"Going about my business."
"Entrance is prohibited. There was a policeman in front. The door was
locked."
"There's a back door."
"That was locked too."
"Locks are silly things. Any fool should be able to handle such feeble
devices."
Donovan was snarling. "Look, brother. You're talking yourself right
into trouble. Now tell us what you're doing here and tell it quick."
"Reading the gas meter."
"Why?"
"Why would anyone read a gas meter? I work for the gas company. This
place is on my route."
"I think you're lying."
"It will be easy enough to find out."
"We'll find out at headquarters."
"You're taking me in?"
"What do you think?"
Dalrymple certainly wasn't afraid of cops. He shook his head in disgust
and said, "This is certainly a stupid world you live in. A world of
idiots. Really it is."
Normally I'm pretty easy going but this punk with his talent for
rubbing people the wrong way, just plain got me. "If you're so damn
smart why are you reading meters for the gas company?"
He grinned, and his grin said he was happy at getting a rise out of me.
"I just arrived recently. The job will do until I get around to what
I'm planning."
* * * * *
Donovan vented his hostility by hauling the guy out to the car.
Dalrymple made no resistance but Donovan managed to get mildly rough
regardless. This also seemed to make the little intruder happy. As
though he took the roughness as a sign he'd got under Donovan's skin
too. Which he had.
He threw a few insults at us while we rode to headquarters but we held
in, knowing if we gave ourselves an inch we'd take a mile and slug him
and have it over with.
In the interrogation room we went at him with all the fixings. A strong
light in his eyes--cigarette smoke in his face.
Donovan, with a snarl on his puss said, "All right, buster. Let's cut
out the jokes. What were you doing in that tavern?"
"Reading the gas meter."
"I said cut out the jokes."
"You've got my identification. What makes you think I had any other
reason for going there?"
"I'll ask the questions. Maybe you don't realize what a spot you're in."
"This is idiotic. This whole procedure emanates from your personal
dislike of me. All you have to do is call the company."
"What do you know about the Davis killing?"
"Only what I heard in the neighborhood. Intriguing little equation,
isn't it?"
I think we'd realized from the beginning that we had nothing on
Dalrymple and that we wouldn't be able to involve him. He'd hit it on
the nose when he said our motivation was personal dislike. Finally I
went out and called the gas company, realizing we'd delayed doing this
because we knew it would lose Dalrymple for us.
When I went back and told Donovan, he still hated to let go. "You
know," he told the sneering little meter-reader, "we can still throw
you in the can."
"What for?"
"Trespassing, Breaking and entering."
"Oh, yes. But you won't."
"And why not?"
"Because it would be too small a triumph and you know you would be
acting from spite. It would diminish your stature in your own eyes."
Donovan was trying to swallow his helpless wrath when I remembered
something Dalrymple had said. "Listen, punk. Exactly where did you come
from?"
"That's right. You made some funny cracks. You said, to quote, 'This
is certainly a stupid world you live in. A world of idiots.' You also
said, 'I've just arrived recently.' Now it occurs to me--"
"That I might have come from a place beyond this planet you call Earth?"
"No. That you're a crackpot--a psycho--and maybe we'd _better_ hold
you."
He sneered at me and ticked off his replies on his fingers. "I did come
from a world far away from yours. I'm not a crackpot--not a psycho. And
you will not hold me."
I looked at Donovan. Donovan looked at me. His voice gentled into a
tone of soft contempt.
"Just where _do_ you come from, punk?"
"From Arva Majoris and don't bother looking it up. It's a planet in a
galaxy beyond the conception of your most brilliant minds. And I use
the term _brilliant_ very loosely."
"And how did you get here?"
"You couldn't possibly understand if I told you. Your elemental mind
simply couldn't grasp the mathematical accident that brought me here;
nor the ten-million-to-one chance of it ever happening again."
Donovan grinned in anticipation. "And you actually think we aren't
going to turn you over to Psycho?"
"Of course you're not."
"And for what reason will we refrain from such?"
"Because if you do that, you'll never get your stupid little murder
solved."
I found myself poised and ready to pounce. "Then you _have_ been
holding out."
"If you mean do I know who killed Davis--no. If you mean can I find
out--yes."
"Well, well," Donovan growled. "He's a detective too."
Dalrymple split a sneer between us. "It's nothing but a mathematical
problem. In the world I come from, students corresponding to your
first-graders are started out on far harder equations."
"So you can just take a pencil and figure it out, eh?"
"Certainly."
* * * * *
I've tried to remember since, exactly what my reaction to Dalrymple
was at that time. Hatred transcended any other emotion I may have had.
But there was something else. A feeling of almost personal discomfort
springing from the certainty that he wanted us to hate him, or at least
didn't care whether or not we did. This was a part of my reaction. And
wondering why, also.
There was an element of vague fear, too, and of this I'm sure--a vague
senseless conviction this crackpot could do all he claimed he could.
I remember that when this last came to my conscious mind, I rejected it
with indignation. And I knew Donovan was rejecting something too. He
turned from Dalrymple with a sneer and said, "We haven't got time to
fool with psychos. We've got a murder to solve. Kick this guy out and
let the white coats find him all over again."
I was sneering too. I took out a pencil and threw it at him and said,
"All right, wise guy. There's one. Let's see what you can do."
"Have you got a piece of paper?"
Almost savagely, Donovan ripped a page off the calendar. It was blank
on the back. He threw it on the table and all the time I could see his
eyes. They were asking, _Why in the hell am I doing this?_ and trying
to cover the question by showing contempt.
We glanced swiftly at each other and there was guilt in both our
faces; like two realists meeting outside a fortune teller's tent. Then
Dalrymple took over.
"We have certain facts," he began. "A dead man; the person who admits
he went through the physical motions of killing him. We also have the
method of producing death--poison--and the setting of the crime."
"I think we've had enough of this clowning," Donovan said in a husky
voice.
Dalrymple ignored the interruption, not even bothering to sneer at
Donovan. "As every school child on my planet knows, each of these
facts must be given a symbol and must become a part of our exploratory
equation."
I was a little rusty on such things but it sounded to me about the
same way school children on our planet went about solving problems in
algebra. I didn't say anything though.
Dalrymple had the pencil racing over the paper, laying out a series of
weird symbols the like of which I had never seen. They were neither
numbers nor letters; nor the kind of geometric or algebra symbols used
on earth either. Of that I was sure.
The closest I can come is to compare them to Egyptian hieroglyphics and
yet that's far from the mark. But whatever they were, Dalrymple seemed
to know exactly what he was doing.
After a few minutes, he leaned back and said, "There--the exploratory
equation is complete. Now we search it for flaws."
Donovan and I had got interested to the point that hostilities were
temporarily suspended. Donovan asked, "Search what for which flaws."
"You haven't the mental scope to understand even the basics of what
I'm doing, but maybe you can understand this: There is no such thing
as chance in a civilization or a culture which is properly based upon
mathematics. In such a civilization lies and evasions are unheard of
because all action and motivation past, present, or future, can be
evaluated and revealed in complete exactitude."
* * * * *
We were trying to follow along. I said, "We've got things like that.
Robot brains, we call them. They figure out impossible problems."
And it came to me at that moment how we were taking for granted,
through our conversation, our statements, and even our thinking, that
this Dalrymple was exactly what he'd said he was--a man from another
world.
He said, "I know what you refer to, but they are so childishly
conceived as to be almost useless." The old sneer again.