“Yes.”
“And I believe you have cited some eight or nine dates up to the fifteenth of July.”
I looked at Mr. Youngquist and I was astonished to see his face the color of bleached muslin.
“Well, did you or did you not?”
I looked at Slim. He was puzzled, too. Finally I nodded.
“Will you say it for the record, please?”
“Yes.”
“That is to say, you are now testifying that you followed Mr. Ellingbery on each of eight or nine occasions prior to July 15, and each time with your partner at your side?”
“Yes.”
“And always at Mrs. Ellingbery’s request?”
“Yes.” That was a nasty question, but it had to be answered yes.
“Were you here in court yesterday?”
“No, sir.” I would have said, “No, your majesty,” if it would have helped.
“You didn’t hear Mrs. Ellingbery testify that her suspicions were first aroused when somebody reported to her that on July the Fourth Tom Ellingbery was riding the roller coaster with another girl?”
I wish I could have jumped into the Brain-Finder and gone back about two weeks. I would have walked through the sidewalk while the coal was being poured.
“No,” I said finally.
The young fellow looked triumphantly at Mr. Youngquist, who looked as if he would like to be buried in ashes up to his ears.
“That’s all.”
Mr. Youngquist rallied and put Slim back on the stand. Then there was a recess. Mr. Youngquist and Mr. Rubicam and Slim and Mrs. Ellingbery and I went into a big huddle out in the hall. “That’s what comes of messing around with imbecilic things like this Brain-Finder,” Mr. Youngquist moaned. “Why didn’t we stick to straight law?”
“Because we couldn’t win that way,” Mr. Rubicam reminded him. “We didn’t have any real evidence.”
Well, they decided the only chance to win the case was to have Slim tell about and demonstrate the Brain-Finder. Slim didn’t like to do that; but we needed those five G’s. That afternoon he told. The next morning we lugged it into court and set it on a table with the screen facing the judge.
There was a crowd in court that morning, thanks to a news story in the morning Herald. Slim groaned; crowds aren’t good for private investigators. I pricked up my ears when in marched Mr. Swanberg, our landlord, as austere as striped trousers could possibly make him, but with a beauteous blonde in a pink dress, clinging as if she was afraid he’d get away. That opened my eyes. Maybe the old iceberg was human after all, to rate that kind of devotion. Maybe he did have an occasional moment of abandonment when he would lick the butter from his knife. If we ever got through this mess I was going to find out. “That’s Mrs. Swanberg,” Youngquist said to Slim.
I looked his wife over in my best professional style. I thought I’d seen her some place, and a detective is supposed to remember faces, but I couldn’t quite place her. Anyway, there were now three blondes mixed in with that courtroom—and that’s a lot of blondes. Mr. and Mrs. Swanberg sat down at one side opposite the jury-box where they could see the screen of the Brain-Finder as well as the judge. I suppose Swanberg had read the story and wanted to see what we were up to in his building. Mrs. Ellingbery sat across the counsel table from me. She was a winner if there ever was one.
Slim went on the stand. He demonstrated the Brain-Finder very feebly—that is, innocuously. It was obvious that Youngquist was scared to death of what might happen.
And again Tom Ellingbery’s lawyers passed up cross examination of Slim. I knew they were waiting for me.
They were. “Do you understand this machine?” one asked me scornfully.
“No, sir.”
“You know how to work it, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Do you mean to tell this court that you can adjust the dials and gadgets on this thing and see what I was doing last week or the week before?”
I tried to be cautious. “If it’s plugged in.”
“Okay, we’ll plug it in.”
He invited me to step down and turn on the switches. I looked at Slim. He nodded. After all, there was nothing else to do. I went.
Some of the tubes crackled and then settled down to a steady green glow, and one bank showed purple. Then the lawyer said, “Now, do you mean to tell me you can tune this contraption in on a man’s brain and find him anywhere in the past?” He sounded completely skeptical.
“Within three months,” I said defiantly.
“For instance, you testified that Tom Ellingbery was riding the roller coaster on the night of July the Fourth with the girl who has been named in this case. You saw this on this screen?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tune it in again?”
Well, I knew this was all preliminary. It would take something absolutely dynamic to convince Judge Monday that the Brain-Finder was the real thing and not a fake. So I wasn’t worrying—yet. “Yes,” I said, and set the dials to Tom Ellingbery’s brainwaves. I picked up Tom and the bleached blonde just as they stepped into the roller-coaster car, and followed them around the ride. It wasn’t very sensational; she screamed and hid her eyes and grabbed Tom around the neck. Standard technique.
Then the lawyer said, “Can you pick up your own brainwave on this thing?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing on the night of July the Fourth?”
“I was—” I swallowed. “I was riding the roller coaster.”
I think somebody snickered.
“Can you show us?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
I began to adjust the dials. Again the amusement park flickered over the ground glass, as seen through my eyes. I was in line. I put my money on the counter to buy a ticket. I saw a slim white hand reach up to the window from my left and I started to turn. Then it hit me!
That gorgeous blonde! That girl who had thrown her arms around me in the car a minute later. That was Swanberg’s
