Keep The Giraffe Burning Read Online Free PDF Page A

wishes to consult the popular specialist, Linder.
    Unannounced, Dr Linder appears, full of good humour and anecdotes. Some days past, he says, he was approached by a man named Menkov, a secret police agent who had trailed Xerov from Moscow and lost him at the airport in Berne. He suspected Linder knew Xerov’s whereabouts, and offered a considerable bribe for the information. Ironically, Xerov is quite well physically, though ‘neurotic squared’, says Dr Linda. ‘Neurotic cubed.’ But it is Menkov who has the cancer. Linder persuaded him to try surgery, and now Menkov is in the local hospital, only three rooms (though he doesn’t know it) from the malingering Xerov.
    To Andrews, Menkov confesses he has become the protector of a young girl named Wendy, an orphan who has also became a suspect in the Straud murder. He brought up the child under great difficulty, being utterly ignored by his wealthy cousin in London, Nora Chamberlin. Nora detests children and animals, but likes machines. Her only friend, as far as Menkov knows, is Priscilla, Bruggs’ secretary.
    In London, Andrews meets Nora, a great red-faced angry woman who once had a barroom brawl with Rent’s heir, young Reverend Queen. Nora is now engaged in suing Priscilla for ‘alienation of Bruggs’ affections’, though she has never commanded them. She refuses to talk any more to Andrews, or to anyone but her friend, Oursler.
    Andrews realizes he must rely on the sociologist’s information. He telephones Priscilla and asks if she would like to go with him to see Oursler, but she wants no contact with any enemy of Bruggs. Finally Andrews calls Oursler, who promises to come to see him the same evening.
    The evening newspaper contains another turn of the screw: Xerov, against the protests of his son, invites little Wendy to visit him in the hospital. He locks his son in a closet and tries to rape the orphan, but Wendy is saved by Reverend Queen. Now Xerov and Yoniski have been added to the list of the suspected murderers of Straud.
    Who killed Straud? There are no clues to the stabbing, and each of the six suspects (Enderby, Rent, Wendy, Xerov, Yoniski and Trell) has plenty of motive and opportunity.
    In trying to puzzle it out on a piece of paper, Andrews comes up with an interesting diagram of the relationships of the people he has met. It looks like a bridge, with missing braces.

     
    DS seems to indicate that Doris is yet another suspect for Straud’s death, so Andrews adds that brace.
    Oursler comes into the room, notices the paper on the desk, and laughs. ‘It was not a good design,’ he says, ‘but it was mine. Bruggs stole it from me, back in engineering school, fifty years ago. Now I have it back.’
    He takes a gun from his pocket, hesitates, then shoots Andrews. Andrews tries to speak the name of his ex-wife, Hera, but no sound comes. He dies. Oursler draws OA.

T HE F ACE
     
     
God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another
     
    I must try to tell this impartially, with a scientific concern for truth. It is not my story, after all. I played only a small part at the end.
    Yet the end, in a way, returns to the beginning. This story is a snake swallowing its own tail.
    Is the tape recording? My name is James P. Anderson, and I am – was a lab technician working for the special project. My work was trivial, for I have very little formal scientific training.
    Not that I’m ignorant. You pick up things, here and there. I’ve been reading about the lives of great scientists. I know, for one thing, how Auguste Kekulé discovered the chemical structure of benzene. Not too many chemists know that. He found it in a dream.
    I keep dreaming that someone is tying to tear off my face. The doctor says that’s just the healing and tightening of new tissue, nothing to worry about.
    Kekulé dreamed of snakes, circling and biting their own tails. That’s how he discovered the benzene ring. Snakes …
    The three boys who found the object in Hill