Somewhat depressed that the day had, apparently, yielded so little, the quartet returned to the inn an hour before nightfall, piled out of their robot-driven limousine and went inside.
Hogar was waiting for them in the foyer. "Welcome back, honored visitors," he said. "Would you care for any home world salted seeds?" He held out a container full of little brown spheres.
They all declined. In no mood to humor anyone, they pressed past the poisoner toward the elevators. When they were within a few yards of the lifts, the doors on the nearest slid open, and one of the giant maseni gods, fully ten feet tall, staggered out and fell on his face, clutching his stomach and screaming at the top of his voice.
Jessie stepped around the god and punched the service button to call another lift. "Hello, Pearlamon," he said.
The oversized maseni myth figure rolled onto its back and looked up. "You're the detective? Arrest this Tooner Hogar! He has slipped me something in my milk, some dire concoction, some horrendous poison that is burning out my innards."
"You'll feel all right in a few minutes," Jessie said, disinterestedly, smiling fatuously. "You'll be dead."
"Nobody cares anymore!" Pearlamon yelled.
"That's right," Jessie said.
"That ruthless Gonius can do as he pleases, hire the murderous Hogar to poison me, and no one cares!"
Tesserax and the three Earth people crowded into the lift that popped open for them, and they ascended, leaving Pearlamon to his temporary death throes in the hotel lobby.
Two hours later, as they sat at a collapsible dining table in the main room of the suite, eating a dinner which the robot had prepared for them and tested for subtle poisons, Hogar brought a message for Tesserax. He knocked lightly at the door, and when the maseni answered, he handed him an olive-drab envelope. "This came for you by courier," Hogar said. "The courier is downstairs, having a drink on the house, so I thought I'd better bring this around myself."
Tesserax accepted the envelope and said, "Thank you," rather coldly, realizing that the courier would shortly be — if he weren't already — doubled up in the hotel bathroom with nausea or diarrhea.
"And," Hogar said, "in hopes that your important investigation has been proceeding as you would like it to, I have brought you a bottle of wine to celebrate."
Tesserax hesitated.
Hogar showed him the label. "A fine vintage."
Tesserax opted for the easiest course, took the bottle and said, "Thank you, Hogar."
"It's nothing, nothing at all," the poisoner said. "Drink hearty, now!"
Tesserax closed the door, dropped the unopened bottle into the nearest wastecan and returned to the table. He handed Jessie the envelope. "It's the report that you asked for — on the suicides of those two supernaturals."
Jessie put it on the table, beside his plate. "I'll read it later," he said, "after I've stewed over everything else we've got."
Later, after Tesserax had left and they were alone, Jessie reached for the report and held it in both hands, looking at it, not opening it yet, waiting to be sure it was time. He had a certain intuition about how to proceed on a case, when it was right to consider datum, what order one should string the clues together for maximum and swiftest solutions. Right now, he wasn't sure about the wisdom of reading the suicide report. He felt that he had not let other things jell enough, that it would only cloud his theories instead of clear them, at this point. Something else should be done first.
Helena said, "This has been an exciting case."
He looked up, across the table, and saw she'd removed her gown. Her heavy breasts thrust across her dirty plate, the nipples turgid. "It sure has," he agreed.
"Better than divorce jobs," Brutus agreed.
"On the other hand," Helena said, "it's been dull."
"Oh?" Jessie asked. "In what way?"
"If you have to ask, you've proven my point. With all that's been going on, we've not had much time for tumbling in the proverbial hay — or in anything, for that matter."
She stood up and slid one hand along her flat belly, to her tangle of dark pubic curls.
Jessie put the envelope down. He had known there was something else to do, first, before reading that report. He just hadn't been able to think what it was. Now he remembered as, jiggling, Helena walked toward him.
* * *
Everyone was asleep but Jessie. He sat up against the headboard of the huge bed, trying to enjoy the gentle lines of Helena's nude body as she lay outside the covers: slightly sagging breasts, deep insweep of waist, thrust of hip, undulating curves of thighs and calves and ankles…. But he couldn't keep his mind on her; his thoughts kept returning to the suicide report. When he found himself staring at her flat belly but thinking about the olive envelope, he knew it was time to read what Tesserax had given him. He had thought out all the other points.
He got up, slipped into his robe and went into the main drawing room, pulled the bedroom door shut and sat down at the dinner table which the robot had cleared. He tore open the envelope, separated twelve sheets of print and began to read.
When he was half finished with the report, Pearlamon or Gonius or one of the other gods staying on the second floor staggered out of his room, moaning loudly, cursing Hogar. Jessie ignored the hysterical cries for help, and they soon ceased. He kept reading. When he finished and considered what he had read in conjunction with what else he had heard and seen, he knew he had the answer. He knew what and why the murderous beast was….
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brutus returned with Tesserax, who closed the door and joined Jessie, Helena and the service robot at the table in the middle of the room. "Is it true — you know what the beast is?"
"Yes," Jessie said.
"And you know how to destroy it?"
"I believe so," the detective said. "I'll have a chance to prove that tonight. If I'm right, the beast knows we're here and it will be coming after us, before dawn."
Tesserax was unsettled by this revelation. He fluttered tentacles before his own mouth, smoothed his robes, patted the top of his head. "Well! Well, then we best unpack the EmRec." He turned to the service robot and gave that order.
"EmRec?" Jessie asked.
The service robot opened a large trunk which they had brought with them, pulled an airtight plastic seal away and activated the machine that waited inside.
"EmRec means 'Emergency Recording System'," Tesserax explained. "It's a device adapted especially for this case."
A four-foot-high robot, in maseni form, waddled out of the trunk, swiveled its head to look at each of them, and toddled to the only empty chair, dragged itself into the seat and said, "I'm ready."
"You'll notice how compact the EmRec is," Tesserax said. "It has only stumpy legs, stumpy arms, and no differentiating 'neck' between its head and body."
"Yeah," Brutus said. "It looks like a dwarf robot."
"This compact design, in addition to the thick armored plating that covers the EmRec's taping areas, makes it nearly indestructible. It can 'live' through one of the beast's attacks. If the rest of us should perish, it will have a record of our progress to pass on to the next team of investigators, so they need not start from scratch."
Helena said, "But why such an elaborate machine? Would a regular, micro-miniaturized, armored recorder have done as well, one that didn't walk and talk?"
"No," Tesserax said. "The EmRec not only records, but makes comments on the tapes about facial expressions and gestures — comments we won't hear, but which those who later listen to the tape might find valuable." Tesserax sat down and looked away from the EmRec. "Shall we get on with it, then? What is this beast that's killed so wantonly, Mr. Blake?"