FullReads

“Come in the other office. Chairs there, and we can sit down. What’s the trouble? A complaint of some kind?”

* * * * *

He ushered Fitzgerald in before him. The detective found himself scowling. He’d have felt better with a different kind of man to ask questions of. This Brink looked untroubled and confident. It didn’t fit the situation. The inner office looked equally matter-of-fact. No…. There was the shelf with the usual books of reference on textiles and such items as a cleaner-and-dyer might need to have on hand. But there were some others: “Basic Principles of Psi”, “Modern Psychokinetic Theories.” There was a small, mostly-plastic machine on another shelf. It had no obvious function. It looked as if it had some unguessable but rarely-used purpose. There was dust on it.

“What’s the complaint?” repeated Brink. “Hm-m-m. A cigar?”

“No,” said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald. “I’ll light my pipe.” He did, extracting tobacco and a pipe that was by no means a meerschaum from his pocket. He puffed and said: “A guy who works for you caught himself on fire this mornin’. It happened on a bus. Very peculiar. The guy’s name was Jacaro.”

Brink did not look surprised.

“What happened?”

“It’s kind of a strange thing,” said Fitzgerald. “Accordin’ to the report he’s ridin’ this bus, readin’ his paper, when all of a sudden he yells an’ jumps up. His pants are on fire. He gets ’em off fast and chucks them out the bus window. He’s blistered some but not serious, and he clams up–but good–when the ambulance doc puts salve on him. He won’t say a word about what happened or how. They hadda call a ambulance because he couldn’t go huntin’ a doc with no pants on.”

“But he’s not burned badly?” asked Brink.

“No. Blisters, yes. Scared, yes. And mad as hell. But he’ll get along. It’s too bad. We’ve pinched him three times on suspicion of arson, but we couldn’t make it stick. Something ought to happen to make that guy stop playin’ with matches–only this wasn’t matches.”

“I’m glad he’s only a little bit scorched,” said Brink. He considered. “Did he say anything about his eyelids twitching this morning? I don’t suppose he would.”

The detective stared.

“He didn’t. Say aren’t you curious about how he came to catch on fire? Or what his pants smelled of that burned so urgent? Or where he expected burnin’ to start instead of his pants?”

Brink thought it over. Then he shook his head.

“No. I don’t think I’m curious.”

The detective looked at him long and hard.

“O.K.,” he said dourly. “But there’s something else. Day before yesterday there was a car accident opposite here. Remember?”

“I wasn’t here at the time,” said Brink.

“There’s a car rolling along the street outside,” said the detective. “There’s some hoods in it–guys who do dirty work for Big Jake Connors. I can’t prove a thing, but it looks like they had ideas about this place. About thirty yards up the street a sawed-off shotgun goes off. Very peculiar. It sends a load of buckshot through a side window of your place.”

Brink said with an air of surprise: “Oh! That must have been what broke the window!”

“Yeah,” said Fitzgerald. “But the interesting thing is that the flash of the shotgun burned all the hair off the head of the guy that was doin’ the drivin’. It didn’t scratch him, just scorched his hair off. It scared him silly.”

Brink grinned faintly, but he said pleasantly: “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”

“He jams down the accelerator and rams a telephone pole,” pursued Fitzgerald. “There’s four hoods in that car, remember, and every one of ’em’s got a police record you could paper a house with. And they’ve got four sawed-off shotguns and a tommy-gun in the back seat. They’re all laid out cold when the cops arrive.”