Futures Past (7 page)

  
The other desk, which seemed to be in current use, was scattered with philatelic magazines and reference books. The drawers contained magnifiers and large sheets of unused stamps in plastic folders with a few singles, also in transparent envelopes, which were even older. Michaelson had never been a stamp collector.

  
"Are these valuable?"

  
"They aren't rare," replied Nesbitt, in tones that said that he had been a collector and probably still was. "But in quantities like that, in mint condition, they are worth a considerable sum of money. If I'd known about them I would have advised him to keep them in a fire-proof safe."

  
"He takes your advice?"

  
"He listens to it."

  
Michaelson smiled. "How well do you know him?"

  
"I call in most nights during my rounds," said Nesbitt. "Being alone he doesn't have to work normal hours, and if he is awake or working late he leaves the door open so I can come in for a cup of coffee, or to watch the wrestling matches if it coincides with my break."

  
"So his hobbies are drinking coffee and watching wrestling," said Michaelson dryly.

  
"No, sir. He switches channels for me. I usually find him watching current affairs programs. He is a very serious-minded young man."

  
"Worried about something, do you think?"

  
"He hasn't looked very happy recently, but from what I've heard he doesn't have any financial worries."

  
"Any idea where he stayed before coming here?"

  
"At a hotel a few blocks away, the Worchester. Some of his mail is still being forwarded from it."

  
"Why did he move?"

  
"I think it was red tape again," said Nesbitt. "He had been living there for nearly two years—well, not exactly, he used a room to carry on his business and sometimes he lived in it if it was too late to go home in the evening. The hotel did not mind at first—it is a small place with an easy-going manager. But apparently it contravened regulations for a guest to carry on a business on a permanent basis from his room. Rather than try to sort it out he moved here."

  
"He confides in you a lot?"

  
"Not at first. But one night he came in drank, really sick drunk. I think it must have been the first time he had tried alcohol and he had tried everything in sight. While I was helping him to bed he told me that he had a problem, but not what it was, and that he had to talk to somebody here. After that we talked for a few minutes, sometimes longer, every night—but never about his problem. I got the impression that it was a very personal thing."

  
"Yes," said Michaelson. "Did he go out much at night?"

  
"Recently, yes," said Nesbitt. "I expect he got himself a girl friend. A good thing, too—he had been very worried about something for the past three weeks. He had told me that his problem was worse than ever and that now there would never be a solution to it. But earlier this week he started going out every night for three or four hours and sometimes staying away all day, so probably there was a solution to it after all."

  
"Yes," said Michaelson.

  
He was thinking about Mrs. Timmins and the solution that she represented to the suspect's very personal problem and he could not trust himself to say anything else.

  
His quick look around was gradually developing into a full-scale search, but so far the night security man had made no objections. He believed that he was helping the suspect and it was obvious that he was so convinced of "Smith's" honesty that the thought that he might be harming the other man had never entered his head. The fact that he was an ex-policeman and Michaelson an inspector would also have something to do with it.

  
Michaelson wrestled briefly with his conscience, but the process was little more than a token bout.

  
Looking disinterested, he began sliding open the desk drawers one by one. "Apart from his recent absences, did he have any other hobbies or outside interests?"

  
"He was keen on local history," said Nesbitt. "He kept a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings, on the shelf behind you."

  
Michaelson picked up the scrapbook and went through it quickly but thoroughly. There were a few old street maps, plans of urban road systems and developments long since completed and clippings going back over half a century. He was not surprised to find several mentions of the city's moment of stark drama some sixty years earlier when the physics building at the university had blown up, taking the physics professor—a stuffy but very brilliant old gentleman tipped for a Nobel Prize—and a mercifully small number of post-graduate assistants with it. He read the chancellor's statement that, so far as he knew, no explosives had been kept in the building, descriptions of the peculiarly sharp detonation and the theories, based on evidence of fusing in parts of the debris, which ranged from an old-fashioned thunderbolt from on high to a meteor strike or the premature invention of a nuclear device ...

  
"No other hobbies?"

  
"Not that I know of," said Nesbitt, then added, "At one time I thought he might be taking up radio as a hobby —he had read some technical articles and wanted to know if I could tell him anything about a standing wave. He gets suddenly curious about lots of things."

  
Michaelson had a vague idea of what a standing wave might be, having listened to the engineers talking shop during a course he had taken on TV traffic monitoring systems, but he did not see how it could help his current investigation. He opened another drawer.

  
And hit the jackpot.

  
It contained a large desk diary, a day book recording income and expenditure and an address book. As he leafed through them the look of disinterest on his face required an increasingly greater effort to maintain.

  
There were appointment notes and memos reminding the suspect that he needed stamps for various retail outlets. There was not, so far as Michael could see, a corresponding supplier for the stamps. Other notes, none of which were recent, comprised current song titles with remarks like, "Piano arrangement not too difficult" or, "Very simple melody" or, "Good, but complicated orchestration needed—I can't memorize it." The final entry, dated three weeks earlier, said, "Found another possibility, will investigate the old lady tomorrow."

  
The last entry in the address book, which otherwise contained only business contacts, was that of Mrs. Timmins. It had been written so heavily that her name and address had been embossed on four of the underlying pages.

  
An emotional type, thought Michaelson coldly as he began going through the cash book.

  
The entries were meticulously neat and, possibly because he had forgotten which book he was using, interspersed with reminders. Like the desk diary it showed ample evidence of income from the sale of stamps, but no indication of where he got them. His expenditure seemed to be confined to rent, food, clothing and sheet music. One of the latter items was for a song with "Memories" in the title and he had added, leaning very heavily on his ballpoint, "Memories don't sell as easily as stamps, but they are all I can take." The last four entries, all dated within the past few weeks, showed the expenditure of considerable sums of money to an undisclosed company or person, with a bracketed notation that said, "In used notes by registered mail." Michaelson noted the amounts.

  
"Can I telephone?" asked the Inspector.

 
 
"He has a night line," said Nesbitt.

  
The night receptionist at the Worchester remembered Smith and, because he was not very busy, did not mind talking about him. Smith had stayed there for nearly a year, conducting a stamp business from nine to five—he lived somewhere else. He kept a very smart if conservative wardrobe in his office room—for impressing customers, he had said—but traveled to and from work in an old, shapeless suit. No, he had not acted in any way suspiciously or oddly, except that sometimes he arrived in the morning without a raincoat when it was pouring wet, and vice versa. But then the weather could change so suddenly. In this morning's forecast they had promised sunny periods ...

  
During the next pause for breath Michaelson thanked the receptionist and hung up.

  
A man who avoids red tape and who sells stamps without buying them and buys sheet music and copies it over and over again, apparently to memorize it. Stamps were a peculiar commodity in that they could not be stolen in bulk without the fact showing up—especially when they were over half a century old. And where could freshly plagiarized music be sold? Any country or broadcasting company who bought it would signal the fact to the whole world and if they were pirates they would hardly pay for the music in the first place.

  
To make any sense at all of this puzzle he would have to look at all the pieces very carefully and move them around to see how or if they fitted. Michaelson considered the suspect's manner, appearance, everything he had found out about him and his oddly run business. Potentially they were all important pieces and he had to try fitting all of them together before he could risk discarding any as belonging to some other puzzle.

  
"Would you like some coffee?" said the night patrolman. He said it three times before Michael heard him.

  
"No, thanks," he said absently. The pieces, all of them, were beginning to fit together. "I would like to make another call before I leave."

  
Doctor Weston had a large local practice. He also had the information on Mrs. Timmins which Michaelson needed and eventually, and with great difficulty, it was coaxed out of him. The details of her physical condition were given much more easily.

  
". . . And I gave that silly old woman until the middle of last week," said the doctor, in the tone of voice he used when he felt very strongly about a patient but did not want people to think that he was soft-hearted. "When I saw her earlier this evening I told the nurse to stay with her—she won't last the night. In her condition I don't know why she bothers to hang on."

  
/ do, said Michaelson, but he spoke under his breath.

  
"One more call, honest," he said to Nesbitt. He had to go arrange with Greer to bring the suspect to Mrs. Timmins' flat, where he would meet them as soon as possible.

  
They met twenty minutes later in her lounge. The nurse had gone into the adjoining bedroom to prepare her patient to receive visitors, leaving the suspect, Greer and Michaelson alone. The suspect looked as frightened as Michaelson had ever seen a man look, and the sergeant's expression reflected controlled puzzlement.

  
He could very well be making the worst mistake of his long and fairly successful career, Michaelson thought, but if all the evidence pointed to an impossible conclusion then the impossible wasn't impossible.

  
"This man has been rather naughty, Sergeant," he said. "His reticence about giving his name was ill-advised, but understandable in the circumstances. I have evidence that he is in fact the old lady's benefactor—he sent the money which she is supposed to have inherited. He hasn't admitted it yet, but I would say that it was conscience money and that he is the son or grandson of the old lady's husband who deserted her and probably married again and who wants the payoff to be anonymous so as to avoid a possible bigamy charge and questions of the legitimacy or otherwise of his children."

  
Greer nodded, then said, "I'll return to the station, sir." He gave the suspect a pained look, the sort which he reserved for nice but ill-advised people who played games with the overworked constabulary, and left. Professionally the sergeant was completely disinterested in nice people.