Free The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem Page A

about what his neighbor was doing behind their mutual wall in the middle of the night, he told himself, he would finally be free from the agonizing hours of tossing sleeplessly in a dark, lonely room.
    But the idea of making sense out of a series of weird, disjointed sounds floated around in Gregory’s head as if in a void. Once, somewhat groggy from a sleeping pill which had made him drowsy without bringing rest, he quietly slipped out of bed and went out on the terrace, but the glass doors to Mr. Fenshawe’s room were covered from the inside with a heavy, nontransparent curtain. Gregory returned to his room shivering from the cold and, feeling like a whipped dog, he slipped under the covers, overcome with gloom because he had tried to do something for which he would always be ashamed.
    Gregory’s work kept him so busy that he rarely thought about the noises during the daytime. At most, he was reminded of them once or twice when he bumped into Kinsey at Headquarters. On these occasions Kinsey always eyed him expectantly, with an air of cautious curiosity, but Gregory decided not to bother him about it. After all, in the long run the problem was trivial. In time, perhaps without even realizing it, Gregory gradually began to change his routine: he brought official reports home and brooded over them until midnight, sometimes even later. This enabled him to lie to himself about the ultimate disgrace that was already so close, for during his long hours of sleeplessness, the most extraordinary ideas were coming into his head, and several times he had conceived a desperate desire to just give up and take refuge in a hotel or a boardinghouse.
    This evening more than ever, returning from Sheppard’s, Gregory needed peace and quiet. The alcohol had worked its way out of his system long before, although he still felt angry and had a pungent taste in his mouth, and his eyes smarted painfully as if there were sand beneath the lids. The staircase, immersed in darkness, was deserted. Gregory passed quickly through the drawing room, where the dark mirrors glistened coldly in the corners, and closed the door of his room with a sigh of relief. Out of habit—it had already become almost a reflex—he stood perfectly still for a moment, listening. At such times he didn’t think; his behavior was instinctive. The house was as still as death. Gregory turned on a lamp, noticed that the air in the room was heavy and stuffy and flung open the door to the terrace, then set about making coffee in his little electric pot. He had a splitting headache. Earlier in the evening other things had distracted him, but now the pain came up to the surface of his consciousness and demanded his full attention. He sat down on a chair next to the bubbling pot, but the feeling that he had just gone through a lousy, unlucky day was so inescapable that he had to stand up. Relax, he told himself, nothing really awful had happened. He’d been given the slip by a man on the subway who vaguely resembled one of the missing corpses. Sheppard had put him in charge of the very investigation he wanted to command. True, the Chief had babbled strangely for a while, but in the end it was all only words, and Sheppard was certainly entitled to carry on if he wanted to. Maybe he was getting religious in his old age. What else had happened? Gregory reminded himself of the incident in the dead-end arcade—the meeting with himself—and laughed involuntarily. “That’s the detective in me… Ultimately, even if I bungle this case, nothing will happen,” he thought. He took a thick notebook out of his drawer, turned to a blank page, and began writing: “MOTIVES: Greed. Religious Fervor. Sex. Politics. Insanity.”
    Glancing back at what he had written, Gregory crossed out each item on the list except “Religious Fervor.” What a ridiculous idea! He threw the notebook aside and leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. The pot was bubbling viciously now. Maybe his silly