Murder in the Gunroom, H. Beam Piper [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

great many things to do, and I’m expected for dinner at the Flemings’. I really wish I could, Mrs. Jarrett. Maybe some other time.”

They chatted for a few minutes, then Pierre guided Rand into one of the wings of the house.

“This is my workshop, too,” he said. “Here’s where I do my writing.” He opened a door and showed Rand into a large room.

On one side, the wall was blank; on the other, it was pierced by two small casement windows. The far end was of windows for its entire width, from within three feet of the floor almost to the ceiling. There were bookcases on either long side, and on the rear end, and over them hung Pierre’s weapons. Rand went slowly around the room, taking everything in. Very few of the arms were of issue military type, and most of these showed alterations to suit individual requirements. As Pierre had told him the evening before, the emphasis was upon weapons which illustrated techniques of combat.

At the end of the room, lighted by the wide windows, was a long desk which was really a writer’s assembly line, with typewriter, reference-books, stacks of notes and manuscripts, and a big dictionary on a stand beside a comfortable swivel-chair.

“What are you writing?” Rand asked.

“Science-fiction. I do a lot of stories for the pulps,” Pierre told him. “Space-Trails, and Other Worlds, and Wonder-Stories; mags like that. Most of it’s standardized formula-stuff; what’s known to the trade as space-operas. My best stuff goes to Astonishing. Parenthetically, you mustn’t judge any of these magazines by their names. It seems to be a convention to use hyperbolic names for science-fiction magazines; a heritage from what might be called an earlier and ruder day. What I do for Astonishing is really hard work, and I enjoy it. I’m working now on one for them, based on J. W. Dunne’s time-theories, if you know what they are.”

“I think so,” Rand said. “Polydimensional time, isn’t it? Based on an effect Dunne observed and described⁠—dreams obviously related to some waking event, but preceding rather than following the event to which they are related. I read Dunne’s Science and Psychical Phenomena some years before the war, and once, when I had nothing better to do, I recorded dreams for about a month. I got a few doubtful-to-fair examples, and two unmistakable Dunne-Effect dreams. I never got anything that would help me pick a race-winner or spot a rise in the stock market, though.”

“Well, you know, there’s a case on record of a man who had a dream of hearing a radio narration of the English Derby of 1933, including the announcement that Hyperion had won, which he did,” Pierre said. “The dream was six hours before the race, and tallied very closely with the phraseology used by the radio narrator. Here.” He picked up a copy of Tyrrell’s Science and Psychical Phenomena and leafed through it.

“Did this fellow cash in on it?” Rand asked.

“No. He was a Quaker, and violently opposed to betting. Here.” He handed the book to Rand. “Case Twelve.”

Rand sat down on the edge of the desk, and read the section indicated, about three pages in length.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, as he finished. The idea of anybody passing up a chance like that to enrich himself literally smote him to the vitals. “I see the British Society for Psychical Research checked that case, and got verification from a couple of independent witnesses. If the S.P.R. vouches for a story, it must be the McCoy; they’re the toughest-minded gang of confirmed skeptics anywhere in Christendom. They take an attitude toward evidence that might be advantageously copied by most of the district attorneys I’ve met, the one in this county being no exception.⁠ ⁠… What’s this story you’re working on?”

“Oh, it’s based on Dunne’s precognition theories, plus a few ideas of my own, plus a theory of alternate lines of time-sequence for alternate probabilities,” Pierre said. “See, here’s the situation⁠ ⁠…”

Half an hour later, they were still arguing about a multidimensional universe when Rand remembered Dave Ritter, who should be at the Rosemont Inn by now. He looked at his watch, saw that it was five forty-five, and inquired about a telephone.

“Yes, of course; out here.” Pierre took him back to the parlor, where he dialed the Inn and inquired if a Mr. Ritter, from New Belfast, were registered there yet.

He was. A moment later he was speaking to Ritter.

“Jeff, for Gawdsake, don’t come here,” Ritter advised. “This place is six-deep with reporters; the bar sounds like the second act of The Front Page. Tony Ashe and Steve Drake from the Dispatch and Express; Harry Bentz, from the Mercury; Joe Rawlings, the AP man from Louisburg; Christ only knows who all. This damn thing’s going to turn into another Hall-Mills case! Look, meet me at that beer joint, about two miles on the New Belfast side of Rosemont, on Route 19; the white-with-red-trimmings place with the big Pabst sign out in front. I’ll try to get there without letting a couple of reporters hide in the luggage-trunk.”

“Okay; see you directly.”

Rand hung up, spent the next few minutes breaking away from Pierre and his mother, and went out to his car. Trust Dave Ritter, he thought, to pick some place where malt beverages were sold, for a rendezvous.

Dave’s coupé was parked inconspicuously beside the red-trimmed roadhouse. Opening his glove-box, Rand took out the two percussion revolvers and shoved them under his trench coat, one on either side, pulling up the belt to hold them in place. As he went into the roadhouse, he felt like Damon Runyon’s Twelve-Gun Tweeney. He found Ritter in the last booth, engaged in finishing a bottle of beer. Rand ordered Bourbon and plain water, and Ritter ordered another beer.

“I have the stuff Tip left with Kathie,” Ritter said, taking out a couple of closely typed sheets and handing them across the table. “He said