The Satan Bug (8 page)

A few feet behind him, lying on the floor at the base of the wall farthest from the door, were fragments of a dark blue curved glass and a red plastic top—the shattered remnants, obviously, of some container or other: there were no signs at all of what the container had once held.

A few feet away in this wall was an inset rubber-sealed glass door: behind this, I knew, lay what the scientists and technicians called the menagerie—one of four in Mordon. I pushed open the door and went inside.

It was a huge windowless room, as large, almost, as the laboratory itself.

All the wall spaces and three room-length benches were taken up by literally hundreds of cages of all types—some of a sealed-glass construction with their own private air-conditioning and filtration units, but most of the standard open-mesh type. Hundreds of pairs of eyes, mostly small, red and beady, turned to stare at me as I entered. There must have been between fifteen hundred and two thousand animals in that room altogether—mostly mice, ninety per cent of them mice, I should have guessed, but also about a hundred rabbits and the same of guinea pigs. From what I could see they all seemed in fair enough health: anyway all of them had clearly been affected in no way at all by what had happened next door. I made my way back to the lab, closing the communicating door behind me.

Almost ten minutes I'd been inside now, and nothing had happened to me yet. And the chances were remote that anything would happen now. I cornered the hamster, returned him to his cage, and left the lab to open the heavy steel outer door. Just in time I remembered that General Cliveden would be waiting not far from the door ready to fill me full of holes if I emerged still wearing the gas-suit— Cliveden would be understandably trigger-happy and could easily miss the fact that I'd removed the breathing apparatus. I climbed out of the gas-suit and opened the door.

General Cliveden had the automatic at eye level, at the full stretch of his arm, pointing towards the widening crack of the doorway and myself.

I don't say he was happy at the prospect of shooting me but he was ready enough for it all the same. And it was a bit late now to tell him that the Hanyatti had a hair-trigger. I said quickly, "It's all right. The air is clear inside."

He lowered his arm and smiled in relief. Not a very happy smile, but still a smile. Maybe the thought had come to him too late in the day that he himself should have volunteered to go inside instead of me.

" Are you perfectly sure, Cavell?" he asked.

" I'm alive, aren't I?" I said irritably. " You'd better come inside." I went back into the lab and waited for them.

Hardanger was first through the door. His nose wrinkled in involuntary disgust and he said, " What in hell's name is causing that vile smell?"

"Botulinus!" It was Colonel Weybridge who supplied the answer and in the shadowless neon lighting his face seemed suddenly grey. He whispered again: " Botulinus."

" How do you know?" I demanded.

" How do I-----" He stared down at the floor and looked up to meet my eyes. " We had an accident a fortnight ago. A technician."

"An accident," I repeated, then nodded. "You would know the smell."

" But what the devil-----" Hardanger began.

" A dead man," I explained. " Killed by botulinus. At the top of the room.

It's Dr. Baxter."

No one spoke. They looked at me, then at each other, then followed me silently up the lab to where Baxter lay.

Hardanger stared down at the dead man. " So this is Baxter." His voice held no expression at all. " You are quite sure? Remember he checked out of here about half-past six last night."

" Maybe Dr. Baxter owned a pair of wire-cutters," I suggested. "It's Baxter all right. Someone coshed him and stood at the lab door and flung a botulinus container against this wall closing the lab door behind him immediately afterwards."

"The fiend," Cliveden said hoarsely. "The unspeakable fiend."

" Or fiends," I agreed. I moved across to Dr. Gregori who had sat down on a high stool. He had his elbows on a bench his face was sunk in his hands. The straining finger tips made pale splotches against the swarthy cheeks and his hands were shaking. I touched him on the shoulder and said, " I'm sorry, Dr. Gregori. As you said, I know you're neither soldier nor policeman. You shouldn't have to meet with those things. But you must help us."

" Yes of course," he said dully. He looked up at me and the dark eyes were smudged and with tears in them. " He was—he was more than just a colleague. How can I help, Mr. Cavell?"

" The virus cupboard. Check it please."

" Of course, of course. The virus cupboard. What on earth could I have been thinking of?" He stared down at Baxter in fascinated horror and it was quite obvious what he was thinking of. " At once, at once."

He crossed to a wooden cupboard with a glazed front and tried to open it. A couple of determined tugs and then he shook his head.

" It's locked. The door's locked."

" Well." I was impatient. " You have the key, haven't you?"

"The only key. Nobody could have got in without this key. Not without force. It—it hasn't been touched."

" Don't be so damned silly. What do you think Baxter died of—influenza?

Open that cupboard."

He turned the key with unsteady fingers. No one was looking at Baxter now—we'd eyes only for Dr. Gregori. He opened both doors, reached up and brought down a small rectangular box. He opened the lid and stared inside. After a moment his shoulders sagged and he seemed different altogether, curiously deflated, head bowed very low.

" They're gone," he whispered. " All of them. All nine of them have been taken. Six of them were botulinus—he must have used one on Baxter!"

"And the others," I said harshly to the bowed back. "The other three?"

" The Satan Bug," he said fearfully. " The Satan Bug. It's gone."

CHAPTER FOUR

The management refectory canteen at Mordon had something of a reputation among the more gourmet-minded of the staff and the chef that had prepared our lunch was right on form: maybe the presence at our table of Dr. MacDonald, a colleague of Gregori's in number one lab and president of the mess,- had something to do with it. However it was, it seemed that I was the only person with an appetite at all that day.

Hardanger only picked at his food and neither Cliveden nor Weybridge made hardly any better a showing. Gregori ate nothing at all, just sat staring at his plate. He excused himself abruptly in the middle of the meal and when he came back in five minutes he looked white and shaken.

Probably, I thought, he'd been sick. Violent death wouldn't be much in the line of a professor specializing in the cloistered work of chemical research.

The two fingerprint experts weren't there. They were still hungry.

Aided by three other detectives recruited locally through Inspector Wylie they'd spent over an hour and a half fingerprinting the entire inside of the laboratory and were now collating and tabulating their results. The handle of the heavy steel door and the areas adjoining the combination lock had been heavily smeared with a cotton or linen material—probably a handkerchief. So the possibility of an outsider having been at work couldn't be entirely excluded.

Inspector Martin came in towards the end of the meal. He'd spent all his time until then taking statements from the temporarily jobless scientists and technicians barred from " E " block and he wasn't finished yet by a long way. Every statement made by those interviewed about their activities the previous evening would have to be rigorously checked.

He didn't say how he was getting on and Hardanger, predictably, didn't ask him.

After lunch I accompanied Hardanger to the main gate. From the sergeant on duty there we learnt who had been in charge of the checking-out clock the previous evening. After a few minutes a tall blond fresh-faced corporal appeared and saluted crisply.

" Corporal Norris, sir. You sent for me."

" Yes," Hardanger said. " Take a seat, please. I've sent for you, Norris, to ask you some questions about the murder of Dr. Harold Baxter."

The shock tactics worked better than any amount of carefully delicate probing could have done. Norris, already in the purpose of lowering himself gingerly into his chair, sat down heavily, as if suddenly grateful to take the weight off his feet, and stared at Hardanger. The eyes widening in a gaze of shocked incredulity, the opened mouth would have been within the compass of any moderately competent actor. But the perceptible draining of colour from the cheeks was something else again,

" The murder of Dr. Baxter," he repeated stupidly. " Dr. Baxter—he's dead!"

" Murdered," Hardanger said harshly. " He was murdered in his laboratory last night. We know for a fact, never mind how, that Dr.

Baxter never left Mordon last night. But you checked him out. You say you checked him out. But you didn't. You couldn't have done. Who gave you his security tag and told you to forge his signature? Or maybe that someone did it himself. How much did they pay you, Norris?"

The corporal had been staring at Hardanger in numbed bewilderment Then the numbness passed and his native Yorkshire toughness reasserted itself. He rose slowly to his feet, his face darkening.

"Look, sir," he said softly. "I don't know who you are. Someone pretty important, I suppose, a police inspector or one of those MI.6 chaps. But I can tell you this. Say that to me just once again and I’ll knock your bloody head clean off."

"I believe you would, too." Hardanger was suddenly smiling. He turned to me. "Not guilty, eh?"

" He could hardly be that good," I agreed.

" I hardly think so. Forgive me, Norris. I had to find out something, and I had to find out fast. I'm investigating a murder. Murder isn't a nice business and sometimes I've got to use tactics that aren't very nice either. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Norris said uncertainly. He was slightly mollified, but only slightly. "Dr. Baxter. How—I mean, who-----?"

"Never mind that just now," Hardanger said briskly. " You checked him out. In this book here. Eighteen thirty-two hours, it says. That right?"

" If the book says so, sir. That time stamp's automatic."

" You took his security tag from him—this one?" He held it up.

" Yes, sir."

"Didn't happen to speak to him, did you?"

"As a matter of fact, sir, yes."

"About what?"

"Just the weather and the like, sir. He was always very friendly to us chaps. And his cold. About his cold. He'd a pretty bad one. Coughing and blowing his nose all the time."

"You saw him clearly?"

" 'Course I did. I've been guard here for eighteen months and I know Dr. Baxter as well as my own mother. Dressed in his usual—checked ulster, trilby and those heavy horn glasses of his."

" You'd swear to it in court? That it was Dr. Baxter, I mean?"

He hesitated, then said, " I'd swear to it. And both my mates on duty saw him also. You can check with them."

We checked, then left to return to the administrative block. I said, "Did you really think Baxter stayed behind last night?"

" No," Hardanger admitted. " He left all right—and came back with his pliers. Either alone or with someone else. Which on the face of it, would appear to make Baxter a bad 'un. But it seems that an even badder 'un disposed of him. When thieves fall out, perhaps."

" You thought the signature genuine?"

" As genuine as any signature can ever be. No one ever signs his signature the same way twice. I think I'll get on to the General in London straight away. An all-out check on Baxter might turn up something very interesting. Especially past contacts."

" You'll be wasting your time. From the point of view of security Baxter was sitting in the hottest seat in Europe— boss of number one lab in Mordon Every step he's taken from the day he learnt to walk, every word he's said since, every person he's met—they would have checked and re-checked a hundred times. Baxter's clean. He's just too big a fish to get through the security mesh."

" So were a number of other characters who are now either in jail or Moscow," Hardanger said grimly. " I'm phoning London now. Then checking with Wylie to see if they've turned up anything on that Bedford that was used as a getaway car. Then I'm going to see how Martin and the fingerprint boys are getting on. Coming?"

" No. I'd like to check with the internal guards who were on duty last night and mooch around on my own a little."

He shrugged. " I've no jurisdiction over you, Cavell. But if anything turns up—you'll let me know?" he added suspiciously.

" Think I'm crazy? With a guy walking around with the Satan Bug in his vest pocket do you think I'm going to start a one-man war?"

He nodded, still a little suspiciously, and left me. I spent the next hour checking with the six internal guards who had been on duty before midnight the previous night and learnt what I had expected to learn—

nothing. All of them were well-known to me, which was probably the real reason why Hardanger had wanted me down in Mordon, and all of them had been on duty in Mordon for at least three years. All of their stories tallied and none of it helped at all. With two guards I made a minute check of all windows and the entire roof area of " E " block and I was just wasting my time.

No one had seen Clandon from the time he left Lieutenant Wilkinson at the gatehouse, just after 11 p.m., till his body had been found. Normally, no one would have expected to see him, for after making his rounds Clandon retired for the night to the little concrete cottage he had to himself less than a hundred yards from " E " block. This cottage faced on the long glass corridor of the block, where, as a security precaution, the lights burned night and day. It was no great trick to guess that Clandon had seen something suspicious in "E" Block and gone to investigate. No other reason could have accounted for his presence outside number one laboratory.

I made my way to the gatehouse and asked for the register book showing the names and nature of business of all those who had checked in and out of Mordon the previous day. There were several hundred of those altogether, but all but a very few of them were staff regularly employed there. Groups of special visitors to Mordon were not infrequent: visiting scientists from the Commonwealth and NATO