Power, The by Frank M. Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

supposed to come back today.”
    Lieutenant Crawford was middle-aged, with pale-blue eyes and a friendly face and hair that was beginning to silver around the temples and above the ears. He wore a slouch hat and a blue suit with a suggestion of a shine and a lived-in air and signs of strain where it was tight around the waist. He looked a lot like a harried, unsuccessful businessman.
    Tanner introduced himself and Crawford grunted, found a place for his hat on the bureau, and lowered himself into the straight-backed chair by the desk like a man lowering himself into a tub of steaming hot water.
    “Mrs. Van Zandt told me about you downstairs, Tanner. Nice woman isn’t she?”
    “Real nice,” Tanner said shortly.
    “Not a very good housekeeper but I guess she doesn’t have the background for it.” He teetered the chair back on its two rear legs and stared at the room, then looked back at Tanner. “You knew John Olson pretty well, didn’t you?”
    “Not too well. His sister is my secretary. And John was on my committee. Outside of that, I didn’t know him very well at all.”
    “Meaning you probably didn’t like him too well. I guess nobody else did, either.”
    “I didn’t say that, Lieutenant.”
    “You didn’t have to. You talk to as many people as I have and you get so you can tell attitudes. Olson was a nobody. Nobody liked him very well, nobody thought very much of him, and nobody’s too sad now that he’s dead.” He took a cigar from his coat pocket and neatly circumcised the end with a penknife. “We get them every day. Usually down in the city and usually in a rented sleeping room. The relatives live way off to hell and gone, they’ve got no friends, and the county has to foot the funeral bill.” He sounded bitter. “You’d be surprised how little people care about each other, Professor.”
    He leaned forward in his chair. “Now this committee he was on. What was it all about?”
    “Research for the Navy—confidential work but I can tell you a little about it. We were testing human beings to see how they would stand up under battle conditions. What the breaking point is. That sort of thing.”
    Crawford chewed it over for a moment, then looked at him shrewdly. “You want to know how he died, don’t you? That why you waited?”
    Tanner tried to keep the tenseness out of his voice. “That’s right. I want to know how he died.”
    “His sister probably told you all we know. No external wounds, no shots or stabs. No blood at all. No signs of a struggle, no marks on the throat, no needle punctures on the arms. The missus says he didn’t have any visitors and the windows weren’t forced at any time.”
    “Have you got any theories?”
    “Theories? That’s the nice thing about my work, the woods are always full of them. Myself, I think he took the short way out. We won’t know until we get the results of the autopsy but it looks like poison.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and stared at the chewed end thoughtfully. “Did you ever see the expression on the face of a man who took poison? You wouldn’t forget it, once you did. They die relatively slowly and feel every second of it. It all shows in the face.” He shrugged. “The only thing wrong with that theory is that we can’t find the bottle or the tin or whatever he carried it in.”
    “I don’t think he would have taken poison,” Tanner said.
    “Why not? He wasn’t well liked, he didn’t have any friends or love life, and so far as I can tell, he didn’t particularly enjoy living. We run into this type of thing all the time.” He squinted at Tanner. “You must have your own ideas—people usually do.”
    “I think he was murdered,” Tanner said slowly.
    Crawford looked interested. “What’s the motive? Money? Passion? Revenge? People usually have to have a reason for killing somebody.”
    There were plenty of reasons, Tanner thought. Shall I tell you what it’s all about, Lieutenant ?
    “I still think he was