his stereo turntable and speakers smashed. Cushions from his couch and
armchairs were slashed, the stuffJug and foam rubber strewn everywhere; the
rugs up-
THE MATLOCK PAPER 77
ended, himped In folds; the curtains ripped from their rods, thrown over the
upturned furnitum
He saw the reason for the crash. His large casement window, on the far
right wall bordermg the street, was a mass of twisted lead and broken
glass. The window consisted of two panels; he remembered clearly that he
had opened both before leaving for the Beesons. He liked the spring
breezes, and it was too early in the season for screens. So there was no
reason for the window to be smashed; the ground was perhaps four or five
feet below the casement, sufficient to dissuade an intruder, low enough for
a panicked burglar to negotiate easily.
The smashing of the window, therefore, was not for escape. It was intended.
He had been watched, and a signal had been givem
It was a warning.
And Matlock knew he could not acknowledge that warning. To do so was to
acknowledge, more than a robbery; he was not prepared to do that
He crossed rapidly to his bedroom door and looked Inside. If possible, his
bedroom was in more of a mess than the living room. The mattress was thrown
against the wall, ripped to shreds. Every drawer of his bureau was
dislodged, lying on the floor, the contents seattered all around the room.
His close was like the rest -suits and jackets pulled from the clothes rod,
shoes yanked from their recesses.
Even before he looked he knew his kitchen would be no better off than the
rest of his apartment The foodstuffs in cans and boxes had not been thrown
on the floor, simply moved around, but the soft items had been torn to
pieces. Matlock understood again. One or two crashes from the other rooms
were toler-
78 Robeq Ludlum
able noise levels; a continuation of the racket from his kitchen might
arouse one of the other families in the building. As it was, he could hear
the faint sounds of footsteps above him. The final crash of the window had
gotten someone up.
The warning was explicit, but the act itself was a search.
He thought he knew the object of that search, and again he realized he
could not acknowledge it Conclusions were being made as they had been made
at Beeso,A; he had to ride them out with the most convincing denials he
could manufacture. That much he knew instinctively.
But before he began that pretense, he had to find out if the search was
successful.
He shook the stammering lethargy out of his mind and body. He looked once
again at his living room; he studied it. All the windows were bare, and the
light was sufficient for someone with a pair of powerful binoculars
stationed in a nearby building or standing on the inclining lawn of the
campus beyond the street to observe every move he made. If he turned off
the lights, would such an unnatural action lend credence to the conclusions
he wanted denied?
Without question. A man didn7t walk into a house in shambles and proceed to
turn off lights.
Yet he had to reach his bathroom, at that moment the most important room in
the apartment. He had to spend less than thirty seconds inside to determine
the success or failure of the ransacking, and do so in such a way as to
seem innocent of any abnormal concerns. If anyone was watching.
It was a question of appearance, of gesture, he thought He saw that the
stereo turntable was the
TEE MATLOCK P”ER 79
nearest object to the bathroom door, no more then five feet away. He walked
aver and bent down, picking up several pieces, including the metal arm. He
looked at it, then suddenly dropped the arm and brought his finger to his
mouth, feigning an imagined puncture on his skin. He walked into the
bathroom rapidly.
Once inside, he quickly opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed a tin of
Band-Aids from the glass shelf. He then swiftly reached down to the left of
the toilet bowl where the cats yellow plastic box was placed and picked up
a comer of the newspaper m2demeath the granules of litter. Beneath the
newspa, per he felt the coarse grain of the two layers of canvas he had
inserted and lifted up an edge.
The scissored page was still intact The silver Corsican paper that ended in
the deadly phrase Venerare Onwrft had not been found.
He replaced the newspaper, scattered the litter, and stood up. He saw that
the frosted glass of the small window above the toilet was partially
opened, and he swom
There was no time to think of that
He walked back into the living room, ripping the plastic off a Band-Aid.
The search had failed. Now the warning had to be ignored, the conclusions
denied. He crossed to the telephone and called the police.
“Can you give me a list of whaes missing?” A uniformed patrolman stood in
the middle of the debris. A second policeman wandered about the apartment
making notes.
“I’m not sure yet. I havenI really checked.”
‘Thafs understandable. Ifs a mess. You’d better
8o Robert Ludlum
look, though. The quicker we get a list, the better.”
“I don7t think anything is missing, officer. What I mean is, I doet have
anything particularly valuable to anyone else. Except perhaps the stereo .
. . and thwes smashed. There’s a television set in the bedroom, that’s
okay. Some of the books could bring a price, but look at them.”
“No cash, jewelry, watches?”
“I keep money in the bank and cash in my wallet. I wear my watch and
haven’t any jewelry.”
“How about exam papers? We’ve been getting a lot of that”
‘In my office. In the English department.*
The patrolman wrote in a small black notebook and called to his partner,
who had gone into the bedroom. “Hey, Lou, did the station confirm the print
man?”
’11ey’re getting him up. He’ll be over in a few minutes.”
“Have you touched anything, Mr. Matlock?*
“I don7t know. I may have. It was a shock.”
‘Particularly any of the broken items, like that record player? Ied be good
if we could show the fingerprint man specific things you haveet touched.”
“I picked up the arm, not the casing.”
“Good. It’s a place to starL”
The police stayed for an hour and a half. The fingerprints specialist
arrived, did his work, and departed. Matlock thought of phoning Sam
Kressel, but reasoned that there wasn’t anything Kressel could do at that
hour. And in the event someone outside was watching the building, Kressel
shouldnt be seen. Various people from the other apartments had wakened and
had come down offering sympathy, help, and coffee.
TBE mATLocK PAPm 83L
As the police were leaving, a large patrolman turned in the doorway. “Sorry
to take so much time, Mr. Matlock. We doift usually lift prints in a break
and entry unless there’s injury or loss of property, but theriA been a lot
of this sort of thing recently. Personally, I think it’s those weirdos with
the hair and the beads. Or the niggers. We never had trouble like this
before the weirdos and the niggers got here.”
Matlock looked at the uniformed officer, who was so confident of his
analysis. There was no point in objecting; it would be useless, and Matlock
was too tired. “Thanks for helping me straighten up.”
“Sure thing.” The patrolman started down the cement path, then turned
again. “Oh, Mr. Matlock.”
‘Yes?” Matlock pulled the door back.
‘It struck us that maybe someone was looking for something. What with all
the slashing and books and everything … you know what I mean?”
‘You’d tell us if that was the case, wouldn’t you?”
*XX course.”
&Yeah. It’d be stupid to withhold information like that~”
“I’m not stupid.”
‘No offense. just that sometimes you guys get all involved and forget
things.”
‘Tm not absentminded. Very few of us are~”
Yeah.” The patrolman laughed somewhat derisively. “I just wanted to bring
it up. I mean, we caZt do our jobs unless we got all the facts, you know?’
“I understand.”
‘Yeah. Good.”
-Good night.-
“Good night, Doctor.”
He closed the door and walked into his living
8z Pwbert Ludluin
room. He wondered if his insurance would cover the disputable value of his
rarer books and prints. He sat down on the nidned couch and surveyed the
room. It was still a mess; the carnage had been thorough. It would take more
than picking up debns and righting furniture, The warning had been clear,
violent
The startling fact was that the warning adsted at all.
Why? From whom?
Archer Beeson~s hysterical telephone call? That was possible, even
preferable, perhaps. It might encompass a motive unrelated to Nimrod. It
could mean that Beeson~s circle of users and pushers wanted to frighten him