The Collection by Fredric Brown

with it. Otto even knew his right name, as it was on his
passport, and they'd be waiting for him at the border. Whereas if he left a
dead man behind him, the body—in an abandoned house—might not be found for
weeks or months, not until he was safe back in America. And by then any
evidence against him, even his possession of the instrument, would be too thin
to warrant extradition back to Europe. He could claim that Otto had given him
the instrument to replace the clarinet he'd lost in saving Otto's life. He'd
have no proof of that, but they'd have no proof to the contrary.
    Quickly and quietly he got off the bed and tiptoed over to
the man sleeping in the rocker and stood looking down at him. It would be easy,
for the means were at hand. The scarf, already around the thin neck and crossed
once in front, the ends dangling. Dooley tiptoed around behind the rocker and
reached over the thin shoulders and took a tight grip on each end of the scarf
and pulled them apart with all his strength. And held them so. The musician
must have been older and more frail than Dooley had thought. His struggles were
feeble. And even dying he held onto his instrument with one hand and clawed
ineffectually at the scarf only with the other. He died quickly.
    Dooley felt for a heartbeat first to make sure and then
pried the dead fingers off the instrument. And held it himself at last.
    His hands held it, and trembled with eagerness. When would
it be safe for him to try it? Not back at his hotel, in the middle of the
night, waking other guests and drawing attention to himself.
    Why, here and now, in this abandoned house, would be the
safest and best chance he'd have for a long time, before he was safely out of
the country maybe. Here and now, in this house, before he took care of
fingerprints on anything he might have touched and erased any other traces of
his presence he might find or think of. Here and now, but softly so as not to
waken any sleeping neighbors, in case they might hear a difference between
his first efforts and those of the instrument ' s original owner.
    So he ' d play softly, at least at first, and quit
right away if the instrument made with the squeaks and ugly noises so easy to
produce on any unmastered instrument. But he had the strangest feeling that it
wouldn't happen that way to him. He knew already how to manage a double reed;
once in New York he ' d shared an apartment with an oboe player and
had tried out his instrument with the thought of getting one himself, to double
on. He ' d finally decided not to because he preferred playing with
small combos and an oboe fitted only into large groups. And the fingering? He
looked down and saw that his fingers had fallen naturally in place over the
finger-holes or poised above the keys. He moved them and watched them start,
seemingly of their own volition, a little finger-dance. He made them stop
moving and wonderingly put the instrument to his lips and breathed into it
softly. And out came, softly, a clear, pure middle-register tone. As rich and
vibrant a note as any Otto had played. Cautiously he raised a finger and then
another and found himself starting a diatonic scale. And, on a hunch, made
himself forget his fingers and just thought the scale and let his
fingers take over and they did, every tone pure. He thought ascale
in a different key and played it, then an arpeggio. He didn ' t know
the fingerings, but his fingers did.
    He could play it, and he would.
    He might as well make himself comfortable, he decided
despite his mounting excitement. He crossed back to the bed and lay back across
it, as he had lain while listening to the musician play, with his head and
shoulders braced up against the wall behind it. And put the instrument back to
his mouth and played, this time not caring about volume. Certainly if neighbors
heard, they'd think it was Otto, and they would be accustomed to hearing Otto
play late at night.
    He thought of some of the tunes he'd heard in the wine