Inspector, trying to get a glimpse of him in the dim light.
“Wait, I think I see…” he said, his tone indicating that he had just made a startling discovery. “So that’s it.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Sheppard answered, resuming his pacing.
Gregory bowed his head, tapping on the edge of the desk with his fingers.
“Theatrical,” he whispered. “An imitation… but an imitation of what?” he said, raising his voice. “A sham, but to cover what? Insanity? No, it can’t be anything like that. The circle is closing again.”
“It’s closing because you’re going in the wrong direction. When you talk about shammed insanity you’re looking for a close analogy to the Lapeyrot case, in which the murderers, if I may put it this way, had a particular audience in mind all along: they purposely left clues to give the police a puzzle to solve. In our case there’s nothing to indicate that any of this is aimed at the police. In fact, I doubt it very much.”
“Yes, well in that…” said Gregory. He felt downhearted and stifled. “So we’re back where we started. The motive.”
“No, not at all. Look over here, please.”
Sheppard pointed to the wall, at a small circle of light that Gregory hadn’t noticed before. Where was it coming from, he wondered. Glancing at the desk, he saw a cut-glass paperweight standing next to the reflector of the desk lamp; a narrow beam of light, refracted in its crystalline depths, was escaping into the room’s dark interior to shine on the wall.
“What do you see here?” asked Sheppard, moving to the side.
Gregory leaned over to escape the lamp’s blinding glare. There was a picture hanging on the wall, almost invisible in the darkness expept for one of its corners, which was lit by the single beam of light. Within this tiny space, not much larger than two coins placed side by side, he saw a dark spot enclosed by a pale gray, slightly curved border.
“That spot?” he asked. “A profile of some kind? No, I can’t make it out… wait a minute…”
Intrigued by the shape, Gregory studied it more and more carefully, his eyes squinting. The more he studied it the more anxious he became. Although he hadn’t the slightest idea what he was looking at, his anxiety began to increase.
“It looks as if it’s alive…” he said involuntarily in a low voice. “Is it a burned-out window in a gutted house?”
Sheppard moved closer to the wall and blocked the area with his body. The irregular spot of light now shined on his chest.
“You can’t figure it out because all you can see is a tiny part of the whole,” he said, “right?”
“So that’s it! You think these disappearing body incidents are only a part — let’s say the beginning — of something bigger.”
“That’s it exactly.”
Sheppard was pacing again. Gregory returned his gaze to the spot on the wall.
“It may even be the beginning of something with criminal and political implications that go beyond the boundaries of this country. What comes next, of course, will depend on what has already taken place, and naturally it could all work out differently. Maybe everything that’s happened so far is only a diversion, or camouflage for some other operation…”
Deeply engrossed in the dark, nerve-wracking shape, Gregory hardly heard him.
“Excuse me, Chief Inspector,” he interrupted. “What is that thing?”
“What? Oh, that.”
Sheppard switched on the ceiling light and the room was filled with brightness. A second or so later he switched it off again, but during the few instants of light Gregory finally managed to catch a glimpse of what he had been staring at so fruitlessly: it was a woman’s head thrown backward at an angle, the whites of her eyes staring straight ahead, her neck scarred by the mark of a noose. There wasn’t enough time for him to see all the details, but even so, with a peculiar kind of delayed action, the expression of horror in the dead face got to him, and he turned to Sheppard, who was still pacing back and forth.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Gregory, blinking his eyes, “but I don’t know if that’s the most important thing about it. Do you really believe that a man alone in a darkened mortuary in the middle of the night would tear apart a cloth curtain with his teeth?”
“Don’t you?” Sheppard interrupted.
“Yes, of course, if he did it because he was nervous or afraid, or if there weren’t any other tools available… but you know as well as I do why he did it. That damned ironclad consistency that we’ve seen throughout this whole series. After all, he did everything to make it look like the bodies had come back to life. He planned everything to achieve that effect, even studied the weather reports. But how could he possibly predict that the police would be ready to believe in miracles? And that’s exactly what makes the whole thing so insane!”
“The kind of criminal you’re talking about doesn’t exist and couldn’t possibly exist,” Sheppard observed indifferently. He pushed the drapes to the side and looked out a dark window.
After a long interval Gregory asked, “Why did you bring up the Lapeyrot case?”
“Because it began childishly, with buttons arranged in patterns. But that isn’t the only reason. Tell me something: exactly what is contrary to human nature?”
“I don’t understand…” Gregory mumbled. He was beginning to get a splitting headache.
“A person manifests his individuality by his actions,” the Chief Inspector explained quietly. “Naturally this holds true for criminal acts also. But the pattern that emerges from our series of incidents is impersonal. Impersonal, like a natural law of some kind. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think so,” said Gregory. His voice was hoarse. He leaned over to one side, very slowly, until he was completely out of the blinding glare of the desk lamp. Thanks to this movement his eyes were soon able to see better in the darkness. There were several other pictures hanging next to the photograph of the woman, all showing the faces of dead people. Meanwhile, Sheppard had resumed his pacing across the room, moving back and forth against a background of nightmarish faces as if he were in the middle of some kind of weird stage setting; no… more as if he were among very ordinary, familiar things. He paused opposite the desk.
“The mathematical perfection of this series suggests that there is no culprit. That may astound you, Gregory, but it’s true…”
“What… what are you…” the lieutenant gasped in a barely audible voice, recoiling involuntarily.
Sheppard stood absolutely still, his face unseen. Suddenly Gregory heard a short, quavering sound. The Chief Inspector was laughing.
“Did I shock you?” the Chief Inspector asked in a more serious tone. “Do you think I’m talking nonsense?
“Who makes day and night?” he continued. There was derision in his voice.
Suddenly Gregory stood up, pushing his chair backward.
“I understand,” he said. “Of course. The series has something to do with the creation of a new myth. An imitation of one of the laws of nature. A synthetic, impersonal, invisible, obviously all-powerful criminal. Oh, it’s perfect! An imitation of infinity…”
Gregory laughed, but not very happily. Then, breathing deeply, he became quiet.
“Why are you laughing?” the Chief Inspector asked gravely, perhaps even a bit sadly. “Isn’t it because you were already thinking along the same lines but rejected the idea? Imitation? Of course. But a perfect imitation, Gregory, so perfect that you’ll come back to me with your hands empty.”
“Maybe,” Gregory said coldly. “And in that case I’ll be replaced by someone else. If necessary I could manage to explain every detail right now. Even the dissecting laboratory. The window can be opened from the outside with the aid of a nylon thread looped around the lock beforehand. I tried it, and it works. But to think that the creator of a new religion of some kind, an imitator of miracles, had to begin this way…”
Gregory shrugged his shoulders.
“No, it can’t be that simple,” the Chief Inspector said. “You keep repeating the word ‘imitation.’ A wax doll is an imitation of a human being, isn’t it? What if someone made a doll that could walk and talk, wouldn’t that be an excellent imitation? And if he made a doll that could bleed? A doll that could experience unhappiness and death, what then?”
“And what does any of this have to… after all, even the most perfect imitation — even the doll you were just
