Free The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem Page B

hundred-meter distance in his beach robe. That same evening his robe was found in his cabin by the beach attendant.
    Coburn had the reputation of being an excellent swimmer. Twenty years ago he had been a member of the American crawling team, and though he had a tendency to gain weight, he had managed to keep reasonably fit for a man his age. Since the beach was crowded, his disappearance went unnoticed. Five days later his body was washed ashore by the waves of a passing storm. His death would have been attributed to accidental drowning, a not unusual occurrence on every major beach, were it not for several minor details that later prompted an investigation. The dead man, a real-estate broker from Illinois, had no wife. Since he had died of unnatural causes an autopsy was performed, the results of which indicated that he had drowned on an empty stomach. Yet the hotel management claimed he had left for the beach right after breakfast. A minor discrepancy, perhaps, but the police commission was not on the best of terms with a group of city aldermen who had invested money in the renovation of certain hotels—among them the Savoy, which had recently been the scene of another incident, to be discussed later on. The police commission took a special interest in those hotels in which guests had met with accidents. A young assistant was put in charge of conducting a secret investigation, and he immediately placed the hotel and its guests under close surveillance. Being a freshly minted detective, he was anxious to sparkle in the eyes of his superior, and, thanks to his zealous enthusiasm, some very odd things were revealed. Coburn’s daily routine had consisted of mornings at the beach, naps in the afternoon, then early-evening visits to the Vittorini brothers’ health spa for the mineral-bath treatment that a local doctor, Dr. Giono, had prescribed for him—Coburn was being treated for the early stages of rheumatism. It also developed that during the week before his death Coburn had been involved in three car accidents, always on his way back from the Vittorini resort and each time under similar circumstances, namely, while trying to run a red light at an intersection. In every case the damage was minor, amounting to no more than dented fenders, and Coburn got off with only a fine and a warning. It was also around this time that he began eating supper in his room, rather than in the hotel dining room—before letting the waiter in, Coburn would first check through the door to make sure he was an employee of the hotel—and he soon gave up taking his daily stroll around the bay at sunset. These were indications that he felt harassed, even personally threatened—running a red light is a well-known method for shaking a tailing car—and such an interpretation would also explain why the deceased man had taken certain precautionary steps inside the hotel. But the investigation failed to turn up any further evidence. Coburn, whose childless marriage had ended in divorce fourteen years earlier, had made no friends either in the Savoy or downtown. It was later discovered that on the day before his death he had tried to buy a revolver from a local gun dealer, not realizing that by Italian law he was required to have a gun license. Since he didn’t have one, he bought an imitation fountain pen designed to spray an attacker with a mixture of tear gas and an indelible dye. The pen was later found, still unwrapped, among his personal belongings, and so they were able to trace it back to the local retailer. Coburn had known no Italian, and the gun dealer had only a weak command of English. All that was learned was that Coburn had asked for a weapon capable of repelling a dangerous attacker, and not just some petty thief.
    After establishing that all the accidents had occurred while Coburn was on his way back from the health spa, the assistant then proceeded to the Vittorinis. Because of the American’s generosity toward the staff, they had