“Ninety per cent scientifically correct,” Kennedy explained. “Just imagine that you are outside on a summer night. Providing your eyesight was equal to the task, you would see in the skies almost this exact scene. It required the better part of last winter to complete this much. This winter I’m going to add the ninth planet and try to find a way to cause the rings of Saturn to revolve. They do, you know.”
“They do what?”
“Revolve.”
“Who does?”
“Saturn’s rings.”
“In clockwise,” I inquired gently, “or counter-clockwise motion?”
He didn’t mind. “You’re pulling my leg. Come on in and sit down.”
I did. At least I tried to. I walked across the studio, ducked under the low-hanging moon and pulled up the most comfortable looking chair. Kennedy jumped at me.
“Look out!”
It was my turn to jump. “What’s the matter?”
“You almost sat on my szopelka.” He rescued it from the chair seat. The thing looked like an oboe to me. Kennedy and his studio and his szopelka began to arouse the smallest suspicion in me. Eccentricity has reasonable limits.
I sat down and stared at the opposite wall. There was a funny picture there, staring at me. A colossal hand was holding aloft a frightened, kicking woman. Gross, brutal fingers of gigantic size were wrapped about her slim waist. The tiny woman seemed to be looking into my eyes, pleading for help.
“What is that?”
“An artist’s original. The picture illustrates a story I sold to an adventure magazine. It concerned giants. I knew the artist and he made me a present of it. As well as this one.” He turned to point to a large watercolor hanging on my left.
The watercolor was astounding, Louise. Something vaguely resembling the creatures people are supposed to see when they’ve had too much to drink. And I don’t mean pink elephants.
“Did you write that one, too?”
“Oh, no. I meant that the same artist gave it to me.”
“It must have some explanation behind it!”
“It’s a man from Mars.”
“How do you know?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“How do you know what a man from Mars is like?”
Kennedy pulled up a chair and sat down beside me. “That is a hypothetical man from Mars. It is based on all known scientific facts about the planet. The probable temperature, gravity, age, air and water conditions, flora and fauna, and the like. You undoubtedly know that the FBI men can construct a reasonably accurate facsimile of a criminal when they have nothing more to work on than a footprint, and perhaps the imprint of his teeth in an apple?”
“I heard of them doing it.”
“We don’t have that much, so to speak. All we have is a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the conditions on the surface of the planet. Assuming that life does exist there, in a form similar to man, this is his most probable appearance. The huge chest, the oversize feet and elephantine ears are all necessary to exist on Mars. Every detail of his appearance checks with scientific fact.”
The more I studied the alien gentleman the more it was brought home to me that I was losing time.
“Look, Kennedy, these magazines that Evans published. I want to see them. I want to have a look at that Chinese poem.”
He caught that one quick, “Does that fit into the background you mentioned?”
“I’m beginning to think so. If I can tie a still-missing something else into it.”
He got up and walked over to a high, narrow bookcase lined with four rows of identical black, ring, bookbinders. Each binder had a name inked in white on the spine.
He selected four of the binders and piled them in my lap. I picked up the first one and read the title Le Zombie on the spine.
“That’s my magazine,” Kennedy stated. “These belong to Harry.” He indicated the two binders on the bottom bearing the name Rosebud. “That’s the name of a sled in an Orson Welles picture, you may remember. Harry was struck by it. The term also has a slangy connotation among the membership.”
I didn’t dare ask what the connotation was for fear he would tell me. He possessed a wonderful ability to wander away from the subject I most wanted to discuss.
Flipping open the cover and a buffer sheet, I found a stack of nicely mimeographed magazines punched and fastened to the rings. I also found something looking up at me from the cover of the top magazine.
A copy of the odd symbol I had seen imprinted on Evans’ wallet; the symbol that I knew wasn’t a lodge emblem.
I called Kennedy’s attention to it.
“That was Harry’s trade-mark, you might say. You’ll find it on the cover of every magazine.”
I flipped through them. “But what is it?”
“I believe it’s a Chinese word — at least, I think it’s a word. It means ‘Fidelity and Friendship.’ ”
“Any particular reason why he used it?”
“I believe he once said he greatly admired the mental attitudes of the Chinese. As I understand it, they have a memory comparable to that old saw about the elephant.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Harry said they never forget a friend, never forgive a hurt. If they like you, you’re in solid — if you will pardon the slang. On the other hand...”
“If they don’t like you, stay away from them?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
I ran my eyes down the printed page. A title said: “A Refutation of the Escape-velocity Theory as Applied to Initial Thrust.” It was followed by six or eight pages of practically solid type broken only by some mathematical equations that couldn’t be made on a typewriter. I asked, “What’s this?”
“An essay.”
“No, I mean this escape-velocity. Escape from what?”
“The earth. It concerns a long held theory, now outdated due to war rockets and the discovery of atomic power, that rocket projectiles must start out with a speed of seven miles per second to escape the gravitational pull of the earth. The essay points out that the projectile may begin at a comparably slower speed enroute to interplanetary space.”
“You think rockets can do that?”
“German war rockets have done that. Our own army experiments will prove it within a few years.”
“I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”
He told me about censorship and the wartime “thou shall not” order. I’d heard the rumor before.
All of which was interesting no end to a scientist and a newspaper editor. I was looking for poetry, and said as much. He removed the binders from my lap, leafed through one without success and was perhaps three-quarters through the second one when he found it. He passed the binder to me.
Louise: you probably remember the time you had occasion to state your opinions concerning my taste and judgment of poetry. I’ve grown no better with the years. Unless it’s something simple like “Hiawatha,” it leaves me cold. In spite of my disinterest in the stuff, I found myself liking what I was reading.
Kennedy later told me it was good poetry. I could quite believe him.
Harry Evans had called it: “For Leonore — A China Doll.” It was sentimental, and that’s an understatement.
I turned to Kennedy. “I thought you said Evans had a daughter named Eleanor?”
“I did. I’ve never met her of course, but he spoke of an Eleanor in one or two letters, and I assumed it was his daughter.” He looked over my shoulder. “That is Leonore.”
“Take the e off the end and put it in front, and it’s about the same thing.”
He smiled. “Do all detectives suspect every thing they see?”