Dalrymple's Equation

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy June 1956 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It's the not knowing that gets you. The wondering. Thinking sometimes one way and sometimes the other. But never knowing for sure. Being suckered is bad enough but wondering whether you've been suckered is rougher. Or whether you've let the biggest thing since fingerprints slide right by you.

Someday the case may be solved. Then we'll know for sure--one way or the other--Donovan and I. What case? Wait 'til I tell you. It won't take long.

The thing started with as crazy a murder as two Homicide cops ever got called in on. In a bar on Tenth Avenue near Grand--you probably know the place and you probably read about the case. It was in all the papers. But the whole story never saw print.

We were rung into it by a call from the squad car boys who got there first. We walked in and a cop I didn't know pointed a thumb at a young guy lying with his head on the bar and said, "Deader than a lamp post for my money."

A young lad--around twenty-three or four--lying there as though he'd had one too many and was sleeping it off. He had downed one too many. And he would spend all eternity sleeping it off.

He was all through.

The barkeep stood there with his apron hanging out and a baffled look on his face. A look that had all the earmarks of being genuine. I said, "Kennedy--Homicide. What happened?"

The barkeep shrugged and licked his dry lips. "I dunno. He just keeled over. I got scared and called the cops."

The kid certainly looked like a morgue job, as I said, but we don't take things like that for granted. The squad car boys had called General Hospital and now a couple of internes came in with a respirator. They didn't use it, though. One of them put his nose close down to the kid's mouth and then looked at the barkeep. "You served him a drink?"

The barkeep nodded. "That's what he came in for."

"Let's see the bottle."

The barkeep gave that a little thought and then took a bottle off the rack and pushed it over the bar. The interne sniffed it, made a face and said, "There's enough arsenic in there to depopulate New Jersey."

"Arsenic!" the barkeep croaked. "You're crazy! We don't serve nobody no arsenic here!"

The interne looked at Donovan and me and said, "Call your meat wagon, lads. This one is beyond us."

He had identification--an Arthur Davis, with nothing at all sinister in his wallet. The lab men came and there was a lot of activity for an hour or so and then we padlocked the joint and took the barkeep downtown with us. His on-the-spot story was simple. Davis had come in and ordered a drink. The barkeep served it up. Davis knocked it off. The drink, in turn, knocked Davis off.

The barkeep's name was Timothy Garver. He was a middle-aged cork puller who had been in the business most of his life. We ran him through R and I and found him clean. Then we sat him down in the interrogation room and started digging into him.

"What did you have against Davis?"

Garver looked like a flabby-jowled ghost. His hands shook. "Nothing. So help me. I never seen the guy before."

"You think we'll swallow that?" Donovan asked. "You think you're playing with school kids? Telling us you poison a guy you never saw before?"

I said, "Maybe he did it for laughs."

"I didn't poison him!" Garver pleaded. "You got to believe me!"

"You mean there wasn't any poison in that bottle?"

"Sure there was--if you say so. What I mean is I didn't put it there. I didn't know it was there. I--"

"What you mean is you'd planned to get the guy out into the alley after he was dead and you lost your nerve after he keeled over."

"No--no! Nothing like that."

"You had that bottle spiked, waiting for Davis to come in."

"No--no! It was just an ordinary bar bottle."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Every tavern has a brand of whisky they push--their bar whisky. When a customer isn't particular about his brand we give him the bar liquor."

It seemed to me the guy was gaining courage. He wasn't quite as nervous as he'd been. "You served other people out of that same bottle?" I asked.

He licked his lips and dropped his eyes before he answered. "Sure I did."

"But that was before you put the arsenic in it."

"I didn't put any poison in that bottle. And you guys can't pin this on me!"

"What makes you think we can't?"

"Because I never knew the fellow and you can't prove I did. So how are you going to make anybody believe I killed somebody I didn't know and had nothing against. You think I'm nuts or something?"

"It's a possibility," I said.