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“Yesterday, I asked Dr. Gerrigel to come in from Washington. Later I decided I needed him for several reasons, but, at the time I first called him, my only purpose was to see if he would recognize Daneel for what he was with no prompting on my part.
“Commissioner, he didn’t! I introduced him to Daneel, he shook hands with him, we all talked together, and it was only after the subject got around to humanoid robots that he suddenly caught on. Now, that was Dr. Gerrigel, Earth’s greatest expert on robots. Do you mean to say a few Medievalist rioters could do better than he under conditions of confusion and tension, and be so certain about it that they would throw their entire organization into activity based on the feeling that Daneel was a robot?
“It’s obvious now that the Medievalists must have known Daneel to be a robot to begin with. The incident at the shoe counter was deliberately designed to show Daneel and, through him, Spacetown, the extent of anti-robot feeling in the City. It was meant to confuse the issue, to turn suspicion away from individuals and toward the population as a whole.
“Now, if they knew the truth about Daneel to begin with, who told them? I didn’t. I once thought it was Daneel himself, but that’s out. The only other Earthman who knew about it was you, Commissioner.”
Enderby said, with surprising energy, “There could be spies in the Department, too. The Medievalists could have us riddled with them. Your wife was one, and if you don’t find it impossible that I should be one, why not others in the Department?”
The corners of Baley’s lips pulled back a savage trifle. “Let’s not bring up mysterious spies until we see where the straightforward solution leads us. I say you’re the obvious informer and the real one.
“It’s interesting now that I look back on it, Commissioner, to see how your spirits rose and fell accordingly as I seemed to be far from a solution or possibly close to it. You were nervous to begin with. When I wanted to visit Spacetown yesterday morning and wouldn’t tell you the reason, you were practically in a state of collapse. Did you think I had you pi
“Then when I came out with my completely wrong solution, while you listened over trimensional circuit, and you saw how far, how immensely far, from the truth I was, you were confident again. You even argued with me, defended the Spacers. After that, you were quite master of yourself for a while, quite confident. It surprised me at the time that you so easily forgave my false accusations against the Spacers when earlier you had so lectured me on their sensitivity. You enjoyed my mistake.
“Then I put in my call for Dr. Gerrigel and you wanted to know why and I wouldn’t tell you. That plunged you into the abyss again because you feared—”
R. Daneel suddenly raised his hand. “Partner Elijah!”
Baley looked at his watch. 23:42! He said, “What is it?”
R. Daneel said, “He might have been disturbed at thinking you would find out his Medievalist co
Baley said, “You’re quite wrong, Daneel. He didn’t know what I wanted Dr. Gerrigel for, but it was quite safe to assume that it was in co
Enderby shook his head. “When this is over—” he began, but choked into inarticulacy.
“How was the murder committed?” demanded Baley with a suppressed fury. “C/Fe, damn it! C/Fe! I use your own term, Daneel. You’re so full of the benefits of a C/Fe culture, yet you don’t see where an Earthman might have used it for at least a temporary advantage. Let me sketch it in for you.
“There is no difficulty in the notion of a robot crossing open country. Even at night. Even alone. The Commissioner put a blaster into R. Sammy’s hand, told him where to go and when. He himself entered Spacetown through the Personal and was relieved of his own blaster. He received the other from R. Sammy’s hands, killed Dr. Sarton, returned the blaster to R. Sammy, who took it back across the fields to New York City. And today he destroyed R. Sammy, whose knowledge had become dangerous.
“That explains everything. The presence of the Commissioner, the absence of a weapon. And it makes it u
But at the end of Baley’s recitation, R. Daneel said, “I am sorry, partner Elijah, though happy for the Commissioner, that your story explains nothing. I have told you that the cerebroanalytic properties of the Commissioner are such that it is impossible for him to have committed deliberate murder. I don’t know what English word would be applied to the psychological fact: cowardice, conscience, or compassion. I know the dictionary meanings of all these, but I ca
“Thank you,” muttered Enderby. His voice gained strength and confidence. “I don’t know what your motives are, Baley, or why you should try to ruin me this way, but I’ll get to the bottom—”
“Wait,” said Baley. “I’m not through. I’ve got this.”
He slammed the aluminum cube on Enderby’s desk, and tried to feel the confidence he hoped he was radiating. For half an hour now, he had been hiding from himself one little fact: that he did not know what the picture showed. He was gambling, but it was all that was left to do.
Enderby shrank away from the small object. “What is it?”
“It isn’t a bomb,” said Baley, sardonically. “Just an ordinary microprojector.”
“Well? What will that prove?”
“Suppose we see.” His fingernail probed at one of the slits in the cube, and a corner of the Commissioner’s office blanked out, then lit up in an alien scene in three dimensions.
It reached from floor to ceiling and extended out past the walls of the room. It was awash with a gray light of a sort the City’s utilities never provided.
Baley thought, with a pang of mingled distaste and perverse attraction: It must be the dawn they talk about.
The pictured scene was of Dr. Sarton’s dome. Dr. Sarton’s dead body, a horrible, broken remnant, filled its center.
Enderby’s eyes bulged as he stared.
Baley said, “I know the Commissioner isn’t a killer. I don’t need you to tell me that, Daneel. If I could have gotten around that one fact earlier, I would have had the solution earlier. Actually, I didn’t see a way out of it until an hour ago when I carelessly said to you that you had once been curious about Bentley’s contact lenses.—That was it, Commissioner. It occurred to me then that your nearsightedness and your glasses were the key. They don’t have nearsightedness on the Outer Worlds, I suppose, or they might have reached the true solution of the murder almost at once. Commissioner, when did you break your glasses?”
The Commissioner said, “What do you mean?”
Baley said, “When I first saw you about this case, you told me you had broken your glasses in Spacetown. I assumed that you broke them in your agitation on hearing the news of the murder, but you never said so, and I had no reason for making that assumption. Actually, if you were entering Spacetown with crime on your mind, you were already sufficiently agitated to drop and break your glasses before the murder. Isn’t that so, and didn’t that, in fact, happen?”