Murder -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
"Wait a minute," I said, backing up against a bookcase to get away from
him. "Why didn't you go farther ahead in time and read in the papers
who did it? Wouldn't that have been the best way?"
For a brief instant his eyes flashed with what seemed to me to be
madness. I thought of the three dollar bill. The guy was crazy. It
had to be that. He'd been using the stuff on himself. Whatever it was
it had affected his mind. He imagined he could send his mind into the
future. Or maybe--
I remembered suddenly why I was here. I had followed Golfin in the
hopes of getting one of those three dollar bills. That made it a
vicious circle. Sure. It was _he_ who was going to murder me, if
anyone was. Those other people didn't know me. And he said I was going
to be poisoned by venom on a pin or needle--_or was it going to be a
hypodermic needle_?
"Don't be afraid, Mr. Smith," Golfin purred. "It's the only hope of
saving your life. Your murder was never solved."
"Oh, it is, is it?" I gritted. I snaked out with my hand and wrapped
my fingers around the wrist of the hand that held the needle. "Give me
that thing," I said.
He struggled. He had a lot of strength for a little man. He pivoted
around and tried to pull his wrist free. With his other hand he tried
to get hold of the needle. I kept shaking his wrist to keep him from
doing it.
Then I remembered his expensive billfold. It probably had the three
dollar bills in it. I simply reached into his breast pocket and
appropriated it. He didn't know it was gone.
A second later, with a loud grunt, he twisted violently in a last
effort to get free. I heard a sharp snap, and at the same time I felt a
sharp pain stab into me.
It was in the small of my back on the right side. _The small of my back
on the right side!_
I let go of his wrist. He was just starting to jerk again, and my
letting go made him stagger backwards and fall against the bookcase on
the far wall. He didn't even know his gadget had gone off!
I did, though. And a strange fatalism was seeping into me, like the
emotional effect of a drug. A numbness was beginning to make itself
felt along my right side.
Sarah Fish was staring at me, her eyes large and round. Not like a fish
though. Too human, too full of concern and sympathy. Maybe she had seen
the needle stick me....
Funny ... Golfin came here convinced in his own insane way that he was
going to prevent a murder. If he hadn't come, I wouldn't have come
either. And if he hadn't come, there wouldn't have been a corpse....
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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