No Strings Attached, Lester Del Rey [readict .txt] 📗

ommitting a perfect murder is a simple matter. Drive out some night to a lonely road, find a single person walking along out of sight of anyone else, offer him a ride, knife him, and go home. In such a crime, there's no reason to connect killer and victim—no motive, no clue, no suspect.

To achieve the perfect murder of a man's own wife, however, is a different matter. For obvious reasons, husbands are always high on the suspect list. Who has a better reason for such a crime?

Henry Aimsworth had been pondering the problem with more than academic interest for some time. It wasn't that he hated his wife. He simply couldn't stand the sight or sound of her; even thinking about her made his flesh crawl. If she had been willing to give him a divorce, he'd have been content to wish her all the happiness she was capable of discovering. But Emma, unfortunately, was fond of being his wife; perhaps she was even fond of him. Worse, she was too rigidly bound to trite morality to give him grounds to sue.

There was no hope of her straying. What had been good enough for her mother was good enough for her, and saved all need of thinking; a woman needed a husband, her place was in the home, marriage was forever, and what would the neighbors think? Anyhow, she'd have had difficulty being unfaithful, even if she tried. She'd been gaining some ten pounds every year for the eleven years they had been married, and she'd long since stopped worrying about taking care of her appearance.

He looked up at her now, letting the book drop to his lap. She sat watching the television screen with a vacant look on her face, while some comic went through a tired routine. If she enjoyed it, there was no sign, though she spent half her life in front of the screen. Then the comic went off, and dancers came on. She went back to darning a pair of his socks, as seriously as if she didn't know that he had always refused to wear the lumpy results. Her stockings had runs, and she still wore the faded apron in which she'd cooked supper.

He contrasted her with Shirley unconsciously, and shuddered. In the year since Shirley Bates had come to work in his rare book store, he'd done a lot of such shuddering, and never because of the slim blonde warmth of his assistant. Since that hot day in August when they'd closed the shop early and he'd suggested a ride in the country to cool off, he and Shirley....

He was interrupted in his more pleasant thoughts by the crash of scissors onto the floor, and his eyes focussed on the deepening folds of fat as Emma bent to retrieve them. "Company coming," she said, before he could think of anything to prevent the mistaken cliché. Then she became aware that he was staring at her. "Did you take the garbage out, Henry?"

"Yes, dear," he answered woodenly. Then, because he knew it was coming anyhow, he filled in the inevitable. "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

She nodded solemnly, and began putting aside her darning. "That's finished. Mama always said a stitch in time saves nine. If you'd cut your toenails, Henry...."

He could feel his skin begin to tingle with irritation. But there was no escape. If he went upstairs to his bedroom, she'd be up at once, puttering about. If he went to the basement, she'd find the canned food needed checking. A woman's place was with her husband, as she'd repeatedly told him. Probably she couldn't stand her own company, either.

Then he remembered something he'd stored away. "There's a new picture at the Metro," he said as quietly as he could. "Taylor's starred, I think. I was going to take you, before this extra work came up."

He could see her take the bait and nibble at it. She had some vague crush left for Taylor. She stared at the television set, shifted her bulk, and then shook her head reluctantly. "It'd be nice, Henry. But going at night costs so much, and—well, a penny saved is a penny earned."

"Exactly. That's what I meant to say." He even relaxed enough to overlook the platitude, now that there was some hope. "I saved the price of lunch today. The nut who wanted King in Yellow was so tickled to get the copy finally, he insisted on treating. You can even take a cab home afterwards."

"That's nice. It'll probably rain, the way my bunion's been aching." She considered it a second more, before cutting off the television. He watched as she drew off the apron and went for her coat and hat, making a pretense of dabbing on make-up. She might as well have worn the apron, he decided, as she came over to kiss him a damp good-bye.

e considered calling Shirley, but her mother was visiting her, and the conversation would have to be too guarded at her end. If he could find some way of getting rid of Emma....

It wouldn't even be murder, really. More like destroying a vegetable—certainly no worse than ending the life of a dumb cow to make man's life more worth living. It wasn't as if she had anything to live for or to contribute. It would almost be a kindness, since she lived in a perpetual state of vague discontent and unhappiness, as if somehow aware that she had lost herself. But unfortunately, the law wouldn't look at it in such a light.

He'd only been thinking actively of getting her out of the way since August, however; and somehow, with time, there must be some fool-proof scheme. There was that alcohol-injection system—but it required someone who would drink pretty freely first, and Emma was a teetotaler. Maybe, though, if he could get her to taking some of those tonics for women....

He dropped it for the moment and turned back to the book. It was an odd old volume he'd received with a shipment for appraisal. There was no title or date, but the strange leather binding showed it was old. Apparently it had been hand-set and printed on some tiny press by the writer, whose name was omitted. It seemed to be a mixture of instructions on how to work spells, conjure demons, and practice witchcraft, along with bitter tirades against the group who had driven the writer out and forced him, as he put it, to enter a compact with the devil for to be a wizard, which is like to a male witch. Henry had been reading it idly, slowly deciding the book was authentic enough, however crazy the writer was. The book had no particular value as a collector's item, but he could probably get a fine price from some of the local cultists, particularly since there were constant promises in it that the writer was going to give a surefire, positive and simple recipe for conjuring up a demon without need of virgin blood, graveyard earth or unicorn horn.

He skimmed through it, looking for the formula. It turned up on the fifth page from the end, and was everything the writer had claimed. A five-sided figure drawn on the floor with ordinary candle wax, a pinch of sugar inside, a bit of something bitter outside, two odd but simple finger gestures, and a string of words in bad Latin and worse Greek. There was a warning that it would work without the pentagram, sugar and bitters, but at parlous risk to the conjurer without such protection.

He frowned. Too simple for the cultists, he realized—unless he could somehow persuade them that the trick lay in some exact phrasing or gesturing pattern which took experiment. They liked things made difficult, so they'd have a good alibi for their faith when the tricks failed. If he could show them in advance that it didn't work, but hint that a good occultist might figure out the right rhythm, or whatever....

He read it through again, trying to memorize the whole thing. The gestures were—so—and the words—umm....

There was no flash of fire, no smell of sulphur, and no clap of thunder. There was simply a tall creature with yellowish skin and flashing yellow eyes standing in front of the television set. His head was completely hairless, and he was so tall that he had to duck slightly to keep from crashing into the ceiling. His features were too sharp for any human face. There were no scales, however; his gold cape and black tights were spangled, and he wore green shoes with turned up toes. But generally, he wasn't bad looking.

"Mind if I sit down?" the creature asked. He took Henry's assent for granted and dropped into Emma's chair, folding his cape over one arm and reaching for an apple on the side table. "Glad to see you're not superstitious enough to keep me locked up in one of those damned pentagrams. Drat it, I thought the last copy of that book was burned and I was free. Your signal caught me in the middle of dinner."

enry swallowed thickly, feeling the sweat trickle down his nose. The book had warned against summoning the demon without the protective devices! But the thing seemed peaceful enough for the moment. He cleared his voice. "You mean—you mean magic works?"

"Magic—shmagic!" the creature snorted. He jerked his thumb toward the television. "To old Ephriam—the crackpot who wrote the book before he went completely crazy—that set would have been more magic than I am. I thought this age knew about dimensions, planes of vibrations, and simultaneous universes. You humans always were a backward race, but you seemed to be learning the basic facts. Hell, I suppose that means you'll lay a geas on me, after I was hoping it was just an experimental summons!"

Henry puzzled it over, with some of the fright leaving him. The scientific sounding terms somehow took some of the magic off the appearance of the thing. "You mean those passes and words set up some sort of vibrational pattern...."

The hairless fellow snorted again, and began attacking the grapes. "Bunk, Henry! Oh, my name's Alféar, by the way. I mean I was a fool. I should have gone to my psychiatrist and taken the fifty year course, as he advised. But I thought the books were all burned and nobody knew the summons. So here I am, stuck with the habit. Because that's all it is—a conditioned reflex. Pure compulsory behavior. I'm sensitized to receive the summons, and when it comes, I teleport into your plane just the way you pull your hand off a hot stove. You read the whole book, I suppose? Yeah, just my luck. Then you know I'm stuck with any job you give me—practically your slave. I can't even get back without dismissal or finishing your task! That's what comes of saving money by not going to my psychiatrist."

He muttered unhappily, reaching for more grapes, while Henry began to decide nothing was going to happen to him, at least physically. Souls were things he wasn't quite sure of, but he couldn't see how just talking to Alféar could endanger his.

"Still," the creature said thoughtfully, "it could be worse. No pentagram. I never did get mixed up with some of the foul odors and messes some of my friends had to take. And I've developed quite a taste for sugar; tobacco, too." He reached out and plucked a cigarette out of Henry's pack, then a book of matches. He lighted it, inhaled, and rubbed the flame out on his other palm. "Kind of weak tobacco, but not bad. Any more questions while I smoke this? There's no free oxygen where I come from, so I can't smoke there."

"But if you demons answer such—such summons, why don't people know about it now?" Henry asked. "I'd think more and more people would be going in for this sort of thing. If the wizards were right all along...."

"They weren't, and we're not demons. It didn't get started until your Middle Ages. And if it hadn't been