Smart House by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page B

me talk to a person!” he had yelled into the telephone finally. Then he had banged down the phone and turned a stricken face to her.
    “What happened?”
    “It was a computer pretending to be a person,” he said in a near whisper. “By God, it was passing itself off as human!”
    Milton Sweetwater did not hesitate a second about taking off his jacket. He handed it to Constance with gratitude, followed her to the terrace, and shook hands with Charlie in the ritualistic manner of men, eyeing each other carefully. He accepted a beer and sat down. Very handsome, she thought. Movie star looks, like Gregory Peck. And he was obviously studying both her and Charlie as much as she was studying him. Charlie, she also thought, was not being helpful.
    “Hot day for driving,” Charlie said; Milton Sweetwater agreed, and now there was silence.
    Abruptly Milton Sweetwater laughed and leaned back in his chair, obviously relaxing. Until that moment Constance had not realized that he had been tense.
    “I got your names from Ralph Wedekind,” he said and drank his beer thirstily. His glass was covered with condensation, so heavy that it dripped like a shower when he moved it. “Actually I have three names. I already talked to someone else and didn’t like him. You’re the second. If you turn us down, there’s another man in New York that I’ll talk to. I was ready to reject you for making me drive out to your place, instead of your coming in to the city, but after a couple days in New York, I’d be the first to admit you’d be crazy to live there. And the last thing we need at Smart House is a crazy detective.”
    “Why a New York detective?” Charlie asked lazily.
    “We don’t care where our person is from, as long as he’s good, with good references. Wedekind gave you his highest recommendation. So I’m here.”
    “Did the computer kill those two men?” Charlie asked, but without any real interest.
    “Of course not. But the shareholders are in a bind. We’ve had three meetings so far and no one knows exactly where to go next, what to do next. The company’s in a tailspin financially and the management is in a tailspin psychologically. Beth Elringer is crying murder, and her brother-in-law is screaming for action. It’s a real mess.”
    Charlie sighed and poured himself more beer. “I read the news stories you sent. What else is there to know? Were the stories accurate?”
    “To a point,” Milton Sweetwater said after a pause that was hardly noticeable, as if in that brief moment he had come to a decision. “Can we all accept that our conference today is confidential whether or not you take on our problem?”
    Charlie waved his hand. “That’s the way we play it.”
    Milton Sweetwater leaned forward. “There’s a major part of that weekend that we decided not to talk about with the press or the police. I don’t think it has a bearing, but at our last meeting, we decided to tell a detective all of it and go on from there.”
    Charlie nodded, then regarded the cats under the lilac bush again. The leaves of the bush were drooping dispiritedly; the cats looked dead; he felt wrung out.
    “You should know something about Gary Elringer and the company or that weekend won’t make a bit of sense,” Milton began. “Gary was a prodigy. I guess the news stories went into that. He built his own computer before he was ten, went to Stanford at fifteen, Ph.D. by twenty, with half a dozen innovations or outright inventions or discoveries under his belt already. He had a couple dozen patents before he could legally take a drink. He also had a difficult personality. Spoiled rotten as a kid, spoiled as an adult. He was chubby and had the social graces of a polecat, snarling, taking what he wanted, and generally making people miserable. In college he met Beth MacNair, shy and very bright, and undeveloped physically. Somehow they hit it off and got married. That was ten years ago. Bruce Elringer, Gary’s brother, meanwhile