“Yeah, I guess it is. And now that you’ve done a little investigating, what do you think?”

Beam smiled, and his eyes seemed to vanish. “I’m not the front office, but I’m guessing that when they get my report they won’t pay without the beneficiary going to court and making us. Look, this is a little narrow garage he’s got. There’s a trash barrel on the right. To get the car in far enough to close the door, Hirsh has to drive all the way to the back wall and in between the barrel on one side and the garage wall on the other. It’s a tight squeeze-I measured it myself. As it was, he left himself just over a foot on the driver’s side and about the same on the other. Get the picture?

“Now that’s pretty good driving for a drunk. Then he douses the lights but leaves the motor running. He slides out from under the wheel on the passenger side. It’s too tight a squeeze on the driver’s side because he’s kind of a fat little guy like me-and he pulls down the garage door. Then he comes back and gets in the front seat again, on the passenger side, where he was found.

“Now when you consider that most people shut off the motor almost automatically when they get into the garage, and that he didn’t forget to turn off the car lights or shut the garage door, that’s kind of hard to see as an accident. If he was so boozed up that he didn’t remember to shut off the motor, how come he was able to drive so straight and true, and how come he was able to remember to turn off the car lights and pull down the garage door behind him?”

“So why did the police call it accidental death?”

“The police! The guy is a citizen. He’s got an important job with the Goddard Lab, which is kind of a big outfit around here. What are they going to do? Make trouble? I figure before they’d call it suicide they’d practically expect him to make out a written statement stating his intentions and then have it witnessed by a notary.”

“I see. So what do you want from me?”

“Anything at all, Mr. Goralsky. Anything you can tell me.”

The interoffice communicator buzzed. Goralsky pressed a button. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Stevenson of Halvordsen Enterprises is here to see you,” came from the box on the desk.

“I’ll be right out.” He turned to Beam, visibly agitated. “Sorry, Mr. Beam, this is important. There’s nothing I can tell you, nothing at all.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Is something wrong?” Mrs. Hirsh asked Dr. Sykes. He had phoned from the lab to say he had important news she ought to know about at once. She led him into the living room, still unstraightened from the afternoon visitors.

“I wouldn’t call it wrong, exactly, Mrs. Hirsh, but I thought you ought to know. That fat little red-faced man who was at the funeral-you remember you said he was eying you all through the ceremony.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, his name is Beam, Charles Beam. He was at the lab when I got back. He’s an investigator for the insurance company that sold your husband his policy.”

“What was he doing at the funeral?”

“Good question. I guess he was investigating.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Dr. Sykes? What is there to investigate?”

“That policy your husband took out, like all policies written these days, had a suicide clause. It also had an accidental death clause.”

“I knew that.”

“Very well. If it was suicide they pay nothing; if it was an accident they pay fifty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, and naturally they want to make sure it wasn’t suicide.”

“Well, sure, I don’t blame them, but it wasn’t. The police did some investigating, too, and they decided officially it was accidental. I should think that would settle it.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that. The police don’t have to pay out any hard cash. They just have to come up with a cause of death for their records. Naturally, unless they have positive proof, they’ll put down accidental death. It’s kinder to the family.”

“But why would Ike commit suicide? He’d have no reason. He liked living here. We were getting along fine.”

Sykes said nothing.

“They’ve got to prove that it was suicide, don’t they? They can’t just say they think it was suicide and refuse to pay, can they?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well?”

“Look, Mrs. Hirsh, the custom in such cases is to investigate and should they decide it’s suicide they refuse to pay and it’s up to you to bring suit to collect. If they don’t have positive proof, they’re apt to offer a settlement-seventy-five percent of the claim, say, or fifty percent-depending on how strong they feel their case is.”

“But I don’t have to take it.”

“No, of course not, but you should have all the facts before you make up your mind one way or the other.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That’s why I came over.” Choosing his words carefully, he said, “I never was going to tell you this, Mrs. Hirsh, and I wouldn’t now if you didn’t need to know to help decide a very important question. But the fact is your husband was going to be fired and he knew it.”

“Fired? But why? I thought he was doing well.”

Sykes obviously was embarrassed. “I wish that were so,” he said gently. “Especially since from all I’ve heard, your husband was quite a man when younger. When he was on the Manhattan Project his work was very well thought of by some mighty important people. But since coming to Goddard, and probably for a while before that, he just didn’t have it. He made half a dozen mistakes in the-what is it, less than a year?-he’d been with us. I covered for him each time with the boss, but this last time he made a mistake that was pretty serious. It was on a job for one of our most important clients, and I did what I could but the boss was stubborn. Ike had an appointment with him for Monday morning.”

“But what did he do?”

“I don’t think I could explain it unless you were a mathematician. But in general, his research seemed to prove that a whole new process was possible, a much cheaper way of doing the thing-sorry, but I can’t be any more explicit-and doing it better. The story leaked out and the company’s stock went up. And then we found that your husband had made a mistake. Naturally the client was angry. What made it bad is that the company is involved in a merger, so it makes them look as though they were manipulating their stock.”

“And Ike knew it?”

Dr. Sykes remained silent.

“Oh, Ike, you poor dear. He must have known and wanted to keep it from me. He was probably afraid we’d have to pick up and move along. We had moved so many times-because of the drinking, you know-and he knew I was beginning to think we had it pretty much licked and we’d be able to stay. He knew I liked it here-”

She broke off as a sudden thought occurred to her. “You don’t think it was because he was afraid he didn’t have it anymore, Dr. Sykes? I mean, you say he made mistakes-he never used to make mistakes. If he thought his mind wasn’t as sharp-from the drinking perhaps-But I wouldn’t have cared. He must have known that. No matter what happened, he’d still be plenty smart for me.”

“I’m sure he did know, Mrs. Hirsh,” Sykes said.

She sat up and squared her shoulders. “All right, then, what do I do now?”

“Nothing. You don’t have to do anything. When you hear from the insurance company, you can decide then. If I can help-” He got up. “If there is anything I can do, Pat-anything at all-you have only to call.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know. You’ve been a good friend to us.”