Dead as a Dinosaur Read online

  The subject was not, however, entirely changed. On Wednesday, there was active response to Dr. Preson’s request—this time in a Long Island newspaper—for someone to board his Doberman bitch, who, according to the advertisement, needed homelike surroundings, not the institutionalism of a kennel. Long Island proved well-filled with men and women anxious to provide foster homes for Dobermans and, while many of them telephoned, four appeared in person. (One, who had read the advertisement only casually, brought with him a Doberman male, having misunderstood the nature of the need.) By midafternoon of Wednesday, the pony people had begun to mingle with the dog people and Dr. Preson, although in theory all out for mammals, was beginning to fly apart. (He had almost kicked the Doberman but, on looking more carefully, restrained himself.)

  It had, he told Jerry North, become more and more difficult to adopt a sympathetic attitude toward the various applicants. It was one thing to realize that they, also, were victims of this—“this depravity!”—but it was another to resist a human temptation to hold them, individually as well as collectively, responsible.

  “I,” Dr. Preson told Jerry North, “am an even-tempered man. You know that.”

  “Well—” Jerry said, compromising.

  “You’re thinking of Steck,” Dr. Preson said. He jumped up and then, in almost the same motion, jumped down again. There was, Jerry thought, no other way to describe his movements. “There are limits,” Preson said, and grabbed his hair. “On the taxonomy of the felids, Steck—!” Words failed him; comprehension failed Jerry North.

  “It is entirely untrue that I threatened to hit the last bushelman with part of Smilodon,” Dr. Preson said. “For one thing, it’s very brittle, of course. For another thing, it isn’t mine and—” He paused, seemingly having lost his place.

  “You’re an even-tempered man,” Jerry North told him.

  “Certainly,” Dr. Preson said. “I am a scientist, Mr. North.”

  “Look,” Jerry said. “To get back. They wanted to sell you a pony? Was that it?”

  “Well trained, broken to saddle and cart,” said Dr. Preson. “A pony!” He almost screamed, and jumped up again, and clutched at his beard. “All day Thursday they kept coming—coming, telephoning, writing letters. Ponies, dog people, bushelmen. The tree surgeons stopped, but what good did that do?”

  “Well—” Jerry said.

  “The next day—masons!” Dr. Preson said. He gripped the edge of Gerald North’s desk, and struggled obviously for control. “Masons,” he repeated, more quietly, but with a kind of desperation. “I wanted a stone chimney built. I wanted to be sure it would draw.” He laughed, a little hysterically. “I left, then.”

  He had, he said, done precisely that—he had fled his apartment. He had gone to the home of his brother, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and there had found sanctuary. He had also, it appeared, found sympathy; he had been urged to remain until, as his brother had said, “This crackpot gets tired of it.” But on Monday, he had returned to his apartment.

  “Got to get this book done,” Dr. Preson told Gerald North. “Can’t work out there. People all the time.”

  He had returned rather cautiously, but on Monday morning it did seem to have blown over. Until evening there had been nothing to interrupt Dr. Preson, and he had begun to get on with the plasticity of the Canoidea. It had been hard to settle down to it, of course; a sense of insecurity remained; Dr. Preson was conscious of listening always for a ring on the telephone, for a knock at the door. But all day nothing happened, and he was beginning to compose himself. Then, at nine-thirty in the evening, it started again.

  It was butlers this time—butlers coming in response to an advertisement in the early edition of the New York Herald Tribune—butlers needed immediately, to apply in person, bringing references. They had done so until after midnight. The next morning—that morning—he had telephoned the police. He told Jerry of his interview with Detective Anstey. “Who isn’t going to do anything,” Dr. Preson told Jerry.

  “Well,” Jerry North said, “it is a crackpot, of course.” Dr. Preson glared at him. “I realize how upsetting it is,” Jerry said. “How—”

  “Upsetting?” Dr. Preson repeated, and jumped up again. “Upsetting, you call it?”

  “More than that, I know,” Jerry said. “But—”

  “I tell you, somebody’s trying to drive me crazy,” Dr. Preson said. “Don’t you see that? Making it impossible for me to work, to think, to—to—”

  The spare, wiry little man was very excited again. Excitement seemed to come and go, in waves. He leaned forward, now, on Jerry North’s desk, and banged the desk with small, hard fists.

  “I’m not making it up!” he said. “You think I am? I’m—imagining it?”

  “No,” Jerry said. “Of course not.”

  “Putting these advertisements in myself?”

  “No,” Jerry said again. “Take it easy, doctor.”

  “Then,” Dr. Preson said, “somebody is trying to do something to me. I think to drive me mad—to—to—I don’t know. Can’t you see what it is? There’s—hatred there. Something you can’t reach—something out of sight, out of touch—hating. Something—”

  “Wait,” Jerry said. “Listen to me, Dr. Preson. It’s what the police say, what your brother says. It’s some crackpot. It’s not directed against you—not against you personally. It isn’t hatred. Somebody found your name somewhere. That’s easy, you’re well known. It’s just—just crazy malice. Surely you understand that?”

  “Would you?” Dr. Preson said. “Would you—” He broke off. “Maybe you think it’s funny?” he asked.

  “Well,” Jerry North said, “in a way it is, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” Dr. Preson said, with great but artificial calm, “it will be very—very comical when this ‘crackpot’ kills me? Because don’t you see—”

  Jerry leaned across the desk, put his hands on Dr. Preson’s shoulders and gripped firmly. The little man was hysterical; it wasn’t pleasant. Jerry managed to laugh.

  “Kills you?” he said, and managed to laugh again. “It’s a practical joke, Dr. Preson. Nothing but—some kind of crazy humor.” He shook the older man, just perceptibly. “Get hold of yourself,” Jerry said, spacing the words.

  To Jerry’s own surprise, it seemed to work. Dr. Preson looked at him for a few seconds and then, only then, began to see him.

  “All right,” Dr. Preson said. “I’m upset. I realize that, of course. I’ve—I’ve been working hard, lately. Trying to get the book done by the time I said. I suppose I’m—”

  “Of course you are,” Jerry said. “I’ll tell you. We’ll go out and have a drink and—”

  But then the telephone rang, and when Jerry answered it was for Dr. Preson.

  “Told them I’d be here,” he said. “If the police actually found out—yes?”

  He listened. Above the scraggling beard his face reddened; with his free hand he clutched his hair. Suddenly, he thrust the telephone at Gerald North. “You listen!” he commanded.

  Jerry North listened. There were four men in the lobby of the apartment hotel in West Twenty-second Street. They were there to see Dr. Preson; they intended to remain there until he returned. They were large men, and stubborn, and the hotel management wanted to turn them over to Dr. Preson as soon as possible.

  “Dr. Preson will not be back this evening,” Gerald North said. “Tell them that. If they don’t leave, call the police.” He hung up; he looked at Dr. Preson, who was sitting again in the chair across the desk. He had his face in his hands.

  Dr. Preson had masseurs, now. He had advertised for them.

  2

  TUESDAY, 10:15 P.M. TO WEDNESDAY, 12:15 A.M.

  Mr. and Mrs. North looked at the chair in which Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., curator of Fossil Mammals of the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, author of Tertiary Mammalian Dispersal (1941); Felid Myology (1943); Taxonomic Memoirs (1948) and The Days Before Man, Vol. I (1950), had been sitting.
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  “My!” Pamela North said. She looked at Martini, who sat on the floor in front of her and blinked up. “Felid,” Pam said to Martini. “There are irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding your phylogeny.” She looked at Jerry North. “Why badger a mammalogist?” she asked. “I’d think they had enough to bear. And speaking of bears. Do you believe they used to be dogs?”

  On that subject, and on subjects which were related, Jerry North was, he told his wife, willing to take Dr. Preson’s word, assuming he could understand it. They were, he told her, away from the point. Pam agreed that they were, but pointed out that it was Dr. Preson who had taken them there.

  “Because he was as excited about Dr.—what’s his name?—Stick?”

  “Steck,” Jerry told her. “He—”

  “As about the bushelmen,” Pam said. “What does he want you to do?”

  “Among other things, he’s an author,” Jerry told her. “He wants me to hold his hand. Or—” He broke off. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I know,” he said. “I suppose he needed an audience. It is a damn funny thing. Damn irritating, too, of course.”

  “I keep thinking of the Doberman,” Pam said. “It ought to be—funny. It all ought to be funny.”

  “In a way it is,” Jerry said. “As I told Preson. But—”

  “But you brought him home for a drink,” Pam said. “Because it wasn’t—well, only funny. It isn’t, is it?”

  Somebody, it had to be presumed, thought it was funny, Jerry told her. What other reason could there be for all of it, for any of it? It was a crackpot’s idea of a rousing joke; on that the man from the precinct was right. There was nothing much to be done about it; on that the man from the precinct was right again.

  “Why Dr. Preson?” Pam asked.

  Presumably, Jerry said, and made them drinks—presumably there was no “why” to it, any more than there was a “why” to the direction lightning took, the victims it chose. Any object which stood above its immediate environment—even if it stood no higher than a small boy, playing with a puppy—was enough “why” for lightning. The small boy died; the puppy lived. Prominence was relative—a towering tree, a little boy on a level field. He brought the drinks back.

  “Preson is prominent enough,” he said. “People have heard his name, particularly since The Days Before Man. There’ve been stories about him. We saw to that, of course. He’s made good copy—a scientist, a subject dry as—as fossil bones—and a best seller out of them. A target for a crackpot.”

  Pamela North patted her lap and Martini jumped to it. She stroked Martini, who purred faintly. Pamela North said she supposed so, but her tone was without confidence. She sipped the drink.

  “You know what the catch is,” she said. “He does too, doesn’t he? That’s why he—he dragged in this Dr. Stick—Steck. It’s going on too long. Wouldn’t a crackpot get bored?”

  It depended perhaps on the width of the crack, Jerry suggested. But his tone, too, lacked assurance. The alternative was deliberate persecution—meaningless persecution. Why should anyone persecute a curator of fossil mammals?

  “Particularly,” Pam agreed, “a nice one. He is nice, isn’t he? In a jumpy, prickly way? In spite of the whiskers and those—those very strange glasses. I’d think you’d go crazy deciding what part to look through.” She paused. “You don’t think he has?” she asked.

  Jerry didn’t. He said Dr. Preson’s book—the popular book—was entirely sane. He said that Dr. Preson had proved sane enough in contract negotiations. He pointed out that Dr. Preson was being victimized, was not making it up—as evidence the authenticated arrival at the apartment hotel of four masseurs. He paused.

  “This Dr. Steck,” Pam said. “Do you know him? The one he’s feuding with. The one he calls a ‘splitter.’”

  “By correspondence,” Jerry said. “He looked over the manuscript for us—Preson’s manuscript. It was beyond us, so we called in Steck and a couple of others, just as a precaution. As specialists in a field we didn’t—”

  “All right,” Pam said. “Did he like it?”

  Jerry did not at first remember. The Days Before Man had been, at any rate, not technically disapproved by the consultant scientists, which was all that was wanted. (Lay opinion was unanimously favorable.) He had a vague feeling one of the consultants had indicated certain reservations. Then he remembered.

  “It was Steck,” he said. “Said the book probably was all right for the kind of people who would read it, since it didn’t make any difference what they thought anyway. Said Preson was a ‘lumper’ and unsound on something or other. The genera of the Felidae, I think. Oh yes—said there was no point to Canoidea since everybody knew what Arctoidea meant. I remember looking that up.” He stopped.

  “All right,” Pam said.

  “Couple of names for the dog family, is all,” Jerry told her. “You can call it Ursoidea, too, but authority will be against you.”

  Other things would be against her also, Pam pointed out. She asked what kind of a man Dr. Steck had sounded like.

  “Was he feuding back?” Pam asked.

  It had not appeared from his letter, so far as Jerry could remember. But it was a couple of years ago.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I gathered from what Preson said that what you call the feud was pretty special—pretty private. Not anything you’d invite outsiders to. Anyway, would people really feud about—about the classification of extinct mammals?”

  “People will feud about anything,” Pam told him. “Don’t you know that, Jerry? Particularly about anything they’re enough interested in. Dr. Preson cares a great deal about old bones, probably. Probably Dr. Steck does.”

  It was a long way from an interest in old bones, however mammalian, to bushelmen, masseurs and Shetland ponies, Jerry pointed out. It was a long way from paleozoology to what Jerry, with some reluctance, brought himself to call crackpotism. He could, in effect, imagine no one less likely to annoy a distinguished mammalogist than another mammalogist.

  “The trouble is,” Pam said, “that Dr. Preson doesn’t seem to think so.”

  There had been that, certainly, during the hours Dr. Preson had spent with the Norths—hours which included a cocktail or two and a dinner stretched by Martha from two to three; which included, also, a subsequent period of conversation in which living dogs, variety Doberman; animals that, a million years ago, approached dogdom; the taxonomic errors of Dr. Albert James Steck and the unanticipated appearance of tree surgeons; the race history of cats and the lack of enterprise of the New York Police Department—in which these and other subjects were rather inextricably mixed. Toward the end, particularly, Dr. Preson had rather harped upon Dr. Steck. But it was not clear whether Dr. Steck had become topical because of things which had happened during the past week or of zoological changes which had, on the best evidence, taken place a few millions of years ago. To be a “genera splitter”—a vice only vaguely comprehensible to the Norths even when explained—was also, Dr. Preson indicated, to be a crackpot. Speaking of crackpots—there was a man who split the existing and prehistoric cats into twenty genera. Speaking of crackpots—there was a man who inserted newspaper advertisements to annoy Dr. Preson. Yet Dr. Preson, possibly because he spoke to laymen of a confrere, did not specifically accuse Dr. Steck.

  “You can’t deny that Dr. Preson wanders a good deal,” Pam told Jerry, who had not thought to deny it; who did, however, now attribute it to a mental uneasiness natural in one who was being assailed by bushelmen. Usually, Jerry said, Dr. Preson kept pretty much to one subject—prehistoric mammals. Jerry had to admit, however, that he did not know a great deal about Dr. Preson.

  He told Pam what he did know. Preson was a paleozoologist widely known in his field, which was a field into which laymen seldom ventured. He was important at the Broadly Institute of Paleontology as a scientist and also as a man who could, and did, finance expeditions, not only, although chiefly, in his own special field. A good many of these expeditions he had led
; where interesting bones were found, there hastened Dr. Preson, with pick and spade. He had been doing this for years, and publishing what he discovered and speculating on the meaning of what he had discovered. He had remained unknown to the readers of the Daily News, whose interest in mammalogy was more immediate, and also to all but a handful of the readers of the New York Times.

  And then a literary agent had telephoned Gerald North, of North Books, Inc., and had said he had something pretty special. Possibly, he had said, a little out of Jerry’s line, but still—. Perhaps of interest to a special audience. (“But, by God, Jerry, it interests me.”) A book which would have to be illustrated and which was, admittedly, a little long. Well—of which one volume, in itself pretty long, was presently at hand. A book now called “Some Aspects of Paleozoology” which, certainly, few readers could be expected to ask for at Macy’s book counter. Still and all—

  “Well—” Gerald North had said, in a tone of extreme doubt. He had nevertheless read the book; he had read it most of one night and part of the next day, and the next night strange monsters had stalked his dreams and the time of man had seemed trivial and wan—a moment during which evolution or nature, or whatever one chose to think of as the animating Force, had grown bored between marvels. “Some Aspects of Paleozoology” had, in short, turned out to be quite a book, and Jerry could not remember another like it. The public, when given the opportunity, appeared to agree.

  Dr. Preson, alone among those concerned, was unsurprised that The Days Before Man appeared on lists of best sellers and remained there. He pointed out that paleozoology was a very interesting study and always had been. He said that the trouble was people usually got it in bits and pieces from popularizers who didn’t, as a matter of fact, know Machairodontinae from Nimravinae, and never would. He excepted certain publications of the American Museum of Natural History, and lamented that they were not more widely read. He was, however, gratified and surprised at the size of the royalty checks. Ancient bones are most readily uncovered by modern dollars.