the pages; algebraic formulas leaped past his eyes.
“Quite true. Do you prefer coffee or tea?” Sciss remembered his responsibilities as a host.
“I’ll take whatever you’re having.”
“Good.”
Sciss went into the kitchen. Gregory put back the book, which was entitled
“Be careful, it’s hot,” he cautioned. “Are you saying that I’m no longer under suspicion?” he asked Gregory after a moment. “You know something? I could have had motives you never even considered. Let’s say I was trying to get rid of a body — someone I killed, just for the sake of argument. In order to bring about a situation in which it was easy to dispose of it, I got hold of a whole batch of bodies, began moving them around, and created a general confusion in which my victim was lost completely. What do you say to that?”
“Too literary,” Gregory replied. He was browsing through a thick, glossy-paged volume on psychometrics. “One of Chesterton’s stories has the same plot.”
“I never read it. I don’t like Chesterton. In your opinion, then, what made me do all this?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think of any possible motive. That’s why I don’t suspect you anymore.”
“Did you dig into my past? Did you draw up a chronology and a map showing all my movements? Did you look for clues and fingerprints? With only one exception, I wasn’t at all inconvenienced by your investigation — I didn’t even notice it.”
“The overall picture didn’t fall into place so I skipped the usual routine. Besides, I’m not a very systematic investigator. I improvise, or, you might say, I tend to be disorderly,” Gregory admitted. There was something stiff in among the pages of the book; he began turning them carefully. “I even have a theory to justify my careless work habits: until you have a specific theoretical structure to fit the facts into, there’s no point in collecting evidence.”
“Are you an intuitionist? Have you ever read Bergson?”
“Yes.”
The pages opened. Between them there was a large photographic negative. It was transparent, but by pressing it against the white paper Gregory was able to make out the silhouette of a human figure bent backward. Very slowly he raised the book closer to his eyes, peeping over it at Sciss. With one finger he moved the negative along the blank area between two columns of print, continuing the conversation at the same time:
“Sheppard told me you were at his place when the body in Lewes disappeared. So you have an alibi. I was acting like a dog looking for a buried bone — running from tree to tree and digging, even though there was nothing there. I was fooling myself. There was nothing for me to dig in, no grounds, nothing…”
Gregory systematically moved the photo along the white strip between the columns until he could make out the image on the negative. It was a picture of a naked woman leaning back against a table. One arm, resting against a stack of black bricks that reached almost to her nipple, was partly covered by her dark, flowing hair — light-colored, in reality. Her long legs stretched down from the table, entwined in a string of white beads. In her other hand she was holding a blurred object of some kind, pressing it against her black, tightly closed thighs. Her lips were open in an indescribable grimace that exposed her dark pointed teeth.
“I think I’ve already made myself enough of a fool in front of you,” Gregory continued.
He glanced suddenly at Sciss. The latter, smiling faintly, nodded his head.
“I don’t know. You present another point of view. If we were living at the time of the Inquisition you might have gotten what you wanted.”
“What does that mean?” Gregory asked. He took another quick look at the negative and suddenly realized that the beads were really a small chain. The girl’s ankles were shackled. Frowning, he slammed the book shut, put it back in its place, and eased himself gently from the arm into the chair.
“I have very little resistance to pain, you know,” Sciss continued. “Torture would squeeze every bit of evidence out of me. You would probably have broken every bone in my body to save your peace of mind — or, I should say, to maintain your mental equilibrium.”
“I understand Sheppard about as much as I do this case,” Gregory said slowly. “He assigned me to a hopeless job, and at the same time, right from the beginning, he didn’t give me a chance. But you’re probably not interested in any of this.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m not.” Sciss put his empty cup down on the table. “I did what I could.”
Gregory stood up and began to walk around the room. On the opposite wall there was a framed photograph, a large-sized picture of a work of sculpture, a good amateur study of light and shadow effects.
“Did you do this?”
“Yes.”
Sciss didn’t turn his head.
“It’s very good.”
Sweeping his eyes around the room, Gregory recognized the desk as the table in the negative. Those bricks — they were books, he thought. He checked the windows; quite ordinary, except that they were provided with black shades, now raised and tightly rolled.
“I didn’t think you had any artistic interests,” he said, returning to the small table. Sciss blinked and got to his feet with a certain amount of difficulty.
“I used to amuse myself with that kind of thing a long time ago. I have quite a few pictures like that one; would you like to see some of them?”
“Very much so.”
“Just a minute.” He looked through his pockets. “What did I do with my keys? Probably still in my coat.”
He went out, leaving the door open, and turned on the light in the foyer. He was gone for the longest time. In his absence Gregory was tempted to look at the volume on psychometrics again, but he decided not to take the risk. All of a sudden, he heard a scuffling noise — it sounded like something ripping, a piece of material being torn; Sciss appeared in the doorway. He was completely transformed. Straightened up, taking unnaturally long steps, he rushed toward Gregory as if he wanted to attack him. He was breathing noisily. Two steps before he reached Gregory he opened his hand. Something white fell out of it — a crumpled scrap of paper. Gregory recognized the napkin. Floating gently downward, it fell onto the floor. The corners of Sciss’s narrow lips were contracted in an expression of unspeakable loathing. Gregory’s cheeks and face began to burn as if they had been scalded.
“What do you want from me, you worm?” Sciss screamed in a falsetto voice, almost choking on the words. “A confession? Here’s your confession: it was me. Do you hear? It was me! All me! I planned it, set it up, and got rid of the bodies. I played with the corpses as if they were dolls — I felt like doing it, do you understand? Only don’t come near me, you worm, because I might vomit!!!” His face was livid. Backing up to the desk and supporting himself on it, he fell into a chair; with trembling hands he plucked a glass vial out of his watch pocket, pulled the cork out with his teeth, panting, and sucked in a few drops of the oily liquid. His breathing slowly eased and became deeper. Propping his head against a row of books on the shelf and spreading his legs apart, he forced himself to breathe more regularly. His eyes were closed. Finally he came to himself and sat up. Gregory’s face was burning; he watched without moving from his place.
“Go away. Please go away,” Sciss said in a hoarse voice, not opening his eyes. Gregory couldn’t move — it was as if he had taken root in the floor. He stood silently, wailing for God knows what.
“You won’t go? All right then!” Sciss stood up, coughing and gasping violently. He stretched himself, touched his shirt collar, which he had unbuttoned just a moment before, smoothed out his suit, and walked into the foyer. A moment later the outside door slammed.
Gregory was alone in the apartment, free to look through the drawers, the whole desk; he walked over to it, but even as he did so he knew he wasn’t going to search it. Lighting a cigarette he paced from wall to wall, trying unsuccessfully to think. He crushed the cigarette, looked around, shook his head, and went into the foyer. His coat was lying on the floor; when he picked it up he saw that it had been torn almost in half by a strong pull along the back; the loop and a small fragment of material were still on the hanger. He was standing with the coat in his hand when the telephone began to ring. He listened intently. The telephone kept ringing. He went back into the room and waited for it to stop, but the ringing continued. “Too few scruples and not enough results,” he thought. “I’m a
