trying to remember what they did during that break, and not everyone was entirely
successful.
Yvette had been talking to Edna during much of the break, and Jules had been
discreetly carrying on a friendly conversation with Yvonne. Most of the candidates had
gone outside into the garden with some of Edna’s ladies-in-waiting, and so had built-in
alibis for the crucial interval. Only three of the men did not have such alibis-Paul
Symond, Choyen Liu, and a fellow named Sean Mulvaney from the planet Arcta.
Mulvaney said that he had been visiting the fresher then, and had no witnesses to his
activity. Symond said he had gone up to his room to get a couple of pieces of jewelry he
had forgotten to bring down to the ball with him originally. Liu admitted that he had gone
out into the garden by himself to meditate.
The police zeroed in on him. The fact that he had no alibi for the time in question, that
he admitted being in the garden at that time, and that Borov had threatened him earlier
in the day made him a prime suspect. Liu accepted that suspicion quietly, saying very
little except to answer every question the police put to him. He stated politely but firmly
that he did not murder Borov and that he did not know who did. Neither the operatives
from SOTE nor the police detectives could make a dent in that story.
Finally, they had to give up. There was not yet enough evidence to make an arrest, or
even to take any one person down to the police station for more detailed questioning.
Since all the suspects were here for the Progress, which was to last for another week
and a half, the police left them alone and went out instead to look over the garden and
search for more clues. After a while, they departed completely, with the warning that no
one in the Progress party was to leave the planet without checking with them first.
All the rest of the day the topic of conversation centered around the murder. Symond,
Mulvaney, and Liu were made unofficial outcasts, with very few people bothering to talk
to them or ask their opinions. Liu took this all with the same quiet acceptance he
affected toward everything; the other two were a bit more annoyed that their integrity
should be so questioned, but they tried to exhibit good humor despite their awkward
positions.
Midway through the day, Jules found an opportunity to take his sister aside and talk
with her privately. “the thought has occurred to me,” he said, “that we may have the
number of the enemy figured all wrong. What if there are two traitors here–one to plant
the bomb and the other to act as his backup? If there are more than one of them here,
it might let those three off the hook; the killer would say he was elsewhere and his
confederate would back his story.
Yvette mulled that over for a second. “You may be right,” she said at last. “There simply
aren’t enough data to go by. Having only one infiltrator in this group would be simpler;
remember how hard it is to qualify. But I suppose there could be more than one.”
“We’ll just have to generate more data, then,” Jules said resolutely. “And I think I know
how to do it. I’ll drop a little bomb of my own.”
He waited until dinnertime to do it, though. While everyone was seated around the large
banquet table-talking about the murder, naturally-Jules suddenly dropped into the
conversation the fact that he had a pretty good idea who the murderer was. Edna gave
him a strange glance, wondering what sort of game he was playing, but, like the
intelligent woman she was, she said nothing. Instead she left it to the others to ask
questions that had formed in her mind as well.
There was no dearth of questioners. “Who is it?” asked Hans Gudding.
Jules shook his head. “I don’t really want to say yet except that it isn’t me. But this is a
serious charge, and I wouldn’t want to slander anyone on just what evidence I have. If I
turned out to be wrong, I would never forgive myself for calling an innocent man a
killer.”
“Shouldn’t you tell the police about your suspicions?” Paul Symond asked.
“I probably should, once I get them firmed up a bit. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll
give them a call and explain my theory.”
“What exactly do you have?” Mulvaney asked. “There’ve been several things that
happened over the few days we’ve all been together. The person I suspect has done a
couple of things that struck me at the time as being most peculiar. There are one or two
facts I want to check on out in the garden.” As he had by now finished eating, he
pushed his chair away from the table. “Please excuse me, all of you, but this could be
important.”
He left the room, much to everyone’s surprise, and went outside to roam around the
garden. He spent two hours alone out there, wandering the paths and occasionally
bending over to examine something under the dim light of Ansegria’s only moon. He
spent a lot of time around the site where the body had been discovered, turning up
rocks and walking around in circles. Occasionally people inside the house would stare
out at him through the windows, wondering what he expected to find, but they preferred
not to know. They let him wander by himself.
That suited Jules just perfectly, for what he was hoping to find would not be in the
garden at all.
Finally, when the hour was getting quite late, Jules decided to return to the castle. Most
of the people, he discovered, had already retired for the evening; though they had done
very little today compared to the other days, the psychological toll the murder had taken
on all of them was enormous. Finding almost no one to talk to, Jules decided to head
up to his own room as well.
As Jules turned into the hallway that led to his own room, he noticed that the light was
out, leaving the entire corridor in pitch blackness. The instant that fact registered in his
mind, he leaped into action-literally. Pushing off with his powerful leg muscles, he dived
forward and to his right, curling himself into a tight ball and rolling until he bumped into
the wall on that side.
His action was well taken. Even as he jumped, the low buzzing sound of a stun-gun
carried through the air. Its beam passed just centimeters to the side of where he was,
although he had no way of knowing just how close it came. All he had known was that,
standing in the light in front of a darkened area, he made the perfect target silhouette
for anyone wanting to shoot at him, and he had taken the appropriate action to
neutralize that.
Now that he was in motion he stood a much better chance of surviving. The odds
against him would be determined by the skill and reflexes of his attacker-unknown
factors, but Jules was not too worried. His DesPlainian reflexes were sure to be better
than those of a normal human. The movement of his roll against the wall brought him to
his feet in a low crouch. Without pausing as much as a split second, he leaped
again-mostly forward this time and only slightly to his left. He was pretty certain he knew
where his attacker would be positioned-at the very back of the darkened corridor, where
he could see Jules’s silhouette approaching all the time … and where Jules would not
be able to see him. By constantly moving toward his enemy, Jules would be narrowing
the distance between them as well as shortening the man’s reaction time. All he had to
do was avoid making his leaps in any consistent pattern and he should be all right.
Again, the buzzing sound of the stunner beam was heard, at shorter and shorter
intervals. A stun-gun could not be set on continuous fire as could a blaster, and needed
a fraction of a second between bursts for it to recharge. That was what Jules was
counting on most; if his opponent had been using a blaster, Jules would have had to
retreat, since he couldn’t have reached his quarry before the deadly beam sliced a hole
through his DesPlainian body.
Using a series of leap, roll, leap again motions, Jules made his way down the blacked
out corridor toward his foe. The buzzing of the stunner took on an almost desperate
whine as the traitor fired repeatedly to rid himself of this upstart who was unexpectedly
fast. Jules, too, was a little surprised at how close together the shots were; his
opponent must have lightning quick reflexes himself, and that was a sobering thought.