“No problem, lad, no problem at all. If you saw no one, that’s it.” He laid his hand briefly on the boy’s shoulder. “Tell you what, son. I’ll leave it today; I can see you’re a bit upset. You’re not used to the police, I can see that. I’ll give you a call around the same time tomorrow. Time to settle down, eh? And, maybe you’ll remember something tomorrow.”
The local police always favored the same bar, The Grapevine, and Hoathe still favored it even after retirement. He met old colleagues there and it always relaxed his mind to talk ‘shop’.
It was not quite coincidence that he choose Ransom’s table. He said: “What’ll you have? You look as if you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
“I’ll have my usual, thanks. And, yes, I have not only a lot on my mind but too much on my plate as well. First that hold up in Welsh Drive, a near fatal domestic out at Potter’s Field, but I’ve been handed that damn Beal kid as well.”
“Having trouble there?”
“You could say that — the little bastard has done a runner. I gave him a break as he was obviously nervous, said I would call next day, which I did, but he’d gone. His father said he’d done it properly, taken quite a bit of stuff with him. He added, as I left, “If you can’t find the little swine, expect no tears from me.”
Ransom sighed. “It means, of course, I’ll have to search his room for leads.”
Hoathe saw his chance. “You could delegate, a retired officer in good health, say with the permission of an area officer etc, etc. Hell, it’s well within the non-hazardous section.”
“They’d pay peanuts for that, a day’s work would hardly buy a beer.”
“True, but I get hellish bored, y’know—”
Two days later he dropped some written pages on Quentin’s front room table.
“What’s this lot?”
“The kid kept a diary in an old exercise book, found it hidden in his bedroom. I’d like you to look it through for me, I’ve quite a few facts, to bring together myself.”
Quentin looked again at the pages, noted that they were a copy and started to read.
An hour later Hoathe rejoined him. “You’ve read it through?”
“Three times, the boy was not quite right in his head, was he? I mean, it’s all sheer fantasy, it couldn’t happen.”
“Mind if I just follow through, old chum? I happen to have quite a few facts which are unknown to you. For instance, Ransom was dead sure that the boy knew a damn sight more than he was saying and that was the reason he ran away.”
“Right, old friend, we’ll play this any way you want, but I still think it comes from a lad with a disturbed mind.”
Hoathe shrugged. “I wish it was that simple. I could dismiss it but the facts won’t let me. As a starter, does he describe the alien?”
“Well, not in detail, no. He says she was a sort of shining, silver-white with huge golden eyes.”
“Does he refer, or imply in any way at all, that he thought she was an alien?”
Quentin frowned. “I see what you’re driving at and you’re quite right. He thought she came from India and, no, he makes no mental connection with the events he recounts and her.”
Hoathe nodded quickly. “Fine, now you keep giving an outline and I’ll fill in the facts when appropriate.”
“Right, well, the next incident he mentions concerns that bully boy, Wayne. You remember that he was attacked by and brought down by a snake. You know, and I know, that there are no snakes of any size in this part of the country. We checked and nothing had escaped from anywhere. The point is that the dead sapling, which he was using and felt had been snatched from his hand, had somehow got there before him. It was lying about two metres away. Wayne and young Beal recognized it instantly. Only later did he begin to draw conclusions and—”
Hoathe interrupted him quickly “Got to hold you there to make another point. As stated earlier, young Tommy ran away from home but he was picked up four days later. He’d been hiding out with an ancient aunt a few miles up the coast. He was brought back and put in a cell to be questioned later.”
“A cell, a proper cell, for a kid of twelve!”
“My thoughts exactly, but blame Landring. In any case, if you don’t, a lot of people will. Much to my satisfaction he’ll never talk his way out of this one.”
Hoathe paused and gulped at his beer before dropping his bombshell. “When someone went to let him out, the boy had gone. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know how. That is the real reason I have failed to agree with you on this fantasy angle. The cell door had a manual lock and an electro-magnetic lock which could only be opened by the primary duty officer.”
Quentin pushed the printed pages away from him. “No more for me, please, my theories are giving way to a kind of coldness inside which I don’t care for.”
“A feeling shared! Care to hear my theory?” Hoathe did not wait for an answer. “The alien he met — and there can be no doubt she was exactly that — took pity on him or took a liking to him. She saw that his life was pretty hellish and devised a means to protect him until she could do more.”
“How to protect him?” Quentin was getting out of his depth
“After his meeting with the alien, some inner faculty inside him warned his unconscious mind of approaching trouble. Anything he was touching at the time was given a brief pseudo life in his defense.”
“Oh God, that length of sapling!” Quentin could see it suddenly in his mind, turning suddenly from an object of wood into something lithe and scaled.
“The boy’s defense faculty seemed able to discriminate,” said Hoathe. “Something nasty for something nasty and an unpleasant deterrent for a mild scheme. The boy describes how part of the school wall seemed to come alive beneath his hand. How wasps went sailing over that wall and down onto the little group below.”
“Shut up!” said Quentin hoarsely. “Just shut up.” He felt as if unseen fingers were touching his body and encasing it in ice. He could see it all, the boy, well dressed, clearly of good background, taking a short cut through the complex. Cole, also in the complex, the worse for drink and probably short of money. There was a quick and easy hit, a bloody school kid probably with money.
It seemed to Quentin that the picture became even more real in his mind. Must have been near the West entrance with Cole lurching out from behind that broken wall there.
The little boy, terrified, staggering back, touching one of the pipes by accident, and then—?
In his mind Quentin saw the pipe, ripple, shine, develop jaws and rise in an enormous black loop above Cole—
He forced the picture from his mind. “It’s absurd, wilder that fantasy. We have to assume that whatever it was that took Cole as far as the playing field lost its short life there and became a pipe again.”
“My reactions entirely.” Hoathe might have been reading the other’s thoughts. “There is only one dreadful contradiction. The police surgeon looked over Cole’s body before it went the examiner. He swore to several witnesses, on oath, that some surface areas of the body had been—partly digested!”
THE GUNMAN, by Philip E. High
Needless to say, the formula in any state was illegal.
It had been discovered and stolen by a research chemist working for one of the big combines in the West.
He was well aware that the formula, given to his employers, would bring him little or no reward. Handled illegally and to the right people, however would bring rich rewards.
The formula, in liquid state, could be contained in a capsule no bigger than the normal pill.
Dropped into a glass of water, the capsule would dissolve in eight seconds.