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

“Funny. I thought all along you were in love with me.”
“So did I ... for a while.”
“Well, forget it. No, I’m not angry, Bea. I’ll even wish you luck. But you must have been pretty certain how I’d react to this.”
“I’m sorry
“Come to think of it, I’ve always let you call the shots. Always.”
Secretly—and this the screen could not show—he thought: Let her? I wanted it that way. It was so much easier to leave the decisions up to her. Sure, she’s dominant, but I guess I’m just the opposite. And now it’s happened again.
It always happens. I was loaded with weight-cloths from the start. And I always felt I had to toe the line, or else. Vanderman—that cocky, arrogant air of his. Reminds me of somebody. I was locked up in a dark place; I couldn’t breathe. I forget. What . . . who. . . my father. No, I don’t remember. But my life’s been like that. He always watched me, and I always thought some day I’d do what I wanted—but I never did. Too late now. He’s been dead quite a while.
He was always so sure I’d knuckle under. If I’d only defied him once. . .
Somebody’s always pushing me in and closing the door. So I can’t use my abilities. I can’t prove I’m competent. Prove it to myself, to my father, to Bea, to the whole world. If only I could—I’d like to push Vanderman into a dark place and lock the door. A dark place, like a coffin. It would be satisfying to surprise him that way. It would be fine if I killed Andrew Vanderman.
“Well, that’s the beginning of a motive,” the sociologist said. “Still, lots of people get jilted and don’t turn homicidal. Carry on.”
“In my opinion, Bea attracted him because he wanted to be bossed,” the engineer remarked. “He’d given up.”
“Protective passivity.”
The wire tapes spun through the screening apparatus, A new scene showed on the oblong panel. It was the Paradise Bar.

Anywhere you sat in the Paradise Bar, a competent robot analyzer instantly studied your complexion and facial angles, and switched on lights, in varying tints and intensities that showed you off to best advantage. The joint was popular for business deals. A swindler could look like an honest man there. It was also popular with women and slightly passй teleo talent. Sam Clay looked rather like an ascetic young saint. Andrew Vanderman looked noble, in a grim way, like Richard Coeur-de-Lion offering Saladin his freedom, though he knew it wasn’t really a bright thing to do. Noblesse oblige, his firm jaw seemed to say, as he picked up the silver decanter and poured. In ordinary light, Vanderman looked slightly more like a handsome bulldog. Also, away from the Paradise Bar, he was redder around the chops, a choleric man.
“As to that deal we were discussing,” Clay said, “you can go to .
The censoring juke box blared out a covering bar or two.
Vanderman’s reply was unheard as the music got briefly louder, and the lights shifted rapidly to keep pace with his sudden flush.
“It’s perfectly easy to outwit these censors,” Clay said. “They’re keyed to familiar terms of profane abuse, not to circumlocutions. If I said that the arrangement of your chromosomes would have surprised your father. . . you see?” He was right. The music stayed soft.
Vanderman swallowed nothing. “Take it easy,” he said. “I can see why you’re upset. Let me say first of all . .
“Hijo . .
But the censor was proficient in Spanish dialects. Vanderman was spared hearing another insult.
“. . . that I offered you a job because I think you’re a very capable man. You have potentialities. It’s not a bribe. Our personal affairs should be kept out of this.”
“All the same, Bea was engaged to me.”
“Clay, are you drunk?”
“Yes,” Clay said, and threw his drink into Vanderman’s face. The music began to play Wagner very, very loudly. A few minutes later, when the waiters
interfered, Clay was supine and bloody, with a mashed nose and a bruised cheek. Vanderman had skinned his knuckles.

“That’s a motive,” the engineer said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? But why did Clay wait a year and a half? And remember what happened later. I wonder if the murder itself was just a symbol? If Vanderman represented, say, what Clay considered the tyrannical and oppressive force of society in general—synthesized in the representative image
oh, nonsense. Obviously Clay was trying to prove something to himself, though. Suppose you cut forward now. I want to see this in normal chronology, not backward. What’s the next selection?”
“Very suspicious. Clay got his nose fixed up and then went to a murder trial.”

He thought: I can’t breathe. Too crowded in here. Shut up in a box, a closet, a coffin, ignored by the spectators and the vested authority on the bench. What would I do if I were in the dock, like that chap? Suppose they convicted? That would spoil it all. Another dark place—if I’d inherited the right genes, I’d have been strong enough to beat up Vanderman. But I’ve been pushed around too long.
I keep remembering that song.

Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it,
So I shot him in the rump with the handle of a skillet.

A deadly weapon that’s in normal usage wouldn’t appear dangerous. But if it could be used homicidally—no, the Eye could check on that. All you can conceal these days is motive. But couldn’t the trick be reversed? Suppose I got Vanderman to attack me with what he thought was the handle of a skillet, but which I knew was a deadly weapon

The trial Sam Clay was watching was fairly routine. One man had killed another. Counsel for the defense contended that the homicide had been a matter of impulse and that, as a matter of fact, only assault and battery plus culpable negligence, at worst, could be proved, and the latter was canceled by an act of God. The fact that the defendant inherited the decedent’s fortune, in Martial oil, made no difference. Temporary insanity was the plea.
The prosecuting attorney showed films of what had happened before the fact. True, the victim hadn’t been killed by the blow, merely stunned. But the affair had occurred on an isolated beach, and when the tide came in . .
Act of God, the defense repeated hastily.
The screen showed the defendant some days before his crime, looking up the tide table in a news tape. He also, it appeared, visited the site and asked a passing stranger if the beach was often crowded. “Nope,” the stranger said, “it ain’t crowded after sundown. Gits too cold. Won’t do you no good, though. Too cold to swim then.”
One side matched Actus non tacit reum, nisi mens sit rea—”The act does not make a man guilty, unless the mind be also guilty”—against Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta—”By the outward acts we are to judge of the inward thoughts.” Latin legal basics were still valid, up to a point. A man’s past remained sacrosanct, provided—and here was the joker—that he possessed the right of citizenship. And anyone accused of a capital crime was automatically suspended from citizenship until his innocence had been established.
Also, no past-tracing evidence could be introduced into a trial unless it could be proved that it had direct connection with the crime. The average citizen did have a right of privacy against tracing. Only if accused of a serious crime was that forfeit, and even then evidence uncovered could be used only in correlation with the immediate charge. There were various loopholes, of course, but theoretically a man was safe from espionage as long as he stayed within the law.
Now a defendant stood in the dock, his past opened. The prosecution showed recordings of a ginger blonde blackmailing him, and that clinched the motive and the verdict—guilty. The condemned man was led off in tears. Clay got up and walked out of the court. From his appearance, he seemed to be thinking.

He was. He had decided that there was only one possible way in which he could kill Vanderman and get away with it. He couldn’t conceal the deed itself or the actions leading up to it, or any written or spoken word. All he could hide were his own thoughts. And, without otherwise betraying himself, he’d have to kill Vanderman so that his act would appear justified, which meant covering his tracks for yesterday as well as for tomorrow and tomorrow.