Among the Mad (28 page)

“John’s this way,” said the man. “He’s waiting for you
in the lab, along with Christopher Anton and Walter Mason, both scientists
under his guidance.”

“Very good,” said Urquhart.

They were shown into an anteroom adjacent to the
laboratory, where they were joined by Professor John Gale.

“Miss Dobbs.” He extended his hand to Maisie and
smiled. “All very cloak and dagger, isn’t it? Sorry about that.” He turned to
Urquhart, said the man’s surname and nodded his head in acknowledgment, and
then brought his attention back to Maisie. “Now then, Miss Dobbs, I understand
you have something for me. My colleagues and I are anxious to start work.”

Maisie reached into her document case and retrieved
the brown paper bag. She held it out to Gale. “The vial is inside.”

“Very good.” He moved to leave, then turned back
again. “Would you like to observe? You’ve worked in laboratories as a student,
so you are well used to the environment. We have protective clothing available
for you.”

Anxious not to spend time in conversation with
Urquhart, and anticipating that he would decline such an invitation—she was
always surprised at how many men in his sort of position could not bear to be
in a laboratory—Maisie nodded. “Yes, I would be most interested.”

Urquhart shook his head. “I’ll go for a cup of tea and
a bite to eat until you’ve got something for me—and don’t worry, I know the way
to the canteen.”

Maisie followed Gale along a corridor, which she
realized was a connecting route between two huts. All the buildings were linked
in this way, she suspected.

“Here you are. Put this pair of overalls on—there’s a
dressing room over there. Make sure the sleeves come right down to your wrists.
You’ll find masks, et cetera, in there.” He pointed to a cupboard, then nodded
toward another door. “We’ll be in that laboratory.”

Having taken the necessary precautions, Maisie joined
the three scientists, and was introduced to the other two men in turn. She
stood to one side and watched as the vial was removed and placed inside a glass
tank that looked as if it had been designed to house goldfish. There were holes
for the scientists to reach through, and soon all but a small amount of the
powder was divided onto a series of glass slides, and secured with a clear
substance. Maisie did not interrupt to ask questions; instead, she continued to
watch as each man took two slides and went to work, first placing the slides
under his microscope.

Gale called her to his side. “What we are looking for
at the outset is the nature of the substance. Can we identify the constituent
particles? How does it behave, and is there movement? Then, when we’ve each
compiled a series of notes, we take samples into the experimentation room.”

“Experimentation room?”

“Yes, my dear. Might not be something you want to
watch—we expose animals to the substance and we see what happens. There’s
enough here, and remaining in the tank, to replicate something of the effect it
had on the man who died—even though he was exposed to a greater dose.”

Maisie nodded, but said nothing.

“You can talk to me while I’m working if you like,
Miss Dobbs. In fact, I sometimes find that if I am having a conversation I
discover more in what I am seeing. I think it has to do with letting the
trained side of my brain do the work while the judgmental side of my brain is
occupied with fielding questions.” Looking into his microscope, he frowned.
“Hmm, this is a sophisticated little stash of something, isn’t it?”

Maisie cleared her throat. “Professor Gale, I wonder,
did you ever know of a young man called Stephen Oliver?”

In the laboratory’s bright lights, Maisie saw color
drain from Gale’s face. She wondered if he would tell the truth.

“Stephen Oliver?” He moved the slide he was handling
to one side, and Maisie noticed his hands were shaking. “Well, yes, I certainly
remember him. Very, very bright young man. One of those who came out to
France—I told you about it, after the gas attacks and help was needed in
identifying the substances and in developing antidotes. His work was
invaluable.”

“I have heard that he was killed.”

Gale nodded, and set the slides in an enamel
kidney-shaped bowl, along with the remaining powder, still in the vial.

“If I remember rightly, he was one of the first to
take the work into the field. We’d asked for volunteers to go out and examine
men who were gassed, so we could find out more about their symptoms closer to
the time of the event, so to speak. In effect, we asked him to go into battle,
because he was even issued a gun.”

“And that’s when he was killed?”

Gale pointed to the small bowl. “Sorry, Miss Dobbs,
but I must move on—the sooner we know what we are dealing with, the sooner we
can be prepared if it’s used again, and on a greater number of people.” He
summoned his fellow scientists, who noted where the substance was moved to and
from; then they left the laboratory and made their way in the direction of the
barking. Maisie followed until they reached a series of huts where, from the
sounds and smells that issued from them, animals were kept. They went into an
adjacent laboratory. When a dog was brought in, Maisie decided that, strong as
she was, Gale was right—it was probably better she did not watch. She left the
room and waited in the corridor outside.

She could hear the men speaking to one another, and
one of them speaking softly to the dog in a soothing manner. Then there was
silence for some seconds, followed by a loud initial screech, then yelping.
Maisie placed her hands over her ears and walked away, but soon the noise
subsided. A bell rang outside, and as Maisie looked out of the window, into the
gritty winter afternoon, she saw two men in overalls come to a side door and be
given entry to the laboratory. They left moments later carrying the deceased
animal between them, wrapped in sacking and a heavy rubber sheet.

Maisie was joined by John Gale, who led her along the
corridor. “We expect to have more to report tomorrow morning. At this stage we
have, we believe, identified the constituent properties of the powder, and we
will replicate it and test it again here. Then we will work on an antidote. But
it all takes time—frankly, it usually takes months. But we are used to
responding to government requests with some speed, so we have to make
assumptions that, as scientists, we might not usually leap to until we are much
further along in our work. Sometimes we get a lucky hit. It’s a bit like a game
of darts. You’d like to be on firm footing, you’d like to stand and consider
your shot, but if the other team is baying for you to go on, you just throw the
dart and hope it hits the bull’s-eye.”

“Do you know anyone who has the knowledge to develop
an agent such as this?”

Gale stopped in front of a sink, turned on the tap,
and began to wash his hands, taking up a brush and scrubbing every crevice of
skin. He looked up at Maisie. “We were just talking in the laboratory, and from
what we have deduced thus far, the characteristics of this particular weapon—it
is a weapon, no other word for it—required an innovator of some advanced
ability. In fact, I would call him a genius.”

“And there’s a thin line between genius and insanity,
isn’t there?”

Gale nodded and dried his hands on a towel, which he
threw into a laundry bin alongside the sink.

“Is that how you would have described Stephen Oliver?”

“He was brilliant, but—”

“Is that how you would have described him?”

He put his hands to his face and pulled them down
toward his chin, then rubbed the skin along his jawline. Instead of resembling
an absentminded academic, John Gale bore the look of a man shouldering a great
weight. He folded his arms and looked down at the ground before speaking to
Maisie again.

“Come along to my office, if you would, Miss Dobbs. We
will have to go through a proper cleansing process first, though. When you go
into the ladies’ changing room you’ll see a receptacle for your overalls, cap,
gloves and mask, and there are instructions on the wall for you to follow. I
will join you outside in the corridor. Hopefully that man Urquhart will still
be occupied in the canteen.”

Maisie followed the instructions to the letter, and
when she emerged, Gale was waiting for her. He led the way to an office close
to the first laboratory. Whereas his office at Oxford was colorful and cluttered,
this office was spare, with few papers on the desk. A series of filing cabinets
were each padlocked at the top, and Gale had taken out two keys to unlock the
door to the office to gain entrance. He pulled up a chair for Maisie and
flicked on an electric fire before taking his seat on the other side of his
desk. He wasted no time in continuing the conversation.

“Stephen Oliver was an interesting study, even before
the war. He was seventeen when he came up to Oxford. His academic record was
about as unbeatable as I have ever seen in my days as a teacher and scientist.
On the other hand, he lacked what one might term ‘social skills,’ though he was
a compassionate person, I would say.”

“In what way did he lack social skills?”

Gale shrugged. “There was this absolute finesse when
working in the laboratory, and a fluency when delivering a paper or addressing
a group of students, or even when engaged in defending a position regarding his
research. But if you asked him down to the pub for a drink, you would have
thought he had never been out. He was uncomfortable around women. I would
imagine that, as a boy, his teacher might have observed, ‘This boy does not
know how to play.’”

“So you had known him for some time?”

“Yes, he was one of my students. Later, he became
involved in laboratory research and was already an accomplished scientist when
the government effectively drafted us all in to deal with the crisis brought
about by the enemy’s use of chemical weaponry.”

“Tell me about his death.”

“That’s where it gets . . . difficult.”

“In what way?”

“Stephen lost his mind in the trenches. Even before he
went up the line, he was probably not dealing with the situation as well as
most.”

“What do you mean?”

“The percussion affected a lot of people—even the
noise in the distance, the constant ba-boom, the shells sounding as if they
were coming ever closer. I tried to overrule his offer to go to the front,
but—it was chaos, Miss Dobbs.”

“Yes, I know.” Maisie paused. “So, he came back from
the trenches changed.”

“War neurosis. Immediate repatriation to England,
where he was placed in an asylum.”

“Not a hospital for men with neurasthenia?”

“Strictly speaking, he wasn’t in the army. As I said,
it was chaos. He went into an asylum.”

“What about his family?”

“Ah, yes. The family.”

“What do you mean?”

“The family—his mother and father—were shocked when
they saw him. There he was, a young man, constantly drooling from the mouth,
not able to control many of the basic human functions. He was shaking, and was
so very sensitive to sound.”

Maisie nodded. “Yes, I understand. And did the parents
try to have him moved? Was there a point at which he returned home?”

“No. In fact, his parents said that it was more than
they could take on. By all accounts, they were committed to their work with
orphaned children. Overcommitted, I would say.”

Maisie leaned back in her chair, as the truth dawned
upon her. “They told people their son had died—didn’t they? It was the
embarrassment, the possible humiliation of having their once brilliant son
diminished.”

“Yes.” Gale looked up. “But he did get better, for a
while.”

“To what degree?”

“To the degree that he could take lodgings in Oxford,
and continue with research at the university. In fact, the regimen seemed to
help him—the order, the necessary discipline of the scientist, seemed to bring
an element of control to every aspect of his demeanor. And communication with
his parents remained severed, as far as I know.”

“What happened to him?”

“A relapse. We brought him to work here.” He held up
his hand. “I know, I know, you may ask about the integrity of such a decision,
but you have to realize, he was a brilliant man, a genius. We needed him. We
were testing antidotes to every gas used by the Germans, and we were also
involved in analyzing those we knew they’d developed but hadn’t used. And we
were working on our own weapons, everything from a biological agent to kill
crops in Germany—the government thought we could starve the country to its
knees—to gases and other nerve agents.”

“And it was too much for him—he had a breakdown.”
Maisie offered the statement as speculation.

“Yes. In hindsight, it was to be expected. He was
testing on dogs at the time, and the next thing we knew he had completely lost
his mind again. Fortunately, one of our psychiatrists was here, and he took
charge of the situation.”

“And he took him into care, didn’t he?”

Gale frowned. “How do you . . . you know, don’t you?”