The Old Die Rich Read online

stay in my custody until we're through."

  I shrugged. "As long as you leave me alone while you're doing yourdigging, I don't give a hang if I'm under arrest for suspicion ofmurder. I've got to do some straightening out. I wish the people inthe future could take on the job--they could do it faster and betterthan I can--but some nice, peaceful quiet would help."

  * * * * *

  He didn't touch me or say a word to me as we waited for the squad toarrive. I sat in the chair and shut out first him and then the menwith their sounding hammers and crowbars and all the rest.

  She'd been ruthless and callous, and she'd murdered old people with nomore pity than a wolf among a herd of helpless sheep.

  But Blundell and Carr had told me that she was as much a victim as theoldsters who'd died of starvation with the riches she'd given themstill untouched, on deposit in the banks or stuffed into hiding placesor pinned to their shabby clothes. She needed treatment for theillness her father had inflicted on her. But even he, they'd said, hadbeen suffering from a severe emotional disturbance and proper carecould have made a great and honored scientist out of him.

  They'd told me the truth and made me hate her, and they'd told metheir viewpoint and made that hatred impossible.

  I was here, in the present, without her. The machine was gone.Yearning over something I couldn't change would destroy me. I had noright to destroy myself. Nobody did, they'd told me, and nobody whoreconciles himself to the fact that some situations just areimpossible to work out ever could.

  I'd realized that when the squad packed up and left and Lou Pape cameover to where I was sitting.

  "You knew we wouldn't find her," he said.

  "That's what I kept telling you."

  "Where is she?"

  "In Port Said, exotic hellhole of the world, where she's dancing inveils for the depraved--"

  "Cut out the kidding! Where is she?"

  "What's the difference, Lou? She's not here, is she?"

  "That doesn't mean she can't be somewhere else, dead."

  "She's not dead. You don't have to believe me about anything else,just that."

  He hauled me out of the chair and stared hard at my face. "You aren'tlying," he said. "I know you well enough to know you're not."

  "All right, then."

  "But you're a damned fool to think a dish like that would have anypart of you. I don't mean you're nothing a woman would go for, butshe's more fang than female. You'd have to be richer andbetter-looking than her, for one thing--"

  "Not after my friends get through with her. She'll know a good manwhen she sees one and I'd be what she wants." I slid my hand over mynaked scalp. "With a head of hair, I'd look my real age, which happensto be a year younger than you, if you remember. She'd go for me--theychecked our emotional quotients and we'd be a natural together. Theonly thing was that I was bald. They could have grown hair on my head,which would have taken care of that, and then we'd have gottentogether like gin and tonic."

  * * * * *

  Lou arched his black eyebrows at me. "They really could grow hair onyou?"

  "Sure. Now you want to know why I didn't let them." I glanced out thewindow at the smoky city. "That's why. They couldn't tell me if I'dever get back to the future. I wasn't taking any chances. As long asthere was a possibility that I'd be stranded in my own time, I wasn'tgoing to lose my livelihood. Which reminds me, you have anything elseto do here?"

  "There'll be a guard stationed around the house and all her holdingsand art will be taken over until she comes back--"

  "She won't."

  "--or is declared legally dead."

  "And me?" I broke in.

  "We can't hold you without proof of murder."

  "Good enough. Then let's get out of here."

  "I have to go back on duty," he objected.

  "Not any more. I've got over $15,000 in cash and deposits--enough tofinance you and me."

  "Enough to kill her for."

  "Enough to finance you and me," I repeated doggedly. "I told you I hadthe money before she sent me into the future--"

  "All right, all right," he interrupted. "Let's not go into that again.We couldn't find a body, so you're free. Now what's this aboutfinancing the two of us?"

  I put my fingers around his arm and steered him out to the street.

  "This city has never had a worse cop than you," I said. "Why? Becauseyou're an actor, not a cop. You're going back to acting, Lou. Thismoney will keep us both going until we get a break."

  He gave me the slit-eyed look he'd picked up in line of duty. "Thatwouldn't be a bribe, would it?"

  "Call it a kind of memorial to a lot of poor, innocent old people anda sick, tormented woman."

  We walked along in silence out in the clean sunshine. It was oursilence; the sleek cars and burly trucks made their noise and thepedestrians added their gabble, but a good Stanislavsky actor like Louwouldn't notice that. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was givinghim a chance to work his way through this situation.

  "I won't hand you a lie, Mark," he said finally. "I never stoppedwanting to act. I'll take your deal on two considerations."

  "All right, what are they?"

  "That whatever I take off you is strictly a loan."

  "No argument. What's the other?"

  He had an unlit cigarette almost to his lips. He held it there whilehe said: "That any time you come across a case of an old person whodied of starvation with $30,000 stashed away somewhere, you turn fastto the theatrical page and not tell me or even think about it."

  "I don't have to agree to that."

  * * * * *

  He lowered the cigarette, stopped and turned to me. "You mean it's nodeal?"

  "Not that," I said. "I mean there won't be any more of those cases.Between knowing that and both of us back acting again, I'm satisfied.You don't have to believe me. Nobody does."

  He lit up and blew out a pretty plume, fine and slow and straight,which would have televised like a million in the bank. Then hegrinned. "You wouldn't want to bet on that, would you?"

  "Not with a friend. I do all my sure-thing betting with bookies."

  "Then make it a token bet," he said. "One buck that somebody dies ofstarvation with a big poke within a year."

  I took the bet.

  I took the dollar a year later.

  --H. L. GOLD

  * * * * *