Alienist. Laurence M. Janifer

      “He told me he checked his watch within seconds—professional habit, I suppose,” Euglane said. “It was then—as you say it—four-thirty-seven A. D. Sixteen-thirty-seven, we say here.”

      “P. M.,” I said, and he nodded. “What did he do? I mean for the next few minutes. Everything.”

      He had, Euglane said, stared for an undetermined time, perhaps a minute. Beyond checking his watch he hadn’t moved. When he did he’d gone to her, seen for certain that she was in fact dead—he hadn’t had any doubt of it, the charred wound over her heart, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter, was a fairly good convincer—and, though he’d dropped to his knees and touched her, mostly around the head and face and hair, he hadn’t moved her body at all.

      The wound had made him check his beamer, and he’d gone back to the bedroom and done that, taken it out of its holster and read the counter, checked the charge and put it back.

      Then he’d called Euglane and come over. He’d taken a cab, being a little afraid of doing his own driving.

      “Nothing else?” I said.

      “Nothing, until he started to leave. I wish he had cried, then or when he arrived here. He did not.”

      “He was dressed when he woke up?”

      “Yes. That was usual for his naps. He didn’t even remove shoes, just lay down.”

      “All right,” I said. I sighed. “Tell me: why the Hell does he think he might have done this? Somebody got in—he wouldn’t have heard that—killed her and got out.”

      “When he called me, he was only distraught over the death. The violence. The loss,” Euglane said. “When he went to the door to leave, he saw that it was not only locked, but chained from the inside. He took a minute or so then, to check the windows. He’s fully air-conditioned, and the windows were shut and locked; some are sealed shut, and none were open or readily openable. None had been broken.”

      “Wonderful,” I said. “We have a classic locked room.”

      “If Harris did not himself commit the crime.”

      “Just possibly, even if he did,” I said. “If he sleepwalked— he’d have to get rid of the beamer simply. Unchaining the door, say, and chaining it up again, anything like that—would that have been too complex a job for him?”

      Euglane thought for a minute, his arms twining. “I’m not sure,” he said.

      “So either the beamer is somewhere in the house—or he managed to get it out while sleepwalking—or somebody else got in and out like a ghost. Or, of course,” I added, “like an alien being.”

      Euglane nodded. “Just so,” he said.