He got back into his car, picked up the viewphone and put a call through to his secretary. “Hello. Mrs. Werner. I want you to find out which store supplied a large Scenedow to the occupants of 2008 Ridge Avenue. Get on to it right away, please.”
“Yes, Mr. Garrod.” The miniature image of Mrs. Werner registered the disapproval which always accompanied any assignment she regarded as being outside her normal duties. “When you’ve done that, contact the manager of the store and get him to buy the Scenedow back again. He can make up any reason he likes and pay any price.”
“Yes, Mr. Garrod.” Mrs. Werner’s face darkened even further. “What then?”
“Have it delivered to my home. By tonight, if possible.”
Garrod had intended staying away from the office for an indefinite period, but an absence of only five days had built up such a pressure of work, coupled with hints of resignation from Mrs. Werner, that he reluctantly agreed to put in several hours at the plant. He slid his car into its reserved slot in the parking lot and sat for a moment trying to shake off his tiredness. The early evening sun was flooding the world with a red-gold light which made the surrounding buildings seem curiously unreal, and in the distance—framed by industrial perspectives—he could see tiny white figures playing a game of tennis. A beam of mellow, nostalgic light picked out the silent players, translating them into a perfect Augustin miniature. Garrod had a vague recollection of observing the same scene years earlier, and the memory was charged with significance as though it was connected with an important phase of his life, but he could not pinpoint the occasion. The sound of footsteps in the gravel interrupted his thoughts and he turned to see Theo McFarlane approaching the car. He lifted his briefcase and got out.
McFarlane pointed at him. “You never change, do you, Planck?”
“Give it up, Mac.” Garrod nodded a greeting. “Any developments?”
“Nothing so far. I’ve been plotting a whole range of frequencies and running the time-over-distance curves through the computer, but it’s bound to take a little while before we strike lucky. How about you?”
“Much the same, except that I’m experimenting with heterodyning several frequencies at once to see if it’s possible to speed up the pendulum effect.”
“I think you’re trying to push too fast, Al,” McFarlane said doubtfully. “We’ve triggered about fifty more panels in the lab and got runaways every time. I quite like this multiple frequency approach of yours, but I honestly don’t see it stabilizing the…”
“I’ve already told you why I can’t afford to hang around. Esther believes her father couldn’t take a spell in prison, from the health point of view, and he’s facing political death unless…”
“But, Al! Even if somebody wanted to frame him they just couldn’t have done it—not in those circumstances. I mean, it’s so painfully obvious that he knocked a man down and killed him.”
“Maybe it’s too obvious,” Garrod said doggedly. “Maybe it’s all too pat.”
McFarlane sighed and drew his toe across the gravel, exposing damp layers. “And you shouldn’t be working at home with two-year glass, Al. You saw the kind of flash we got with only a two-day build-up.”
“There’s no heat storage. It isn’t as if a runaway would set my lab on fire.”
“Even so…”
“Theo,” Garrod cut in. “Don’t fight me on this.”
McFarlane raised his square-pointed shoulders in resignation. “Me? Fight you? I’m a mental judoist from way back. You know my philosophy for dealing with people—there can be no action without reaction.”
Suddenly, inexplicably, his words seemed to spear right through Garrod. McFarlane waved good-bye and walked towards his own car. Garrod tried to wave back, but all his attention was drawn inwards to the disturbances inside his own body. His knees felt loose, his heart had lapsed into an unsteady, lumping rhythm, and a chill extended downwards from stomach to groin. In his head there was a pressure which rapidly built up to a peak and exploded in a kind of psychic orgasm.
“Theo,” he said softly, “I don’t need the slow glass—I know how it was done.”
McFarlane failed to hear him, got into his car and drove away. Garrod stood absolutely still in the centre of the parking lot until the other man’s car had vanished from sight, then he emerged from his trance and ran towards his office. Mrs. Werner was waiting for him, her sallow face taut with impatience.
“I can only stay behind for two hours,” she said, “so it would…”
Garrod brushed past her. “Go home now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He went into his private office, slammed the door and threw himself into his chair. Action and reaction. It was all so simple. A car and a man collide at speed, and with sufficient force to dent the vehicle’s fender and to render the human body lifeless. Because cars usually move quickly and men usually move slowly, an investigator coming on the scene is preconditioned to interpret it in only one way. In the context of everyday life, the car must have struck the man; but, treating it as a proposition in pure mechanics, the same fatal result would be obtained if the man struck the car.
Garrod nursed his head in his hands as he tried to visualise the method. You drug the driver of the car, carefully judging the amount and the time at which the dose is administered so that he will become incapable of control at roughly the location you desire. If he kills himself or anybody else in the process, this is an added benefit, and you do not need to put Phase Two of the plan into action. But if he brings his car safely to a halt, you are ready with a suitable victim who has been stunned or doped into unconsciousness. You suspend him from a vehicle—a breakdown truck with projecting crane would be ideal—and you smash him into the stationary car. He bounces off it, to be found lying dead several yards away, while you are escaping from the scene at high speed, probably without lights.
Taking his block of paper from a drawer, Garrod ticked off all the peculiar features of the case which could be accommodated by his new theory. It accounted for Kolkman’s presence in Ridge Avenue at that time of night. It explained the loud engine noise which had been heard by Livingstone and the other witnesses. “I hit the brake but it doesn’t do any good,” Livingstone had said while still in shock—hitting the brake would have changed nothing when his car was not moving.
And how could the crime be detected at this stage? The dead man would have traces of a drug in his blood, or would have an extra injury not consistent with the “accident“. His clothing would have been marked by a hook or other means of suspension, and a check of slow glass monitors on the roads leading to the Ridge Avenue area could prove that a breakdown truck or other suitable vehicle had been in the right place at the right time.
Garrod decided to call Grant Morgan and was turning to the viewphone when it chimed to announce an incoming call. He pressed the acceptance button and found himself looking at his wife. The background of shelves and miscellaneous equipment told him Esther was in his laboratory at home.
Esther touched her coppery hair nervously. “Alban, I…”