“Whatever you say,” Gregson said at last. “If you’re sick, you can’t go. I thought you’d be interested.”
“I am, of course! I want to know whatever they find out. I’m going to take good care of myself — aspirin, the whole works — I’ll be back on my feet soon, and I’ll try to get to the Yard around… around one. Tell Calls I’ll be waiting for him.”
Gregory hung up and walked over to the window. It was daybreak; he knew he’d never be able to fall asleep again. He swung open the terrace door and stood in the penetrating damp air. The curtain stirred gently. He stared at the colorless sky of the new day.
6
It was a few minutes to four when Gregory arrived at the Ritz. Glancing at a clock built into a column marking a streetcar stop, he paused in front of a display of still photographs from a new film and casually studied the glass-covered pictures of a long-legged woman in torn underwear, some masked gangsters, and two cars colliding in a cloud of dust. One after another, big American cars pulled up in front of the restaurant. A pair of tourists from across the ocean emerged from a long black Packard: the woman, old and hideously made up, was wearing diamonds and a sable cape; her escort, a slim young man discreetly dressed in gray, held her handbag and waited patiently until she got out of the car. On the other side of the street the neon marquee of a theater flashed on in a burst of light and movement, its bluish reflection glittering in the windows of nearby stores. When the hands of the clock indicated 4:20, Gregory began moving toward the Ritz. The earlier part of the afternoon had gone as he expected. Calls finally came back with a medical report on the body and an account of the circumstances in which it was found, both absolutely worthless, and Gregory was forced to admit that his idea of setting up stake-outs to watch for the returning bodies was fantasy, plain and simple. He couldn’t possibly get enough policemen to cover an area of more than eighty square miles.
A doorman in gold braid opened the door for him. His gloves were more respectable-looking than Gregory’s. Uncertain how the meeting would go, the lieutenant was worried and ill at ease. Sciss had phoned him around noon to suggest having dinner together, trying so hard to be gracious that he gave the impression of having forgotten the events of the previous evening. He hadn’t even mentioned the unfortunate phone call. “The second act,” Gregory mused, looking around the large dining room. He saw Sciss and headed for his table, thus managing to escape from the approaching headwaiter. As he drew closer he saw that there were two other men with Sciss. He didn’t recognize either one. When the introductions were over, Gregory leaned uncomfortably against the red velvet upholstered back of his chair; he was flanked on both sides by majolica potted palms, and from the table, which was situated on a raised platform, he had a fine view of the whole interior of the Ritz: elegant women; brilliantly colored, brightly lit fountains; pseudo-Moorish columns. Sciss handed him the menu. Gregory wrinkled his forehead, pretending to study it. He was beginning to feel that Sciss was out to make a fool of him.
His earlier assumption — that Sciss wanted to have a candid private talk — was clearly wrong. “The ass is using his friends to impress me,” Gregory thought, looking with affected indifference at his table companions, Armour Black and Doctor McCatt. Gregory knew Black from his books and from pictures in the newspapers. About fifty years old, Black was at the height of his popularity. A long series of best-selling novels, written after years of silence, had finally made him famous. The writer kept himself in excellent shape, and in person it was easy to see that the news pictures showing him on the tennis court or with fishing rod in hand were genuine. Black had big, neatly manicured hands; his head was large, with a thick crop of dark hair, a fleshy nose, and thick eyebrows that overshadowed his face; sometimes, when he closed his eyes for a while in the middle of a conversation, his age showed. The other man seemed much younger but probably wasn’t; boyish-looking and very thin, he had close-set blue eyes and a protruding Adams apple that seemed to stretch the skin of his neck. His behavior was eccentric, to say the least. Sometimes he hunched over and stared with glazed eyes at the whiskey glass in front of him; then, seeming to regain his senses, he’d straighten up and sit rigidly for a minute or so. A moment later he would stare around the dining room with his mouth gaping open or would turn, stare persistently at Gregory, then break out laughing like a mischievous child. He seemed the same type as Sciss, and because of this Gregory assumed he was one of Sciss’s students. But while Sciss reminded him of a long-legged bird, there was something reminiscent of a rodent in McCatt.
The drift of Gregory’s zoological associations was interrupted by a slight dispute between Black and Sciss.
“No, anything but Chateau Margot,” the writer stated categorically, shaking the wine list. “That sorry excuse for a wine would kill even the best appetite. It destroys the taste buds and curdles the stomach juices. And in general,” he said, glancing at the wine list with an air of aversion, “there’s nothing here. Not a thing! Of course it isn’t my problem. I’m used to making sacrifices.”
“Oh, please.” Sciss seemed genuinely embarrassed. The headwaiter appeared, his dignified bearing and long, black tails reminding Gregory of a well-known symphony orchestra conductor. Black was still grumbling when the hors d’oeuvres were served. Sciss tried to make conversation, bringing up a recent news item, but his effort was received in silence. Without making the slightest effort to answer, Black turned to Sciss with his mouth full, his eyes blazing in outrage as if the scientist was guilty of some terrible indiscretion. “This famous friend of his certainly doesn’t let him get away with anything,” Gregory thought to himself with satisfaction. The men ate silently against the increasingly noisy background of the other diners. Between the soup and the main course, McCatt lit a cigarette, unwittingly threw the burned-out match into his wine, then had some trouble fishing it out. Gregory, for want of anything better to do, watched him listlessly. The meal was nearly over when Black finally spoke.
“All right, I forgive you. But if I were in your place, Harvey, my conscience would be bothering me. That duck — what did they do to her before she died? There’s something about long-drawn-out funerals that always ruins the appetite.”
“But Armour…” Sciss mumbled, uncertain what to say. He tried to laugh but without much success.
Black shook his head slowly. “I didn’t say anything. Here we are — vultures gathered from the four corners of the earth… and those apples! What an atrocity! To stone a defenseless animal to death with apples! Don’t you agree: oh, and à propos, you’re compiling statistics on supernatural occurrences in cemeteries, if I remember correctly, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I can show them to you if you want. There’s nothing supernatural involved. You’ll see for yourself.”
“Nothing supernatural? How dull! My dear fellow, if there’s no element of the supernatural, I’m not at all interested in your statistics. What good are they?”
Observing Sciss’s agony and his complete inability to defend himself against Black, Gregory finally began to enjoy himself.
“But it’s really a very interesting problem,” McCatt observed good-heartedly.
“What problem? Nothing but some plagiarism from the Gospels, that’s all! Or is there something I don’t know about?”
“Please try to be serious for a minute,” Sciss said, making no effort to disguise his impatience.
“But I’m never more serious than when I’m joking,” said Black.
“You know,” McCatt turned to Sciss, “I’m reminded of a story. You’ve heard of the Elberfeld horses, haven’t you — the ones that were supposed to be able to read and count. The case was very much like the one you’re working on — the only alternatives seemed to be fraud or a miracle.”
“And in the end it turned out that it wasn’t a fraud, right?” Black interrupted.
“No, it wasn’t. The man who trained the horses — I can’t remember his name — wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. He really believed that
the horses could talk and count. They tapped out numbers and the letters of the alphabet with their hooves, and they were usually able to hit on the right answer by watching him — not by lip reading or anything like that, but by interpreting various aspects of his outward appearance — changes in his facial expression, unconscious gestures, changes in his posture, movements so slight that human observers didn’t notice them. But of course these performances all took place under strict scientific supervision.”
“And that explanation satisfied the scientists?”
“Yes, by and large. Because in this case the traditional position that you must choose between two possibilities — either a miracle or a bluff — didn’t work. There was a third answer.”
“I have a better analogy,” Sciss said, leaning forward on his elbows. “Table tipping. As you know, even people who don’t believe in spiritualism can lift tables into the air and move them around. From the traditional point of view, you have either another case of fraud or a genuine manifestation from the spirit world. But in actual fact it isn’t a fraud or a spirit that tips the table. The movement results from the combined action of all the microscopic muscle vibrations of each individual in the group of people whose hands are joined above the table. Since each of these individuals is an organism of the same kind, their neuromuscular structures are closely related; thus we see a specific collective process, a definite oscillation of tonus, muscle tension, and nervous impulse rhythm. The people in the circle are completely unaware of the phenomenon, and in effect a combination of forces occurs which brings pressure to bear on the tabletop.”
“Oh, come on,” said the writer, considerably quieter now and showing real interest. “Exactly what are you trying to say? That the corpses disappeared because of an oscillation in the afterworld? That dead bodies rise from time to time to satisfy a complicated statistical procedure? My dear fellow, I much prefer a miracle without the statistical trimmings.”
“Armour, must you make fun of everything?” Sciss flared up angrily, his forehead turning red. “My analogy was elementary and therefore incomplete. This series of so-called resurrections, which really aren’t resurrections at all, presents a specific curve. It isn’t as if all the corpses disappeared on the same day. The incidents began with very slight body movements, then the phenomenon increased, reached a maximum, and began to drop. So far as the coefficient of correlation with cancer is concerned, it is considerably higher than the coefficient of correlation between sudden deaths and sunspots. I already told you that—”
“I know! I know! I remember! It’s a simple case of cancer à rebours: instead of killing things it does the opposite — it brings them back to life. A brilliant scheme, symmetrical, positively Hegelian!” said Black. His left eyelid was fluttering impatiently, making it look as if a black butterfly was sitting just under his eyebrow. This impression was heightened by the writer’s angry efforts to stop the movements of the tic with his finger.
“Nowadays rationalism is the fashion, not the method, and superficiality is always one of the characteristic features of fashion,” Sciss said coldly, ignoring the writer’s sarcasm. “At the end of the nineteenth century it was universally believed that we knew almost everything there was to know about the material world, that there was nothing left to do, except keep our eyes open and establish priorities. The stars moved in accordance with calculations not very different from those needed to run a steam engine; the atoms too, and so forth. A perfect society was attainable, and it could be constructed bit by bit according to a clear-cut plan. In the exact sciences these naively optimistic theories were abandoned long ago, but they are still alive in the thought processes of everyday life. So-called common sense relies on programmed nonperception, concealment, or ridicule of everything that doesn’t fit into the conventional nineteenth century vision of a world that can be explained down to the last detail. Meanwhile, in actuality you can’t take a step without encountering some phenomenon that you cannot understand and will never understand without the use of statistics. And thus we have, for example, the famous duplicitas causum of the doctors, the behavior of crowds, and the cyclical fluctuations of the content of dreams, or such phenomena as table tipping.”
“Fine, fine. You’re right as usual. But what about the cemetery incidents?” Black asked gently. “I’ve heard you out and table tipping will never be a problem for me again, but unfortunately I can’t say the same thing about your resurrections.”
Gregory twisted around in his chair, delighted by the writer’s comments. He glanced eagerly at Sciss. The scientist, having calmed down a bit, was watching the other men with a slight, almost phony smile; the corners of his small mouth turned downward: as always when he was about to say something momentous, his expression combined helplessness with triumph.
“Not long ago McCatt showed me a new electronic computer that uses human language. When he plugged it in, the speaker gave a few grunts and started babbling incoherently. It sounded like a phonograph record being played at the wrong speed, but with a record you can sometimes recognize snatches of music or words; the sounds the computer produced were all gibberish. It took me completely by surprise — I still remember the experience vividly. Incidentals like that sometimes prevent you from seeing the whole picture. In the case of the mortuaries, the corpses are only accessories, shocking perhaps, but…”
“So you still maintain that according to your formula the thing has been solved,” said Black slowly, watching through drooping eyes as Sciss emphatically denied the statement with his head.
“Let me finish. My mass-statistical approach concentrates on the phenomenon as a whole. I admit that we still need an analysis of the individual instances, and a study of the processes which generate the actual movements of the dead bodies, but such a particularized, specific treatment of the problem is outside my field of competence.”
“Now I understand. You’re saying that your theory explains the movement of a large number of bodies taken as a group, but that we still don’t know what makes any particular corpse move?”
Sciss compressed his lips, then pouted again. He answered in a quiet voice, but a slight grimace testified to the feeling of contempt behind his words.
“Any event can be understood on two levels, and this is a fact that you won’t change by ridiculing me. According to statistics, let’s say, a gun is fired once every five days in a big city. But if you’re sitting next to a window and a bullet smashes the pane over your head, you don’t reason this way: ‘A shot has just been fired, there won’t be another for five more days, therefore I’m safe.’ Instead, you assume that someone is after you with a gun, maybe a madman, and that it’s a good idea to take cover under the table. I have just given you an example of the difference between a prediction based on mass-statistics and an individual reaction to a single event; the individual reaction is relatively subordinate to the mass-statistical calculation.”
“What do you think about all this?” Black asked, turning to Gregory.
“Me? I’m looking for a human criminal,” the lieutenant replied quietly.
“Is that so? Yes, of course… naturally, as a specialist in individual occurrences, you wouldn’t believe in a virus.”
“But I do believe in it. It’s a remarkable virus. And fortunately it has many identifiable traits. For example, it likes darkness and solitude, that’s why it only operates at night in godforsaken out-of-the-way holes. It avoids policemen like the plague — evidently because they have some special immunity. Furthermore, it likes dead animals, especially cats. And it has literary interests also, although it limits itself to weather forecasts.”
The writer listened to Gregory with increasing amusement. His face changed, taking on a cheerful expression, and he began speaking quickly.
“You could get a warrant to arrest almost anyone with that description, Inspector. Whoever throws rocks at the Earth, for instance. After all, meteors usually strike the Earth at night, they come down in solitary places where there are
no people or policemen to see them — in fact, they almost always hit a little before daybreak, which shows how tricky they are, since night watchmen usually fall asleep just before dawn. If you asked Sciss about this, he’d tell you that the areas most frequently bombarded by meteors lie in a zone of retreating night and thus constitute the forepart of Earth during its cosmic voyage through space — and, since it is a well-known fact that more falling leaves hit the front window of a moving car than the rear window, we have an analogy… et cetera. But you have to find a perpetrator soon, don’t you?”
“Falling meteors and viruses acting up don’t interest me — I’m concerned about the real person behind all this; I may be unimaginative but he’s the only perpetrator I want. I’m not worried about whoever’s responsible for meteors and stars…” Gregory answered, his tone sharper than he intended.
The writer watched him for a moment. “Oh, you’ll get your man all right. I guarantee it. Besides… you already have him.”
“Really?” The lieutenant raised his eyebrows.
“It may be that you aren’t going after him the right way — maybe you haven’t collected enough evidence to put the finger on him yet — but that’s not the real point. A culprit who isn’t caught is a defeat for you — it means still another folder in the unsolved cases file. But a culprit who doesn’t exist, who never existed, that’s something completely different, worse than all your records burning up, worse even than confused language in your official reports, it’s the end of the world! For you the existence of the perpetrator of a crime has nothing to do with victory or defeat — it’s a matter of the sense or absurdity of your profession and your daily activities. And because catching him means peace of mind, salvation, and relief, you’ll get him by hook or by crook, you’ll get the bastard even if he doesn’t exist!”
The Investigation Page 15
