You'll Die Yesterday

You'll Die Yesterday

By Rog Phillips

At first, in
the weak light, he thought he saw the body. But the drawer was empty!

The corpse had one bad habit; it kept walking
i
n and pointing a gun at the only two people interested in keeping it alive!

"Thank you,"
January Stevens said, his voice drowned out by the applause of the audience in the small lecture hall. He turned to leave the platform.

The hall was filled almost to capacity with an audience of quietly dressed men and women. They had come to hear a world-famous author speak on his most recent book, and the attention they had given his words was complete and sincere during the entire two hours.

"Just a moment, Mr. Stevens," the lady chairman said, standing up. The applause stilled. "Perhaps the audience has a few questions to ask. I myself have one." She paused while Jan turned to face her. "What is your next book about? You are writing another, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not," Jan said. "Of course I might write another sometime; but right now I have no plans in that direction."

"What
!
" the chairwoman said, smiling. "You write a best seller and aren't
making plans to reap the bene
fits of your fame?" When Jan only smiled she turned to the audience. Any questions? Ah. There's a hand. Yes?"

"Where did you get the idea for your book 'Me and My Robot', Mr. Stevens?" the owner of the hand asked, rising.

"Well, that's hard to say," Jan said. He darted a glance at Paula Morris sitting at the side in the front row, then turned his eyes back to the man. He seemed just an innocent spectator with a vacuous face. "Where do ideas come from?" He grinned. There was a ripple of laughter in the audience.

"What I mean is," the man persisted, "did it come from any research work being done at present, by you or by someone you know?"

Jan glanced toward Paula again, frowning uneasily. While his eyes were on her a shot shattered the silence of the auditorium. Jan's eyes swung up in time to see the man who had asked him the questions stiffen, then sag down, dropping out of sight behind a row of chairs.

In the stunned hush that followed a chair overturned at the rear of the hall.

"He did it!" a woman's voice shouted, clutching at a man. The man struck at her with a hand containing a gun. Free of the clutching fingers, he ran to the exit and vanished.

Jan was already off the platform running up the aisle. He reached the exit seconds behind the fleeing gun-man. The doorman was coming toward him.

"What happened in there?" the doorman asked. "I thought I heard a shot."

"Did a man just run out this door?" Jan asked hurriedly.

"No," the doorman said.

"He must have," Jan said. "Which way did he go?"

"Nobody came out any doors," the man insisted. "I ought to know. I've been out here all the time."

Jan turned back into the auditorium. A crowd had gathered about the spot where lay the man who had been shot. Jan pushed through and saw Paula bending over him in a hastily cleared area.

"How is he, Paula?" he asked, stooping down beside her.

The man on the floor looked up at Jan, then smiled painfully. "I should have waited to hear what you wanted to tell me," he said, smiling ruefully.

"But you were
shot!" Jan said. "How could you
--?"

"I didn't mean just now," the man said. "I meant--"

A shudder shook his body. He became still.

"He's dead," Paula whispered, drawing away from the man, her eyes wide.

"Dead?" a scared voice came from the crowd. "Let's get out of here, Emma. I don't want to get mixed up in a murder."

"We've got to find out who he was, Paula," Jan said in a low voice.

He knelt down by the dead man and felt inside his breast pocket, drawing out a leather billfold and some printed sheets.

The doorman was saying, "Everyone has to stay here until the police arrive. I've locked the doors."

Jan and Paula slipped over to a corner by themselves while they inspected their find.

"This's some sort of license," Jan said, coming across a card. He read, "Fred Stone, age -- What! A hundred and seven? Expires January seventh, 2163. Wonder what that
'
T.T. Permit' means? But of course this is some sort of crazy card. Doesn't mean anything. How could it?"

"What are these printed sheets?" Paula said, taking them from Jan's hand and unfolding them. "Look at this!"

Together they read the heading. "Speech of January Stevens before the Society at their meeting of April 8, 1953."

"Why, Jan!" Paula exclaimed. "That's today!" Her eyes scanned the first few paragraphs. "And it's word for word the speech you just gave."

"I see it is," Jan said. "But it can't be. I didn't prepare my talk. I made it up as
I went along, and there's just—"
He looked at Paula wide
-
eyed. "There's nothing except the shorthand notes of the society's secretary. Mrs. Gregory the chairwoman said my speech would be taken down in shorthand and printed in the Society's quarterly bulletin!" He inspected the papers grimly. "I'm going to keep these," he said. "I'll give the police his wallet when they get here."

The door
opened in the darkened room. Lights came on, revealing the room as a well-equipped modern scientific laboratory. Jan closed the door and locked it.

"I've got to conduct some tests on these papers Paula," he said, going over to a table holding several varnished cases. "No use waiting until morning. I couldn't sleep anyway, wondering about them."

He swung open the door on the front of one of the cases, bringing out an instrument resembling a box camera.

"This is one of the things I bought with the royalties from my book," he explained. "Its
'
a commercial development of the Geiger Counter for telling the age of organic compounds. It tells their age by measuring their radio-activity."

He took a pair of headphones from the cabinet and placed them over his ears, plugging the cord into the camera-like box.

"Now," he said. "I take this lead plate to block off emanations from the table, then lay the papers on the lead." He did so, then placed the camera-like box lens down on the papers. "I plug it in now," he said. "Now whenever an atom explodes it makes a click in the earphones. I count the clicks for a minute."

He listened intently while Paula watched. Finally he took off the headphones and placed them over Paula's ears. She listened while he took a booklet from the cabinet and looked at tables.

"Paula," he said, his voice sounding queer. "According to the tables those papers are just two hundred and ten years old."

"Two hundred and ten?" Paula echoed. "But--but that would mean--"

Jan nodded. "It jibes with the expiration date on that card belonging to Fred Stone. It means that he came f
r
om the year 2163, two hundred and ten years in the future. That T. T. permit means time travel."

Paula took off the earphones.

"He came back in Time," Jan said, "carrying the printed copy of my speech about my book, to ask me questions about it. He was killed before he could ask those questions."

"Why?" Paula asked.

"I wish I knew," Jan said. "Was it to keep him from getting the answers t
o questions he was going to ask
--or was it to keep me from learning what questions he was going to ask?"

At the door a man had materialized out of thin air. Jan and Paula, their backs to the door, hadn't seen him. He cautiously unlocked the door and swung it open, then stood in the opening as though he had just entered.

"Put your hands up and get away from that bench," he said abruptly.

At the first sound of his voice Jan and Paula turned, startled. They stared at him and his pointed gun, their eyes widening.

"How did you get in?" Jan demanded. "That door was locked from the inside!"

"Never mind that," the man said. "Step away from that bench so I can get those papers."

Jan looked at the man keenly as he raised his hands and slowly moved away from the bench.

"You're a killer," he said. "I got a good look at you there in the auditorium."

The man grinned at him mirthlessly, then moved warily to the bench, pocketing the papers Jan had been testing.

"What you know won't be believed," he said. "Otherwise I'd be forced to kill both of you. And I'm taking your only proof with me."

He backed toward the exit, jumped through and slammed the door.

Instantly Jan was in motion, running toward the door. He flung it open and looked out. Slowly he came back across the room.

"He was gone," he said. "He must have vanished, because there wasn't time for him to get to the end of the hall."

"Put up your hands," the now familiar voice of the killer sounded from one corner of the room.

Jan and Paula turned in the direction of the voice.

The man advanced toward them cautiously, his gun trained on them.

"Turn around, Stevens," he ordered.

Jan slowly turned, his hands elevated as high as he could get them. The killer's free hand searched Jan's pockets swiftly and expertly.

"What did you do with it?" he demanded, his voice harsh.

"With what?" Jan asked, mystified. "You--"

"Drop that gun, Forbes," a new voice said.

The killer spun around and fired. The man across the room ducked to one side and ran along the wall, trying to get Jan and Paula out of his line of fire. He was wearing a brown uniform with a police badge on his chest.

The killer jumped to the door and flung it open, darting out. The uniformed man ran after him. Jan, lowering his hands, went to the door and looked out. He turned back into the laboratory.

"Gone," he said. "I wonder what he wanted this time? The police got everything except those papers he took." He frowned. "That man in uniform acted like a policeman. He had a badge. . . "

"I'm getting a headache," Paula said shakily, "Take me home, darling."

The phone
rang. Jan carefully lifted the tip of the electric soldering iron from the maze of wires, small radio tubes, condensers, and case-covered units of the electronic device he was putting together.

He crossed the laboratory to the desk. Lifting the telephone receiver, he said, "Hello?"

"Jan!" It was Paula's voice exploding into a note of relief. "I just saw him!"

"The killer?" Jan said excitedly. "Where are you? I'll get the police and come right over."

"No, not the killer," Paula said. "Fred Stone."

"Fred Stone?" Jan echoed. "But you couldn't! He was killed."

"That's who I mean," Paula said. "I just saw him. He was standing on the corner. By the time I could get to where he was he was gone; but there wasn't any doubt. It was him!"

"Where are you now," Jan asked.

"Downstairs," Paula said. "I'm coming up."

"Wait!" Jan said. "I'll be right down. I want you to show me where you saw Fred Stone."

"No," Paula said. "I think he was looking for the address where your office is. You should stay there in case he calls."

There was a click at the other end. Jan hung up, looked around the laboratory, then went to the door and opened it to look out. He left the door partly ajar and went back to his soldering. A few moments later there were sharp clicks of heels from the hall. Paula came through the door, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Good morning, darling," she said, going up to Jan, placing her hands against his chest, and giving him a light kiss. When Jan tried to kiss her again she evaded him. "Wipe the lip-stick off," she said. "You may have callers."

"That's right," Jan said, taking out a handkerchief and rubbing his lips. "But Fred Stone-- huh-uh. You must have seen someone that just looks like him."

"I'd swear it was him," Paula said, becoming serious. "Remember, I saw him quite close. I couldn't mistake someone else for him."

"But you didn't see the man on the sidewalk close up?" Jan said.

"N-no." Paula hesitated. "But he was wearing the same clothes. Ordinary business suit, but if you remember it was cut a little peculiarly and a shade of gray I've never seen before. I couldn't be mistaken."

"We'll settle that right now," Jan said, grinning.

He went to the phone. In a few moments he was connected with his party.

"Hello," he said. "Trowbridge? This is Jan Stevens."

"Oh, hello, Mr. Stevens," the voice at the other end said. "I was just going to call you. I'd like for you and Miss Morris to come down to my office. Can you take the time?"

"Of course," Jan said. "We'll be right down. She's here with me. But I wanted to ask you something. Do you still have the body of the man who was shot last night?"

"Of course," Trowbridge said. "Down at the morgue. Why?"

"Are you sure?" Jan asked. "Paula insists that she just saw him down on the corner very much alive."

"What!" Trowbridge's voice barked. There was a brief silence."On second thought, Stevens, stay where you are. I have something I want you to look at. I'll come over to your laboratory. You and Miss Morris stay there. I won't take long to get there."

"We'll be here," Jan promised. He hung up. "The detective in charge of the murder investigation is coming up," he told Paula.

"He says they still have the corpse in the morgue."

"I don't care," Paula said doggedly. "I'd stake my life that it was the same man."

"There are enough crazy things about this,"
Jan said. "I think you're wrong
--"

The phone rang. Jan picked it up. "Mr. Stevens," the voice of Trowbridge spoke. "I just checked with the morgue. Don't know why I did. A hunch. It paid off. The corpse is gone."

"Huh?" Jan said, startled.