The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem

Author:Stanislaw Lem
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2011-11-07T18:31:33+00:00

5

Gregory was so taken aback that he couldn't answer for a moment. He stood in the doorway without removing his hat, a foolish expression on his face. Sheppard smiled faintly.

"Why don't you close the door?" he said at last, when the tongue-tied scene had dragged on a little too long. Pulling himself together, Gregory hung up his coat and shook hands with the Chief Inspector, watching him expectantly.

"I came over to find out what you accomplished at Sciss's place," said Sheppard, sitting down at the desk again and resting his elbow on the book he had been reading. The Chief Inspector spoke calmly, as usual; detecting a note of irony in the word accomplished, however, Gregory adopted a tone of naive sincerity in his reply.

"But Chief Inspector," he babbled, "all you had to do was tell me you were interested, and I would have phoned you. That doesn't mean I'm not glad to see you, of course, but why did you bother to go out of your way --" Sheppard, however, made no effort to carry his end; it was clear that he saw through Gregory's act and, with a slight gesture, he cut off the flow of words.

"Let's not play cat and mouse, Lieutenant," he said. "It was very clever of you to figure out that I'm not here to listen to one of your stories. You made a blunder tonight, a very big blunder, when you set up that telephone call. Yes, the phone call to Sciss while you were at his house. You had Gregson phone him about an allegedly recovered body so you could observe his reaction. And before you start explaining, let me venture a guess that you didn't accomplish anything with your little trick. I'm right, aren't I?"

The Chief Inspector's last words were angry. Rubbing his cold hands gloomily, Gregory straddled a chair and muttered:

"Yes."

All his garrulousness seemed to have disappeared. Sheppard pushed a box of Player's toward him and, taking a cigarette himself, continued:

"It was a cheap trick par excellence, Gregory, a classic. You didn't learn a thing, or almost nothing. Sciss, on the other hand, knows that you suspect him or will know it by tomorrow, which comes to the same thing; furthermore, he'll also know that you set up the call to trap him. All the same, assuming you're right -- that he is either the perpetrator or an accomplice -- then you did him a favor by warning him. And so far as that goes, didn't it occur to you that someone as cautious as the perpetrator seems to be, now that he's gotten such a clear-cut warning, will become ten times more cautious?"

Gregory was silent, chewing almost furiously on his fingernails. Sheppard, the calmness in his voice contradicted only by a deep furrow between his eyebrows, went on:

"Whether or not you tell me the details of your plan of operations is your business, because I always try, as much as possible, to respect the autonomy of the officers conducting investigations for me.

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