For a moment, Norris thought the old man would attack him. But O’Reilley spat a sudden curse, scurried toward the counter, grabbed a fat book from beneath the cash register, then hurried away toward the stairs at the rear of the shop.
“Hey, pop! Where you going?”
“Get me glasses!”
“You’re wearing your glasses!” Norris started after him. “New ones. Can’t see through them.” O’Reilley bounded up-stairs.
“Leave the book
Norris stopped with his foot on the bottom step. O’Reilley slammed the door at the head of the stairs, locked it behind him. Grumbling suspiciously, the inspector went back to the counter to wait.
Five minutes passed. The door opened. O’Reilley came downstairs, looking less angry but decidedly nervous. He slammed the book on the counter, riffled its pages, found a place, muttered “Here it is, see for yourself,” and held it at a difficult angle.
“Give it here.”
O’Reilley reluctantly released it, began babbling about bureaucracy and tin-horn inspectors who acted like dictators and inspection codes that prescribed and circumscribed and prohibited. Norris ignored him and stared at the duplicate receipt.
“Adelia Schultz… received Chimpanzee-K-99-LJZ-35i on…”
It was the number on the list from Anthropos. It was the number of the animal he wanted for normalcy tests. But it was not the number of Mrs. Schultz’s neutroid, nor was it the number written on Mrs. Schultz’s copy of
O’Reilley was still babbling at him. Norris held the book up to his eye, took aim at the bright doorway across the surface of the page. O’Reilley stopped babbling.
“Rub marks,” the inspector grunted. “Scrape marks on the paper.”
O’Reilley’s breathing sounded asthmatic. Norris lowered the book.
“Nice erasure job—for a carbon copy. Do it while you were upstairs?”
O’Reilley said nothing. Norris took a scrap of paper, folded his handkerchief over the point of his pocketknife blade, used the point to clean out the eraser dust from between the receipts, emptied the dust on the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket.
“Evidence.”
O’Reilley said nothing.
Norris tore out the erased receipt, pocketed it, put on his hat and started for the door.
“See you in court, O’Reilley.”
“
He turned. “Okay—I’m waiting.”
“Let’s go sit down first,” the deflated oldster muttered weakly.
“Sure.”
They walked up the flight of stairs and entered a dingy parlor. He glanced around, sniffed at the smell of cabbage boiling and sweaty bedclothing. An orange-haired neutroid lay sleeping on a dirty rug in the corner. Norris stared down at it curiously. O’Reilley made a whining sound and slumped into a chair, his breath coming in little whiffs that suggested inward sobbing. Norris gazed at him expressionlessly for a moment, then went to kneel beside the newt.
“K-99-LJZ-35i,” he read aloud, peering at the sole of the tattooed foot. The newt stirred in its sleep at the sound of a strange voice. When Norris looked at O’Reilley again, the old man was staring at his feet, his forehead supported by a leathery old hand that shielded his eyes.
“Lots of good explanations, O’Reilley?”
“Ye’ve seen what ye’ve seen; now do what ye must. I’ll say nothing to ye.”
“Look, O’Reilley, the newt is what I’m after. So I found it. I don’t know what else I’ve found, but juggling serial numbers is a serious offense. If you’ve got a story, you better tell it. Otherwise, you’ll be telling it behind bars. I’m willing to listen here and now. You’d better grab the chance.”
O’Reilley sighed, looked at the sleeping newt in the corner. “What’ll ye do with her?”
“The newt? Take her in.”
O’Reilley sat in gloomy silence while he thought things over. “We were class-B, me and the missus,” he mumbled suddenly, “allowed a child of our own if we could have ‘un. Fancy that, eh? Ugly old coot like me—class- B.”
“So?”
“The government said we could have a child, but Nature said we couldn’t.”
“Tough.”
“But since we were class B, we weren’t entitled to own a newt. See?”
“Yeah. Where’s your wife?”
“With the saints, let’s hope.”
Norris wondered what sort of sob-story this was getting to be. The oldster went on quietly, all the while staring at the sleeping figure in the corner.
“Couldn’t have a kid, couldn’t own a newt either—so we opened the pet shop. It wasn’t like havin’ yer own, though. Missus always blubbered when I sold a newt she’d got to feeling like a mother to. Never swiped one, though—not till Peony came along. Last year this Bermuda shipment come in, and I sold most of ‘em pretty quick, but Peony here was puny. People ‘fraid she’d not last long. Couldn’t sell her. Kept her around so long that we both loved her. Missus died last year. ‘Don’t let anybody take Peony,’ she kept saying afore she passed on. I promised I wouldn’t. So I switched ‘em around and moved her up here.”
“That all?”
O’Reilley hesitated, then nodded.
“Ever done this before?”
O’Reilley shook his head.
There was a long silence while Norris stared at the child-thing. “Your license could be revoked,” he said absently.
“I know.”
He ground his fist thoughtfully in his palm, thought it over some more. If O’Reilley told the truth, he couldn’t live with himself if he reported the old man… unless it wasn’t the whole truth.
“I want to take your books home with me tonight.”
“Help yourself.”
“I’m going to make a complete check, investigate you from stem to stern.”
He watched O’Reilley closely. The oldster was unaffected. He seemed concerned—grief-stricken—only by the thought of losing the neutroid.
“If plucking a newt out of stock to keep you company was the only thing you did, O’Reilley, I won’t report you.”
O’Reilley was not consoled. He continued to gaze hungrily at the little being on the rug.
“And if the newt turns out not to be a deviant,” he added gently, “I’ll send it back. We’ll have to attach a correction to that invoice, of course, and you’ll just have to take your chances about somebody wanting to buy it, but… “ He paused. O’Reilley was staring at him strangely.
“And if she is a deviant, Mr. Norris?”
He started to reply, hesitated.
“Is she, O’Reilley?”
The oldster said nothing. His face tightened slowly. His shoulders shook slightly, and his squinted eyes were brimming. He choked.
“I see.”
O’Reilley shook himself, produced a red bandana, dabbed at his eyes, blew his nose loudly, regathered his composure. “How do you know she’s deviant?”
O’Reilley gave him a bitter glance, chuckled hoarsely, shuffled across the room and sat on the floor beside the sleeping newt. He patted a small bare shoulder.
