With a claustrophobic sensation of something closing in upon him, Dikon sat down and waited.

‘I understand,’ said Webley, ‘that your movements last night were as follows.’ He flattened his notebook on his knees and began to read from it. ‘But I’ve heard all this before,’ Dikon thought. ‘I’ve read it a hundred times in airliners, on the decks of steamers, in hotel bedrooms.’ And he saw yellow dust jackets picturing lethal weapons, clutching hands, handcuffs, and men like Mr Webley squinting along the barrels of revolvers. More in answer to his thoughts than to Webley’s questions he cried aloud: ‘But it was only an accident!’

‘In a case of this sort, Mr Bell, disappearance of the party concerned under circumstances pointing to demise, we make inquiries. Now, you were saying?’

His heavy interrogation began to take on a kind of lifeless rhythm: question, answer, pause, while Sergeant Webley wrote and Dikon fidgeted, and again, question. It was a colourless measure reiterated drearily with variations. Under its burden Dikon walked again down a narrow track, through a gap in a hedge, and across a barren place where white flags showed clearly. Beyond the drone of Webley’s voice a single scream rose and fell like a jet from a geyser.

Webley was very insistent about the scream. Was Dikon positive that it had come from the direction of the mud cauldron? Sounds were deceptive, Webley said. Might it not have come from the village? Dikon was quite positive that it had not and, on consideration, said he would swear that it had arisen close at hand in the thermal region. Where precisely had he been when he first saw Mr Falls? Here Webley unfolded a large-scale and extremely detailed map of the district. Dikon was able to find his place on the map and, a punctual wraith, Mr Falls walked again towards him in the starlight. ‘Then you’d say he was about halfway between you and the mud pot?’ The sense of impending horror which had haunted Dikon ever since he woke was now intensified and translated physically into a dryness of the throat. ‘About that,’ he said.

Webley looked up from the map, his pale finger still flattened on the point where Dikon had stood. ‘Now, Mr Bell, how long would you say it was from the time you left Mrs and Miss Claire until the moment you first saw Mr Falls?’

‘No longer than it takes to walk fairly briskly from the car to the point under your finger. Perhaps a couple of minutes. No more.’

‘A couple of minutes,’ Webley repeated, and stooped over his notebook. With his head bent, so that his voice sounded more muffled than ever, he said much too casually: ‘You’re in young Mr Claire’s confidence, aren’t you, Mr Bell?’

‘In what sense?’

‘Didn’t he tell you about his ideas on Mr Questing?’

‘He talked to me about them. Yes.’