Dead as a Dinosaur (8 page)

“Dr. Preson has taken an overdose of a barbiturate,” Bill told them. “Apparently he had some left and thought he might as well go through with it after all.” He shook his head. “Poor little guy,” he said. “I guess he'll end up in Bellevue after all.”

“Bad?” Jerry North asked, and Bill Weigand shrugged as he answered.

“He's in a coma,” Bill said. “At the hospital. Probably they'll bring him out of it. Unless he got more than they think or is particularly sensitive. Live for the observation ward, probably. For a sanatorium.”

“Why you?” Dorian asked, and again Bill shrugged.

“Crossed wires, as much as anything,” he said. “That was a relay from the inspector. He's working on the first premise—that somebody's persecuting Dr. Preson. So this looks like attempted murder, maybe. Something we should look into. Anstey's later report—that the doctor was his own persecutor—is still somewhere in channels. So the inspector says, ‘Get Weigand over there for a look around' and—end of an evening. I'll find another bottle of milk with phenobarbital in it, one glass gone out of it and into Dr. Preson. When Dr. Preson comes around tomorrow, the story will be that somebody got in while he was taking his sister home this afternoon and provided another bottle of drugged milk, from which he dutifully drank.”

“He wouldn't,” Pam pointed out. “After one bottle full of barbital, anybody would think twice.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Are you looking for rationality, Pam?”

Pam North hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “I guess not. I guess I'm licked. And he's such a nice little man, in spite of the whiskers and everything. Let's go home, Jerry.”

Bill Weigand dropped them; drove on to the apartment hotel in West Twenty-second Street; went upstairs to have his look around. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley was in one of his thorough moods.

Bill Weigand was thorough himself; a conviction that thoroughness would lead nowhere did not lessen his application. In half an hour he had what he needed, which was, at least in outline, what he expected.

Dr. Preson had been found, in a coma, at a few minutes before eleven. A nephew, Wayne Preson, had found him. The nephew had called Laura and Homer Preson, sister and brother of the mammalogist, and then for an ambulance. There had then been an empty glass in front of Dr. Preson, who had been sitting at the table in the rear of the room relabeling bones. The glass had contained milk. It was apparent that, as he wrote on gummed labels, licked the labels and applied them to the bones, Dr. Preson had sipped from the glass.

“Took the taste out of his mouth, probably,” a uniformed precinct man suggested, and Bill said, “Right,” and then, more or less absently, “should have used a sponge.”

“Makes 'em too wet,” the precinct man said, and continued to report. He had arrived in a prowl car before the ambulance from St. Vincent's; when he arrived, Wayne Preson had got the little curator of mammals to a couch. He was restless, then, stirring uneasily in his sleep.

From what Wayne said, it was easy to get the picture. Dr. Preson, sitting in front of his pile of bones, had written and licked and sipped and stuck labels onto bones. Slowly the phenobarbital in the milk had had its effect. The handwriting on the labels, at first firmly clear, had deteriorated; toward the end it was hard to decipher what Dr. Preson had intended. “Particularly with words like that,” the precinct man said. In the end, Dr. Preson's head had come to rest on the table, with the bones of extinct mammals. Apparently as he lost consciousness, he had been reaching for another label from a box of them near his hand. How long he had rested so was anybody's guess.

The ambulance had come and Dr. Preson had been taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, his nephew in attendance. Laura and Homer Preson had also gone directly to the hospital. Precinct detectives had continued the formalities.

“Found a bottle of milk, less one glass, in the refrigerator,” Bill Weigand said. “Dr. Preson's fingerprints on it, probably. No—he'd have wiped them off, wouldn't he? Phenobarbital in the milk.”

“About that, captain,” the precinct man said. “Good guess.”

“Repetition,” Bill told him. “It happened earlier. Didn't anybody tell you?”

“Who'd tell me?” the uniformed man said. “Don't you know we just think with our feet?” He interrupted himself. “Sorry, captain,” he said. “Didn't mean anything.”

Bill told him enough. He said, “Oh, one of
those
things.”

“Did they find out when Dr. Preson got here?” Bill asked.

They had. The information had been left with the man from the prowl car. Dr. Preson had got back to the hotel a little before five o'clock in the afternoon. He had not left again. When Wayne had arrived, representing the family, he had first telephoned Dr. Preson from the desk, and had gone up when there was no answer.

“Any food sent up to him?” Bill asked.

There had not been.

“Carrying anything when he came in?”

There information failed; that had been overlooked, or not imparted to the precinct man. Weigand telephoned down to the desk. Dr. Preson had, the desk clerk remembered, been carrying something—a paper bag, he thought. Yes, come to think of it, it could have contained a bottle of milk. Yes, Dr. Preson had certainly been alone. No, he had not communicated with the desk thereafter. The hotel did not serve meals, but could have sent out for sandwiches. It had not been asked to.

The pattern held, then. Laura Preson's blunder into the trap Dr. Preson had set for himself had not stopped him. He had brought home another quart of milk, filled it again with phenobarbital, taken the overdose which was to prove a new step in “persecution.” The poor little guy! So much innocent cunning—not to hide the bottle coming in, yet to rub fingerprints from it! The cunning of madness. Such a nice little man, Pam North thought him. The things that happened to people—

Bill looked at the bones on the table; wondered if Dr. Preson would ever be able to complete the task of rearranging them. If he did he would have to redo much he had done that night. Not only were many of the labels beyond decipherment, but some of them had not adhered to the bones to which they had been affixed. As his mind grew dimmer, as sleep came, Dr. Preson must often have failed to moisten the gummed labels from—Bill looked at a package of labels, waiting in reserve—from Dennison's, naturally.

Bill returned to the telephone. He had been right, his office told him, on the contents of the bottle of milk. The first analysis showed there had been phenobarbital in it again. He had been right about the absence of fingerprints on the bottle. The glass, however, had had Dr. Preson's prints on it, as well as those of another man. The other man, undoubtedly, was the nephew Wayne, who said he had, on seeing the glass, automatically picked it up and smelled of its contents. It was difficult to persuade people to keep hands off things; the human instinct is to touch. But this time, Bill thought, it didn't make any particular difference.

“I'll stop by the hospital,” Bill told the presiding sergeant at Homicide West. “If nothing new comes up there, I'll be at home. If the inspector calls, tell him it doesn't look much like attempted murder. Tell him I'll report in the morning. Right?”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant said.

Acting Captain William Weigand went to St. Vincent's Hospital. In an anteroom on the third floor of the main building, he found a thin, sharp woman of about fifty, a neat small man with gray hair and gray clothes and glasses, and a dark, slender man of, perhaps, twenty-five. Among them there was, Bill decided, a family resemblance. He introduced himself to Laura and Homer and Wayne Preson.

“Will this make any difference?” Miss Laura Preson said. She spoke to him sharply. “It is, of course, essential that we know.”

“Difference?” Bill Weigand said. “In what way, Miss Preson?”

“Your man,” she began, but then turned to her brother. “Tell him, Homer,” she instructed.

“My sister means, any difference in the dispo—I mean, the treatment of my poor brother,” Homer Preson said. “The detective this evening—I think his name was Anstey?—indicated that we would be free to arrange for my brother's—treatment. My sister wonders whether this—this incident—will make a difference in that plan?”

He was, Bill decided, a precise man.

“Not necessarily, I shouldn't think,” Bill said. “Of course, that's in other hands. However, it does make treatment more imperative. You see that.”

“Your coming here—” Homer Preson began.

That, Bill told him, was another matter. A certain routine was established; he was part of it.

“Since,” Bill Weigand said, “it might have been attempted murder.”

Three Preson countenances expressed incredulity. The family resemblance was enhanced. Weigand was told, by Miss Laura Preson, that what he was suggesting was nonsense. He was asked, by Homer Preson, who would want to kill a harmless man like Orpheus. Wayne Preson contented himself with a nervous gesture of rejection, but then stood up, moved to a window and looked out of it. The implication was of departure from stupidity.

All three of these slight, wiry people were keyed up. That was, of course, understandable. Bill Weigand was soothing. All contingencies, even the most improbable, had to be taken under consideration. Death—or the threat of death—from other than natural causes had always to be looked into. There was every reason to suppose that Dr. Orpheus Preson had prepared his own sleeping draught, for reasons that—well, that he was afraid were evident. For a time, that had not been so evident. Investigation had been started; inevitably it continued for a time through momentum. Bill Weigand was, he told them, merely tidying up.

But that it was inconceivable that anyone should desire the death of a “harmless little man”—that, academically, did not follow. Harmless little men, as well as larger and more harmful men, did die violently from time to time. Most often, they died because they had something somebody else wanted, and wanted badly. Wayne Preson turned from the window, at that, and laughed. Bill offered him a faint, receptive smile, and waited.

“You think the Broadly Institute put something in Uncle Orph's milk?” Wayne Preson enquired. He had an unexpectedly deep voice; he clipped his words. “A committee of curators, perhaps?”

“Wayne,” his aunt said, “don't talk nonsense. Don't try to be funny.”

“Not I,” Wayne said. “This gentleman.” He indicated Bill Weigand. “This gentleman” shook his head. “Oh,” Wayne said. “Then you didn't know?”

Bill was afraid he didn't get it. He continued to shake his head, the faint smile still receptive. He had missed the point of the joke, the smile said.

“My brother has left his money to the Broadly Institute,” Homer Preson said. “My son refers to that. The Broadly Institute of Paleontology, with which my brother is associated.” He paused to look with disapproval at Wayne Preson, who was bland, who said, “Sorry, dad,” without any conviction in his voice. “A very poor joke,” Homer Preson told his son.

“You wanted to know who would profit,” Wayne Preson told Weigand. “In the event Uncle Orph—er—shuffled off. Isn't that what the police always want to know? Well, there you have it. The Broadly Institute. Not his loving family.”

“Wayne!” Laura Preson said. “Must you be so—childish?” She turned to Weigand. “I hope,” she said, “that I do not need to tell you that we have no interest in whatever money my brother may have.”

“None,” Homer Preson said. “In any case, my brother is not a wealthy man. A few thousands.”

“Which we don't get,” Wayne said. “In any case,” he added, his inflection faintly mimicking his father's. He still seemed amused. But then he looked at his aunt, at his father, finally at Bill Weigand. “Of course,” he said, “they're right. I'm afraid I was merely—” He broke off. “It struck me as amusing,” he said. “The Institute putting stuff in uncle's milk. Don't pay any attention to me.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I won't arrest the Institute.” His tone dismissed the subject. Wayne Preson was an intelligent young man, in contact with his elders. Flippancy resulted. But the disposition of Orpheus Preson's “few thousands” was without interest, academic or other. There was no case. There was only one of those things, destined to proceed to the observation ward of Bellevue Hospital, unless there was family intervention.

“How is he?” Bill asked anybody who had an answer.

“Doing as well as can be expected,” Wayne Preson answered. “As they always are.”

Weigand expected rebuke, waited for amplification. But the elder Presons offered neither. Homer Preson, in response to Weigand's slightly lifted eyebrows, merely nodded. It was Wayne who amplified. A nurse had visited them about an hour earlier and used the familiar words. She had also suggested that they might as well go home, since no change was to be expected immediately; she had promised they would be notified when Dr. Preson awakened. But they had decided to wait a little longer. He looked at Weigand. “Couldn't you—?” he asked.

Bill could. He went in search of information. It carried him past a nurse and her familiar assurances. It carried him to a resident physician.

“Oh, coming along all right,” the resident said. “These things take time, you know.”

“He'll be all right, then?” Bill said.

“Why—” the resident said. “Oh yes, I'd think so, captain.”

Now Bill Weigand waited, letting the physician feel that more was expected.

“You understand,” the physician said, “that tolerance varies. Recuperative powers vary. There are—elements. Body weight enters in, of course. Other things.” He managed, Weigand thought, to assume the appearance of a man who has said something.

“Right,” Bill Weigand said, “go on, doctor.”