Dead as a Dinosaur Read Online Free

Preson; they intended to remain there until he returned. They were large men, and stubborn, and the hotel management wanted to turn them over to Dr. Preson as soon as possible.
    â€œDr. Preson will not be back this evening,” Gerald North said. “Tell them that. If they don’t leave, call the police.” He hung up; he looked at Dr. Preson, who was sitting again in the chair across the desk. He had his face in his hands.
    Dr. Preson had masseurs, now. He had advertised for them.

2
    T UESDAY , 10:15 P . M . TO W EDNESDAY , 12:15 A . M .
    Mr. and Mrs. North looked at the chair in which Orpheus Preson, Ph.D., D.Sc., curator of Fossil Mammals of the Broadly Institute of Paleontology, author of Tertiary Mammalian Dispersal (1941); Felid Myology (1943); Taxonomic Memoirs (1948) and The Days Before Man , Vol. I (1950), had been sitting.
    â€œMy!” Pamela North said. She looked at Martini, who sat on the floor in front of her and blinked up. “Felid,” Pam said to Martini. “There are irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding your phylogeny.” She looked at Jerry North. “Why badger a mammalogist?” she asked. “I’d think they had enough to bear. And speaking of bears. Do you believe they used to be dogs?”
    On that subject, and on subjects which were related, Jerry North was, he told his wife, willing to take Dr. Preson’s word, assuming he could understand it. They were, he told her, away from the point. Pam agreed that they were, but pointed out that it was Dr. Preson who had taken them there.
    â€œBecause he was as excited about Dr.—what’s his name?—Stick?”
    â€œSteck,” Jerry told her. “He—”
    â€œAs about the bushelmen,” Pam said. “What does he want you to do?”
    â€œAmong other things, he’s an author,” Jerry told her. “He wants me to hold his hand. Or—” He broke off. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I know,” he said. “I suppose he needed an audience. It is a damn funny thing. Damn irritating, too, of course.”
    â€œI keep thinking of the Doberman,” Pam said. “It ought to be—funny. It all ought to be funny.”
    â€œIn a way it is,” Jerry said. “As I told Preson. But—”
    â€œBut you brought him home for a drink,” Pam said. “Because it wasn’t—well, only funny. It isn’t, is it?”
    Somebody, it had to be presumed, thought it was funny, Jerry told her. What other reason could there be for all of it, for any of it? It was a crackpot’s idea of a rousing joke; on that the man from the precinct was right. There was nothing much to be done about it; on that the man from the precinct was right again.
    â€œWhy Dr. Preson?” Pam asked.
    Presumably, Jerry said, and made them drinks—presumably there was no “why” to it, any more than there was a “why” to the direction lightning took, the victims it chose. Any object which stood above its immediate environment—even if it stood no higher than a small boy, playing with a puppy—was enough “why” for lightning. The small boy died; the puppy lived. Prominence was relative—a towering tree, a little boy on a level field. He brought the drinks back.
    â€œPreson is prominent enough,” he said. “People have heard his name, particularly since The Days Before Man . There’ve been stories about him. We saw to that, of course. He’s made good copy—a scientist, a subject dry as—as fossil bones—and a best seller out of them. A target for a crackpot.”
    Pamela North patted her lap and Martini jumped to it. She stroked Martini, who purred faintly. Pamela North said she supposed so, but her tone was without confidence. She sipped the drink.
    â€œYou know what the catch is,” she said. “He does too, doesn’t he? That’s why he—he dragged in this