Dyer Rand stared at his guest in amazement. He said, “I can’t promise that! I’m chief of police, Joad. I have my duty to my job and to the people of Chicago.”

  “That’s why I came here, to your apartment, instead of to your office. You’re not working now, Dyer; you’re on your own time.”

  “But—”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Of course not.”

  Bela Joad sighed. “Then I’m sorry for waking you, Dyer.” He put down his cup and started to rise.

  “Wait! You can’t do that. You can’t just walk out on me!”

  “Can’t I?”

  “All right, all right, I’ll promise. You must have some good reason. Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll take your word for it.”

  Bela Joad smiled. “Good,” he said. “Then I’ll be able to report to you on my last case. For this is my last case, Dyer. I’m going into a new kind of work.”

  Rand looked at him incredulously. “What?”

  “I’m going to teach crooks how to beat the lie-detector.”

  Chief Dyer Rand put down his cup slowly and stood up. He took a step toward the little man, about half his weight, who sat at ease on the armless, overstuffed chair.

  Bela Joad still smiled. He said, “Don’t try it, Dyer. For two reasons. First, you couldn’t hurt me and I wouldn’t want to hurt you and I might have to. Second, it’s all right; it’s on the up and up. Sit down.”

  Dyer Rand sat down.

  Bela Joad said, “When you said this thing was big, you didn’t know how big. And it’s going to be bigger. Chicago is just the starting point. And thanks, by the way, for those reports I asked you for. They are just what I expected they’d be.”

  “The reports? But they’re still in my desk at headquarters.”

  “They were. I’ve read them and destroyed them. Your copies, too. Forget about them. And don’t pay too much attention to your current statistics. I’ve read them, too.”

  Rand frowned. “And why should I forget them?”

  “Because they confirm what Ernie Chappel told me this evening. Do you know, Dyer, that your number of major crimes-has gone down in the past year by an even bigger percentage than the percentage by which your convictions for major crimes has gone down?”

  “I noticed that. You mean, there’s a connection?”

  “Definitely. Most crimes—a very high percentage of them—are committed by professional criminals, repeaters. And Dyer, it goes even farther than that. Out of several thousand major crimes a year, ninety percent of them are committed by a few hundred professional criminals. And do you know that the number of professional criminals in Chicago has been reduced by almost a third in the last two years? It has. And that’s why your number of major crimes has decreased.”

  Bela Joad took another sip of his coffee and then leaned forward. “Gyp Girard, according to your report, is now running a vitadrink stand on the West Side; he hasn’t committed a crime in almost a year—since he beat your lie-detector.” He touched another finger. “Joe Zatelli, who used to be the roughest boy on the Near North Side, is now running his restaurant straight. Carey Hutch. Wild Bill Wheeler— Why should I list them all? You’ve got the list, and it’s not complete because there are plenty of names you haven’t got on it, people who went to Ernie Chappel so he could show them how to beat the detector, and then didn’t get arrested after all. And nine out of ten of them —and that’s conservative, Dyer—haven’t committed a crime since!”

  Dyer Rand said, “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “My original investigation of the Chappel case showed me that he’d disappeared voluntarily. And I knew he was a good man, and a great one. I knew he was mentally sound because he was a psychiatrist as well as a criminologist. A psychiatrist’s got to be sound. So I knew he’d disappeared for some good reason.

  “And when, about nine months ago, I heard your side of what had been happening in Chicago, I began to suspect that Chappel had come here to do his work. Are you beginning to get the picture?”

  “Faintly.”

  “Well, don’t faint yet. Not until you figure how an expert psychiatrist can help crooks beat the detector. Or have you?”

  “Well—”

  “That’s it. The most elementary form of hypnotic treatment, something any qualified psychiatrist could do fifty years ago. Chappel’s clients—of course they don’t know who or what he is; he’s a mysterious underworld figure who helps them beat the rap—pay him well and tell him what crimes they may be questioned about by the police if they’re picked up. He tells them to include every crime they’ve ever committed and any racket they’ve ever been in, so the police won’t catch them up on any old counts. Then he—”

  “Wait a minute,” Rand interrupted. “How does he get them to trust him that far?”

  Joad gestured impatiently. “Simple. They aren’t confessing a single crime, even to him. He just wants a list that includes everything they’ve done. They can add some ringers and he doesn’t know which is which. So it doesn’t matter.

  “Then he puts them under light waking-hypnosis and tells them they are not criminals and never have been and they have never done any of the things on the list he reads back to them. That’s all there is to it.

  “So when you put them under the detector and ask them if they’ve done this or that, they say they haven’t and they believe it. That’s why your detector gauges don’t register. That’s why Joe Zatelli didn’t jump when he saw Martin Blue walk in. He didn’t know Blue was dead—except that he’d read it in the papers.”

  Rand leaned forward. “Where is Ernst Chappel?”

  “You don’t want him, Dyer.”

  “Don’t want him? He’s the most dangerous man alive today!”

  “To whom?”

  “To whom? Are you crazy?”

  “I’m not crazy. He’s the most dangerous man alive today —to the underworld. Look, Dyer, any time a criminal gets jittery about a possible pinch, he sends for Ernie or goes to Ernie. And Ernie washes him whiter than snow and in the process tells him he’s not a criminal.

  “And so, at least nine times out of ten, he quits being a criminal. Within ten or twenty years Chicago isn’t going to have an underworld. There won’t be any organized crimes by professional criminals. You’ll always have the amateur with you, but he’s a comparatively minor detail. How about some more cafe royale?”

  Dyer Rand walked to the kitchenette and got it. He was wide awake by now, but he walked like a man in a dream.

  When he came back, Joad said, “And now that I’m in with Ernie on it, Dyer, we’ll stretch it to every city in the world big enough to have an underworld worth mentioning. We can train picked recruits; I’ve got my eye on two of your men and may take them away from you soon. But I’ll have to check them first. We’re going to pick our apostles—about a dozen of them—very carefully. They’ll be the right men for the job.”

  “But, Joad, look at all the crimes that are going to go unpunished!” Rand protested.

  Bela Joad drank the rest of his coffee and stood up. He said, “And which is more important—to punish criminals or to end crime? And, if you want to look at it moralistically, should a man be punished for a crime when he doesn’t even remember committing it, when he is no longer a criminal?”

  Dyer Rand sighed. “You win, I guess. I’ll keep my promise. I suppose—I’ll never see you again?”

  “Probably not, Dyer. And I’ll anticipate what you’re going to say next. Yes, I’ll have a farewell drink with you. A straight one, without the coffee.”

  Dyer Rand brought the glasses. He said, “Shall we drink to Ernie Chappel?”

  Bela Joad smiled. He said, “Let’s include him in the toast, Dyer. But let’s drink to all men who work to put themselves out of work. Doctors work toward the day when the race will be so healthy it won’t need doctors; lawyers work toward the day when litigation will no longer be necessary. And policemen, detectives, and criminologists work toward the day when they will no longer be needed because there will be no more crime.”

  Dyer Rand nodded very soberly and lifted his glass. They drank.

  The spaceship from Andromeda II spun like a top in the grip of mighty forces.

  The five-limbed Andromedan strapped into the pilot’s seat turned the three protuberant eyes of one of his heads toward the four other Andromedans strapped into bunks around the ship.

  “Going to be a rough landing,” he said.

  It was.

  ELMO SCOTT hit the tab key of his typewriter and listened to the carriage zing across and ring the bell. It sounded nice and he did it again. But there still weren’t any words on the sheet of paper in the machine.

  He lit another cigarette and stared at it. At the paper, that is, not the cigarette. There still weren’t any words on the paper.

  He tilted his chair back and turned to look at the sleek black-and-tan Doberman pinscher lying in the mathematical middle of the rag rug. He said, “You lucky dog.” The Doberman wagged what little stump of tail he had. He didn’t answer otherwise.

  Elmo Scott looked back at the paper. There still weren’t any words there. He put his fingers over the keyboard and wrote: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” He stared at the words, such as they were, and felt the faintest breath of an idea brush his cheek.

  He called out “Toots!” and a cute little brunette in a blue gingham house dress came out of the kitchen and stood by him. His arm went around her. He said, “I got an idea.”

  She read the words in the typewriter. “It’s the best thing you’ve written in three days,” she said, “except for that letter renewing your subscription to the Digest. I think that was better.”

  “Button your lip,” Elmo told her. “I’m talking about what I’m going to do with that sentence. I’m going to change it to a science-fiction plot idea, one word at a time. It can’t miss. Watch.”

  He took his arm from around her and wrote under the first sentence: “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of the party.” He said, “Get the idea, Toots? Already it’s beginning to look like a science-fiction sendoff. Good old bug-eyed monsters. Bems to you. Watch the next step.”

  Under the first sentence and the second he wrote. “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of—” He stared at it. “What shall I make it, Toots? ‘The galaxy’ or ‘the universe’?”

  “Better make it yourself. If you don’t get a story finished and the check for it in two weeks, we lose this cabin and walk back to the city and—and you’ll have to quit writing full time and go back to the newspaper and—”

  “Cut it out, Toots. I know all that. Too well.”

  “Just the same, Elmo, you’d better make it: ‘Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo Scott.’ “

  The big Doberman stirred on the rag rug. He said, “You needn’t.”

  Both human heads turned toward him.

  The little brunette stamped a dainty foot. “Elmo!” she said. “Trying a trick like that. That’s how you’ve been spending the time you should have spent writing. Learning ventriloquism!”

  “No, Toots,” said the dog. “It isn’t that.”

  “Elmo! How do you get him to move his mouth like—” Her eyes went from the dog’s face to Elmo’s and she stopped in mid-sentence. If Elmo Scott wasn’t scared stiff, then he was a better actor than Maurice Evans. She said, “Elmo!” again, but this time her voice was a scared little wail, and she didn’t stamp her foot. Instead she practically fell into Elmo’s lap and, if he hadn’t grabbed her, would probably have fallen from there to the floor.

  “Don’t be frightened, Toots,” said the dog.

  Some degree of sanity returned to Elmo Scott. He said, “Whatever you are, don’t call my wife Toots. Her name is Dorothy.”

  “You call her Toots.”

  “That’s—that’s different.”

  “I see it is,” said the dog. His mouth lolled open as though he were laughing. “The concept that entered your mind when you used that word ‘wife’ is an interesting one. This is a bisexual planet, then.”

  Elmo said, “This is a —uh— What are you talking about?”

  “On Andromeda II,” said the dog, “we have five sexes. But we are a highly developed race, of course. Yours is highly primitive. Perhaps I should say lowly primitive. Your language has, I find, confusing connotations; it is not mathematical. But, as I started to observe, you are still in the bisexual stage. How long since you were mono-sexual? And don’t deny that you once were; I can read the word ‘amoeba’ in your mind.”

  “If you can read my mind,” said Elmo, “why should I talk?”

  “Consider Toots—I mean Dorothy,” said the dog. “We cannot hold a three-way conversation since you two are not telepathic. At any rate, there shall shortly be more of us in the conversation. I have summoned my companions.” He laughed again. “Do not let them frighten you, no matter in what form they may appear. They are merely Bems.”

  “B-bems?” asked Dorothy. “You mean you are b-bugeyed monsters? That’s what Elmo means by Bems, but you aren’t—”

  “That is just what I am,” said the dog. “You are not, of course, seeing the real me. Nor will you see my companions as they really are. They, like me, are temporarily animating bodies of creatures of lesser intelligence. In our real bodies, I assure you, you would classify us as Bems. We have five limbs each and two heads, each head with three eyes on stalks.”

  “Where are your real bodies?” Elmo asked.

  “They are dead— Wait, I see that word means more to you than I thought at first. They are dormant, temporarily uninhabitable and in need of repairs, inside the fused hull of a spaceship which was warped into this space too near a planet. This planet. That’s what wrecked us.”

  “Where? You mean there’s really a spaceship near here? Where?” Elmo’s eyes were almost popping from his head as he questioned the dog.

  “That is none of your business, Earthman. If it were found and examined by you creatures, you would possibly discover space travel before you are ready for it. The cosmic scheme would be upset.” He growled. “There are enough cosmic wars now. We were fleeing a Betelgeuse fleet when we warped into your space.”

  “Elmo,” said Dorothy. “What’s beetle juice got to do with it? Wasn’t this crazy enough before he started talking about a beetle juice fleet?”

  “No,” said Elmo resignedly. “It wasn’t.” For a squirrel had just pushed its way through a hole in the bottom on the screen door.

  It said, “Hyah dar, yo all. We uns got yo message, One.”

  “See what I mean?” said Elmo.

  “Everything is all right, Four,” said the Doberman. “These people will serve our purpose admirably. Meet Elmo Scott and Dorothy Scott; don’t call her Toots.”

  “Yessir. Yessum. Ah’s sho gladda meetcha.”

  The Doberman’s mouth lolled open again in another laugh; it was unmistakable this time.

  “Perhaps I’d better explain Four’s accent,” he said. “We scattered, each entering a creature of low mentality and from that vantage point contacting the mind of some member of the ruling species, learning from that mind the language and the level of intelligence and degree of imagination. I take it from your reaction that Four has learned the language from a mind which speaks a language differing slightly from yours.”

  “Ah sho did,” said the squirrel.

  Elmo shuddered slightly. “Not that I’m suggesting it, but I’m curious to know why you didn’t take over the higher species directly,” he said.

  The dog looked shocked. It was the first time Elmo had ever seen a dog look shocked, but the Doberman managed it.

  “It would be unthinkable,” he declared. “The cosmic ethic forbids the taking over of any creature of an intelligence over the four level. We Andromedans are of the twenty-three level, and I find you Earthlings—”

  “Wait!” said Elmo. “Don’t tell me. It might give me an inferiority complex. Or would it?”

  “Ah fears it might,” said the squirrel.

  The Doberman said, “So you can see that it is not purely coincidence that we Bems should manifest ourselves to you who are a writer of what I see you call science-fiction. We studied many minds and yours was the first one we found capable of accepting the premise of visitors from Andromeda. Had Four here, for example, tried to explain things to the woman whose mind he studied, she would probably have gone insane.”

  “She sho would,” said the squirrel.

  A chicken thrust its head through the hole in the screen, clucked, and pulled its head out again.

  “Please let Three in,” said the Doberman. “I fear that you will not be able to communicate directly with Three. He has found that subjectively to modify the throat structure of the creature he inhabits in order to enable it to talk would be a quite involved process. It does not matter. He can communicate telepathically with one of us, and we can relay his comments to you. At the moment he sends you his greetings and asks that you open the door.”

  The clucking of the chicken (it was a big black hen, Elmo saw) sounded angry and Elmo said, “Better open the door, Toots.”

  Dorothy Scott got off his lap and opened the door. She turned a dismayed face to Elmo and then to the Doberman.

  “There’s a cow coming down the road,” she said. “Do you mean to tell me that she—”

  “He,” the Doberman corrected her. “Yes, that will be Two. And since your language is completely inadequate in that it has only two genders, you may as well call all of us `he’; it will save trouble. Of course, we are five different sexes as I explained.”

  “You didn’t explain,” said Elmo, looking interested. Dorothy glowered at Elmo. “He’d better not. Five dif-ferent sexes! All living together in one spaceship. I suppose it takes all five of you to—uh—“

  “Exactly,” said the Doberman. “And now if you will please open the door for Two, I’m sure that—”

  “I will not! Have a cow in here? Do you think I’m crazy?”, “We could make you so,” said the dog. Elmo looked from the dog to his wife.

 

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