Darker Than You Think by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

some danger," rapped a
photographer. "About somebody that didn't want him to talk. And
then he conked off, right in the middle of what he had to say. That's
pretty damn funny. You aren't just possibly frightened out, Quain?"
    Sam
Quain gulped nervously.
    "Naturally,
we're upset," he admitted huskily. "But where's any
tangible proof that Dr. Mondrick had any enemy here?" His own
haggard eyes peered away into the thick dusk, narrowing as if to
hunted fear. "There's none," he insisted. "Dr.
Mondrick's death at this moment can be nothing more than a tragic
coincidence. Perhaps it was less. The fatal attack was doubtless
brought on by his own excitement."
    "But
what about his 'Child of Night'?" the radio reporter broke in.
"His 'Black Messiah'?"
    Sam
Quain's bleak face tried to smile.
    "Dr.
Mondrick read detective stories. His Child of Night, I believe, is
merely a figure of speech—a personification of human ignorance,
perhaps. He was given to figurative language, and he wanted to make
his announcement dramatic."
    Sam
Quain nodded toward the wooden box.
    "There
lies your story, gentlemen. I'm afraid Dr. Mondrick chose an
unfortunate publicity device. After all, the theory of human
evolution is no longer frontpage news. Every known detail of the
origin of mankind is extremely important to such a specialist as Dr.
Mondrick, but it doesn't interest the man in the street —unless
it's dramatized."
    "Hell!"
The radio man turned away. "That old buzzard sure took me for a
ride." An ambulance drew up beside the plane, and he watched the
blind woman bidding her husband a final farewell. Barbee was glad she
couldn't see the flashbulbs flickering.
    "What
are your plans now, Mr. Quain?" demanded a hawk-faced man in
black—a science reporter, as Barbee knew him, for one of the
press associations. "When are you going to give us the rest of
this interrupted announcement?"
    "Not
soon." Sam Quain patiently turned his head for a photographer
and blinked at the cruel flashbulbs. "We all felt, you see, that
Dr. Mondrick was speaking prematurely. I think all my associates in
the Foundation will agree with me that the objects we brought back
from the Ala-shan must be studied carefully in our own laboratory,
along with all Dr. Mondrick's notes and papers, before we have any
statement for the public. In due time, the Foundation will publish a
monograph to present his work. That may take a year. Perhaps two."
    Somebody
in the impatient group made an impolite sound through his lips.
    "We've
got a story, anyhow." The science reporter grinned at him
cheerfully. "If that's the way you want it, we'll use what we
have. I can see the tabloid heads already—'Prehistoric Curse
Clips Grave Robber.'"
    "Print
what you like." Sam Quain peered around him in the windy gloom,
and Barbee could see his veiled unease. "But we have no further
statement now —except that I want to offer our apologies, on
behalf of the Foundation, for this tragic anticlimax. I do hope you
will be generous in anything you write about Dr. Mondrick. He was
truly great—if sometimes a trifle eccentric. His work, when
fully published, will place him securely among the honored few of the
humane sciences, along with Freud and Darwin."
    His
weary jaw set stubbornly.
    "That's
all that I—or any of us—will have to say."
    The
photographers flashed a final bulb at his set face, and began packing
their equipment. The radio man coiled up his cable and took down his
microphone. The newsmen scattered reluctantly, to file their stories
of an obscure and unresolved event.
    Barbee
looked for April Bell and glimpsed her entering the terminal
building. She had slipped away, he supposed, to telephone her story
to a rewrite man on the Call. But
Barbee's own deadline was midnight, for the early edition of the Star. He
still had time to try to solve the riddle he felt in Mondrick's
death.
    He
pushed impulsively forward to seize Sam Quain's arm. The tall
explorer recoiled from his