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 a 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 —
“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
