“That’s a lie. I know she’s in there.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Who are you?”
“None of your business,” boomed the voice. “Go away.”
“Sorry. I’m not going, mister.”
The deep voice took on a rasp of irritation. “Look, I’ve got a gun in my hand. If you don’t get away, I’m going to shoot right through the door.”
Parker pulled me aside and called through the door: “Open up! Police!”
“I don’t care who you say you are,” boomed the voice. “I’m warning you for the last time. Either you people get away or I shoot.”
“And I’m warning you,” called Parker. “Either you open the door or we shoot. I’m going to count to three. Unless you open up, we’re going to shoot our way in. One!”
No answer.
“Two!”
Deep booming derisive laughter.
“Three!”
No sound.
Parker motioned to the policeman carrying the carbine and he ranged up. Parker raised his right hand, index finger pointed upward.
“Open up! Last call!”
No sound.
Parker pointed the finger at the policeman and nodded. A stream of bullets ripped through the door. There was a piercing scream, a thud, and silence. Parker made a sign to two of the detectives, burly men. They knew what to do. They hurled themselves at the door, shoulder to shoulder, in unison, time and again. The door creaked, creaked, gave, and then burst from its fastenings.
Sylvia Troy lay on the floor dead of the bullets from the carbine. There was no one else in the apartment. The door had been locked and bolted. The windows were closed and bolted from the inside. Inspection was quick, expert, and unequivocal, but, aside from the corpse of Sylvia Troy — and now, ourselves — there was no one else in the apartment.
Detective-Lieutenant Louis Parker came to me, his eyes belligerent but bewildered, his face angrily glistening beneath a veil of perspiration. His men, tall, thick-armed, strong-muscled, powerful, gathered like silent children, in a group about him. “What the hell?” said the Detective-Lieutenant, the words issuing in a curious hoarse whisper. “What do you think, Pete?”
I had to swallow before I could speak, but I clung to my premise. “I do not believe in ghosts,” I said.
Perhaps I do not believe in ghosts because I refuse to believe in ghosts and my mind rejects the possibility and seeks other explanation. In the Troy affair such explanation, for me, involved death-wish, hallucination, guilt complex, retribution, self-punishment, and dual personality.
There are those who disagree with my conclusions.
You may be one of them.
Murder, 1990
by C. B. Gilford
Would you like a glimpse into the future? Simply obtain an old-fashioned spy glass — available at all the better pawnshops — and gaze longingly through it towards the horizon. Should you see an indescribably beautiful scene, your lens may require wiping.
The case of Paul 2473 really began when he discovered the old book. He recognized it instantly for what it was, because he had once been through the Micro-filming Section where they were recording some old-fashioned but worthy volumes on genetics before destroying them. But the sight of this book, obviously an uninspected relic of the dim past, provoked a simultaneous curiosity and dread in him.
He’d been marching with the Thursday Exercise Platoon over a country back road, and now they were enjoying their ten-minute rest period, lying by the roadside among the grass-strewn brick ruins of some ancient building. Paul was bored — Thursdays always bored him intensely — and both his mind and eye were casting about for something of interest to focus upon.
Which was why his gaze had roamed over the crumbling, disintegrating wall beside him. He saw the aperture almost immediately. At this particular spot, the bricks seemed to have fallen down against a still standing portion of the wall so as to make a small igloo or cave. A tiny, cozy, rain proof den, he thought, for some small wild thing. A few of the little beasts always seemed to survive the best efforts of the decontamination squads which constantly scoured vacant areas.
Paul turned over and lay on his stomach so that he could peer into the dark hole, and saw the book. He knew instantly, of course, what the proper procedure was. He should take the thing, not open it, but hand it over instead to the Platoon Leader. He’d been taught that all such objects pertaining to the former civilization could be either valuable or dangerous. He had no more right to destroy the book than he had to look at it.
Half-intending deceit but not fully decided, he checked first to see if he were being observed. The Leader was nowhere in sight. The members of the Platoon were all prone, none of them close to Paul, and none of them paying the least attention to him. Tentatively, still not committed to disobedience, Paul reached into the hole, grasped the book and drew it out.
It was small, light, and seemed ready to fall apart at his touch. Trembling, but overwhelmed by curiosity, he lifted the cover and glanced at the fly leaf. The Logic of Murder, he read.
For a moment he experienced a dismal disappointment. The word “logic” had some meaning for him, though vague. The last word, “murder,” was completely and totally mysterious. The book was useless if he knew absolutely nothing of its subject matter. But as he pondered it, he was not so sure. The book might teach him what “murder” was. And “murder” might be something vastly entertaining.
“Everybody up!” The Platoon Leader’s shrill bark of command came from far away through the trees.
In the instant before the somnolent members of the Platoon could rouse themselves and stir from the matted grass, Paul 2473 came to a momentous decision. He thrust the little book inside his shirt. Then he got up, stretched, and walked back to the road where the files were forming.
In his cubicle, Paul 2473 re-invented the ancient stratagem of schoolboys. Every evening during the few minutes he had to himself, he held the little book behind the afternoon edition of The News of Progress, and thus, while seeming to be immersed in the sort of reading that was his duty, he was actually engaged in a forbidden pastime. He practiced this little deception in case the wall television screen chose at any time to look in on him.
As he read, though more and more conscious of the dangers involved, he grew more and more fascinated by what he found in the little book. Gradually, by piecing together scattered references, he began to arrive at some conclusions.
Murder, he discovered with something of a shock, was the taking of a human life. It was a completely new and hitherto undreamed of idea to him. He knew that life did not go on forever. He knew that elderly people sometimes got sick, were carted off to some medical building or physiology laboratory or clinic, and then were never seen again. Death, he also knew, was usually painless — unless there were a specific, scientific reason for the authorities to decree it should not be — and so he had neither considered death much nor feared it.
But murder had apparently been a phenomenon of the previous civilization in which the authorities not only did not arrange human death, but were actually opposed to individuals who took such matters into their own hands. Yet the practice, though accompanied by danger, seemed to have been amazingly popular. Paul 2473 shuddered at the barbarism of it, but could not stop reading.
But as he came to understand the title of the book, he discovered that although murder was hideous, it had been in its own past environment rather understandable. In a society where people had chosen their own mates at random, murders had been committed out of sexual jealousy or revenge. In a society where the authorities had not provided sustenance for the population, murders had been committed to acquire wealth.