«So when you put them under the detector and ask them if they’ve done this or that, they say they haven’t and they believe it. That’s why your detector gauges don’t register. That’s why Joe Zatelli didn’t jump when he saw Martin Blue walk in. He didn’t know Blue was dead — except that he’d read it in the papers.»
Rand leaned forward. «Where is Ernst Chappel?»
«You don’t want him, Dyer.»
«Don’t want him? He’s the most dangerous man alive today!»
«To whom?»
«To whom? Are you crazy?»
«I’m not crazy. He’s the most dangerous man alive today — to the underworld. Look, Dyer, any time a criminal gets jittery about a possible pinch, he sends for Ernie or goes to Ernie. And Ernie washes him whiter than snow and in the process tells him he’s not a criminal.
«And so, at least nine times out of ten, he quits being a criminal. Within ten or twenty years Chicago isn’t going to have an underworld. There won’t be any organized crimes by professional criminals. You’ll always have the amateur with you, but he’s a comparatively minor detail. How about some more café royale?»
Dyer Rand walked to the kitchenette and got it. He was wide awake by now, but he walked like a man in a dream.
When he came back, Joad said, «And now that I’m in with Ernie on it, Dyer, we’ll stretch it to every city in the world big enough to have an underworld worth mentioning. We can train picked recruits; I’ve got my eye on two of your men and may take them away from you soon. But I’ll have to check them first. We’re going to pick our apostles — about a dozen of them — very carefully. They’ll be the right men for the job.»
«But, Joad, look at all the crimes that are going to go unpunished!» Rand protested.
Bela Joad drank the rest of his coffee and stood up. He said, «And which is more important — to punish criminals or to end crime? And, if you want to look at it moralistically, should a man be punished for a crime when he doesn’t even remember committing it, when he is no longer a criminal?»
Dyer Rand sighed. «You win, I guess. I’ll keep my promise. I suppose — I’ll never see you again?»
«Probably not, Dyer. And I’ll anticipate what you’re going to say next. Yes, I’ll have a farewell drink with you. A straight one, without the coffee.»
Dyer Rand brought the glasses. He said, «Shall we drink to Ernie Chappel?»
Bela Joad smiled. He said, «Let’s include him in the toast, Dyer. But let’s drink to all men who work to put themselves out of work. Doctors work toward the day when the race will be so healthy it won’t need doctors; lawyers work toward the day when litigation will no longer be necessary. And policemen, detectives, and criminologists work toward the day when they will no longer be needed because there will be no more crime.»
Dyer Rand nodded very soberly and lifted his glass. They drank.
PI IN THE SKY
ROGER JEROME PHLUTTER, for whose absurd name I offer no defense other than that it is genuine, was, at the time of the events of this story, a hardworking clerk in the office of the Cole Observatory.
He was a young man of no particular brilliance, although he performed his daily tasks assiduously and efficiently, studied the calculus at home for one hour every evening, and hoped some day to become a chief astronomer of some important observatory.
Nevertheless, our narration of the events of late March in the year 1987 must begin with Roger Phlutter for the good and sufficient reason that he, of all men on earth, was the first observer of the stellar aberration.
Meet Roger Phlutter.
Tall, rather pale from spending too much time indoors, thickish shell-rimmed glasses, dark hair close-cropped in the style of the nineteen eighties, dressed neither particularly well nor badly, smokes cigarettes rather excessively …
At a quarter to five that afternoon, Roger was engaged in two simultaneous operations. One was examining, in a blink-microscope, a photographic plate taken late the previous night of a section in Gemini. The other was considering whether or not, on the three dollars remaining of his pay from last week, he dared phone Elsie and ask her to go somewhere with him.
Every normal young man has undoubtedly, at some time or other, shared with Roger Phlutter his second occupation, but not everyone has operated or understands the operation of a blink-microscope. So let us raise our eyes from Elsie to Gemini.
A blink-mike provides accommodation for two photographic plates taken of the same section of sky, but at different times. These plates are carefully juxtaposed and the operator may alternately focus his vision, through the eyepiece, first upon one and then upon the other, by means of a shutter. If the plates are identical, the operation of the shutter reveals nothing, but if one of the dots on the second plate differs from the position it occupied on the first, it will call attention to itself by seeming to jump back and forth as the shutter is manipulated.
Roger manipulated the shutter, and one of the dots jumped. So did Roger. He tried it again, forgetting — as we have — all about Elsie for the moment, and the dot jumped again. It jumped almost a tenth of a second.
Roger straightened up and scratched his head. He lighted a cigarette, put it down on the ash tray, and looked into the blink-mike again. The dot jumped again, when he used the shutter.
Harry Wesson, who worked the evening shift, had just come into the office and was hanging up his topcoat.
«Hey, Harry!» Roger said. «There’s something wrong with this blinking blinker.»
«Yeah?» said Harry.
«Yeah. Pollux moved a tenth of a second.»
«Yeah?» said Harry. «Well, that’s about right for parallax. Thirty-two light years — parallax of Pollux is point one oh one. Little over a tenth of a second, so if your comparison plate was taken about six months ago when the earth was on the other side of her orbit, that’s about right.»
«But Harry, the comparison plate was taken night before last. They’re twenty-four hours apart.»
«You’re crazy.»
«Look for yourself.»
It wasn’t quite five o’clock yet, but Harry Wesson magnanimously overlooked that, and sat down in front of the blink-mike. He manipulated the shutter, and Pollux obligingly jumped.
There wasn’t any doubt about it being Pollux, for it was far and away the brightest dot on the plate. Pollux is a star of 1.2 magnitude, one of the twenty brightest in the sky and by far the brightest in Gemini. And none of the faint stars around it had moved at all.
«Um,» said Harry Wesson. He frowned and looked again. «One of those plates is misdated, that’s all. I’ll check into it first thing.»
«Those plates aren’t misdated,» Roger said doggedly. «I dated them myself.»
«That proves it,» Harry told him. «Go on home. It’s five o’clock. If Pollux moved a tenth of a second last night, I’ll move it back for you.»
So Roger left.
He felt uneasy somehow, as though he shouldn’t have. He couldn’t put his finger on just what worried him, but something did. He decided to walk home instead of taking the bus.
Pollux was a fixed star. It couldn’t have moved a tenth of a second in twenty-four hours.
«Let’s see — thirty-two light years,» Roger said to himself. «Tenth of a second. Why, that would be movement several times faster than the speed of light. Which is positively silly!»
Wasn’t it?
He didn’t feel much like studying or reading tonight. Was three dollars enough to take Elsie out?
The three balls of a pawn-shop loomed ahead, and Roger succumbed to temptation. He pawned his watch, and then phoned Elsie. Dinner and a show?
«Why certainly, Roger.»
So, until he took her home at one-thirty, he managed to forget astronomy. Nothing odd about that. It would have been strange if he had managed to remember it.