Osborne had just extended his hand when a youth with a flashgun and a cumbersome plate camera came up.
'Professor Neilson,' he shouted at them. 'Un moment, si'l vous plait. A picture, please. For the American press.'
He bustled around, pushing all four into position he wanted for the photograph. Jan he had standing between his seated mother and father, Osborne well to one side. Satisfied, he backed towards the cafe entrance, peering into the range-finder.
'Bon!' he exclaimed. The flash momentarily blinded everyone with its burst of white light.
Simultaneously Jan fell sideways against his father, moaning.
The photographer disappeared into the street, and a gentleman who had been reading a newspaper at a table beside the door put on his hat, slid something black and shiny into the breast pocket of his overcoat and walked quite unhurriedly after the photographer.
The Neilson's were bent over their son, but Osborne had seen the careful and methodical movements of the man near the door. He had seen what that black thing shoved inside the coat was, noticing the squat round cylinder of a silencer on the muzzle of the gun. He loped through the door - in time to see a Citroen, its number plate covered in frozen slush, pick up photographer and gunman and cruise away along the lakeside road which led to Vevey and the frontier.
He returned to the Neilsons. 'It's no good,' he said gently.
'They got away.'
The Neilsons took no notice. They were isolated by their grief as they awkwardly nursed the body of their dead son, one on each side.
Mrs Neilson looked helplessly at her husband. 'He - he told me he feared this,' she moaned. 'They've been hunting him for months. They kept him prisoner before that, but he escaped. They made him work.'
'Who did?' her husband exclaimed. 'Where could he have been imprisoned?'
She began caressing Jan's hair, touching his eyelids. 'He said it was in a country called Azaran.'
In a discreet house on the outskirts of Berne, Kaufman was compiling the details of the report he had to send his employers.
The gunman stood at the side of the bureau desk, eyeing the bundle of American dollars which he had earned.
'So the pictureman was late,' Kaufman said; 'he will be reprimanded in due course. But you are sure you killed the Neilson boy before he could talk?'
'He wouldn't talk much after he was hit,' the gunman laughed. 'But he talked plenty before. To his mother. And she can talk to her husband - and to some Englishman the old man brought with him. He was introduced to the boy as Osborne.'
Kaufman sighed. 'Osborne. It would have to be. All this killing. I dislike it. One death - and you have to organise another. So it goes on.'
He pushed the money to the corner of the desk. The gunman stuck it inside his coat, a cushion for the revolver which lay there.
'Get out of the country right away,' Kaufman told him.
'As for me, I shall have to return to England.'
Andre and Fleming were flown to the R.A.F. station at Northolt to avoid ,publicity problems at London Airport. A Government car awaited them on the apron and they were driven straight to the Ministry of Science.
The Minister had decided to handle the interview personally, with Geers sitting in to brief on the technical side.
He had a foreboding about questions in the House some time or other about this business if the secret leaked, and he had no intention of having to admit inefficiency. He was also a just man, which was why he had called a solicitor from the Attorney General's office to sit in and watch over the normal rights of a British citizen. His worried mind found a touch of humour there. Was the girl a British citizen? She had no birth certificate; no parents. So far as Somerset House was concerned she did not exist. It was an interesting point if this affair ever came to a legal trial. He fervently hoped it wouldn't.
The Minister greeted his visitors coldly. But he went out of his way to stress that this was in no sense a trial; it was an informal enquiry.
Fleming, untidy and doing his best to disguise the strain he felt, laughed sardonically. 'Very informal,' he said. 'I noticed the informally dressed plain clothes nark hanging around the door just in case I might make a run for it. Ah, and my dear Geers is here as well.'
The Minister ignored him and turned to Andre. 'Sit down, my dear,' he said gently. 'You must be very tired. But this is unfortunately necessary.'
He sat at his desk and re-read the brief report of the preliminary questioning Quadring had sent by teletype.
I'm informed that you are suffering from amnesia,' he began, and motioned to Geers.
Geers rose from his chair to the Minister's right and confronted the girl. 'Andromeda,' he said harshly. 'Surely you haven't forgotten the factors involved in the synthesis of living tissue? Do you really mean to tell us you know nothing about the fact that one of the formulae obtained from the computer on which you worked enable Professor Dawnay to construct living matter in the laboratory? And that the outcome of that work was you yourself?'
Andre looked back at him, wide-eyed but quite calm, with the placidity of a child. She slowly shook her head.
Geer's face flushed with frustration and anger. 'You're not going to insist that you can't remember your work with the computer?'
The solicitor coughed discreetly. 'I think that is enough, Dr Geers,' he said mildly. To Andre he murmured, 'Don't worry to answer all these questions just now.'
'I agree,' said the Minister, glaring at Geers. 'The girl's unfit and distraught. Perhaps we can have her history properly explained to her in a calmer atmosphere.'
Fleming strode forward to the desk. 'That's the last thing!'
he shouted.
The Minister looked at him coldly. 'I beg your pardon.'
Hurriedly the solicitor interposed. 'I think that my professional advice would be that this lady must testify once she is medically fit and has been properly informed of the past.
Her evidence would, of course, have to be before a properly constituted Board of Enquiry.'
'I could brief her,' Geers said eagerly.
The Minister looked at him with hardly concealed distaste.
'I would have preferred Osborne if circumstances had been different. In any case, he cannot be brought back from Geneva until tomorrow.' He smiled at Andre. 'Perhaps you'll wait in the ante-room while we talk to Dr Fleming?'
Fleming crossed to the door and opened it. He smiled reassuringly at her as she went out.
'Now, Dr Fleming, why did you abduct this woman?' The Minister's gentle tone had changed.
'That's beside the point,' Fleming retorted truculently.
'Then what is the point?'
'That the message from the Andromeda nebulae, and all that derived from it, was evil.' Deliberately he forced himself to speak calmly and quietly. 'It was sent by a superior intelligence that would subjugate us, and would have, if necessary, destroyed us.'
'And because you thought that, you destroyed the computer.'
The Minister's tone was grim, though the inflexion suggested he was posing a question rather than making a statement. 'Yet you seem to be ready to do anything to protect the girl who worked it. Your contention surely involves her in your condemnation.'
'The girl is nothing without the computer. The will, the memory, the knowledge - they were all in the machine. You can see there's something lacking in her now that the computer no longer exists - thank God. Something missing in her character. Ask Geers; he knows what she was like... '
The Minister ignored the invitation. He had no intention of getting involved in by-ways of ethics when he believed the issue was far simpler.
'I put it to you, Dr Fleming, that you destroyed the computer and you abducted the girl because she might have told us what happened.'