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The difference here was that Brace Books didn't know what McAllister had been doing with Lucas Anderson's accounts.
"Let's just go over these papers," he said with a trace of impatience.
Anderson nodded without enthusiasm, and stepped back, inviting him in.
Did he have company? A glance into the dining nook told McAllister that he did not. A di
How to get him into the living room? But Anderson was leading him there. It was not a big house, and a hostile publishers assistant would not be invited into the semisacred writing room.
Anderson stopped in the middle of the room. "Spread it on the coffee table."
McAllister circled Anderson as he reached into the briefcase. His fingers brushed papers, and then the Gyrojet, and suddenly his pulse was thundering in his ears. He was afraid.
He'd spent considerable time plotting this. He'd even typed outlines, as for a mystery novel, and burned them afterward. He could produce the royalty statements; they were there in his briefcase, though they would not stand up. Or ... His hand, unseen within the briefcase, clenched into a fist.
He was between Anderson and the picture window when he produced the Gyrojet.
The Gyrojet: an ancient toy or weapon, depending. It was a rocket pistol, made during the 1960s, then discontinued. This one had been stolen from someone's house and later sold to McAllister, secretly, a full twelve years ago.
A rocket pistol. How could any former Buck Rogers fan have turned down a rocket pistol? He had never shown it to anyone. He had had the thought, even then, that it would be untraceable should he ever want to kill somebody…
The true weapon was the rocket slug. The gun looked like a toy, flimsy aluminum, perforated down the barrel. Anderson might have thought it was a toy—but Anderson was bright. He got the point immediately. He turned to run.
McAllister shot him twice in the back.
He left by the front door. He gri
The alibi machine, the newspapers had called it then. They still did. The advent of the displacement booths had produced one hell of a crime wave. When a man in, say, Hawaii could commit murder in Chicago and be back in the time it would take him to visit the men's room, it did make things a bit difficult for the police. McAllister himself would be at a party in New York ten minutes from now. But first...
He walked around to the back of the house and stood a moment, looking into the picture window.
He'd thrown a paper tablecloth over Anderson's body. Glass particles on the body would be a giveaway. He'd take the tablecloth with him; and how were the police to know that it was the third bullet, rather than the first, that had shattered the picture window? But if it was the first bullet, then the killer must have been someone Anderson would not let into the house.
McAllister fired into the picture window.
Glass showered inward. There was the scream of an alarm.
McAllister stood rooted. It was a terrible sound, and in these quiet hills it would carry forever! He hadn't expected alarms. There must be a secondary system, continually in operation—Hell with it. McAllister ran into the house, picked up the tablecloth and ran out. Glass particles all over his shoes. Never mind. His shoes and everything else he was wearing were paper, and there was a change of clothing in the briefcase. He'd dump gun and all at the next number he dialed.
The altitude was getting to him. He was panting like a bloodhound when he closed the booth door and dialed. Los Angeles International, then a lakeside resort in New Mexico; the police could hardly search every lake in the country.
Nothing happened.
He dialed again. And again, while the alarm screamed to the hills, Help! I am being robbed. When his hand was shaking too badly to dial, he backed out of the glass door and stood looking at the booth.
This hadn't been in any of the outlines.
The booth wouldn't let him out. In all this vastness he was locked in, locked in with the body.
It was two hours before the helicopter from Fresno arrived. Even so, they made good speed. Only a police organization could get a copter in the air that fast. Who else dealt with situations in which one could not simply flick in?
The copter landed in front of the Anderson house, after some trouble picking it out of the wild landscape. Police Lieutenant Richard Donaho climbed out carefully as soon as the dust had stopped swirling. For the benefit of the pilot his face was u
With the motor off, the alarm from the house was an intolerable scream. Lieutenant Donaho moved around to the side of the machine, opened a hatch and switched in the portable JumpShift unit.
He stood back as men and equipment began pouring through. Uniformed men moved toward the house, spreading out. Donaho didn't interfere. He wasn't expecting anything startling. It was going to be cold burglary, the burglar vanished quite away.
It was a smallish one-story house in a wild and beautiful setting, halfway up a mountain. The sun was still bright, though it had almost touched the western peaks. The sky was dark blue, almost lavender. Houses were scarce upslope, and far scarcer downslope. There were no roads. No roads at all. This place must have been uninhabited until twenty years ago, when jumpShift Inc. had revolutionized transportation.
The shrill of the alarm stopped.
In the sudden silence a policeman walked briskly from around the side of the house. "Lieutenant!" he called. "It's not burglary. It's murder. There's a dead man on the living room rug."
"All right," said Donaho. He called Homicide.
Captain He
Dopaho nodded at the uniformed man, whose name was Fisher. Fisher said, "It's around in back. Picture window shattered. Man inside, dead, with two holes in his back. That's as far as we've got. Want to come look, sir?"
"In a minute. What was wrong with the displacement booth? Never mind, I see it."
It was obvious even from here. The displacement booth was a standard model, a glass cylinder rounded at the top, with a dial system set in the side. Its curved door was blocked open by a chunk of granite.
"So that's why you needed the copter," said He
It was an old trick. Any burglar knew enough to block the displacement booth door before trying to rob a house. If he set off an alarm the police couldn't flick in, and he could generally run next door and use the displacement booth there. But here…
"I wonder how he got out?" said He
Donaho shifted impatiently. This was a murder investigation, and he had not yet so much as seen the body. He