Fallada said: “Tell me something. Did you really believe she was dead?”
Carlsen shook his head. “No, I didn’t believe it. And if you want to know the truth, I didn’t want to believe it.” He felt himself flushing as he said it. Again, it had cost an effort to force himself to say the words.
If Fallada was surprised, he showed no sign of it. “Was she so attractive?”
The desire not to go on was so strong that he was silent for almost a minute. He said finally: “It’s difficult to explain.”
“Would you say, for example, that she had some hypnotic effect?”
Carlsen felt angry with himself for feeling so embarrassed. He said, stumbling over the words: “You know, it’s. . . difficult. . . I mean it’s strange how hard it is to talk about it.”
Fallada said quickly: “But it’s important to talk about it. This is something I want to understand.”
“Okay.” Carlsen swallowed. “Did you ever read a poem called ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ when you were at school?”
“No, but I know the legend. My mother was born in Hamelin.”
“Well, in the poem, the piper leads all the kids away into the side of a mountain. And they all follow him willingly. Only one gets left behind because he’s lame. And he describes what the music seemed to promise. . . something about. . . I can’t remember the words exactly, but a joyous land where everything is new and strange. A marvellous, ideal kind of place where mince pies grow on trees and the rivers are made of ice cream soda.” He swallowed a drink, feeling the dry heat burning his cheeks and ears. “That’s what it was like.”
“And can you describe what she seemed to promise?”
“Well. . . nothing. In that sense. But it was the same kind of thing — a kind of vision of an ideal woman, if you like.”
“The Ewig-weibliche?”
Carlsen looked blank; Fallada explained: “Goethe’s eternal-feminine principle. He ends his Faust: ‘The eternal feminine draws us upwards and on.’ ”
Carlsen nodded. He was now experiencing a strange sense of relief. “That’s it. That’s true. I suppose Goethe must have met a woman like this. The kind of thing you dream about as a child. You look at your sister’s friends, and you think they must be goddesses. When you’re older, you get more realistic and you think women aren’t like that at all.”
Fallada said softly: “But the dream remains.”
“Yes, the dream. And that’s why I couldn’t believe it. Dreams don’t just die like that.”
“There is only one thing you must remember.” He waited until Carlsen looked up from his glass. “This creature was not a woman.” As Carlsen made an impatient gesture, he went on quickly: “I mean that these creatures are totally alien to everything we mean by human.”
Carlsen said stubbornly: “They’re humanoid.”
Fallada said sharply: “No, not even that. You forget that the human body is a highly specialised piece of adaptation. A quarter of a billion years ago, we were fishes. We developed arms and legs and lungs to move about on land. It is a million-to-one chance that creatures from another galaxy could have evolved along the same lines.”
“Unless conditions on their planet were similar to earth.”
“Possible, but unlikely. We now have a pathologist’s report on the bodies of the three aliens. Their digestive systems are identical to those of human beings.”
“So?”
Fallada leaned forward. “They live by draining the life of other creatures. They don’t need food.”
Carlsen shook his head. “I suppose so. But. . . I don’t know. We just don’t know, do we? We don’t really know a damn thing — not one single definite fact.”
Fallada said patiently, like a professor coaching a backward student: “I think we have a few facts. For example, we are fairly certain that the girl on the railway line was killed by one of these creatures, whatever they are. We also know that the fingerprints found on her throat belonged to a man called Clapperton.” He paused; Carlsen said nothing. “That suggests two possibilities. Either that Clapperton was acting in obedience to the vampires, or that one of them had gained possession of his body.”
It was what Carlsen had known he was going to say; nevertheless, it made his scalp prickle, and a wave of coldness ran over his body. He started to speak, but his voice stuck hi his throat. His heart was suddenly beating painfully.
Fallada said gently: “We both recognise this as a possibility, in which case it is also possible that these things are indestructible. But that doesn’t mean they are incapable of making mistakes. For example –”
The sharp buzz of the telescreen interrupted him. He pressed the reply key.
“The Commissioner of Police to speak to you, sir.”
“Put him through.”
Carlsen was sitting on the far side of the desk, so could not see the Commissioner’s face; the voice was clipped and military.
“Hans, glad I caught you. There’s been a new development. We’ve found the suspect.”
“The racing driver?”
“Yes. I’ve just been to see him.”
“Alive?”
“Unfortunately not. In the Wandsworth mortuary. His body was fished out of the river this afternoon.”
“So there had been no post-mortem yet?”
“Not yet. But I’d say it’s a clear case of suicide after committing a murder. So from our point of view, the case is closed.”
Fallada said: “Percy, I want to see that body.”
“Yes, of course. Any. . . er. . . particular reason?”
“Because I’d like to take a bet he didn’t die by drowning.”
“Then you’d lose it. I watched them pumping the water out of his lungs.”
Fallada shook his head incredulously. “Are you sure?”
“Quite certain. Why? I don’t understand you. . .”
Fallada said: “I’m coming over there to see you now. Will you be there in half an hour?”
“Yes.”
“I’m bringing Commander Carlsen too.”
Fallada rang off. He stood up, sighing and massaging his eyes. “That is unbelievable. I would have staked a thousand pounds that he was dead before he entered the water.” He crossed to the window and stared out, his hands deep in his coat pockets. “When the screen rang, I was about to say that they had made a mistake in choosing Clapperton. He is too well-known. Consequently, he is of no use to them. So he has to die.”
“Well, you were right.”
Fallada grunted. “Perhaps. . . We must go now.” He pressed the communication button and told his secretary: “Order a cab to pick me up in front of the Ismeer Building in five minutes. And tell Norman to expect another body for examination.”
The high-speed elevator took twenty-five seconds to carry them to the ground floor, a mile below. There was no sensation of movement; only a momentary lightness. Fallada stood without speaking, his head sunk on his chest.
As they left the air-conditioned coolness of the Ismeer Building, the air of the city poured over them like warm water. The spring day was as hot as midsummer. Many of the dark-suited men had removed their jackets. Women had taken advantage of the sun to try out the latest fashion: transparent dresses over brightly coloured underwear. There was a gaiety about the crowd that made it hard to believe in vampires.
The tiny battery-powered cab was waiting by the pavement. Carlsen was about to climb in when he heard the voice of the robot news-vendor: “New Stranger sensation. New Stranger sensation. . .” The changing neon sign in front of it read: “Spaceman describes Mary Celeste of space. . .” Carlsen slipped a coin into the machine and took the Evening Mail.
There was a photograph on the front page that he recognised as Patricia Wolfson, wife of the captain of the Vega. She was holding two children by the hand.
In the cab, Fallada leaned forward, trying to read over his shoulder. Carlsen said: “It looks as if Wolfson went aboard the Stranger after all.”
Fallada leaned back. “Read it aloud, would you?”
” ‘Only one hour before receiving an order forbidding all further exploration of the Stranger, Captain Derek Wolfson and a three-man team entered its control room. This was revealed today in an exclusive interview by Mrs Patricia Wolfson, the spaceman’s wife. Mrs Wolfson talked to our reporter at the London International Spaceport.
” ‘On Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Wolfson, together with her two children, spent five hours in the signal room at moonbase, and exchanged messages with her husband, who was more than a quarter of a billion miles away, in the explorer-ship Vega.
” ‘In a televised message lasting eight and a half minutes, Captain Wolfson described how his team entered the derelict through a massive new hole torn by a meteor since the Stranger was discovered last November. “If the hole had been a few yards higher, it would have totally destroyed the control deck,” Captain Wolfson told his wife.