"Kuttner, Henry - Private Eye UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

HENRY KUTTNER

Private Eye
Numerous writers have attempted to combine the mysteiy story with science fiction, and although there have been some successes, there are also problems. The kind of future scientific breakthroughs commonplace in SF should make the apprehension of criminals much easier than it is today. it is not surprising, then, that some of the finest fusions of science fiction and the mystery focus not on the capture of the offender, but rather on the way in which the criminal committed the crime under conditions in which escape from detection is almost impossible. “Private Eye” is a superb example.









The forensic sociologist looked closely at the image on the wall screen. Two figures were frozen there, one in the act of stabbing the other through the heart with an antique letter cutter once used at Johns Hopkins for surgery. That was before the ultramicrotome, of course.
“As tricky a case as I’ve ever seen,” the sociologist remarked. “If we can make a homicide charge stick on Sam Clay, I’ll be a little surprised.”
The tracer engineer twirled a dial and watched the figures on the screen repeat their actions. One—Sam Clay—snatched the letter cutter from a desk and plunged it into the other man’s heart. The victim fell down dead. Clay started back in apparent horror. Then he dropped to his knees beside the twitching body and said wildly that he didn’t mean it. The body drummed its heels upon the rug and was still.
“That last touch was nice,” the engineer said.
“Well, I’ve got to make the preliminary survey,” the sociologist sighed, settling in his dictachair and placing his fingers on the keyboard. “I doubt if I’ll find any evidence. However, the analysis can come later. Where’s Clay now?”
“His mouthpiece put in a habeas mens.”
“I didn’t think we’d be able to hold him. But it was worth trying. Imagine, just one shot of scop and he’d have told the truth. Ah, well. We’ll do it the hard way, as usual. Start the tracer, will you? It won’t make sense till we run it chronologically, but one must start somewhere. Good old Blackstone,” the sociologist said, as on the screen, Clay stood up, watching the corpse revive and arise, and then pulled the miraculously clean paper cutter out of its heart, all in reverse.
“Good old Blackstone,” he repeated. “On the other hand, sometimes I wish I’d lived in Jeifreys’s time. In those days, homicide was homicide.”

Telepathy never came to much. Perhaps the deve’oping faculty went underground in response to a familiar natural law after the new science appeared
—omniscience. It wasn’t really that, of course. It was a device for looking into the past. And it was limited to a fifty-year span; no chance of seeing the arrows at Agincourt or the homunculi of Bacon. It was sensitive enough to pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter, descramble and screen them and reproduce the image of what had happened. After all, a man’s shadow can be photographed on concrete if he’s unlucky enough to be caught in an atomic blast. Which is something. The shadow’s about all there is left.
However, opening the past like a book didn’t solve all problems. It took generations for the maze of complexities to iron itself out, though fiially a tentative check and balance was reached. The right to kill has been sturdily defended by mankind since Cain rose up against Abel. A good many idealists quoted, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” But that didn’t stop the lobbyists and the pressure groups. Magna Carta was quoted in reply. The right to privacy was defended desperately:
And the curious upshot of this imbalance came when the act of homicide was declared nonpunishable unless intent and forethought could be proved. Of course, it was considered at least naughty to fly into a rage and murder someone on impulse, and there was a nominal punishment—imprisonment, for example—but in practice this never worked because so many defenses were possible. Temporary insanity. Undue provocation. Self-defense. Manslaughter, second-degree homicide, third degree, fourth degree—it went on like that. It was up to the state to prove that the killer had planned his killing in advance; only then would a jury convict. And the jury, of course, had to waive immunity and take a scop test, to prove the box hadn’t been packed. But no defendant ever waived immunity.
A man’s home wasn’t his castle—not with the Eye able to enter it at will and scan his past. The device couldn’t interpret, and it couldn’t read his mind;
it could only see and listen. Consequently the sole remaining fortress of privacy was the human mind. And that was defended to the last ditch. No truth serum, no hypnoanalysis, no third degree, no leading questions.
If, by viewing the prisoner’s past actions, the prosecution could prove forethought and intent, okay.
Otherwise, Sam Clay would go scot-free. Superficially, it appeared as though Andrew Vanderman had, during a quarrel, struck Clay across the face with a stingaree whip. Anyone who has been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war can understand that, at this point, Clay could plead temporary insanity and selfdefense, as well as undue provocation and possible justification. Only the curious cult of the Alaskan Flagellantes, who make the stingaree whips for their ceremonials, know how to endure the pain. The Flagellantes even like it; the pre-ritual drug they swallow transmutes pain into pleasure. Not having swallowed this drug, Sam Clay very naturally took steps to protect himself— irrational steps, perhaps, but quite logical and defensible ones.
Nobody but Clay knew that he had intended to kill Vanderman all along. That was the trouble. Clay couldn’t understand why he felt so let down.

The screen flickered. It went dark. The engineer chuckled.
“My, my. Locked up in a dark closet at the age of four. What one of those old-time psychiatrists would have made of that. Or do I mean obimen? Shamans? I forget. They interpreted dreams, anyway.”
“You’re confused. It . .
“Astrologers! No, it wasn’t either. The ones I mean went in for symbolism. They used to spin prayer wheels and say ‘A rose is a rose is a rose,’ didn’t they? To free the unconscious mind?”
“You’ve got the typical layman’s attitude toward antique psychiatric treatments.”
“Well, maybe they had something, at that. Look at quinine and digitalis. The United Amazon natives used those long before science discovered them. But why use eye of newt and toe of frog? To impress the patient?”
“No, to convince themselves,” the sociologist said. “In those days the study of mental aberrations drew potential psychotics, so naturally there was unnecessary mumbo jumbo. Those medicos were trying to fix their own mental imbalance while they treated their patients. But it’s a science today, not a religion. We’ve found out how to allow for individual psychotic deviation in the psychiatrist himself, so we’ve got a better chance of finding true north. However, let’s get on with this. Try ultraviolet. Oh, never mind. Somebody’s letting him out of that closet. The devil with it. I think we’ve cut back far enough. Even if he was frightened by a thunderstorm at the age of three
months, that can be filed under Gestalt and ignored. Let’s run through this chronologically. Give it the screening for. . . let’s see. Incidents involving these persons: Vanderman, Mrs. Vanderman, Josephine Wells—and these places:
the office, Vanderman’s apartment, Clay’s place . .
“Got it.”
“Later we can recheck for complicating factors. Right now we’ll run the superficial survey. Verdict first, evidence later,” he added, with a grin. “All we need is a motive
“What about this?”

A girl was talking to Sam Clay. The background was an apartment, grade
B-2.
“I’m sorry, Sam. It’s just that ... well, these things happen.”
“Yeah. Vanderman’s got something I haven’t got, apparently.”
“I’m in love with him.”