Three to Conquer (7 page)

             
"Name it, then."

             
"I can't," confessed Riley. "I can't so much as imagine an explanation."

             
"Some people are always there when accidents happen,"
Harper pointed out. "They can't help it; it's the way things go. Take my Aunt Matilda—"

             
"Let somebody else take her—I'm married," said Riley. "Are you going to break this case, or do you prefer to wait until I'm ordered to bring you in?"

             
"How much is the reward?"

             
Riley looked prayerfully at the ceiling. "He weakens at the thought of money.
Five thousand dollars.
"

             
"
I'll stew it awhile."

             
"If the idea is to wait for the reward to be jacked up, you may wait too long."

             
With that, Riley bestowed a curt nod on Moira and walked out. They listened to his heavy footsteps fading away in the distance.

             
"Moira, do you sense anything strange about me?
"

             
"
Oh, no, Mr. Harper," she assured.

             
That was true enough. Her mind revealed that she wished he were ten inches taller and ten years younger; it might add a little spice to office work. She asked no more than that because her stronger emotional interests were being satisfied elsewhere.

             
He did not probe any more deeply into her thinking processes. His life resembled that of one perpetually walking by night through a city of well-lit and wide-open bedrooms. He tried not to look, didn't
want
to look, but often could not avoid seeing. He was guilty of invasion of privacy twenty times per day, and just as frequently regretted, it.

             
"Riley must be talking through his hat."

             
"Yes, Mr. Harper."

             
He called Riley, on the phone, midmorning of the following day, and announced, "You've given me the fidgets."

             
"That was my intention," said Riley, smirking in the tiny visiscreen.

             
"Everything is well in hand here, we being better organized than are some police headquarters. I can leave for a few days without risk of bankruptcy; but I'm not going away blind and bollixed.
"

             
"
What d'you mean?"

             
"For a start, I'll get nowhere if the moment I set foot across the line Ledsom's boys grab me."

             
"I'll tend to that," Riley promised. "They'll leave you alone—unless they can prove you're ready for cooking."

             
"I want the addresses of Alderson's widow and of that girl.
Also of the fellow who phoned Ledsom—if they've managed to trace him."

             
"Leave it to me; I'll call you back as soon as I can."

             
Harper pronged the phone, watched its fluorescent dial cloud over and go
blank. What bothered him was the hulking but agile-minded Riley's vague suspicions concerning his aptitude for uncovering evil long hidden from everyone else.

             
The trick was easy enough. He had found out long ago that if he stared too long at a man with a guilty conscience, the recipient of the stare became wary while the guilt radiated from his mind in vivid details. Nine times in the last ten years he had gazed absently at people who had literally thought themselves into jail or the chair.

             
Harper had no difficulty in imagining the reaction should the news ever get out that no individual's mind was truly his own. He would be left without a friend, other than some person of his own peculiar type—if such a one existed.

             
As for the criminal element, they'd see to it that his life wasn't worth a moment's purchase.

             
Possibly he had been followed-up in police thought as a direct result of his foolishness, in passing them news so openly, and so often. He had been impelled to do it mostly because he detested finding himself in the presence of somebody who had got away with
mayhem, and any time might try to get away with it again. It irked his sense of justice.

             
In the future, it might be better to pass the word to the police by some indirect method—such as, for example, the
anonymous telephone call. It was doubtful whether that would serve, however; Harper had become too well-known a local character to leave the police puzzling over the source of such tip-offs.

             
The phone buzzed, and Riley came on. "I've got those two addresses." He read them out while Harper made a note of them,
then
said, "The unknown caller hasn't been traced, but Ledsom now thinks there's nothing to his message. They've found a fellow, roughly corresponding to your description, who gave Alderson some lip in the midmo
rn
ing. There were several witnesses and, in all probability the caller was one of those."

             
"What was the squabbler doing at 4:00 p.m.?"

             
"He's in the clear; he was miles away and can prove it."

             
"H'm! All right, I'll go take a look around and hope my luck holds out."

             
"
I
s
it luck?" asked Riley pointedly.

             
."Bad
luck, to my way of thinking," said Harper. "If you had fathered ten sets of twins, you'd appreciate without being told that some men can be afflicted."

             
"More likely I'd appreciate that some guys know how," Riley retorted. "
And that's the trouble with you—so go
to it
!"

             
He faded off the screen. Harper sighed for the third time, tucked the slip of paper with its addresses into a vest pocket, spoke to Moira.

             
"I'll phone each day to see what's doing. If you can't handle
something urgent and important, you'll have to nurse it until
I ring through."

             
"Yes, Mr. Harper."

             
"And if anyone turns up to pinch me, tell them they're too late—I'm on the lam.
"

             
"
Oh, Mr. Harper."

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