City of Brass Read online

  “Sorry,” I repeated, and I really was. But what could I do? There were times when you had to say no.

  “Thanks for the coffee, anyway,” she said, and was gone—out into the evening crowds headed this way and that in the eternal maze of Grand Central.

  I watched her receding rear for a moment before it was swallowed up, then turned back to the dregs of a good cup of coffee. As I finished it and started to rise I found myself suddenly looking once more into the deep bright eyes of Simon Ark.

  “Simon! What in the heck are you doing here?”

  “Who was the girl?” he asked me with just a hint of a smile.

  “You saw her?”

  “She was following us all evening. I wondered why.”

  “You mean you saw her and didn’t tell me?”

  The smile broadened a bit. “She may have been a discarded love, or a current one.”

  “You decided she wasn’t?”

  He nodded. “But why was she following you?”

  “Believe it or not, she wanted to see you—only she didn’t know it at the time. She’s Henry Mahon’s sister-in-law. That’s the fellow up in Baine City that I mentioned once or twice. Both of them have got some crazy idea that something pretty horrible’s happening up at Baine U. It turns out Hank is running a fund raising drive for the University in a couple of weeks, and I guess he’s worried about the bad publicity.”

  “What kind of a thing?”

  “Huh? I don’t know. Some guy named Professor Wilber is experimenting—probably got a drug to pep up the football team or something crazy like that.”

  “Do you think I should look into it?”

  “What could it be to interest you, Simon? It’s research being carried out on a grant from Baine Brass. They’re surely not making hidden atomic bombs or anything like that.”

  “But if he’s a friend of yours …”

  “Well, I’ll tell you—maybe next week we can run up there. I may have to go to Buffalo again, and we can drive up.”

  Simon Ark frowned. “Evil often does not choose to wait, but perhaps as you say there is nothing in this but the overworked imaginations of a few people.”

  “I’m afraid Henry Mahon is not the most realistic person in the world,” I said. “Let’s wait and see what develops …”

  So we didn’t make the trip to Baine City the following week. Summer was upon us suddenly, and the New York heat made the beaches of Long Island the only fit goals for a drive. Simon drifted away without my even being conscious of his going, off to some other city or some other country half a world away. The days lengthened out into the glorious warmth of life that seemed suddenly so important to a man of forty, and I had the happy feeling that life was far from being over for men. There was Shelly, seemingly as young and lovely as when I’d first married her, and there was my job—more challenging but more rewarding with each passing year.

  And so Henry Mahon and his wife and Cathy Clark were forgotten. They were people of a borderland at best, people who helped fill up your life without ever really being a part of it. And summer—a fortieth summer—was especially a time for being oneself. Shelly and I discovered the secluded little beaches that dotted Long Island’s north shore, and there was only the sun to see us and approve as we basked in its warmth.

  There was always the radio, filling the sand and the air with gentle music for a quiet mood, with occasional well-timed interruptions for the news of the world—just to remind one that men still plotted and schemed and lived and died, even on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

  This day, the Saturday that marked the beginning of a long July Fourth weekend, we were alone together on a little strip of sand not far from the Eaton’s Neck lighthouse. Shelly was reading a recent novel by Graham Greene and I was puttering around with the charcoal grill, trying to get a fire going for supper.

  “Germany, China, Egypt.” Shelly moaned. “We might as well be fighting a war already the way those newscasters talk.” And then she fell silent as the droning voice of the announcer shifted to local matters.

  “The upstate New York community of Baine City has a real murder mystery on its hands today with the discovery of the bullet-riddled body of a young girl.” I sat up at the name of Baine City and dropped what I was doing. “The girl, twenty-two-year-old Cathy Clark, had graduated only last month from Baine University. Her body was found some miles out of the city on a side road where she apparently was shot to death while seated in her car.”

  That was all. Then he was off again to an oil explosion in Texas. “Baine City,” Shelly said. “Isn’t that the place …”

  “That’s the place. And that’s the girl who followed me the night I was late getting home. God, what could have happened?”

  “She was the one who wanted Simon to help her?”

  I nodded, running sand nervously through my fingers. “And I didn’t listen to her.”

  “But what could you have done?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Apparently anything would have been better than nothing. Come on, let’s pack up and get back to town. I want to get the details of this.”

  It took us the better part of two hours to reach the Triborough Bridge, battling the traffic of a hot holiday weekend every mile of the way. I bought all three Saturday afternoon papers on the way, but only one had the story. That was enough.

  It was on page three, under a flash photograph showing a late model sports car with its door open on the driver’s side. She was hanging there, half in and half out of the car, with her long blonde hair reaching down to the pavement. There was a stain below her head which might have been blood or perhaps only a random oil stain. The printed account carried little I hadn’t already heard on the radio. A highway repair crew had found her in the early hours of Saturday morning while answering an emergency call. She’d apparently been seated in the front seat when someone had fired six pistol shots through the windshield and side window. There were no signs that she’d been attacked, the report concluded, meaning she hadn’t been raped. I was mildly surprised to see no mention of her parents. Only Jean Mahon was mentioned as a survivor.

  “I’d better try to locate Simon,” I said when we reached home. “He’ll want to know about this.”

  “I thought he was out of town.”

  “Maybe he’s back for the weekend. There’s always a chance.”

  I had a long list of telephone numbers Simon Ark had given me once, and I started through them. The Institute for Egyptian Studies was closed for the weekend and there was no one but the janitor to answer the phone. The little hotel on 84th Street hadn’t seen him in weeks, and Father Toole at Fordham thought he was out of town. I tried a Long Island number and one in Jersey, but the answer was the same.

  “Well, I’d better fly up to Baine City tonight,” I told Shelly.

  “Alone? Why in heaven’s name? Why go up there? You hardly knew the girl.”

  “Well, for one thing, Hank Mahon might be in trouble too. If she was killed because of this Professor Wilber’s experiments, maybe Mahon is next. They asked me to help—to have Simon Ark help—and now I’ve got to do something.”

  She didn’t like it, I know, but I had to go. I caught an evening plane and was checking into the Baine City Hotel at midnight …

  Sunday morning in a city, any city, is a day set apart. It is a day of rest, and for those few who have to work it is a day tilled with quiet activity. It is not a day for judging a city, because all cities have a certain charm in the peaceful quiet of a Sunday morning.

  Baine City, on the third of July, was a city deserted by many of its residents. The three-day weekend had lured them away, to the nearby beach where many had cottages, or further a bit, to the mountains that could just be seen on a clear day from the tops of the taller buildings. The city could have been mine that morning as I stood at my hotel window seeing the sweep and flow of it. The streets shot out like empty arrows before me, and I realized after a time that the hotel was located at the point of a wide
V. Far at the end of one set of streets was a great factory that I took to be Baine Brass. In the other direction, down the left arm of the V, I could see a typical college bell tower rising behind the buildings.

  Baine Brass and Baine University, linked together by the network of streets that was Baine City. I wondered about this man whose name they bore, this man Baine who had carved his city in the heart of New York State and put his stamp on everything in it.

  I called Mahon from the hotel. “I was sorry to hear about Cathy,” I told him. “It was a shock.”

  “Believe me, it was a shock for us too. Jean is in bad shape.”

  “Can I come out?”

  He hesitated a bit. “What for?”

  “Well, you asked for help once. About Professor Wilber, out at the University.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t think you could do anything now. That’s all blown over.”

  “But Cathy is dead,” I insisted.

  “I know, but that had nothing to do with Wilber. It—it was a wild crowd she was running around with.”

  “Mighty wild, to pump six bullets into her.”

  He sounded somehow different to me, troubled, unsure of himself. He cleared his throat and went on. “Well, there’s nothing that can be done about it now. I appreciate your calling.”

  “Look, Hank, I flew up here last night just to see you. I’m trying to locate Simon Ark and get him up here too. If you don’t want any help, just say so.”

  “I thought I’d said it, fella. The police will catch Cathy’s killer. There’s nothing for us to do.”

  “What about Professor Wilber’s experiments?”

  “I told you—there’s nothing to it. My imagination got the better of me.”

  “Cathy saw me in New York. She was upset about Wilber too.”

  “Oh for God’s sake! There’s nothing to it, forget it, can’t you?”

  Another thought struck me. “Your fund raising drive—is it on now?”

  “Yeah, all this month. And I don’t want you and Ark stirring up a storm. Not this month. I’m getting one percent of everything I bring in, and it’s tough enough as it is. You wouldn’t believe there could be so much resentment against old Baine in this city.”

  “So the fund raising goes on, and Cathy Clark goes unmourned.”

  “What can I do? What can you do?”

  “Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “I’ll be seeing you, Hank.”

  And I hung up.

  Henry Mahon was a damned spoiled fool who loved nobody but himself and never had. This much I knew, but of course I’d known it for a long time really. The only problem now was my own course of action. I could catch the next plane back to New York and forget all about Mahon and Jean and Cathy and the mysterious professor, or I could stay and putter around on my own.

  On my own, there was no real choice. I reached for the phone to call the airport, but it jumped into life as my hand touched it. “Hello?” I questioned softly, half expecting it to be Mahon calling back to say he was sorry.

  “This is Simon,” the familiar voice answered. “I’m downstairs. Shelly told me about the trouble …”

  We ate breakfast downstairs, and over coffee I told him about my phone conversation with Henry Mahon. He settled back in the chair to think about it for a moment.

  “What do you say? Should we retreat under fire, or should we look into the doings at Baine University?”

  “Do you think we’d really find something, Simon? Do you think we’ll find Professor Wilber crouched over a rack of bubbling test tubes, changing himself into a Mr. Hyde?”

  Simon Ark smiled. “I hardly think a true mad scientist would find it necessary to resort to bullets for his murders. Perhaps Mahon was correct about this wild crowd.”

  “Well, let’s take a run out there anyway,” I suggested. “Out to the University. We can at least look around.”

  Simon shrugged in agreement and we finished our coffee. Outside the hotel we found a single taxi with a sleepy driver who was happy to find a fare on a Sunday morning. “Nobody at the University, you know,” he volunteered. “Summer courses don’t start till the fifth. That’s Tuesday.”

  “We know.”

  “Just don’t want to steal your money. Here we are. Want me to wait?”

  It was only a half-mile walk back to the hotel, so I paid him and sent him on his way. Then Simon and I set off on foot across the rolling green of the campus, toward the distant stone buildings where familiar ivy was beginning to creep up the walls.

  “What do you think of it, Simon?”

  “They are all alike, your American colleges. Space and air and the feeling of youth and age somehow combined. Places for fun, perhaps for too much fun.”

  “There’s a lot of knowledge mixed in with the fun, though,” I said, pausing a moment to study a sign that directed us left for the science building. “Our colleges today are the backbone of a vast educational system that promotes knowledge in every possible field. You’re no doubt aware that much of the work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs had its beginnings in our universities, in science buildings not too much different from this one.”

  But Simon only sighed. “Education for destruction. You would certainly not argue that the world is a good place for all of that.”

  “I wouldn’t argue anything with you, Simon. You’ll probably still be around when I’m long dead.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Come on—this door is open. It must lead somewhere.”

  He followed me into the science building, down a whitewashed hallway that seemed to take us only deeper into the bowels of the place. And as we walked a queer chattering sound reached our ears—the sound of many creatures, animals, birds, something.

  “What do you make of that, Simon?”

  “We shall know in another moment, my friend.”

  We turned the final corner and found ourselves before a pair of open glass doors. Beyond was a laboratory, with rows of cages lining the walls. Monkeys, mostly, with occasional rabbits and birds—and at the far end great cages that held four good-sized apes. And in the midst of it all was a little man wearing a white coat and thick, horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Professor Wilber?” I asked, a bit uncertainly.

  “Yes, I am Professor Wilber.” His voice was like the rest of him—small and withdrawn, with only a bare hint of power and authority behind it.

  “You work even on Sundays?”

  He waved his arms vaguely. “My work is never done here. Just what can I do for you gentlemen?”

  We introduced ourselves and I made some bumbling comments about the possibility of doing a book on Baine City and the University. “We heard you were engaged in basic research on the subjects of birth and heredity, with funds from Baine Brass.”

  “Oh, correct, correct, but hardly complete.” He bustled about as he spoke, giving more the impression of being absentminded than mad. Behind him a monkey screeched in its cage. “Yes see, I am looking into the very nature of life itself, looking into the mysteries of all creation. I plan to publish a paper on my findings.”

  I remembered some experiments carried out in Mexico some years back. “Are you trying to create life?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I do not picture myself as God, gentlemen. Not yet. Tell me, how is the weather outside?”

  “Warm.”

  “Summer.” He opened one of the rabbit cages and seemed to inject the beast with a small hypodermic needle. “Summer is the best time of all. Perchance next summer I will be out of this filthy clean room and into the warmth of the sun. And tomorrow is a holiday too!”

  Simon Ark had been standing in the very center of the room, well away from any of the cages. But now he moved a bit toward the apes at the end of the wall. “You even work tomorrow?” he asked, contributing to the conversation.

  “Every day, every day, because I never know which day the thing might go wrong. All a lifetime’s work could go in a moment’s time.”

  My thoughts went b
ack to Cathy Clark. “Tell me, Professor, do you ever have some of the science coeds assist you here?”

  The idea seemed to shock him. “No, no, no such thing. You see these large apes? This baboon is of the species that Burton once saw attempt to rape a girl in Cairo.”

  He was over my head but I stuck with it. “What?”

  Simon interrupted. “Richard Burton—I believe in his writings he mentions an attack on a woman, in Cairo—1856. The beast was killed before he could do any damage.

  “And because of that you don’t have women assisting you? What about a girl named Cathy Clark?”

  If he knew the name his face did not show it. “Clark? Clark?”

  “She was killed yesterday,” Simon said.

  “Oh, I read something in the newspaper. Too bad, too bad.”

  “We have reason to believe she was connected with you in some manner, Professor Wilber.”

  “With me? With me? Impossible! I may have seen her about the campus, but nothing further. I spend sometimes sixteen to twenty hours a day in this room, and as I have said no women work here.”

  “But your researches are supported by Baine Brass?”

  He bowed his head to one side in a gesture of assent. “The entire science program here is financed by the worthy donations of Foster Baine.”

  I pressed on, certain there was something to uncover here. “This Foster Baine is the president of Baine Brass?”

  “Correct, correct. Grandson of the founder. Carrying on in a great tradition,”

  “But I understand he contributes nothing to the Arts College. Isn’t that strange?”

  Professor Wilber tossed his head. “Why strange? The Baine family stands for technological and scientific advancement. Thus that is the field of their endowments.”

  “One more question, Professor …”

  He gave me a queer look. “Are you people detectives or what? So many questions!”

  “I was just wondering if you knew a young fellow named Henry Mahon. He’s a public relations man who’s handling the current fund-raising drive.”

  “Don’t know him,” Wilber answered shortly. He was convinced now that we were investigators of some sort, and he was clamming up.