For a change, the air conditioning in the building was working. Still, the few wisps of blond hair that ringed the bald dome of Barnum's head were damp with sweat. A vein throbbed under his ear. I decided to take a little umbrage at his attitude.
'Everything my clients tell me is taken in confidence. It's the way I work.'
'But you haven't said whether or not you'll help me.'
'You haven't said what it is you want me to help you with. Until you do, I can't commit myself.' That wasn't exactly true, but I hoped it would force the issue.
The university president finally passed a hand over his eyes as if trying to erase a bad vision, then leaned back in the chair. 'I'm sorry,' he said after a few moments. 'I've been rude. I didn't want to risk having us seen talking to each other at great length at the university. It might have seemed strange.'
'Strange to whom?'
Slowly, Barnum raised his eyes to mine. 'I would like you to investigate one of your colleagues, Dr. Vincent Smathers.'
I let out a low, mental whistle. I was beginning to understand Barnum's penchant for secrecy. Vincent Smathers was the university's most recent prize catch, an experimental psychologist who was a Nobel Prize winner. University presidents don't normally make a habit of investigating their Nobel Prize winners. The usual procedure is to create a specially endowed $100,000 chair, which was what had been done for Smathers. 'What's the problem?'
Barnum shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know,' he said at last. 'Perhaps I'm being overly suspicious.'
'Suspicious about what?'
'Dr. Smathers brought with him an assistant, Dr. Chiang Kee. Dr. Kee, in turn, brought two assistants with him, also Chinese. Quite frankly, those two men don't look like people with university backgrounds.'
'Neither do I.'
Barnum flushed. 'I suppose you're implying-'
'I'm not implying anything,' I said. I was feeling a little abrasive. 'I'm saying that you, better than anybody else, should know that you can't judge a man by his looks. I'm sure Smathers knows what he's doing. I just don't want you to waste the university's money.'
Barnum thought about that for a moment. 'I suppose I am on edge,' he said distantly. 'Ever since they found that man's body on the campus-'
'I have a brother who's a detective in the New York Police Department, so I'm able to keep track of these things. Nobody has accused anybody at the university of killing him, if that's what you're worried about. He was fresh off the Bowery.'
'Yes, but there's still the question of what a Bowery derelict was doing on the campus.'
'This is New York,' I said, as if that explained everything. 'Do you think there's some connection between Smathers and the killing?'
'Oh,
'Besides the Chinese, what else doesn't appear as it should?'
Barnum took a deep breath. 'There is the matter of the hundred-thousand-dollar yearly endowment Dr. Smathers receives for the academic chair he holds. While it's true that a man of Dr. Smathers' proven administrative abilities is not normally expected to-'
He was filibustering against his own thoughts. I cut him short. 'You don't know what's happening to the money.'
Barnum looked relieved. 'That's right,' he said. The rest seemed to come easier. 'I believe you know Mr. Haley in the English Department?'
I said I did. Fred Haley and I had shared a few cups of coffee together.
'Mr. Haley swears to me that he's seen Dr. Kee before, in Korea. As you probably know, Mr. Haley was a POW. He tells me that Dr. Kee-who was using a different name then-was an enemy interrogator, in charge of the brainwashing program to which all of the POWs were subjected. He had a reputation for brutality, psychological and physical.'
I mulled that over in my mind. Fred Haley was not a man given to wild accusations. At least he was no more paranoid than anybody else who has to live and/or work in New York.
'It wouldn't be the first time a former enemy had come to work in the United States,' I said. 'Often it works to our benefit, as in the case of Von Braun. He changed his name to keep people from rattling the skeletons in his closet. It's possible everything's on the up-and-up.'
'Yes, it's possible. But since the good name of the university is involved, don't you feel it's worth some investigation?'
I said I thought it was. We discussed the mundane subject of fees and I told him I'd look into it.
I checked into my university office, did some paperwork, then locked up and headed across the campus toward Marten Hall, an older building which houses the Psychology Department.
It soon became apparent that one doesn't just walk in and strike up a conversation with a Nobel Prize winner; Smathers' security system would have shamed the nearest missile-tracking base. His first line of defense was his secretary, a 250-pound, hawk-faced woman who had somehow escaped the last pro football draft. The nameplate on her desk said Mrs. Pfatt. It really did.
She stopped torturing her typewriter long enough for me to introduce myself as one of Smathers' university colleagues, a criminologist who wanted to consult with Dr. Smathers on a question of criminal psychology, if you please.
I was told Dr. Smathers had no time for consultations. The typewriter groaned and clacked.
'In that case, perhaps I could speak with Dr. Kee.'
I was told Dr. Kee had no time for consultations.
I left Mrs. Pfatt and walked down a long corridor lined on both sides with classrooms. A few undergraduate classes were in session, filled with sleepy-looking freshmen. Everything looked distressingly in order. Most of the students in the building recognized me and waved. I smiled and waved back.
Marten Hall has four floors, and I assumed Smathers had his private offices and research labs on the top one. I worked my way up the floors as casually as possible. The third floor was mostly offices and laboratories sparsely populated on a Saturday morning with a few graduate researchers. I headed toward the stairway at the end of the corridor, stopped and stared. Somebody had installed a heavy steel door across the entrance to the stairs. NO ADMITTANCE-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY was stenciled in red paint across the door.
Less money should have been spent on material and more on the lock; I got out my set of skeleton keys and hit on the third try. I pushed the door open. A narrow flight of stairs snaked up and twisted to the left, out of sight. I was beginning to understand where much of the first year's $100,000 had gone; the inside of the door, as well as the walls and ceiling of the staircase, had been soundproofed. It seemed a curious expense for a Psychology Department; mental processes just don't make that much noise.
I climbed the stairs and found myself at the end of a long corridor, expensively refinished with glassed-in offices on one side and closed doors on the other. I pushed one of the doors and it swung open. I stepped in, closed the door behind me and turned on the lights.
It was a laboratory, large, heavily soundproofed. There was an array of monitoring machines, computers and other sophisticated equipment lined up against the walls. All had wires leading to a large, water-filled tank in one corner of the lab. The tank looked like an aquarium designed to hold a baby whale. It was at least ten feet long, three feet wide and four feet deep. Electrode nodes were built into the glass walls of the tank, along with black rubber straps that now floated on the surface.
I poked around the machines for a while, but couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do. I turned off the lights, went out of the lab and walked quietly down the corridor, glancing in the other rooms with the closed doors. They were all labs, similar to the one in which I had been. The offices on my left were all empty-except for the last one.
The Chinese caught me out of the corner of his eye. He was the original Captain Flash, out of his chair and standing in front of me in a lot less time than it would have taken Superman to find a phone booth. I should have
