permanent bruising and the broken bones too old ever to knit and of the months or years of pain which resulted from a simple robbery with violence when the victim was senile. Michaelson had worked on too many cases just like that.

  "Your property will be returned to you," he said finally, "if I ever let you out."

  While the suspect was being returned to his cell Michaelson prodded the bunch of keys with his forefinger. There were no car keys and the five in the bunch, presumably the door, room and garden shed keys, were old in design indicating a dwelling in the older part of the city and the remaining two, which were duplicates, were new and distinctive with a long serial number etched into them. Greer was practically breathing down his neck as he wrote the number on his pad.

  "I've seen that type of key before, too," said the sergeant. "There are five or six new office buildings using them. We were notified because the locks are supposed to be thief-proof, but obviously the keys aren't. Or do you think they are his own?"

  When Michaelson did not reply he went on, "Those buildings maintain a round-the-clock security guard. I can call them with the serial number right now, and if their key registers are up to date, find out the office and the occupier's name. He may know something about the suspect, and I can call at his office first thing in the morning."

  "I'll call at his office," said Michaelson, "as soon as you come off the phone."

  "Aren't you a bit senior to be personally investigating I a—"

  Michaelson nodded, and said, "This one bothers me." I

  Half an hour later he was reading the tasteful cream lettering on the grained door of office 47 in the Dunbar Building while the patrolman on night duty, an ex-policeman called Nesbitt, stood watchfully behind him. The company occupying the office was SMITH PHILATELIC SUPPLIES and the Smith in question, Michaelson had discovered on the way up, answered fully to the description of the suspect.

  "I intend having a look around," said Michaelson, "and I shall not remove any
of Mr. Smith's property unless a more detailed examination becomes necessary, by which time I shall have a warrant. In the meantime I would appreciate it if you would accompany me while I look around, and, of course, give me as much information as you can about Smith. Last time I saw him he could not even give me his name."

  He was not actually lying to Nesbitt, but he had managed to give the other a very strong reason for believing , that the suspect was an amnesia victim.

  The suspect—Michaelson could not believe that his I name was really Smith—occupied a small suite of offices. The outer office contained two desks, a few chairs I and even fewer filing cabinets. Dominating the inner of- office was a large desk covered by a thick asbestos board ] on which lay an electric toaster, kettle and frying pan. J The desk lamp was angled to point at the head of the 1 camp bed which was neatly made up behind the desk. Most J of the built-in shelving contained nonperishable groceries, 1 also neatly stacked, while a refrigerator in one corner took I care of the perishable kind. The desk's telephone table I had been removed to another corner where it supported a I color TV. A washroom opened off the smaller office where I shirts and socks were dripping dry into a bath.

  "It isn't usual," said Nesbitt in answer to Michael- I son's unspoken question, "but so long as there is no fire 1 hazard, and Smith is very careful that way, there is I nothing in the rules which actually forbids it. Besides, at the prices we charge for these offices we can't afford to be too strict."

  Michaelson nodded and began taking a closer look around. The towels looked new—not brand new, but not very old, either—and the shaver and other bits and pieces had also been bought recently. A closer examination of the inner office showed that the suspect was very clean and tidy in his habits. There were books here and there, not enough to be called a library but they all looked as though they had been read several times—cheap editions or paperbacks on pretty heavy, nonfiction subjects for the most part. The exception was a small pile of science-fiction paperbacks. He noted Asimov's The End of Eternity, Heinlein's Door Into Summer, Shaw's The Two-Timers and Tucker's Year of the Quiet Sun ...

  The suspect's taste in s-f was good if somewhat restricted, Michaelson decided as he returned to the outer office.

  "Has Mr. Smith spoken to you?" Michaelson asked as he lifted the dust cover off what he thought was a typewriter but what turned out to be a small record player.

  "Often," Nesbitt replied, then explained, "he isn't very organized about his paperwork and when I suggested that he get himself a secretary, he asked me what exactly would be involved. I told him about medical and unemployment insurance payments and income tax deductions and so on: he seemed to lose interest."

  There were sheets of printed music and blank manuscript pages scattered over the top of the desk, which apparently had not been disturbed for some time. On the manuscript pages the same few bars of a melody had been written over and over again. The desk drawers were filled with more manuscript blanks and dozens of records which, like the sheet music on top of the desk, were mainly ballads. A few were familiar—pleasant enough tunes, but too derivative for Michaelson to really approve of them. There were no musical instruments in the room.

  The other desk, which seemed to be in current use, was scattered with philatelic magazines and reference books. The drawers contained magnifiers and large sheets of unused stamps in plastic folders with a few singles, also in transparent envelopes, which were even older. Michaelson had never been a stamp collector.

  "Are these valuable?"

  "They aren't rare," replied Nesbitt, in tones that said that he had been a collector and probably still was. "But in quantities like that, in mint condition, they are worth a considerable sum of money. If I'd known about them I would have advised him to keep them in a fire-proof safe."

  "He takes your advice?"

  "He listens to it."

  Michaelson smiled. "How well do you know him?"

  "I call in most nights during my rounds," said Nesbitt. "Being alone he doesn't have to work normal hours, and if he is awake or working late he leaves the door open so I can come in for a cup of coffee, or to watch the wrestling matches if it coincides with my break."

  "So his hobbies are drinking coffee and watching wrestling," said Michaelson dryly.

  "No, sir. He switches channels for me. I usually find him watching current affairs programs. He is a very serious-minded young man."

  "Worried about something, do you think?"

  "He hasn't looked very happy recently, but from what I've heard he doesn't have any financial worries."

  "Any idea where he stayed before coming here?"

  "At a hotel a few blocks away, the Worchester. Some of his mail is still being forwarded from it."

  "Why did he move?"

  "I think it was red tape again," said Nesbitt. "He had been living there for nearly two years—well, not exactly, he used a room to carry on his business and sometimes he lived in it if it was too late to go home in the evening. The hotel did not mind at first—it is a small place with an easy-going manager. But apparently it contravened regulations for a guest to carry on a business on a permanent basis from his room. Rather than try to sort it out he moved here."

  "He confides in you a lot?"

  "Not at first. But one night he came in drank, really sick drunk. I think it must have been the first time he had tried alcohol and he had tried everything in sight. While I was helping him to bed he told me that he had a problem, but not what it was, and that he had to talk to somebody here. After that we talked for a few minutes, sometimes longer, every night—but never about his problem. I got the impression that it was a very personal thing."

  "Yes," said Michaelson. "Did he go out much at night?"

  "Recently, yes," said Nesbitt. "I expect he got himself a girl friend. A good thing, too—he had been very worried about something for the past three weeks. He had told me that his problem was worse than ever and that now there would never be a solution to it. But earlier this week he started going out every night for three or four hours and sometimes staying away all day, so probably there was a solution to it after all."

  "Yes," said Michaelson.

  He was thinking about Mrs. Timmins and the solution that she represented to the suspect's very personal problem and he could not trust himself to say anything else.

  His quick look around was gradually developing into a full-scale search, but so far the night security man had made no objections. He believed that he was helping the suspect and it was obvious that he was so convinced of "Smith's" honesty that the thought that he might be harming the other man had never entered his head. The fact that he was an ex-policeman and Michaelson an inspector would also have something to do with it.

  Michaelson wrestled briefly with his conscience, but the process was little more than a token bout.

  Looking disinterested, he began sliding open the desk drawers one by one. "Apart from his recent absences, did he have any other hobbies or outside interests?"

  "He was keen on local history," said Nesbitt. "He kept a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings, on the shelf behind you."

  Michaelson picked up the scrapbook and went through it quickly but thoroughly. There were a few old street maps, plans of urban road systems and developments long since completed and clippings going back over half a century. He was not surprised to find several mentions of the city's moment of stark drama some sixty years earlier when the physics building at the university had blown up, taking the physics professor—a stuffy but very brilliant old gentleman tipped for a Nobel Prize—and a mercifully small number of post-graduate assistants with it. He read the chancellor's statement that, so far as he knew, no explosives had been kept in the building, descriptions of the peculiarly sharp detonation and the theories, based on evidence of fusing in parts of the debris, which ranged from an old-fashioned thunderbolt from on high to a meteor strike or the premature invention of a nuclear device ...

  "No other hobbies?"

  "Not that
I know of," said Nesbitt, then added, "At one time I thought he might be taking up radio as a hobby —he had read some technical articles and wanted to know if I could tell him anything about a standing wave. He gets suddenly curious about lots of things."

  Michaelson had a vague idea of what a standing wave might be, having listened to the engineers talking shop during a course he had taken on TV traffic monitoring systems, but he did not see how it could help his current investigation. He opened another drawer.

  And hit the jackpot.

  It contained a large desk diary, a day book recording income and expenditure and an address book. As he leafed through them the look of disinterest on his face required an increasingly greater effort to maintain.

  There were appointment notes and memos reminding the suspect that he needed stamps for various retail outlets. There was not, so far as Michael could see, a corresponding supplier for the stamps. Other notes, none of which were recent, comprised current song titles with remarks like, "Piano arrangement not too difficult" or, "Very simple melody" or, "Good, but complicated orchestration needed—I can't memorize it." The final entry, dated three weeks earlier, said, "Found another possibility, will investigate the old lady tomorrow."

  The last entry in the address book, which otherwise contained only business contacts, was that of Mrs. Timmins. It had been written so heavily that her name and address had been embossed on four of the underlying pages.

  An emotional type, thought Michaelson coldly as he began going through the cash book.

  The entries were meticulously neat and, possibly because he had forgotten which book he was using, interspersed with reminders. Like the desk diary it showed ample evidence of income from the sale of stamps, but no indication of where he got them. His expenditure seemed to be confined to rent, food, clothing and sheet music. One of the latter items was for a song with "Memories" in the title and he had added, leaning very heavily on his ballpoint, "Memories don't sell as easily as stamps, but they are all I can take." The last four entries, all dated within the past few weeks, showed the expenditure of considerable sums of money to an undisclosed company or person, with a bracketed notation that said, "In used notes by registered mail." Michaelson noted the amounts.