That's not it at all,' roared Mandel, half-rising as though tempted to throw himself at Talliaferro. 'I deny the whole miserable fabrication. What about the record I have of Villiers' phone call? He used the word classmate. The entire tape makes it obvious-'
'He was a dying man,' said Talliaferro. 'Much of what he said you admitted was incomprehensible. I ask you, Dr. Mandel, without having heard the tape, if it isn't true that Villiers' voice is distorted past recognition?'
'Well-' said Mandel confused.
'I'm sure it is. There is no reason to suppose, then, that you might not have rigged up the tape in advance, complete with the damning word classmate.' Mandel said, 'Good lord, how would I know there were classmates at the Convention? How would I know they knew about the mass tranference?'
'Villiers might have told you. I presume he did.'
'Now, look,' said Mandel, 'you three saw Villiers alive at eleven. The medical examiner, seeing Villiers' body shortly after 3 a.m., declared he had been dead at least two hours. That was certain. The time of death therefore, was between ii p.m. and i a.m. I was at a late conference last night. I can prove my whereabouts, miles from the hotel, between ten and two, by a dozen witnesses, no one of whom anyone can possibly question. Is that enough for you?'
Talliaferro paused a moment. Then he went on stubbornly, 'Even so. Suppose you got back to the hotel by two-thirty. You went to Villiers' room to discuss his talk. You found the door open, or you had a duplicate key. Anyway, you found him dead. You seized the opportunity to scan the paper-'
'And if he were already dead, and couldn't make phone calls, why should I hide the film?'
To remove suspicion. You may have a second copy of the film safe in your possession. For that matter, we have only your own word that the paper itself was destroyed.'
'Enough. Enough!' cried Urth. 'It is an interesting hypothesis. Dr. Talliaferro, but it falls to the ground of its own weight.'
Talliaferro frowned. That's your opinion, perhaps-'
'It would be anyone's opinion. Anyone, that is, with the power of human thought. Don't you see that Hubert Mandel did too much to be the criminal?'
'No,' said Talliaferro.
Wendell Urth smiled benignly. 'As a scientist. Dr. Talliaferro, you undoubtedly know better than to fall in love with your own theories to the exclusion of facts or reasoning. Do me the pleasure of behaving similarly as a detective.
'Consider that if Dr. Mandel had brought about the death of Villiers and faked an alibi, or if he had found Villiers dead and taken advantage of that, how little he would really have had to do! Why scan the paper or even pretend that anyone had done so. He could simply have taken the paper. Who else knew of its existence? Nobody, really. There was no reason to think Villiers told anyone else about it. Villiers was pathologically secretive. There would have been every reason to think that he told no one.
'No one knew Villiers was giving a talk, except Dr. Man-del. It wasn't announced. No abstract was published. Dr. Mandel could have walked off with the paper in perfect confidence.
'Even if he had discovered that Villiers had talked to his classmates about the matter, what of it? What evidence would his classmates have except the word of one whom they are themselves willing to consider a madman?
'By announcing instead that Villiers' paper had been destroyed, by declaring his death to be not entirely natural, by searching for a scanned copy of the film-in short by everything Dr. Mandel has done, he has aroused a suspicion that only he could possibly have aroused when he need only have remained quiet to have committed a perfect crime. If he were the criminal, he would be more stupid, more colossally obtuse than anyone I have ever known. And Dr. Mandel, after all, is none of that.' Talliaferro thought hard but found nothing to say.
Ryger said, Then who did it?'
'One of you three. That's obvious.'
'But which?'
'Oh, that's obvious too. I knew which of you was guilty the moment Dr. Mandel had completed his description of events.'
Talliaferro stared at the plump extraterrologist with distaste. The bluff did not frighten him, but it was affecting the other two. Ryger's lips were thrust out and Kaunas' lower jaw had relaxed moronically. They looked like fish, both