“What about sledges?”
“Technically it would have been possible, but not in the amount of time he had to work with. After all, a sledge can’t travel at more than a mile or two an hour, especially in a storm like the one they had that night. Even with the best horses he wouldn’t have been able to get out of the closed-off area by noon.”
“If you say so, Lieutenant, but a moment ago you told us that this kind of net isn’t completely secure,” Sheppard said gently. “In fact, an absolutely secure cordon is only an ideal we aspire to.”
“Besides,” Farquart commented, “he could have put the corpse in a bag and carried it through the fields on foot.”
“Impossible,” said Gregory. He wanted to remain silent but his cheeks were burning. He could hardly keep himself from jumping to his feet.
“No vehicles left the closed-off zone after six in the morning. I can vouch for that,” he declared. “Maybe an infantryman could have gotten through the snow but not with a load as heavy as an adult body. He would have dumped it…”
“Maybe he did dump it,” Sorensen observed.
“I thought of that, but we combed the whole area — there was a thaw the next day which made the job easier — and we didn’t find a thing.”
“Your reasoning is hardly as faultless as you think,” Sciss unexpectedly broke into the conversation. “First of all, you didn’t find the dead cat, but if you had really conducted a careful search you would have—”
“Excuse me,” said Gregory, “but we were looking for a human corpse, not for a dead cat.”
“Exactly! But there are so many places to hide a corpse in such a large area that you might just as well conclude that it isn’t there.”
“The perpetrator could have buried the body,” Farquart added.
“He snatched it just to bury it?” Gregory asked with an innocent air. Farquart snorted.
“Maybe he buried it when he saw he couldn’t get away.”
“But how did he know he couldn’t get away? After all, we weren’t announcing the roadblocks on the radio,” Gregory retorted. “That is… unless he has a contact in the department, or unless he’s a police officer…”
“That’s not a bad thought,” Sciss smiled. “But in any case, gentlemen, you haven’t exhausted all the possibilities. What about a helicopter?”
“What nonsense!” said Dr. Sorensen contemptuously.
“Why? There aren’t any helicopters in England?”
“The doctor apparently believes that it’s easier to suspect a psychopath than a helicopter,” said Gregory, smiling complacently.
“What about all the carcasses?” Sorensen added.
There wasn’t a sound from Sciss, who seemed to be absorbed in his lecture notes.
“The search for the bodies must be continued,” Sheppard went on. “We have to plan a much more comprehensive operation, including ports and dockyards. Some kind of surveillance of ships and cargoes. Do any of you have anything else to say? Any new ideas? Any theories? Anything at all? Please don’t be afraid to be outspoken, even too outspoken.”
“In my opinion, it’s not possible —” Gregory and Farquart began at the same time. They looked at each other and stopped.
“I’m listening.”
No one spoke. The telephone jangled. The Chief Inspector disconnected it and watched the men seated before him. A cloud of bluish tobacco smoke rose around the lamp. For a moment, silence reigned.
“In that case, I…” Sciss said. He was meticulously folding his manuscript and putting it into the briefcase. “… I have applied the constant which I explained to you earlier in order to determine the sequence and location of these phenomena in advance.”
He stood up, moved over to the map, and, using a red pencil, marked off an area encompassing part of the counties of Sussex and Kent.
“If the next incident takes place between tomorrow morning and the end of next week, it will occur in this sector, which is bounded on the north by the suburbs of East Wickham, Croydon, and Surbiton, on the west by Horsham, on the south by a strip of the Channel coast, and on the east by Ashford.”
“A pretty big area,” Farquart said dubiously.
“Not really, since we can exclude an interior sector in which incidents have already taken place. The phenomenon is characterized by its movement outward, so the only area actually involved is a circular strip no more than twenty-one miles wide. It includes eighteen hospitals and about one hundred sixty small cemeteries. That’s all.”
“And you… you’re sure there will be an incident in this area?” asked Sorensen.
“No,” Sciss replied, after hesitating for a rather long moment, “I’m not sure. But supposing it doesn’t take place… or, rather, that if it doesn’t take place…”
Something curious was happening to the scientist. Everyone watched in amazement as he began shaking and his voice started to crack like an adolescent boy’s. Suddenly Sciss burst out laughing. He roared with laughter as if delighted by some private thought, totally oblivious to the deadly silence with which his uncontrollable hilarity was greeted.
Sciss picked up his briefcase from under the armchair, nodded his head in a slight bow, and, his shoulders still heaving spasmodically, walked out of the office, taking quick, inordinately long steps.
2
A strong wind scattered the clouds, and the yellowish glow of the setting sun became visible above the rooftops. The street lights dimmed, the snow darkened and blended into the sidewalks and gutters. His hands in his coat pockets, Gregory walked quickly, not looking into any of the doorways he passed.
Hesitating for a moment at an intersection, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shivering in the cold, damp air. Finally, angered by his own indecisiveness, he turned to the left.
The meeting had ended — in fact, dissolved — immediately after Sciss’s dramatic exit. Nothing had been accomplished. Sheppard hadn’t even decided who was going to take over the case. Since he had only seen him five or six times before, Gregory hardly knew the Chief Inspector. Of course he was aware of all the usual methods for bringing oneself to the attention of a superior officer, but he had never resorted to such tactics during his short career as a detective; now, though, he was beginning to regret this, because his relatively low rank reduced his chances of being put in charge of the investigation.
Sheppard had stopped Gregory just as he was leaving the conference room and asked him how he would conduct the investigation. Gregory had answered that he didn’t know. The truth, of course, but honest answers usually don’t pay. Sheppard would probably regard Gregory’s response as a sign that he wasn’t too smart, or that he had a poor attitude.
And what had Farquart told the Chief about him, he wondered. Surely nothing very impressive. Gregory tried to reassure himself with the thought that he was just overrating Farquart by worrying this way, since Farquart’s opinion really wasn’t worth anything.
His thoughts wandered from Farquart’s rather dull personality to Sciss. Now there was a character! Gregory had heard a lot about him.
During the war Sciss had been in the Operations Section, working close to the chief of staff, and from all accounts he had some pretty solid achievements to his credit. About a year after the war, though, he’d been fired. The story was that he’d insulted some VIP — it might have been Field Marshal Alexander — and the story was certainly believable. Sciss was well-known for his ability to antagonize everyone around him. It was also said that Sciss was standoffish, nasty, absolutely devoid of tact, and as unmercifully frank as a child in telling other people his opinions of them.
Remembering his own dismay at the meeting because he hadn’t been able to counter Sciss’s seemingly perfect logic, Gregory could well understand the animosity which the scientist seemed to inspire wherever he went. At the same time, though, he respected the intellectual powers of this strange man, whose tiny head made him
