Murder in Black Letter, Poul William Anderson [best ebook reader ubuntu TXT] 📗

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · CHICAGO
DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
LONDON · MANILA

IN CANADA
BRETT-MACMILLAN LTD.
GALT, ONTARIO

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1960

POUL ANDERSON 1960

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

All rights reserved—no part of this book may be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a
review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

First Printing

Library of Congress catalog card number: 59-5690

The Macmillan Company, New York
Brett-Macmillan Ltd., Galt, Ontario

Printed in the United States of America

To him whom I shall ever regard
as the best and wisest man whom
I have ever known

Except, of course, for Taffimai Metallumai, all characters in this book are fictitious, without intentional resemblance to any actual person, living or dead. The events described are made up out of whole cloth. The hotels, restaurants, companies, and other business enterprises herein mentioned are equally nonexistent. Two real institutions occur: the University of California and the Berkeley Police Department. There is no implication intended that either of these would condone all the actions and opinions of the imaginary people I have wished onto their payrolls.

Steel talked between roses. Kintyre parried Yamamura's slash; his riposte thumped on the other man's arm.

"Touché!" exclaimed the detective. He took off his mask and wiped sweat from a long, high-cheeked face. "Or is it you who's supposed to say that? Anyhow, enough for today."

"You're not doing so badly, Trig," Kintyre told him. "And I have some revenge due for all those times you've had me cartwheeling through the air, down at the dojo."

Trygve Yamamura clicked his tongue. He stood over six feet tall, lanky, the Oriental half of him showing mostly in narrow black eyes and smoked-amber skin. "You would use sabers, wouldn't you?" he said.

Robert Kintyre shrugged. "A foil is for women and I'm not fast enough for an épée. Also, there's professional interest. A saber is a wee bit closer to the Renaissance weapon."

"I think I'll stick to Japanese swords."

Kintyre nodded. He was a stocky man of medium height, with straight dark hair above a square, snub-nosed, sallow-complexioned face. His eyes were gray under level brows, and set unusually far apart; there was little else to mark him out physically, until you noticed his gait. To an only slightly lesser degree than Yamamura's, it had the indefinable compactness of a judo man.

They stood in a garden in Berkeley. Walls enclosed them: the main house, now vacant while its owner and family were on vacation; the three-room cottage to the rear which Kintyre rented; a board fence strewn with climbing blossoms on either side. Overhead lay a tall sky where the afternoon sun picked out the vapor trail of a jet sliding above San Francisco Bay.

"I agree, Samurai swords make these look like pitchforks," said Kintyre. "But you can't do much with them except collect them. Too damned effective!"

Yamamura removed his padded coat and fished for his pipe. "You off work now?" he asked.

"Yep. Last bloody paper corrected, last report in, term's over, and I'm not teaching again till fall. It's great, though impoverished, to be free."

"You're making a pack trip into Kings Canyon, aren't you?"

"Uh-huh. Bruce Lombardi and I were supposed to leave tomorrow. Only what the devil has become of Bruce?" Kintyre scowled. "His girl called me last night, said he'd left the day before—Saturday—and hadn't come back yet. She was worried. I'm beginning to be."

"Hm." Attentiveness flickered up in Yamamura. His agency, small and new, had no engagements at the moment. However, he spoke with no more than friendly concern. "Is it like the kid to go tearing off that way? I don't know him especially well, he's just somebody I meet now and then at your place."

"That's the point," said Kintyre. "It is not like him. The department head inquired about it this morning. Bruce hasn't turned in the grades for two of his classes; and he's disgustingly reliable, normally." He paused. "On the other hand, he's having his troubles these days and—anyhow, I hesitate to—"

Footsteps sounded in the driveway. A trim quasi-military shape came around the house.

"Officer Moffat," said Yamamura. He had belonged to the Berkeley force until he set up for himself. "What's happened?"

"Hello, Trig," said the policeman. He turned to the other. "Are you Professor Robert Kintyre?"

"Assistant professor only, no cobwebs yet." Why did he answer with a bad joke, he wondered—postponing something?

"How do you do. I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but we're trying to identify a young man who was found dead this morning. I was told that someone of his description was a teaching assistant in the history department, and that you knew him best."

The voice was sympathetic, but Kintyre stood very quietly for a moment. Then: "I know a lot of young men, but perhaps—Bruce Lombardi?"

"That's the name I was given," said Moffat. "I'm told you were his faculty adviser."

"Yes." Kintyre pawed blindly after a cigarette, meeting only his jacket. "How did he come to die?"

"If it is him. Do you think you could identify him for us? I warn you, it isn't pretty."

"I've seen dead men before," said Kintyre. "Come on." He started toward the street.

"Your clothes," said Moffat gently.

"Oh, yes. Yes. Thanks." Kintyre fumbled at his equipment. He threw it on the grass. "Put this junk away for me, will you, Trig?" His voice was uncertain. "I'll call you later."

"Sure," said Yamamura in a low tone. "Call me anytime."

Kintyre followed Moffat to the police car. It nosed off the shabby-genteel residential street and into southbound traffic. Moffat, at the wheel, pointed to the cigarette lighter.

Kintyre put tobacco smoke into his lungs and insisted: "What happened?"

"He seems to have been murdered." Moffat's eyes flickered sideways along his passenger's wide shoulders, down to the thick wrists and hands. "We'll go to headquarters first, if you don't mind, and you can talk to Inspector Harries."

In the following time, at the office, Kintyre answered many questions. Inspector Harries seemed to have little doubt who his corpse was, but much uncertainty about everything else.

"Bruce Lombardi. Age twenty-four, did you say? Five feet nine, slender build, brown eyes, curly brown hair—m-hm. Did he wear glasses?"

"Yes. He was nearsighted. Horn rims."

"What kind of clothes did he ordinarily pick?"

"Anything he got his hands on. He was a sloppy dresser. I remember—no, never mind."

"Please tell me, Dr. Kintyre. It may have some bearing."

"Hardly. This was about five years ago. I was an assistant bucking for an instructorship, he was a freshman with a major in my department—history, did I tell you? There was some kind of scholastic tea or something—semiformal—you know. He showed up in a secondhand tweed jacket and an old pair of khaki wash pants. He honestly thought they were suitable for—Never mind. It seemed funny at the time."

Kintyre stubbed out his cigarette (the fifth, sixth, twentieth?) and took a deep breath. He was letting this run away with him, he thought. He was yattering like an old woman, shaken into brainlessness. It was not as if he had never encountered death before.

He groped toward the teaching of the dojo, the judo school. Judo is only in part a sport; it is also a philosophy, the Gentle Way, with many aspects, and the first thing to learn is to relax utterly. The passive man is prepared for anything, for he can himself become anything.

But it was an unreal attempt. Kintyre's interest in judo was a superficial growth of a few years; his roots lay in the West. He understood with sudden bleakness why Bruce's death had so clamped on him: once again someone he cared for was gone, and the horror he had borne for two decades stirred toward awakening.

"Don't you feel well, Dr. Kintyre?"

Harries leaned over the desk, politely concerned. "I'm sorry to put you to a strain like this. If you want to rest a while—"

"No." Kintyre mustered a degree of steadiness. "I was a bit shaken, but—Go ahead. If Bruce really was murdered, I certainly want to give you any help I can finding who did it."

The inspector regarded him thoughtfully. "You and he were pretty close, weren't you?"

"In a way. He was almost eleven years younger than I, and had lived a—limited life. Not sheltered in the usual sense, his family being poor, but limited. And he was such a peaceful fellow, and his life since entering college had been mostly books. It made him seem even younger."

Kintyre sighed. "We got to be about as friendly as one can get under such circumstances," he finished. "Maybe I looked on him as a son. Not being married, I can't be sure of that."

"Did he ever say anything which led you to believe that he might be in serious trouble?"

"No. Absolutely not. That is, I knew his older brother hung—hangs around with a dubious crowd over in San Francisco, and it distressed him, but he never implied anything really bad was involved."

"Let's see." Harries looked at some notes. "I gather he left his, uh, girl friend's place about six P.M. Saturday, telling her he had business over in the City and she shouldn't wait up. She got worried and checked with you Sunday evening. And he was found by a patrol car this morning, at daybreak, on the bank of the old frontage road, near the Ashby Avenue turnoff."

"You've worked fast," said Kintyre. Or did I tell you all this? he wondered. There are a few minutes which I remember only hazily. I was so busy fighting myself.

"What did you do over the weekend?" asked Harries in a casual tone.

"Oh, let's see—Saturday morning I puttered around down at the yacht harbor, doing some work on my boat. I went home in the afternoon, graded papers and so on, went out at night and had a few beers with a friend—Dr. Levinson of the physiology department. Sunday morning I took a sail on the Bay, and later finished my paperwork. Shortly after Miss Towne had called me, I was invited over to Gerald Clayton's suite at the Fairhill. We had some drinks and talked till quite late. This morning I turned in my last reports to the University, came home, and was horsing around with Trig Yamamura when your man arrived."

"You seem pretty well alibied," smiled Harries. "Not that we suspect anyone on this side of the Bay."

"Why not?"

Harries' mouth tightened. "Dr. Kintyre, you'll undoubtedly be asked a great many more questions in the next several days. Get the worst over with now. Then go out with some friends and have a lot more drinks. That's my advice."

They shook hands, feeling it was a somehow theatrical gesture, and thus being embarrassed without knowing how to avoid