one day be possible to build a machine to trap this energy — something between a treadmill and a turbine, existing half on our plane and half on the ghost’s. The machine will exert friction on the ghost, but since the ghost cannot be slowed down, the ghost will continuously pass energy into the machine. Even if it is only possible to drain a tiny fraction of the ghost’s terajoules, I estimate that a few hundred ghosts would be enough to power the entire continental United States, leaving our annual production of oil, gas, and coal available to our armed forces, and our cities smogless. As you will no doubt already have noted, my calculations rely on the assumption that in the afterlife ghosts retain considerable mass. My evidence for this is that victims of decapitation carrying their own severed heads have been observed to complain about the weight.’
‘I see.’ Loeser’s main concern about the Eminent Domain was that he would arrive to find all his ex- girlfriends there and there wouldn’t be any drugs to get him through it. ‘Do you think everyone gets an afterlife, even if they don’t believe in it?’
‘God will allow no man to escape the reward or the punishment that he deserves,’ said Clarendon, putting an odd stress, Loeser thought, on the word ‘punishment’. ‘On earth as it is in heaven. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to concentrate for a few minutes while I calibrate the equipment.’
‘Take your time. Do you want a drink?’
‘No, thank you.’
Loeser made himself a whisky and soda. Outside a fire engine screamed down Palmetto Drive. He thought about Marsh. Was there really a laboratory ghost haunting the California Institute of Technology? And then he realised that Marsh wouldn’t quite be the only one of that species. The whole state of California was a laboratory, a room for testing new theories, measuring new forces, designing new gadgets. So Loeser himself — uneasy and pale, detached and misplaced, a spilt drop of something old and cold — what was he, while he lived here, but another laboratory ghost?
After a while, Clarendon frowned and said, ‘There’s no ghost here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘According to my readings, there is no ghost in this house.’
‘But I’ve been living with her for three years. I’m sure of it. Couldn’t your equipment be unreliable?’ Then the telephone rang. Loeser made an apologetic gesture and went to answer it. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Adele.’
He switched to German. ‘Adele! I don’t remember giving you my telephone number.’
‘I got it from Mrs Jones at Throop Hall. Egon, I think I know who killed Marsh.’
‘I thought you were sure it was Slate.’
‘It wasn’t Slate. It can’t have been. There have been other murders.’
‘What?’
‘Last year, one of the cooks from the cafeteria. And the year before that, one of the gardeners. Hearts gone, same as Marsh. Millikan covered it up each time so there wouldn’t be a panic. But he couldn’t do that with Marsh because there were too many of us there when we found the body. And now the rumours have got out. I heard about it from Dick. When the cook was killed, Slate wasn’t even in California. He was visiting a sister in Alaska. He’d already been gone for a week and the corpse was only a few hours old when they found it.’
‘I was right! It was Ziesel!’
‘No, not Ziesel,’ said Adele, and then said the inevitable three syllables.
‘Clarendon?’ repeated Loeser without thinking, and then bit his lip. The phasmatometrist presumably didn’t speak German but of course he could recognise his own name.
‘Yes. He’s building a machine powered by ghosts, and he’s under pressure from the State Department to finish the machine before this war in Europe starts, and he needs to test it first, and he can’t just wait for people to die in accidents. I think he’s killing people himself! He’s breeding ghosts like biologists breed mice!’
‘How do you know so much about his research?’
‘The Professor told me. And listen to this: Dick said all the bodies have turned up in or near the Obediah Laboratories. That’s where Clarendon works. Ziesel is all the way over in Robinson.’
‘Adele, he’s in my house.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s here. Now. With me.’ Loeser didn’t dare look round.
‘God, why?’
‘He’s testing for a ghost here.’
‘So he has all his machines with him? And the two of you are alone? Loeser, what if he’s there to kill you and capture it on the phasmatometer?’
‘Adele, for Christ’s sake, call the police! Tell them to come here!’
‘I will, but they may not get there in time. Egon, you have to get him out of your house.’
Loeser put down the phone and turned to find Clarendon standing there only a few inches away, holding the same big pair of wire cutters that he’d had in the basement last night. ‘I was wondering if you might unlock that window,’ Clarendon said. ‘Sometimes I use an aerial to detect possible electromagnetic disturbances from the Heaviside Layer. It’s the most accurate way to compensate for them.’
To unlock the window, Loeser would have to turn his back on Clarendon again. Just the thought made the nape of his neck wrinkle with fear. He thought he saw Clarendon’s grip tighten on the handle of the tool. ‘I thought there was no ghost here.’
‘It’s worth a second try. I’m confident that my apparatus is reliable, but in any experiment there are unanticipated factors.’
‘Dr Clarendon, I really don’t want to take up any more of your evening. I’m sure your apparatus got it right the first time. I must have been wrong about the ghost. I’ve always been a bit jumpy. Now, as it happens I have two dozen people coming to dinner so I’m afraid—’
‘It will take just a few more minutes, Mr Loeser, if you’ll just oblige me by unlocking that window. I can’t seem to work the catch.’
For a long moment, Loeser stared at Clarendon, wondering if he could possibly overpower him without losing a finger. The rhythm of his heart seemed to be drumming out, ‘Please/don’t let/him eat/me please/don’t let/him eat/me.’ Then, for the second time that day, the doorbell rang.
Drunk with relief, Loeser dashed to the door and flung it open, hoping that it was burly policeman with a revolver, a nightstick and perhaps for good measure some sort of medieval halberd.
But it wasn’t. It was someone even more formidable than that. It was Dolores Mutton.
‘Mrs Mutton!’ he cried joyfully. ‘Hello! Hello!’
‘Good evening, Mr Loeser.’ She walked past him into the house and looked Clarendon up and down. ‘Oh, I see you have company.’
‘This is Dr Clarendon.’
‘A pleasure to meet you. Now, I assure you I wouldn’t usually interrupt like this, Dr Clarendon, but I have some very important Cultural Solidarity Committee business to discuss with Mr Loeser. It’s awfully kind of you to cut your visit short.’
‘In fact I was hoping to stay and take a few more—’
‘Awfully kind of you,’ repeated Dolores Mutton, combining a perfectly gracious smile with a voice that suggested she wouldn’t need to resort to a pair of wire cutters to relieve him neatly of his thumbs. Clarendon blanched and then with some haste started packing up his equipment. Nobody spoke until he’d finished, after which he scurried out without saying goodbye or picking up his hat. Loeser was pleased but unsurprised to observe that the terrifying angel had the same efficient effect on other men that she’d once had on him. As soon as the door was closed, she said, ‘I don’t think you understood me on the telephone last night.’
‘About Professor Bailey?’
‘Yes. You’re going to start bringing him to our parties.’
‘I told you, Mrs Mutton, I don’t know him well enough.’
‘I’m not giving you a choice, Loeser. You’ll do it, or Jascha and I will destroy you. And because of your predictable greed, we won’t need to resort to violence to do that. You’ve been embezzling from the Cultural Solidarity Committee of California for the last three years. Unless you do as we say and arrange for us to become friends with Professor Bailey, we’ll give the evidence to the cops, and you’ll be tried and convicted, after which you’ll serve time in jail and then be deported back to Germany.’
