The Mike Hammer Collection

Roxy smiled a little bit, and the last traces of hardness left her face. She looked almost maternal. “He’s wonderful. A charming boy.”

“You seem to like him.”

“I do. You’d like him too.” She paused, then, “Mike . . . do you really think he was kidnapped?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I want to talk about him. Downstairs I suggested that he might have become temporarily unbalanced and the old man nearly chewed my head off. Hell, it isn’t unreasonable to figure that. He’s supposed to be a genius and that automatically puts him out of the normal class. What do you think?”

She tossed her hair back and rubbed her forehead with one hand. “I can’t understand it. His room is next door, and I heard nothing although I’m usually a light sleeper. Ruston was perfectly all right up to then. He wouldn’t simply walk out.”

“No? And why not?”

“Because he is an intelligent boy. He likes everyone, is satisfied with his environment and has been very happy all the time I’ve known him.”

“Uh-huh. What about his training? How did he get to be a genius?”

“That you’ll have to find out from Mr. York. Both he and Miss Grange take care of that department.”

I squashed the butt into the ashtray. “Nuts, it doesn’t seem likely that a genius can be made. They have to be born. You’ve been around him a lot. Tell me, just how much of a genius is he? I know only what the papers print.”

“Then you know all I know. It isn’t what he knows that makes him a genius, it’s what he is capable of learning. In one week he mastered every phase of the violin. The next week it was the piano. Oh, I realize that it seems impossible, but it’s quite true. Even the music critics accept him as a master of several instruments. It doesn’t stop there, either. Once he showed an interest in astronomy. A few days later he exhausted every book on the subject. His father and I took him to the observatory where he proceeded to amaze the experts with his uncanny knowledge. He’s a mathematical wizard besides. It doesn’t take him a second to give you the cube root of a six-figure number to three decimal points. What more can I say? There is no field that he doesn’t excel in. He grasps fundamentals at the snap of the fingers and learns in five minutes what would take you or me years of study. That, Mike, is the genius in a nutshell, but that’s omitting the true boy part of him. In all respects he is exactly like other boys.”

“The old man said that too.”

“He’s quite right. Ruston loves games, toys and books. He has a pony, a bicycle, skates and a sled. We go for long walks around the estate every once in a while and do nothing but talk. If he wanted to he could expound on nuclear physics in ten-syllable words, but that isn’t his nature. He’d sooner talk football.”

I picked another cigarette out of the box and flicked a match with my thumbnail. “That about covers it, I guess. Maybe he didn’t go off his nut at that. Let’s take a look at his room.”

Roxy nodded and stood up. She walked to the end of the room and opened a door. “This is it.” When she clicked on the light switch I walked in. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. There were pennants on the walls and pictures tucked into the corners of the dresser mirror. Clothes were scattered in typical boyish confusion over the backs of chairs and the desk.

In one corner was the bed. The covers had been thrown to the foot and the pillow still bore the head print of its occupant. If the kid had really been snatched I felt for him. It was no night to be out in your pajamas, especially when you left the top of them hanging on the bedpost.

I tried the window. It gave easily enough, though it was evident from the dust on the outside of the sill that it hadn’t been opened recently.

“Keep the kid’s door locked at night?” I asked Roxy.

She shook her head. “No. There’s no reason to.”

“Notice any tracks around here, outside the door or window?”

Another negative. “If there were any,” she added, “they would have been wiped out in the excitement.”

I dragged slowly on the cigarette, letting all the facts sink in. It seemed simple enough, but was it? “Who are all the twerps downstairs, bunny?”

“Relatives, mostly.”

“Know ’em?”

Roxy nodded. “Mr. York’s sister and her husband, their son and daughter, and a cousin are his only blood relations. The rest are his wife’s folks. They’ve been hanging around here as long as I’ve been here, just waiting for something to happen to York.”

“Does he know it?”

“I imagine so, but he doesn’t seem bothered by them. They try to outdo each other to get in the old boy’s favor. I suppose there’s a will involved. There usually is.”

“Yeah, but they’re going to have a long wait. York told me his health was perfect.”

Roxy looked at me curiously, then dropped her eyes. She fidgeted with her fingernails a moment and I let her stew a bit before I spoke.

“Say it, kid.”

“Say what?”

“What you have on your mind and almost said.”