Double Jeopardy Read online

  From a past master of science fiction comes this jet-paced account of the adventures of Federal Agent George Helmfleet Jones. Combining sleuthing genius with the scientific advances of an advanced age, Jones tackles a series of sinister crimes—crimes made more sinister still because the perpetrators a/so combine genius with astonishing scientific discoveries.

  In the beginning, Jones is assigned to locate an illegal production source of perizone, the closely controlled new drug that cures every type of blood disease. His trail leads him to an upstate New York research institute where an odd collection of experts are engaged in secret experiments under the strictest security measures. But security in Jones's time is not the security known to the 1950's -—recent laws have kept the government from probing into individual affairs under threat of prosecution. This is hampering enough to an investigator on an important case, but then Jones runs into a half dollar that is perfect in every way — except that everything on it is reversed; an immensely valuable stolen statue — which can't be stolen because it's still on display; and the identical twin of a beautiful scientist — who doesn't have a sister!

  These all but incredible mysteries bring Jones to a master coup that just can't happen and yet does: three million dollars have been sent in a sealed rocket from New York to San Francisco; there is no pilot on the unmanned ship, which does not stop anywhere in transit — but when the hold is open, the money has unaccountably vanished! Jones, discovering a startling connection between the two impossible cases, puts his own life in double jeopardy — he has to close in on a killer who can be in two places at the same time!

  DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  by Fletcher Pratt

  * * *

  Selected for reprint by the editors of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine

  GALAXY PUBLISHING CORP.

  421 Hudson Street New York 14, N.Y.

  GALAXY Science Fiction Novel No. 30

  Copyright 1952, by Fletcher Pratt, and 1952 by Standard Magazines, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  by THE GUINN COMPANY, INC.

  NEW YORK, N.Y.

  One

  The Chief's chair creaked as he leaned back in it and looked out of the window, then turned to face the young man on the other side of the desk.

  "Jones," he said, "your record shows you should know a man named Richard Mansfeld."

  Jones smiled. "I ought to," he said. "He played left half when T was playing tackle at Cornell in '84. He hasn't gotten into anything, has he?"

  Without, answering directly, the Chief said: "Kept in touch with him?"

  "Seen him at a couple of class reunions, that's all. He went into analytical chemistry when I took up security work, so I wouldn't expect to. Last I heard he was a big number in it."

  "He still is," said the Chief. "Maybe too big. That's what we want to find out, and we've picked you for assignment to the case because, on the record, you should be able to approach him in a friendly way."

  "I see." Agent George Helmfleet Jones's face fell a trifle. "I don't know that I would be as good as someone who was a st ranger."

  The Chief lifted a cautionary hand. "It isn't a case of betraying a friendship, and there isn't any charge, as yet, at least. But there's something very queer going on, and more than one government agency would like to know what it is. And Richard Mansfeld may or may not have some clue to it. Do you know what perizone is?"

  Jones frowned. "One of those mould drugs, isn't it? Good for leukemia."

  "A cure for it, and for every other type of blood disease. Also for several of the types of cancer. In fact, it marks the culmination of the progress in that direction which began back in the '40s. Hertzberg got the Nobel Prize for it."

  Jones looked past him, through the glass wall and across the Potomac to where the afternoon rocket-jet for Europe was slowly tilting into position, waiting. It was the Chief's habit to let each part of an outline sink in slowly and be grasped before going on. He hated repeating.

  "Unfortunately," he said, "you don't get something for nothing, even in medicine. Perizone has a peculiar secondary effect. It releases all inhibitions. Anybody under the influence of a dose is totally incapable of refusing to answer any question that is asked them, for instance. Or if they happen to feel annoyed, they're just as likely to pick up a chair and break it over someone's head. Or if they feel cheerful, they'll sing. And they become very subject to suggestion."

  He paused again. Jones said: "In other words, the patient is completely irresponsible. I can see where a few doses of it would be a great help to the big apple of some mob who didn't want to get in personally. Or to a shake-man, for that matter."

  The Chief's white head nodded gravely. "That's the point. Perizone is a dangerous drug, in spite of its value. That's why the Federal Bureau of Medicine controls it very carefully. The regulations say that it shall be administered only in a hospital and with maximum precautions. Even the doctors allowed to prescribe it have special licenses from the Bureau, and if someone else wants to use perizone, one of these specialists has to be called in as a consultant. The restrictions aren't generally known, because the Bureau doesn't want people trying to steal the stuff for unauthorized purposes, and the Bureau chemists think they may work out a way to dampen these secondary effects."

  The Chief stopped again. Jones wished he hadn't. "I should think— " he began, but the hand came up.

  "Control is rendered relatively easy by the fact that the production of perizone is a very slow and difficult process. It's a highly selective mould; won't grow on anything but the fermented sap of a tree called the Ben Franklin tree."

  "Ornamental," said Jones. "We used to have one in the yard when I was a kid."

  "After the mould is grown, it has to be processed," continued the Chief, "and that takes a good deal of time and rather elaborate equipment. That gives another check, at source, and the Bureau has men watching and controlling all production. In fact, there are only two firms making perizone now—Howard Chemical, out at Evansville, Indiana, and Emmett Industries of Dallas. You needn't note either; they're not important in this case."

  Jones put away the notebook he had begun to take out.

  The Chief went on: "So you see, the production of perizone has been well below the demand. I say has been, because about four months ago it began to catch up, and today it's just about an even thing."

  "Pardon," said Jones, "but couldn't that be cyclical, or due to the disappearance of the diseases perizone is good for?"

  "No," said the Chief. "That's the first thing the people over in the Bureau of Medicine thought of. They submitted the figures to an integrator, including those of incidence of the disease over the sixty years we have accurate records for it. Integrator analysis can't give an absolutely positive result, of course, but the statistical probability is overwhelmingly against anything of the kind. On the other hand, the integrator calculates the probability of an additional source of perizone verv highly."

  "I should think it would be easy to locate the source, then," said Jones. "The doctors who use it? The retailers? The wholesalers, if there are any in the drug business ?"

  The Chief smiled. "Every time the Bureau has tried that, it has run into a stone wall. Everybody who touches the stuff claims he obtains it from a perfectly legitimate source, and even if they didn't, they wouldn't admit it, because it's only a little more valuable than uranium, besides being extremely useful. And you want to remember that the personal privacy laws of '63 won't let the Bureau do too much snooping, and all the damned doctors know it. As soon as anyone starts asking questions, they simply ask what evidence there is of a violation of law, and when none can be produced, they yell 'Personal privacy' and clam up . . . Yes?"

  Jones had made
a movement and opened his mouth. Now he said: "I can understand how the Bureau would be worried about an extra source of perizone shedding the stuff out into general circulation instead of the controlled channels. But if that were happening, wouldn't the effect show up in general crime statistics somehow? That is, more crimes of one class or in one area ?"

  The Chief smiled. "Smart lad. The FBI thought of that, too, when the Bureau took up its problems with them. They put that question into an integrator, too. The answer they got was that the only abnormal incidence of crime over the four-month period since perizone supply began to catch up with demand was a twenty-percent increase in swindling in the Los Angeles area. Now people may commit crimes under the influence of perizone, but swindling certainly isn't one of them. Besides, that Berghammer fortune-telling group accounts for most of the cases. What the Bureau is worried about is that we'll get a sudden, big outburst."

  "Which Bureau? Medicine or FBI?"

  "Both, for different reasons. Now one more thing, and you'll see why I asked you about Mansfeld. Do you know where he is now ?"

  "No. As I said, I only see him at class reunions."

  "He's at the Braunholzer Research Institute in Geneva, New York. The connection is this: in spite of personal privacy and a general clamming up, the Bureau people believe that if there is an additional source of perizone, it's somewhere in that region. They've graphed it off against a map and fed that into the integrator, too, and it seems that the supply began to catch up with the demand in a spreading circle centering somewhere around that region. Although it's fair to admit that there are indications around Evansville, too, where Howard Chemical is."

  "But why pick on this Braunholzer place?"

  "Because no one knows exactly what goes on there, and it's the only place in the circle indicated by the integrator about which there's any such mystery. I'll fill you in: the place was set up as a foundation by old Sebastian Braunholzer, the brewer, who had such a lot of money. About twenty years ago his only son was desperately ill with some double-jointed infection and the doctors gave him up, all but a chap named Runciman, a pathologist. He saved the kid's life at the price of cutting off one of his legs, and the story is that old Braunholzer was so grateful that he set Runciman up in a research institute of his very own. The Bureau people tell me that since he got in there, Runciman has practically pulled the hole after him. He squeals about personal privacy every time anyone comes near the place and won't let anybody in."

  "Can't they learn anything from his past record—I mean before he got the Institute ?"

  "What they have learned doesn't mean much. He was interested in regenerative tissue, and wrote a couple of pieces on it for the medical journals. In fact, the Bureau people say that it was by means of something like that that he saved young liiaunholzer's life. The integrator rejects a calculation on the probability of his still carrying on the same line of work, on the ground that we don't have enough factors. . . Well, that's the story on the Braunholzer Research Institute, where your classmate Mansfeld works. I want you to go up there—you can be taking a little vacation—foregather with him, just hang around, and find out what you can without violating the personal privacy laws. You see, it's not a regular investigation, just an exploratory tour. The integrator isn't by any means positive that this is the place the perizone is coming from . . . Any questions ?"

  Jones ran his fingers through the long haircut that was popular that fall. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said. "Isn't there any other possible place in the circle you speak of where perizone could come from?"

  "Two or three, as possibilities."

  "Then why so much effort on this one? And above all, what is this office doing in the case? If there's any case at all, aren't we outside it? I thought the law was very strict that Secret Service was confined to counterfeiting and guarding the President."

  "It is." The Chief touched the button that opened the drawer of his desk, took out an object, and with two quick steps came around and dropped it in Jones's hand. "We're in it because of this."

  It was a coin. Jones turned it over in puzzlement, looking at the Liberty in flowing garments, marching to the right, the rising sun with its outburst of rays beneath her extended left arm, and the eagle with half-folded wings on the reverse; "1917," he read. "Looks like one of the old Saint-Gaudens series of half dollars, rather worn." "That's right."

  Jones rang it on the desk top, rubbed it tentatively between his fingers, took out a pocketknife that contained a variety of tools, including a picklock, and tried to scratch the surface, then looked at the Chief.

  "Seems all right to me," he said. "Of course, I'm not a chemist— "

  "It wouldn't do you any good if you were. The chemists are agreed that the composition is perfectly right. That's where some of the wear comes from. Also the milling is perfect, and the micromeasurements on the stamping."

  "Then what makes you think there's anything wrong with it? Why isn't it genuine?"

  For answer the Chief reached into the drawer again, produced a second coin, and tossed it over. "Here's another one."

  Jones compared the two for a moment, then looked up with an expression of utter amazement. "It's reversed!" he said.

  "That's right. On a real coin of that issue, the figure of Liberty is moving toward the left and so is the eagle on the reverse. It's a perfect reproduction, except that everything is turned in the opposite direction. And that coin turned up in Geneva, New York, in the hands of a bank teller who was making a collection of the half-dollar series—you know there are a good many commemoratives—and so happened to notice it. He wrote the Treasury about it asking where there was any record of reversed half dollars of 1917, and of course they called us in."

  "How many more of them are there?"

  The Chief brought his fist down on the desk. "Not one. We've had every half dollar in Geneva checked, and in several other places, and, as far as we've been able to find out, this specimen is absolutely unique. Yet the thing has the right amount of bullion in the right proportions, and it seems perfectly clear that it's not hand work. I've had it for about a year now, trying to run down the possibilities. There's no record of any such counterfeit in the files of the Secret Service. There has been no appearance of similar coins, as I said before. The integrator rejects any calculation on it on the basis of an error in data. That is, the damned thing can't exist, but there it is. I finally put it on the unsolved list for Central Security. I gather that about the same time Medicine sent in their perizone problem, and when they fed the lot into their integrator, they came out with the rather remote possibility that there might be a connection—I suppose on the grounds of geographical location. So Central Security sent me over to have a conference with Medicine, and I learned about their trouble."

  "I see," said Jones. "And as the Bureau of Medicine doesn't have any undercover investigating service, and the FBI can't find anything, they passed the baby to us."

  "That's it. When you go up there, you'll be working on three levels. Your cover story is that you're just on a vacation. If anyone gets funny, you're technically trying to trace the nitwit who counterfeited one single, old half dollar and made a bad job of it. But actually, you're really looking for a source of unauthorized perizone. I suppose you'd better use your own heli, since it technically isn't an official trip. You can get some money from Miss Brashear, and I'll have the records show you on vacation."

  Jones ran a hand through his hair again. "Shouldn't I know something about this perizone and how it works?"

  "Good idea. I'll phone Medicine and have them give you a briefing. Ask for Dr. Hall. Do you want a visual or a book?"

  "Visual with sound, I think. The psychs have me listed as retaining more easily that way."

  Two

  George Helmfleet Jones let his helicopter down on the resilient plastic surface of the Geneva airport, observed with a frown that there weren't any line-service cars, carried his own bag over to the tower, paid his fee, and asked for a taxi.
It would have to be called. The clerk behind the desk snapped off the visi-phone and in answer to the question said the Braunholzer Institute was on the hill overlooking the lake, out beyond old Hobart College, "but they don't let nobody in there, mister. They got some kind of secret experiments going on, about frogs and things. I think it's a gov'ment project about this bacterial war."

  Direct assault on the citadel could wait, Jones decided He'd first have to try to get Dick Mansfeld out and throw a few drinks into him, which wouldn't be too hard unless Dick had changed a lot. He said: "Who runs the place, anyway?"

  "I dunno." The clerk's interest evidently did not run along those lines. "Here's your taxi, mister."

  The cab slid smoothly along the rubberoid street, through swirls of dead leaves from overhanging elms that were shedding the last of their summer dress, and pulled into the discharge space under the Gushing Hotel, where a neatly uniformed girl seized his bag and placed it on a conveyor. Upon grave consideration, the clerk did have a room that could be occupied for two weeks. It had a phone with a tap check and recorder. Would Mr. Jones care to have lunch sent up? It would be there almost as soon as he was.

  Mr. Jones said he would take the matter up after making a couple of phone calls, and went up to a room that had a buzz in the air-conditioning machine and a faulty rim-light that flickered for a couple of minutes after it was turned on. The bellhop accepted his quarter and said she would send someone up to fix the light; he fished out the phone directory and dialed the number of the Braunholzer Institute. A woman answered, saying that she would try to find Dr. Mansfeld, and asked who wished to speak to him, but the visi-panel remained blank.

  It was a long wait, and Jones found by trying it that the switch to turn on the wall-newspaper was just out of reach when the phone cord was stretched to its fullest extent. But ultimately there was a click, the face of Dick Mansfeld appeared in brilliant color, and his voice bellowed: "George, you hairy old horse, where are you calling from?"