Fisher waited for Potter to say something. Finally, the parolee turned and answered, almost in a whisper.
“You have things all wrong, Captain.”
“Really?”
“You have it all wrong about me. I know that’s what everybody thinks, but they’re wrong. I took that money because I wanted it, wanted it very much. I’ve always dreamed of traveling round the world, ever since I was a little boy, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to take the money when it was so easily available. But after I took it, I realized that I wasn’t the criminal type — not in the least.”
He came over and sat in the chair opposite.
“I couldn’t bear the idea of being hunted, living in fear all the time. Always jumping at shadows, always looking over my shoulder. Oh, maybe I had some wild idea about serving out my sentence and then running off with the money when I got out. But that would be exactly the same thing — running, afraid to live in the open, unable to enjoy any of the pleasures the money would bring me. I’m just not made that way, Captain.”
Fisher stared at him.
“I thought prison wouldn’t be hard to take, and in some ways it wasn’t. But I had time to think everything out, and now I know what I have to do. So if you want the money, Captain, I’m ready to give it back.”
“You’re what?”
“All I want is to be let alone, Captain. All I want is to live in peace. Don’t you understand?”
“Then where’s the money?”
Potter swallowed.
“Right here — right here in this room.”
He got up, went to the suitcase on the bed, and opened it. It was crammed with money.
The travel agent beamed when the short, owlish man walked into the office and said:
“I’m interested in a round-the-world cruise.”
“Yes, sir!”
“But I want the best, understand? I don’t care about the cost.”
“I understand perfectly,” the travel agent said.
Milt Potter sat down, gratefully. The last three days had been fatiguing. It had been an effort, visiting twenty city banks, signing twenty different names to twenty withdrawal slips. But the task was over, and he had his money. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was more than he could have saved or even earned in the last twelve, tax-free, all expense-paid years. $84,000 interest, compounded over a dozen years on his capital investment.
100
E = Murder
Ellery Queen
The title of Ellery’s lecture being The Misadventures of Ellery Queen, it was inevitable that one of the talks should be crowned by the greatest misadventure of all. It came to pass just after his stint at Bethesda University, in the neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where misadventures of all sorts are commonplace.
Ellery had scribbled the last autograph across the last coed’s Humanities I notebook when the nearly empty auditorium resounded with a shot, almost a scream.
“Mr. Queen, wait! Don’t go yet!”
The chancellors of great universities do not ordinarily charge down center aisles with blooded cheeks, uttering whoops; and Ellery felt the prickle of one of his infamous premonitions.
“Something wrong, Dr. Dunwoody?”
“Yes! I mean probably! I mean I don’t know!” the head of Bethesda U. panted. “The President... Pentagon... General Carter... Dr. Agon doesn’t— Oh, hell, Mr. Queen, come with me!”
Hurrying across the campus in the mild Maryland evening by Dr. Dunwoody’s heaving side, Ellery managed to untangle the chancellorial verbiage. General Amos Carter, an old friend of Ellery’s, had enlisted the services of Dr. Herbert Agon of Bethesda University, one of the world’s leading physicists, in a top-secret experimental project for the Pentagon. The President of the United States himself received nightly reports from Dr. Agon by direct wire between the White House and the physicists’s working quarters at the top of The Tower, Bethesda U.’s science citadel.
Tonight, at the routine hour, Dr. Agon had failed to telephone the President. The President had then called Agon, and Agon’s phone had rung unanswered. A call to the Agon residence had elicited the information from the physicist’s wife that, as far as she knew, her husband was working as usual in his laboratory in The Tower.
“That’s when the President phoned General Carter,” Dr. Dunwoody wailed. “It happens that the General was closeted with me in my office — a, well, a personal matter — and that’s where the President reached him. When General Carter heard that you were on campus, Mr. Queen, he asked me to fetch you. He’s gone ahead to The Tower.”
Ellery accelerated. If Dr. Agon’s experiments involved the President of the United States and General Amos Carter, any threat to the safety of the physicist would, like the shot fired by the rude bridge that arched the flood, echo round the world.
He found the entrance to the ten-story aluminum-and-glass Tower defended by a phalanx of campus police. But the lobby was occupied by three people: General Amos Carter; a harassed-looking stalwart in uniform, the special guard on Tower night duty; and a young woman of exceptional architecture whose pretty face was waxen and lifeless.
“But my husband,” the young woman was saying, like a machine — a machine with a Continental accent. “You have no right, General. I must see my husband.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Agon,” General Carter said. “Oh, Ellery—”
“What’s happened to Dr. Agon, General?”
“I found him dead. Murdered.”
“Murdered?” The crimson in Chancellor Dunwoody’s cheeks turned to ashes. “Pola. Pola, how dreadful.”
General Carter stood like a wall. “It’s dreadful in more ways than one, Doctor. All Agon’s notes on his experiments have been stolen. Ellery, for the next few minutes I can use your advice.”
“Of course, General. First, though, if I may... Mrs. Agon, I understand from Dr. Dunwoody that you’re a scientist in your own right, a laboratory technician in Bethesda’s physics department. Were you assisting your husband in his experiments?”
“I know nothing of them,” Pola Agon’s mechanical voice said. “I was a refugee, and although I am now a naturalized citizen and have security clearance, it is not for such high priority work as Herbert was doing.”
Dr. Dunwoody patted the young widow’s hand and she promptly burst into unscientific tears. The chancellor’s arm sneaked about her. Ellery’s brows went aloft. Then, abruptly, he turned to General Carter and the guard.
The top floor of The Tower, he learned, consisted of two rooms: the laboratory and the private office that housed Dr. Agon’s secret project for the Pentagon. It was accessible by only one route, a self-service, nonstop elevator from the lobby.
“I suppose no one may use this elevator without identification and permission, Guard?”
“That’s right, sir. My orders are to sign all visitors bound for the top floor in and out of this visitors’ book. There’s another book, just like it, in Dr. Agon’s office, as a further check.” The guard’s voice lowered. “There was only one visitor tonight, sir. Take a look.”
Ellery took the ledger. He counted 23 entries for the week. The last name — the only one dated and timed as of that evening — was James G. Dunwoody.
“You saw Dr. Agon tonight, Doctor?”
“Yes, Mr. Queen.” The chancellor was perspiring. “It had nothing to do with his work, I assure you. I was with him only a few minutes. I left him alive—”