«This is something,» Forester said, «that we can’t allow to keep eating on us. We have to talk it out.»
«You mean rationalize it?» asked Sifford.
Forester shook his head. «Talk it out, I said. This is once we can’t kid ourselves.»
«There were nine characters last night,» said Craven.
«And a whale,» said Forester.
«You mean one of…»
«I don’t know. If one of us did, let’s speak up and say so. There’s not a one among us who can’t appreciate a joke.»
«A grisly joke,» said Craven.
«But a joke,» said Forester.
«I would like to think it was a joke,» Maitland declared. «I’d feel a lot easier if I knew it was a joke.»
«That’s the point,» said Forester. «That’s what I’m getting at.»
He paused for a moment.
«Anyone?» he asked.
No one said a word.
They waited.
«No one, Kent,» said Lodge.
«Perhaps the joker doesn’t want to reveal himself,» said Forester. «I think all of us could understand that. Maybe we could hand out slips of paper…»
«Hand them out,» Sifford grumbled.
Forester took sheets of folded paper from his pocket, carefully tore the strips. He handed out the strips.
«If anyone played a joke,» Lodge pleaded, «for God’s sake let us know.»
The slips came back. Some of them said «no,» others said «no joke,» one said «I didn’t do it.»
Forester wadded up the strips.
«Well, that lets that idea out,» he said. «I must admit I didn’t have much hope.»
Craven lumbered to his feet. «There’s one thing that all of us have been thinking,» he said, «and it might as well be spoken. It’s not a pleasant subject.»
He paused and looked around him at the others, as if defying them to stop him.
«No one liked Henry too well,» he said. «Don’t deny it. He was a hard man to like. A hard man any way you look at him. I was closer to him than any of you. I’ve agreed to say a few words for him at the service this afternoon. I am glad to do it, for he was a good man despite his hardness. He had a tenacity of will, a stubbornness such as you seldom find even in a hard man. And he had moral scruples that none of us could guess. He would talk to me a little—really talk—and that’s something that he never did with the rest of you.
«Henry was close to something. He was scared. He died.
«There was nothing wrong with him.»
Craven looked at Dr. Lawrence.
«Was there, Susan?» he asked. «Was there anything wrong with him?»
«Not a thing,» said Dr. Susan Lawrence. «He should not have died.»
Craven turned to Lodge.
«He talked with you recently.»
«A day or two ago,» said Lodge. «He seemed quite normal then.»
«What did he talk about?»
«Oh, the usual things. Minor matters.»
«Minor matters?» Mocking.
«All right, then. If you want it that way. He talked about not wanting to go on. He said our work was unholy. That’s the word he used—unholy.»
Lodge looked around the room. «That’s one the rest of you have never thought to use. Unholy.»
«He was more insistent than usual?»
«Well, no,» said Lodge. «It was the first time he had ever talked to me about it. The only person engaged in the research here, I believe, who had not talked with me about it at one time or another.»
«And you talked him into going back.»
«We discussed it.»
«You killed the man.»
«Perhaps,» said Lodge. «Perhaps I’m killing all of you. Perhaps you’re killing yourselves and I myself. How am I to know?»
He said to Dr. Lawrence, «Sue, could a man die of a psychosomatic illness brought about by fear?»
«Clinically, no,» said Susan Lawrence. «Practically, I’m afraid, the answer might be yes.»
«He was trapped,» said Craven.
«Mankind’s trapped,» snapped Lodge. «If you must point your finger, point it at all of us. Point it at the whole community of Man…»
«I don’t think,» Forester interrupted, «that this is pertinent.»
«It is,» insisted Craven, «and I will tell you why. I’d be the last to admit the existence of a ghost…»
Alice Page came swiftly to her feet.
«Stop it!» she cried. «Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!»
«Miss Page, please,» said Craven.
«But you’re saying…»
«I’m saying that if there ever was a situation where a departed spirit had a motive—and I might even say a right—to come back and haunt his place of death, this is it.»
«Sit down, Craven,» Lodge commanded, sharply.
Craven hesitated angrily, then sat down, grumbling to himself.
Lodge said, «If there’s any point in continuing the discussion along these lines, I insist that it be done objectively.»
Maitland said, «There’s no point to it I can see. As scientists who are most intimately concerned with life we must recognize that death is an utter ending.»
«That,» objected Sifford, «is open to serious question and you know it.»
Forester broke in, his voice cool. «Let’s defer the matter for a moment. We can come back to it. There is another thing.»
He hurried on. «Another thing that we should know. Which of the characters was Henry’s character?»
No one said a word.
«I don’t mean,» said Forester, «to try to find which belonged to whom. But by a process of elimination…»
«All right,» said Sifford. «Hand out the slips again.»
Forester brought out the paper in his pocket, tore more strips.
Craven protested. «Not just slips,» he said. «I won’t fall for a trick like that.»
Forester looked up from the slips.
«Trick?»
«Of course,» said Craven, harshly. «Don’t deny it. You’ve been trying to find out.»
«I don’t deny it,» Forester told him. «I’d have been derelict in my duty if I hadn’t tried.»
Lodge said, «I wonder why we keep this secret thing so closely to ourselves. It might be all right under normal circumstances, but these aren’t normal circumstances. I think it might be best if we made a clean breast of it. I, for one, am willing. I’ll lead off if you only say the word.»
He waited for the word.
There was no word.
They all stared back at him and there was nothing in their faces—no anger, no fear, nothing at all that a man could read.
Lodge shrugged the defeat from his shoulders.
He said to Craven, «All right, then. What were you saying?»
«I was saying that if we wrote down the names of our characters it would be no better than standing up and shouting them aloud. Forester knows our handwriting. He could spot every slip.»
Forester protested. «I hadn’t thought of it. I ask you to believe I hadn’t. But what Craven says is true.»
«All right, then?» asked Lodge.
«Ballots,» Craven said. «Fix up ballots with the characters’ names upon them.»
«Aren’t you afraid we might be able to identify your X’s?»
Craven looked levelly at Lodge. «Since you mention it, I might be.»
Forester said, wearily, «We have a batch of dies down in the labs. Used for stamping specimens. I think there’s an X among them.»
«That would satisfy you?» Lodge asked Craven.
Craven nodded that it would.
Lodge heaved himself out of the chair.
«I’ll get the stamp,» he said. «You can fix the ballots while I’m after it.»
Children, he thought.
Just so many children.
Suspicious and selfish and frightened—like cornered animals.
Cornered between the converging walls of fear and guilt, trapped in the corner of their own insecurity.