The Stone That Never Came Down Read Online Free PDF

inside the coat it wore.
    “Just checking to see whether he was carrying any–ah–worldly goods,” was his answer. “We could make better use of them now than he can … No, nothing. No wallet, no billfold, just a comb and some keys and–what’s this? Oh, only a letter. What a shame. Okay, let’s move on. And pray the snow lasts long enough to cover our footprints.”

IV

    “Lay him down there, nurse,” Dr Hector Campbell instructed as he led the way into the white-walled casualty examination room adjacent to his office at the North-West London General Clinic. He had to speak loudly. Not only was it blood-transfusion day–which meant that the pride of the haematological department was in operation, the continuous-throughput plasma centrifuge–but the friend who had brought in this Jewish-looking man with the cut head was keeping pp a nonstop flow of excuses.
    “I had no shoes on, you see, and there was snow on the road, so by the time I’d gone back for my slippers they’d …”
    But Hector forgot about him the instant he opened the office door. He froze, muttering an oath.
    “Is something wrong?” demanded the girl who was helping the casualty onto the examination couch: “Nurse Diana Rouse” according to the name-badge pinned on her stiff apron.
    “Yes! This is wrong!” Furious, Hector advanced into the office. Books had been pulled down from every shelf and lay randomly on the floor, while an attempt had been made to start a fire in a metal wastebin. Griming his fingers with charred paper, he retrieved some of the less completely burned sheets and discovered just what he might have expected: pictures of the genital organs, descriptions of the sexual act.
    “Oh, no!” the nurse exclaimed from the doorway. “Who could have done such a dreadful thing?”
    “I could make a few guesses,” Hector grunted. “What kind of people set themselves up as arbiters of what shall and what shall not appear in print? Now I’ll have to send for the police, I suppose … Oh, get on with cleaning up that man’s head. And tell his friend to wait outside!”
    On the point of reaching for the phone, he hesitated before deciding that the intruders were unlikely to have touched it and hence he would not be spoiling any prints, and during his hesitation it rang. He snatched it up.
    “Dr Campbell? This is Professor Kneller at the Gull-Grant Research Institute. I believe Maurice Post is a patient of yours, and we’re very anxious to get in touch with him–”
    “Professor, I haven’t seen Maurice .since a week ago!” Hector broke in. “And I don’t have time to talk now. I just came into my office, and it’s been vandalised. Looks like godhead work.”
    “Oh.” A pause. “Well, I won’t keep you, then, but if you do hear anything from Maurice–”
    “Yes, of course! Goodbye!”

    The magazines provided in the waiting-area for patients and their friends were approved and donated, according to a rubber stamp on each, by the Campaign Against Moral Pollution, and hence predictably were dull as ditchwater. Malcolm recalled that at about the same time as he had lost his job there had been a rash of letters to the press, master-minded no doubt by Lady Washgrave, saying how horrified parents had been to find Playboy or Penthouse when taking their children to see a doctor.
    –The devils. When you think of how they pervert kids …!
    In response to pressure from an influential group of parents the headmaster of the school at which Malcolm had been a popular and respected teacher had invited a speaker from the Campaign to address the morning assembly. The man had declared, with some justification, that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and then gone on to claim that the only solution lay in returning to the Good Old Moral Values of the glorious past.
    Unable to stand any more, Malcolm had demanded why, if those values were so marvellous, the people who paid lip-service to them had involved mankind in two