Double Jeopardy Read online

  "The Cushing, right here in your own home town. I'm on my vacation, and I thought maybe I could persuade you to play hooky and fly over to Ithaca with me to see the Oregon game.** "I'd love it, but . . . wait a minute." The face disappeared from the plate, and there was another pause, at the end of which Mansfeld's voice suddenly spoke without any visual accompaniment. "Look, George, I made a date with one of the technicians here to go over to her place and watch the game on video. I've just been talking to her, and she'd be awfully glad to have you come along and furnish some real expert criticism. How about it? We'll be a lot more comfortable sitting there with glasses in our hands, than up in the stands drinking out Of a bottle."

  Jones considered rapidly. Two of them, and one a woman; he could probably get in a good preliminary survey. "Okay," he said. "Shall I come around and meet you?"

  "Don't bother. We can go right to her place. The address is 8 18 Schuyler Street, apartment 8-B. Got it? Name on the door's Taliaferro. I'll be there about 14:30. What do you think? Are we going to take those web-feet?"

  "We ought to if Parker can keep from throwing those passes away . . . Okay, I'll see you."

  Jones disconnected, picked up the house phone, ordered lunch, and, on second thought, a bottle of whiskey to take along, and sat down to contemplate the newspaper until it was time to go. The Cubans were threatening withdrawal from the Caribbean Union, there had been a jet crash in Nebraska, Harvard was expected to win over Michigan, and the lunch was an excellent lake trout that left him still feeling a sensation of well-being when he climbed into the taxi an hour and a half later.

  Three-eighteen Schuyler was one of those modern buildings with glass sun-bathing bubbles projecting from the walls like so many warts. When he pressed the button under "Taliaferro" and stood close to the visi-plate for identification, it was Dick Mansfeld's voice that answered. "She got held up finishing an experiment, but she'll be home any minute. Come on up."

  Mansfeld met him at the door, looking a trifle heavier than when Jones had last seen him, but abundantly cheerful. "How are you, George?" he said. "Come on in, take a load off your feet, and tell me what brings you to our backwater? The glasses are over there. Be careful of that automatic soda gadget; it's got too much power."

  Jones pumped the plunger for ice, squirted soda with the desired care, and looked around. The apartment had been decorated with a good deal of taste and care, but it looked more like a man's place than a woman's, except for the pictures. That one there was. . . .

  "Why," he said, "I had my vacation due, and I thought for once that instead of taking it in the conventional way, I'd do exactly what I wanted to. So I started by coming up here to look up a man named Leonard Marks, who has his studio over on the other side of the lake. In case you didn't know it, he's just about the best water-colorist since Winslow Homer."

  "Still following the arts, eh, George," said Mansfeld. "I can't figure what ever made you take up this sleuth-hound business instead of turning into a painter."

  "Not enough money in it," said Jones. "What are you up to here, yourself? I was as surprised as anything when Cook told me you were located here at this institute. I thought you were all fixed up inventing new fabrics for Orgon."

  Mansfeld gave Jones a rather peculiar look. "If you really need a good detective in your business some time, get hold of a class secretary," he said. "I didn't know Cook knew about my being here. In fact, I'm still supposed to be with Orgon."

  "What's the idea? Big-secret stuff or little-secret stuff?"

  Mansfeld sipped his drink and said: "You could call it little-secret stuff, I guess, though it will be big enough if we ever work it out right. Just at present, we don't want any governmental— -"

  The announcer buzzed and the red light flashed. "That must be her," said Mansfeld. "Stand by to tackle; they're coming through the line." He stepped over and pushed the door-release button. "Wait till you see our Betty-Marie. She's my secret sorrow."

  "I don't get it," said Jones.

  "Tell you later. Here she comes." The outer door clicked, opened, and Jones experienced the sensation of being kicked in the pit of the stomach. The girl who came in would have stopped any show from New York to Rio de Janeiro merely by walking across the stage. Her eyes were on a level with his own, but her blond hair was piled higher. The way she walked and the shape of her legs made him think of a dancer, and her figure made him think of everything. It was in a daze that he heard Mansfeld say: "Miss Taliaferro, this is George Jones I was telling you about, the human thinking-machine of the backfield; George, this is Betty-Marie Taliaferro, the pearl of the Braunholzer Institute, and our best thinking-machine. You two ought to get along together."

  Jones murmured something about hoping they would; she said: "I see you two have started guzzling without waiting for me. Why is it that all football players turn into sots in their old age?"

  "It's because women won't pay us any attention after we quit being heroes," said Mansfeld, and looked at his watch. "Let's get set."

  Betty-Marie accepted the drink Mansfeld had made for her, they took their places in chairs facing the video wall, and the field at Ithaca became visible, with the two teams running through practice formations and the stands in movement'. Jones said: "Are you a Cornellian or an Oregonian, Miss Taliaferro?"

  "Neither. I went to Cal Tech, where they don't have football teams, but I'm interested in it as a scientific study. The variation in the results obtained from approximately the same muscular equipment. Now if it were only really identical— "

  Mansfeld said: "Sh-sh," and then pointed at the screen. There didn't seem to be anything particular going on, but before Jones could say anything, the rich, fruity voice of the announcer began to list the line-ups as the two teams took their places for the kickoff, and all three gave their attention to the game. Jones glanced from time to time at the lovely profile of the girl. It remained incredibly beautiful, but the more one looked at it, the colder it became, as though she were in fact the thinking-machine Dick Mansfeld had called her. Neither did she show the slightest emotion. When Parker threw a pass straight into the arms of an Oregon defender, who galloped away up the field with it, and the men groaned in unison, she merely remarked: "That was that left tackle's fault; he let that man through on the passer and he had to throw it away." When Oregon scored for the second time and the groans changed to howls of dismay, she only appealed to Jones: "Have you noticed that defensive center moves faster to his left than to his right? I think Oregon has found it out."

  At half time the score was 20-0, Oregon. Betty-Marie got up and remarked: "I observe a certain lack of cheerfulness in my guests. Mr. Jones, Dick tells me that you make an avocation of art. Do you like my pictures?"

  Jones's eyes swept the room. "Very much. That Bernasco is a remarkable job. Where did you ever— " He stopped suddenly and strode across the room to where a statuette stood on a pedestal. "Why, this is Lober's Girl with Doves! I thought— "

  Did he fancy it, or did he catch out of the corner of his eye a quick glance exchanged by the two? Betty-Marie said: "It's a reproduction, by a new process. A friend gave it to me."

  Jones touched the statuette. "Then it's the most wonderful reproduction I've ever seen. I'd swear that was the original bronze."

  Mansfeld said: "They can do some good work with those new plastics. Say, George, I wish you'd call Ithaca long-distance and tell that idiot of a coach to put in Margetsson. He can't run and he can't tackle, but when he's in there, everybody plays their heads off."

  "There are people like that," agreed Betty-Marie. "They have a kind of psycho-chemical effect on others, as though they were releasing inhibitions. I've seen the one you mean on video, and I'll bet a stop-watch timing would show the others at least a perceptible part of a second faster when he's playing. Tell me something, Mr. Jones. Do you Secret Service people find modern technical processes make it easier for counterfeiters to work or for you to catch them ?"

  "Catch them, I guess," said Jones. "A queer bill hasn't a chance of getting past since the banks and most of the big stores put them through the automatic scanners. But the old eye is still the best. We had— " He stopped suddenly; there were too many unexplained things going on around here to let loose the story of the reversed half dollar. Not that he suspected Dick Mansfeld of anything, but experience had taught him that when there is a general atmosphere of secretiveness, it is a good idea to keep one's own secrets.

  Fortunately, a blare of band music saved him from having the unfinished sentence noticed, and a moment later the second half began. The desired Margetsson was in this time, and from the kickoff it was evident that he was making a good deal of difference. Cornell got the ball, marched down the field, and lost it on a fumble close to the Oregon goal; got it again, and moved slowly but surely to a touchdown. The Oregon counterattack picked up where it had left off in the first half, but then ground to a halt, and, just as the quarter ended. Cornell worked out another touchdown.

  Both men were sitting oh the edges of their chairs now, and Betty-Marie's cool comments were an annoyance. She seemed to realize it and fell silent as, with the crowd roaring from the stands, Cornell hammered its way to a third touchdown and—a tie score, for the extra point was missed. But when Oregon took the kickoff and started back up the field, the dynamic Margetsson suddenly appeared in the Oregon backfield, leaped through the air, and snatched a pass from the fingertips of the passer and fell on it. Two minutes later Cornell had another score, and thirty seconds after that, two wild men were embracing each other in Betty-Marie's living room. She surveyed the scene calmly.

  "The interesting thing about it to me is that he used to be an invalid," she said. "When he was here— "

  "To hell with that!" cried Mansfeld. "That was the greatest old play ever made in football. We're going out and tell the town about it. Want to come along, Betty-Marie?"

  She shook her head. "It's all over, isn't it? Besides, I have some work to do tonight. That latest issue of Wissenschaftliche Zeitung has an article on Riemann math with some formulas I want to check."

  Three

  Dick Mansfeld settled back, emitted a totally unashamed belch, and said: "I vote that after a dinner like that we start the evening drinking with a couple of brandies. We'll need 'em if the chorus in this joint is going to look like anything but what they are—which is a bunch of babes who couldn't make the grade on the High Air circuit and ended up in a country roadhouse."

  Jones wiggled his fingers at the waiter, ordered the brandies, complimented him on the pheasant with truffle stuffing, received the information that the birds were flown in daily by auto-jet from North Dakota and their contents from Paris, and turned to his companion. "I should say so," he said. "After looking at that specimen from your lab, I won't be satisfied with anything less than Miss America. I couldn't keep my eyes off her."

  "Nobody can," said Mansfeld. "Don't mention it; it makes me gloomy, and this is an occasion of rejoicing. I can't get to first base with her, and neither can anyone else."

  "Betty-Marie Taliaferro," said Jones. "From the name you'd expect her to be a sweet little southern nothing."

  "Instead of which she has a Ph.D. from Cal Tech, and eats the higher mathematics of electrical quanta for breakfast. You'd be surprised at some of the things she's done. Even old Runciman can't compare with her, though his field's mainly pathology. The trouble with her as a person is that she has so much in the way of looks and intelligence that there just isn't anything she wants except things that she has to work hard to get. Men don't come in that class—for her."

  "I suppose not," said Jones. "By the way, didn't she say something about Margetsson having been at your institute at one time?"

  "I think he was there," said Mansfield. "Had some obscure disease that he picked up in the tropics during a summer vacation. Runciman heard of it and offered to take the case on because he was interested, I believe. But it was over in pathology, and I don't know the details . . . Here we go."

  The lights in the night club changed to the penetrating shade known as X-ray blue, and a syrupy voice announced that the guests of Reeder's Rest were about to witness that incomparable artist, Laraine Medalie, and her snow-girls, fresh from an engagement in Caracas, Venezuela. The orchestra slid into the strains of "Bonbon"; the incomparable Laraine appeared in the center of the ceiling, in what seemed to be a cellophane wrapper, and was swung slowly to the floor as the snow-girls came pattering out in exiguous costumes of white rabbit fur.

  "How do they do it?" asked Jones. "I can never figure it out."

  "You mean bringing her in like that?" said Mansfield. "It's the stuff the wires they swing her on is made of, protapon. Has the quality of bending blue light, so a narrow object made of it is simply invisible. That's what we researchers do—work our heads off on one of the most important discoveries in years so that a night club can have a new effect."

  The incomparable Laraine was swaying slowly to and fro in the paces of what was evidently going to end as a strip tease, while the orchestra worked itself into a fever and the snow-girls tossed balls of cotton at the guests. At a table at one side of that occupied by the two friends, a man caught one of the artificial snowballs neatly, tossed it back at the star dancer, and scored a direct hit, which she rewarded by blowing him a kiss. Then the man waved a hand at Mansfeld.

  "Seems to know you," observed Jones, "and her, too, for that matter."

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Mansfeld. "That's Everett Benson. He probably knows every unattached female within a hundred miles of the place, and some of the attached ones."

  "Did you say Everett Benson?" said Jones, taking his eyes off the strip-teaser for a moment.

  "Yes. Why? You know him?"

  "No. Only—how do you happen to, if you don't mind a

  question ?"

  "Why, he's our accountant and general financial wizard at the Institute. Good man, too, I would say. Been with us a little over a year, and even if he does spend his nights chasing another kind of figures, I gather he does a pretty good job with those he handles in the daytime."

  "Who's the big guy at his table, the one with the dark face ?"

  "Some hot-rod banker from New York. Named Di Paduano, I believe. Benson has more financial deals going on than the Secretary of the Treasury, and some of these money men are always around. You wouldn't think it, just being here at the Institute, but he operates on his own, too."

  The incomparable Laraine ended her act to a whoop from the brasses, the audience pattered its applause, and a waiter came hurrying over to take orders for the renewal of drinks; Mansfeld said : "Two scotch and sodas."

  "Let me skip this one," said Jones.

  "Hey, what do you mean? You can't do that! We're celebrating!"

  "I know. But the food took the edge off those drinks we had before dinner, and I don't feel quite like building a new foundation. Is your friends Benson giving us the come-on ?"

  "Huh?" said Mansfeld. "Yes, I guess he is. Let's go over and see what he wants."

  Everett Benson proved to be a thin-faced man in the early thirties, who accepted the introduction to Jones with effusive enthusiasm and invited them to join him. "I'm all alone for the time being," he said, "but I don't expect to be long. In fact, I have sort of date with a couple of the performers after the next show, and I think I could get hold of another if you want to join us. My heli's outside."

  "Come on," said Mansfeld, "make the right finish to a big evening."

  "No, I don't think I will," said Jones. "Those drinks made me a little bit groggy, and I'm tired anyway. You go ahead, Dick, and I'll slide back to the hotel. I want to get up in time to catch Marks at his studio in the morning. He's an early bird, and he's likely to be out in the field, sketching."

  "Okay," said Mansfeld. "Ring me up if you need a guide to our beautiful city." He turned to Benson: "He's just encountered our Betty-Marie, and is taking the shock hard."

  All three laughed, and Jones threaded his way among the tables to the door. In his room, the recorder over the phone had its red light on. He cut in the instrument, checked it to see that the message had not been tapped, and listened: "Mr. Jones," it said metallically, "will you please call Mr. McAllister at once, no matter how late you come in? Mr. Jones, will Jones cut it off and looked at his watch—21:37; that was not too late, especially in view of the fact that Mr. McAllister, which was the name the Chief was currently using for communication with agents in the field, had something so urgent that he was willing to be pulled out of bed for it. He dialed the connection with Washington, then the Chief's private home number, and said: "Jones calling Mr. McAllister, from Geneva, New York."

  "Put on your visi," said the voice at the other end. "I'm going to give you a visi-flash, in case anyone should come into the room where you are. Any taps?"

  "No, I checked. Let her come."

  The Chief's face flashed into momentary definition, a row of books behind it, then winked out. "Okay," said Jones, "I have you. What's the story?"

  "Central Security has picked up another item in the complex you're working on. They got some unsolved items from the Treasury Department today and, in making the run through the integrator, it came up with a fairly high probability that one of them is connected with the case you're working on. The Braunholzer family withdrew its financial support from the Institute a little over five months ago, very quietly."

  "For God's sake, why?"

  "We're trying to find out, specifically. But I don't think it will get us much of anywhere. The old man is dead, you know, and the two sons seem to feel there are better uses for money than supporting a place like that. Treasury wouldn't even have turned it in, except that the sons seemed quite willing to pay the extra income tax."

  Jones said: "That would give a reason for the Institute to be making perizone, if it is making perizone."

  "That's what I thought. But if they are making it, how the devil are they getting it into the buyers' hands without leaving any traces ?"