Read Online Lifeforce by Colin Wilson - Free Book Online

“This way, Mr Carlsen.” He led the way into an office on the other side of the corridor; the card on the door read: “H. Fallada, Director.”
    Carlsen said: “Who was the man?”
    “My assistant, Norman Grey.”
    “No, I mean the dead man.”
    “Oh, some idiot who hanged himself. He may be the Bexley rapist. We have to find out.” He opened the drink cupboard. “Is it too early to offer you a whisky?”
    “No, I think I’d like one.”
    “Please sit down.” Carlsen took the reclining chair near the immense bow window; it moulded itself to his body. From up here, the world looked sunlit and uncomplicated. He could see clear to the Thames estuary and Southend. It was difficult to believe in violence and evil.
    On the metal bookcase a few yards away, Fallada’s face stared at him from the jacket of a book called A Primer of Sexual Criminology. The thick lips and drooping eyelids gave it a curiously sinister appearance in photographs; in fact, there was something humorous, almost clownish, about Fallada’s face. Behind the thick lenses, the eyes looked as if he was enjoying some secret joke. “Your health.” The ice clinked as he drank. Fallada sat on the edge of the desk. He said: “I have just been examining a body.”
    “Yes?”
    “A dead girl. She was found on a railway line near Putney Bridge.” He reached into his pocket, and handed Carlsen a folded paper.
    It was a typewritten sheet, headed Deposition of Albert Smithers; address, 12 Foskett Place, Putney : “At about 3.30, I realised my wife had forgotten to pack my tea flask, so I asked the foreman’s permission to return home for it. I took the shortcut along the line, a matter of about five hundred yards. About a quarter of an hour later, at ten minutes to four, I made my way back along the same stretch of line. As I approached the bridge I saw something on the tracks. It had definitely not been there twenty minutes earlier. Approaching closely, I saw that it appeared to be the body of a young woman lying face downward. Her head was across the inner line. I was about to run for help when I heard the approach of the goods train from Farnham. So I grabbed the body by the ankles and pulled it onto the side of the track. My reason for doing this was that I thought she might be alive, but on feeling her pulse I realised she was dead…”
    He looked up. “How was she killed?”
    “Strangled.”
    “I see.” He waited.
    Fallada said: “Her lambda count was only .004.”
    “Yes, but… but surely that doesn’t mean much? I thought that anyone who died by violence —”
    “Oh, yes. It could be a coincidence.” He looked at his watch. “We should know for certain in less than an hour.”
    “How?”
    “By means of a test that we have developed.”
    “Is it a secret?”
    “It is a secret. But not from you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “In fact, that is why I asked you here today. This is something that you have to know about.” He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a small tin box. He opened the lid and placed it on the desk. “Can you guess what they are?”
    Carlsen bent down and peered at the tiny red globules, each the size of a pinhead.
    “Electronic bugging devices?”
    Fallada laughed. “Right the first time. But not the kind you’ve ever come across.” He closed the tin and dropped it into his pocket. “Would you like to come this way?”
    He led the way through an inner door and switched on a light. They were in another small laboratory. The benches were lined with cages and glass fish tanks. The cages contained rabbits, hamsters and albino rats. In the tanks, Carlsen recognised goldfish, eels and octopuses.
    Fallada said: “What I am going to tell you now is known to no one outside this institute. I know I can rely on your discretion.” He stopped in front of a cage that contained two tame rabbits. “One of these is a buck, the other a doe. The doe is now in heat.” He reached out and pressed a switch. A television