LITMIR.BIZ

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Hardin was seated in Barry’s inner office. As Barry entered he was saying to Carol Ann Cusack, “Where’s Jim Cotswold?”

      Carol Ann said, “Why, Mr. Cotswold is on vacation.”

      Barry said, “What’s up, Bat?”

      “Just a minute. I want to check up on something.” Bat looked at the secretary. “Yes, but where? I assume he left you his itinerary.”

      “Why, he’s in Mozambique. You know Mr. Cotswold and that Poloroid-Leica of his. He wanted to get shots of animal life in nature.”

      “Get him for me, will you Carol Ann?”

      Looking somewhat mystified, she dialed. Bat Hardin sat down in the chair behind Barry Ten Eyck’s steel desk.

      “Put it on this screen, please,” he said.

      Barry said, “What’s going on? Why do you want to bother Jim?”

      Jim Cotswold’s angular face and upper body faded in. He was wearing a bush jacket with half a dozen pockets. Around his neck was slung a recent-design camera with a monstrously long snouted lens. He was obviously surprised. And obviously talking into his pocket phone.

      “Hey,” he said. “What’s the big idea? I was just about to get a shot of a real lion. I mean a real one, right out here parading around in the bush.”

      Bat said, “Sorry. It’s important, Jim. Let’s take a look at it.”

      “At what?”

      “The lion.”

      Mystified, the Second Vice-Demecrat of Shyler-deme redirected his pocket TV phone screen. In the faint distance, Bat and Barry, who was now looking over Bat’s shoulder, could see an African bush scene and, yes, slinking through the background was a male lion.

      Jim’s voice said, “Satisfied? Now, damn it, you let him get away before I could get my shots.”

      Bat said, “How far are you from the nearest town with a jetport, Jim?”

      “A good three days by truck, dammit. What the devil do you clowns want?”

      “Nothing more,” Bat told him. “Sorry to bother you. Good hunting.” He flicked off the set and turned back to Barry.

      Barry said, “What in the devil’s up?”

      “He’s in Mozambique, all right. And way the hell and gone out in the boondocks.” Bat Hardin fished into a pocket and came forth with what at first seemed a chunk of melted copper. He handed it over to his superior.

      Barry scowled down at it. Finally, he made out some lettering. “Why, it’s a coin. A copper coin.” He looked up at the other who was again gnawing away at his lip and scowling. “So what? Where’d you get it?”

      “Harrison, down in Disposal found it, by accident, in one of the incinerators.”

      “Well, what of it?”

      “So I checked it out with that resident who had the coin collection stolen.”

      Barry looked at him. Bat nodded.

      Barry demanded, “You mean this is one of the stolen coins and it was found in an incinerator?”

      Bat nodded again. He said, “Come on, Barry. Let’s go over and see Stevens.”

      They entered the office of Shyler-deme’s Security Chief, and Stevens looked up from his desk. Bat tossed the half melted copper coin before him and reversed a chair and sat straddled on it, his arms on the back. Barry remained standing for the present.

      Stevens took up the coin and scowled at it. “What’s this?”

      “Part of the coin collection that was stolen yesterday,” Bat said.

      “Oh? I’ll be darned. Where’d you get it, Hardin?”

      “Pure luck. Harrison, down on the incinerators, fished it out.”

      Stevens grunted sourly. “Well, I don’t see what good it does us. Our killer evidently ditched his loot to avoid any evidence.”

      Bat shook his head. “I’ve got a different theory.”

      Both Barry and Stevens were staring at him. Bat said, “He never stole the stuff.”

      Barry sputtered, “Are you completely around the bend?”

      Bat Hardin shook his head doggedly. “The whole thing’s been crazy and it was meant to look crazy. All this supposed stealing of things not worth stealing. As though some nut were at work. It’s been one long misdirection and a very cute idea. Too damn cute. But our supposed burglar has been going into apartments, messing them up a bit to make them look as though they were completely ransacked, and then he’d toss a few items into the disposal chute and leave. He wouldn’t be carrying a thing, in case somebody came up on him unexpectedly. He was always clean of any loot.”

      Stevens was scowling disbelief. “But why, for Christ’s sake?”

      Bat bit his lower lip nervously. “That’s what I had trouble figuring out. But there’s only one answer, so far as I can see. Like I said, it was misdirection. He wanted to kill poor Lawrence McCaw for some reason I don’t know as yet. He must have figured out that if he just did the job, straight off, an investigation would follow. A thorough investigation. And such an investigation would reveal the fact that he had motive for killing McCaw. However, if he gobbledygooked up the whole thing and made it look like the killing was unpremeditated, that a sneak thief had been caught robbing the McCaw apartment and had killed its occupant, then nobody would look in his direction.”

      “Oh, Bat, this is pretty farfetched,” Barry protested.

      Bat looked at him. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, Barry.”

      Barry said, “Look, you’ve explained absolutely nothing about how he got into the building. How he got from one floor to another without detection. How he knew the apartments he entered were empty. How he got into them. Good grief, Bat.”

      Bat was eyeing him levelly. “Why do you think I phoned Jim Cotswold?”

      Barry blinked at him.

      Bat said patiently, “Supposedly, you and I and Jim are the only three persons who can make their way around Shyler-deme, any place at all, without having to check it out with Security. Well, that narrows it down to just you and me. Jim’s in the African bush.”

      Barry stared at him. “What the hell do you mean?”

      Bat turned his eyes to Stevens, who had been looking sourly at him. Bat said, “The thing is, we aren’t the only three deme officials that can go anywhere at any time. There’s one more. Our Chief of Security. In fact, he can do it much better than we can. He can also check apartments through his spy lenses to see if they are empty, before he pretends to burglarize one. He also has the means to open any door to any apartment.”

      “You’re crazy as a coot!” Stevens blurted.

      “He also admitted, when we were up in McCaw’s room, that he knew the man slightly. That was a smart bit of business. If he had denied knowing him at all and somebody had stumbled on the fact that he did, the fat would have been in the fire.”

      Bat Hardin shook his heavy head. “No, Barry. We’ll have to dig it out, but will eventually find that our boy, here, had a very good reason to kill Lawrence McCaw. And he had a better opportunity than anyone else in this deme. He’s our man.”

      Barry began to say, in bewilderment, “I can’t …”

      But Stevens, his lips thinned back, had scooped a Gyro-jet pistol from a desk drawer. He snapped, “I’m getting out of here and I don’t want anybody to try and stop me.” He was on his feet.

      “Nobody’ll try to stop you,” Bat said reasonably.

      Stevens backed around to the door, keeping

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