Free The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem Page B

little list of motives wasn’t so stupid after all, he reflected. A frightening idea began to work its way to the surface. Gregory waited passively, gloomily beginning to feel like a struggling, helpless insect trapped in an incomprehensible darkness.
    Shivering, he got up, walked over to his desk, and opened a bulky volume entitled Forensic Medicine to a place indicated by a bookmark stuck between the pages. The chapter heading read, “The Decomposition and Decay of the Corpse.”
    He began reading, but after a while, although his eyes obediently continued to follow the text, his mind began to visualize Sheppard’s room with its gallery of dead faces. He pictured the scene: Sheppard pacing back and forth in an empty house, stopping occasionally to take a look at the pictures on the wall. Shivering again, Gregory made a decision: Sheppard was a prime suspect. Suddenly he heard a shrill whistle and realized that the coffee was ready.
    Closing the book, Gregory got up, poured himself a cup, and gulped it down while standing at the open door of the terrace, not even noticing that the hot coffee was burning his throat. A hazy glow hung over the city. He could see far-off cars shooting along the nighttime streets, looking, in the distance, like white flashes disappearing into a black abyss. From inside the house there was a faint rustling. It sounded a little like a mouse eating its way through the wall, but Gregory knew it wasn’t. Feeling as if he had lost even before the game really started, Gregory ran out on the terrace. Supporting himself on the stone balustrade, he raised his eyes upward. The sky was full of stars.

3,
    That night Gregory had a dream in which everything became crystal clear and he cracked the case, but in the morning he couldn’t remember a single detail. Part of it came back to him while he was shaving. He was at a shooting gallery in Luna Park firing a big red pistol at a bear. He’d just scored a bull’s-eye when the bear growled and reared up on its hind legs; suddenly it wasn’t a bear at all but Doctor Sciss, very pale and wrapped in a dark cloak. When Gregory took aim, the pistol became as soft as a piece of rubber. He kept pressing his finger against the place where there should have been a trigger even though it didn’t do any good. That was all he could remember. When he finished shaving, he decided to phone Sciss and arrange a meeting. On his way out of the house he saw Mrs. Fenshawe in the hall, rolling up a long carpet runner. One of the cats was curled up under her stool. Gregory could never tell the cats apart, although he could see the differences between them when they were together. After a quick breakfast in a cafeteria on the other side of the square, he telephoned Sciss. A woman’s voice at the other end told him that Sciss had left London for the day. This ruined Gregory’s plan. Uncertain what to do next, he went out into the street, strolled around for a while gazing at the store windows, and then, for no reason at all, spent an hour wandering through Woolworth’s. Around twelve o’clock he left Woolworth’s and finally checked in at Scotland Yard.
    It was Tuesday. Making a mental note of the number of days still remaining in the period Sciss had specified, Gregory skimmed through a sheaf of reports from the outlying suburbs, carefully went over the latest weather information and the long-range forecasts for southern England, chatted for a while with the typists, and arranged to see a film that evening with Kinsey.
    After the film he was still at a loss for something to do. He most definitely did not want to spend any more time in his room studying Forensic Medicine , not from laziness but because the pictures always upset him, although naturally he’d never admit that to anyone. There was a long wait ahead; he knew it would pass more quickly if he could find an interesting diversion, but it wasn’t easy. After killing some time by compiling a long list of books and