Dead as a Dinosaur by Frances Lockridge Page B

somewhat allied, subjects he was loquacious with Acting Captain William Weigand and also with Detective (First Grade) Vern Anstey, briefly called in to amplify. The inspector was reminded (obscurely, as it seemed to Weigand) of a crackpot he had himself come across back in 1915—no, maybe it was 1913—who had his furnished room full of snakes. It had been quite a thing; they had been killing snakes for hours. Their harborer had wound up on Blackwell’s Island. “No Welfare about it in those days.”
    â€œI suppose this Preson will wind up in Bellevue observation,” O’Malley said. “Keep him there for weeks, trying to find out what makes him tick, won’t they? Waste a lot of time and money. Anybody can see he’s a crackpot.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “I take it you agree, then, that he took this stuff himself? For some—crackpot reason?”
    â€œWhat’ve I been telling you?” O’Malley asked. “Don’t make me do your thinking for you, Bill.”
    â€œNo sir,” Bill Weigand said, with a little more emphasis than he intended. O’Malley looked at him.
    â€œI agree with you, sir,” Bill said.
    â€œThink you would,” O’Malley said. “Nothing in it for Homicide. Anyway, he’s not—”
    The telephone rang at that moment, O’Malley said, “Yeh,” into it, and handed it to Weigand, who listened, said “Right, thanks,” and hung up.
    â€œPreson died at 9:52,” he said.
    O’Malley assumed, briefly, the expression of a man who would have removed his hat, had he happened to be wearing a hat. He said, “Well, we’ve all got to go” and then banished, with some little effort, the melancholy into which this thought threw him.
    â€œO.K.,” he said. “It’s suicide, then. Like I said, he was just a crackpot.”
    It occurred to Bill that, to O’Malley, Dr. Preson had, by dying, finally proved that point. The logic was, possibly, less than convincing. But it was also true that, by dying, Dr. Preson had not proved he was not a crackpot. Suicide, while of unsound mind—whether Preson had meant to go that far or not. Bill stood up.
    â€œWell,” he said, “that’s that, then?”
    â€œSure,” the inspector said. “That ties it up.”
    Bill agreed. It would run its routine course, through reports, autopsy, the filing of papers without significance. But it was tied up.
    The death of Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., was adequately reported in the New York World-Telegram and Sun that afternoon; the account appeared on page one, although below the fold, for two editions before a more important story (“State Department Janitor Once Red, McCarthy Charges”) relegated it to page seven. The account was factual—Dr. Preson had been found in a coma due to an overdose of a barbital derivative and efforts to revive him had proved futile. The police were satisfied that Dr. Preson, author of the recent best seller, had himself administered the drug, probably taking an overdose through inadvertence. Homer Preson, head of a printing company bearing his name and well known as a type designer, said that his brother had been nervous and run-down for several months, but not under a doctor’s treatment.
    The New York Post found room for several paragraphs among its columns of opinion, but, since the rewrite man involved had not happened to read The Days Before Man —as the World-Telegram’ s man had—the account was briefer. The Journal-American contented itself with two paragraphs well inside, headlined “Mammalogist Dies of Over-Dose.” The item was read with disappointment by many Journal-American readers who, misled by a multi-syllabled word, had expected more lively things.
    Gerald North read the World-Telegram account on his way home from the office and thought, first, “the poor little guy” and, second,