The H. Beam Piper Megapack Read online

  But, whatever this business may portend, I do not like it. I want to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible, and I will thank you, my dear sir, and your government, for any assistance you may find possible.

  I have the honor, sir, to be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

  Berchtenwald

  * * * *

  FROM BARON VON KRUTZ, TO THE COUNT VON BERCHTENWALD. MOST URGENT; MOST IMPORTANT.

  TO BE DELIVERED IMMEDIATELY AND IN PERSON REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES.

  28 November, 1809

  Count von Berchtenwald:

  Within the past half hour, that is, at about eleven o’clock tonight, the man calling himself Benjamin Bathurst was shot and killed by a sentry at the Ministry of Police, while attempting to escape from custody.

  A sentry on duty in the rear courtyard of the Ministry observed a man attempting to leave the building in a suspicious and furtive manner. This sentry, who was under the strictest orders to allow no one to enter or leave without written authorization, challenged him; when he attempted to run, the sentry fired his musket at him, bringing him down. At the shot, the Sergeant of the Guard rushed into the courtyard with his detail, and the man whom the sentry had shot was found to be the Englishman, Benjamin Bathurst. He had been hit in the chest with an ounce ball, and died before the doctor could arrive, and without recovering consciousness.

  An investigation revealed that the prisoner, who was confined on the third floor of the building, had fashioned a rope from his bedding, his bed cord, and the leather strap of his bell pull. This rope was only long enough to reach to the window of the office on the second floor, directly below, but he managed to enter this by kicking the glass out of the window. I am trying to find out how he could do this without being heard. I can assure you that somebody is going to smart for this night’s work. As for the sentry, he acted within his orders; I have commended him for doing his duty, and for good shooting, and I assume full responsibility for the death of the prisoner at his hands.

  I have no idea why the self-so-called Benjamin Bathurst, who, until now, was well-behaved and seemed to take his confinement philosophically, should suddenly make this rash and fatal attempt, unless it was because of those infernal dunderheads of madhouse doctors who have been bothering him. Only this afternoon they deliberately handed him a bundle of newspapers—Prussian, Austrian, French, and English—all dated within the last month. They wanted they said, to see how he would react. Well, God pardon them, they’ve found out!

  What do you think should be done about giving the body burial?

  Krutz

  * * * *

  (From the British Minister, to the Count von Berchtenwald.)

  December 20th, 1809

  My dear Count von Berchtenwald:

  Reply from London to my letter of the 28th, which accompanied the dispatch case and the other papers, has finally come to hand. The papers which you wanted returned—the copies of the statements taken at Perleburg, the letter to the Baron von Krutz from the police captain, Hartenstein, and the personal letter of Krutz’s nephew, Lieutenant von Tarlburg, and the letter of safe-conduct found in the dispatch case—accompany herewith. I don’t know what the people at Whitehall did with the other papers; tossed them into the nearest fire, for my guess. Were I in your place, that’s where the papers I am returning would go.

  I have heard nothing, yet, from my dispatch of the 29th concerning the death of the man who called himself Benjamin Bathurst, but I doubt very much if any official notice will ever be taken of it. Your government had a perfect right to detain the fellow, and, that being the case, he attempted to escape at his own risk. After all, sentries are not required to carry loaded muskets in order to discourage them from putting their hands in their pockets.

  To hazard a purely unofficial opinion, I should not imagine that London is very much dissatisfied with this dénouement. His Majesty’s government are a hard-headed and matter-of-fact set of gentry who do not relish mysteries, least of all mysteries whose solution may be more disturbing than the original problem.

  This is entirely confidential, but those papers which were in that dispatch case kicked up the devil’s own row in London, with half the government bigwigs protesting their innocence to high Heaven, and the rest accusing one another of complicity in the hoax. If that was somebody’s intention, it was literally a howling success. For a while, it was even feared that there would be questions in Parliament, but eventually, the whole vexatious business was hushed.

  You may tell Count Tarlburg’s son that his little friend is a most talented young lady; her sketch was highly commended by no less an authority than Sir Thomas Lawrence, and here comes the most bedeviling part of a thoroughly bedeviled business. The picture was instantly recognized. It is a very fair likeness of Benjamin Bathurst, or, I should say, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, who is King’s lieutenant governor for the Crown Colony of Georgia. As Sir Thomas Lawrence did his portrait a few years back, he is in an excellent position to criticize the work of Lieutenant von Tarlburg’s young lady. However, Sir Benjamin Bathurst was known to have been in Savannah, attending to the duties of his office, and in the public eye, all the while that his double was in Prussia. Sir Benjamin does not have a twin brother. It has been suggested that this fellow might be a half-brother, but, as far as I know, there is no justification for this theory.

  The General Bonaparte, alias the Emperor Napoleon, who is given so much mention in the dispatches, seems also to have a counterpart in actual life; there is, in the French army, a Colonel of Artillery by that name, a Corsican who Gallicized his original name of Napolione Buonaparte. He is a most brilliant military theoretician; I am sure some of your own officers, like General Scharnhorst, could tell you about him. His loyalty to the French monarchy has never been questioned.

  This same correspondence to fact seems to crop up everywhere in that amazing collection of pseudo-dispatches and pseudo-State papers. The United States of America, you will recall, was the style by which the rebellious colonies referred to themselves, in the Declaration of Philadelphia. The James Madison who is mentioned as the current President of the United States is now living, in exile, in Switzerland. His alleged predecessor in office, Thomas Jefferson, was the author of the rebel Declaration; after the defeat of the rebels, he escaped to Havana, and died, several years ago, in the Principality of Lichtenstein.

  I was quite amused to find our old friend Cardinal Talleyrand—without the ecclesiastical title—cast in the role of chief adviser to the usurper, Bonaparte. His Eminence, I have always thought, is the sort of fellow who would land on his feet on top of any heap, and who would as little scruple to be Prime Minister to His Satanic Majesty as to His Most Christian Majesty.

  I was baffled, however, by one name, frequently mentioned in those fantastic papers. This was the English general, Wellington. I haven’t the least idea who this person might be.

  I have the honor, your excellency, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

  Sir Arthur Wellesley

  POLICE OPERATION (1948)

  “…there may be something in the nature of an occult police force, which operates to divert human suspicions, and to supply explanations that are good enough for whatever, somewhat in the nature of minds, human beings have—or that, if there be occult mischief makers and occult ravagers, they may be of a world also of other beings that are acting to check them, and to explain them, not benevolently, but to divert suspicion from themselves, because they, too, may be exploiting life upon this earth, but in ways more subtle, and in orderly, or organised, fashion.”

  Charles Fort: “LO!”

  * * * *

  John Strawmyer stood, an irate figure in faded overalls and sweat-whitened black shirt, apart from the others, his back to the weathered farm-buildings and the line of yellowing woods and the cirrus-streaked blue October sky. He thrust out a work-gnarled hand accusingly.

  “That there heifer was worth two hund’rd, two hund’rd an’ fifty dollars!” he clamored. �
�An’ that there dog was just like one uh the fam’ly; An’ now look at’m! I don’t like t’ use profane language, but you’ns gotta do some’n about this!”

  Steve Parker, the district game protector, aimed his Leica at the carcass of the dog and snapped the shutter. “We’re doing something about it,” he said shortly. Then he stepped ten feet to the left and edged around the mangled heifer, choosing an angle for his camera shot.

  The two men in the gray whipcords of the State police, seeing that Parker was through with the dog, moved in and squatted to examine it. The one with the triple chevrons on his sleeves took it by both forefeet and flipped it over on its back. It had been a big brute, of nondescript breed, with a rough black-and-brown coat. Something had clawed it deeply about the head, its throat was slashed transversely several times, and it had been disemboweled by a single slash that had opened its belly from breastbone to tail. They looked at it carefully, and then went to stand beside Parker while he photographed the dead heifer. Like the dog, it had been talon-raked on either side of the head, and its throat had been slashed deeply several times. In addition, flesh had been torn from one flank in great strips.

  “I can’t kill a bear outa season, no!” Strawmyer continued his plaint. “But a bear comes an’ kills my stock an’ my dog; that there’s all right! That’s the kinda deal a farmer always gits, in this state! I don’t like t’ use profane language—”

  “Then don’t!” Parker barked at him, impatiently. “Don’t use any kind of language. Just put in your claim and shut up!” He turned to the men in whipcords and gray Stetsons. “You boys seen everything?” he asked. “Then let’s go.”

  * * * *

  They walked briskly back to the barnyard, Strawmyer following them, still vociferating about the wrongs of the farmer at the hands of a cynical and corrupt State government. They climbed into the State police car, the sergeant and the private in front and Parker into the rear, laying his camera on the seat beside a Winchester carbine.

  “Weren’t you pretty short with that fellow, back there, Steve?” the sergeant asked as the private started the car.

  “Not too short. ‘I don’t like t’ use profane language’,” Parker mimicked the bereaved heifer owner, and then he went on to specify: “I’m morally certain that he’s shot at least four illegal deer in the last year. When and if I ever get anything on him, he’s going to be sorrier for himself then he is now.”

  “They’re the characters that always beef their heads off,” the sergeant agreed. “You think that whatever did this was the same as the others?”

  “Yes. The dog must have jumped it while it was eating at the heifer. Same superficial scratches about the head, and deep cuts on the throat or belly. The bigger the animal, the farther front the big slashes occur. Evidently something grabs them by the head with front claws, and slashes with hind claws; that’s why I think it’s a bobcat.”

  “You know,” the private said, “I saw a lot of wounds like that during the war. My outfit landed on Mindanao, where the guerrillas had been active. And this looks like bolo-work to me.”

  “The surplus-stores are full of machetes and jungle knives,” the sergeant considered. “I think I’ll call up Doc Winters, at the County Hospital, and see if all his squirrel-fodder is present and accounted for.”

  “But most of the livestock was eaten at, like the heifer,” Parker objected.

  “By definition, nuts have abnormal tastes,” the sergeant replied. “Or the eating might have been done later, by foxes.”

  “I hope so; that’d let me out,” Parker said.

  “Ha, listen to the man!” the private howled, stopping the car at the end of the lane. “He thinks a nut with a machete and a Tarzan complex is just good clean fun. Which way, now?”

  “Well, let’s see.” The sergeant had unfolded a quadrangle sheet; the game protector leaned forward to look at it over his shoulder. The sergeant ran a finger from one to another of a series of variously colored crosses which had been marked on the map.

  “Monday night, over here on Copperhead Mountain, that cow was killed,” he said. “The next night, about ten o’clock, that sheepflock was hit, on this side of Copperhead, right about here. Early Wednesday night, that mule got slashed up in the woods back of the Weston farm. It was only slightly injured; must have kicked the whatzit and got away, but the whatzit wasn’t too badly hurt, because a few hours later, it hit that turkey-flock on the Rhymer farm. And last night, it did that.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Strawmyer farm. “See, following the ridges, working toward the southeast, avoiding open ground, killing only at night. Could be a bobcat, at that.”

  “Or Jink’s maniac with the machete,” Parker agreed. “Let’s go up by Hindman’s gap and see if we can see anything.”

  * * * *

  They turned, after a while, into a rutted dirt road, which deteriorated steadily into a grass-grown track through the woods. Finally, they stopped, and the private backed off the road. The three men got out; Parker with his Winchester, the sergeant checking the drum of a Thompson, and the private pumping a buckshot shell into the chamber of a riot gun. For half an hour, they followed the brush-grown trail beside the little stream; once, they passed a dark gray commercial-model jeep, backed to one side. Then they came to the head of the gap.

  A man, wearing a tweed coat, tan field boots, and khaki breeches, was sitting on a log, smoking a pipe; he had a bolt-action rifle across his knees, and a pair of binoculars hung from his neck. He seemed about thirty years old, and any bobby-soxer’s idol of the screen would have envied him the handsome regularity of his strangely immobile features. As Parker and the two State policemen approached, he rose, slinging his rifle, and greeted them.

  “Sergeant Haines, isn’t it?” he asked pleasantly. “Are you gentlemen out hunting the critter, too?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Lee. I thought that was your jeep I saw, down the road a little.” The sergeant turned to the others. “Mr. Richard Lee; staying at the old Kinchwalter place, the other side of Rutter’s Fort. This is Mr. Parker, the district game protector. And Private Zinkowski.” He glanced at the rifle. “Are you out hunting for it, too?”

  “Yes, I thought I might find something, up here. What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” the sergeant admitted. “It could be a bobcat. Canada lynx. Jink, here, has a theory that it’s some escapee from the paper-doll factory, with a machete. Me, I hope not, but I’m not ignoring the possibility.”

  The man with the matinee-idol’s face nodded. “It could be a lynx. I understand they’re not unknown, in this section.”

  “We paid bounties on two in this county, in the last year,” Parker said. “Odd rifle you have, there; mind if I look at it?”

  “Not at all.” The man who had been introduced as Richard Lee unslung and handed it over. “The chamber’s loaded,” he cautioned.

  “I never saw one like this,” Parker said. “Foreign?”

  “I think so. I don’t know anything about it; it belongs to a friend of mine, who loaned it to me. I think the action’s German, or Czech; the rest of it’s a custom job, by some West Coast gunmaker. It’s chambered for some ultra-velocity wildcat load.”

  The rifle passed from hand to hand; the three men examined it in turn, commenting admiringly.

  “You find anything, Mr. Lee?” the sergeant asked, handing it back.

  “Not a trace.” The man called Lee slung the rifle and began to dump the ashes from his pipe. “I was along the top of this ridge for about a mile on either side of the gap, and down the other side as far as Hindman’s Run; I didn’t find any tracks, or any indication of where it had made a kill.”

  The game protector nodded, turning to Sergeant Haines.

  “There’s no use us going any farther,” he said. “Ten to one, it followed that line of woods back of Strawmyer’s, and crossed over to the other ridge. I think our best bet would be the hollow at the head of Lowrie’s Run. What do you think?”

&nb
sp; The sergeant agreed. The man called Richard Lee began to refill his pipe methodically.

  “I think I shall stay here for a while, but I believe you’re right. Lowrie’s Run, or across Lowrie’s Gap into Coon Valley,” he said.

  * * * *

  After Parker and the State policemen had gone, the man whom they had addressed as Richard Lee returned to his log and sat smoking, his rifle across his knees. From time to time, he glanced at his wrist watch and raised his head to listen. At length, faint in the distance, he heard the sound of a motor starting.

  Instantly, he was on his feet. From the end of the hollow log on which he had been sitting, he produced a canvas musette-bag. Walking briskly to a patch of damp ground beside the little stream, he leaned the rifle against a tree and opened the bag. First, he took out a pair of gloves of some greenish, rubberlike substance, and put them on, drawing the long gauntlets up over his coat sleeves. Then he produced a bottle and unscrewed the cap. Being careful to avoid splashing his clothes, he went about, pouring a clear liquid upon the ground in several places. Where he poured, white vapors rose, and twigs and grass grumbled into brownish dust. After he had replaced the cap and returned the bottle to the bag, he waited for a few minutes, then took a spatula from the musette and dug where he had poured the fluid, prying loose four black, irregular-shaped lumps of matter, which he carried to the running water and washed carefully, before wrapping them and putting them in the bag, along with the gloves. Then he slung bag and rifle and started down the trail to where he had parked the jeep.

  Half an hour later, after driving through the little farming village of Rutter’s Fort, he pulled into the barnyard of a rundown farm and backed through the open doors of the barn. He closed the double doors behind him, and barred them from within. Then he went to the rear wall of the barn, which was much closer the front than the outside dimensions of the barn would have indicated.

  He took from his pocket a black object like an automatic pencil. Hunting over the rough plank wall, he found a small hole and inserted the pointed end of the pseudo-pencil, pressing on the other end. For an instant, nothing happened. Then a ten-foot-square section of the wall receded two feet and slid noiselessly to one side. The section which had slid inward had been built of three-inch steel, masked by a thin covering of boards; the wall around it was two-foot concrete, similarly camouflaged. He stepped quickly inside.