Authors: Alistair MacLean
" What I'm afraid of you see," Gregori went on quietly," is what we may find behind that door. I have not the mind of a detective, but I can see things when they lie plainly before me. Whoever broke his way into Mordon was a desperate man playing for desperate stakes. The end justified by any means—and the only ends to justify such terrible means would be some of the stocks in the virus cupboard."
"Cupboard?" Hardanger drew down his bushy brows "Don't you lock those damn' germs away somewhere safe?"
"They are safe," I said. "The lab walls are of reinforced concrete and panelled with heavy-gauge mild steel. No windows, of course. This door is the only way in. Why shouldn't it be safe in a cupboard?"
"I didn't know." Hardanger turned back to Gregori. " Please go on."
"That's all." Gregori shrugged. "A desperate man. A man in a great hurry. The key to the locker—just wood and glass—I have in my hands here. See? He would have to break in. In his haste and with the use of force who knows what damage he may not have done, what virus containers he might not have knocked over or broken? If one of those had been a Satan Bug container, and there are but three in existence . . .
Maybe it's only a very remote chance. But I say to you, in all sincerity and earnestness, if there was only one chance in a hundred million of a Satan Bug container having been broken, there is still more than ample justification for never opening that door again. For if one is broken and one cubic centimeter of tainted air escapes-----"
He broke off and lifted his hands helplessly. " Have we the right to take upon ourselves the responsibility of being the executioners of mankind?"
"General Cliveden?" Hardanger said.
" I'm afraid I agree. Seal it up."
" Colonel Weybridge? "
"I don't know, I don't know." Weybridge took off his cap, ran his hand through the short dark hair. " Yes, I do now. Seal the damn' place up."
" Well. You're the three men who should really know what they are talking about" Hardanger pursed his lips for a moment, then glanced at me. "In the face of expert unanimity, it should be interesting to hear what Cavell thinks." "
"Cavell thinks they're a pack of old women," I said. "I think your minds are so gummed up with the idea of the Satan Bug on the loose that you're incapable of thinking at all, far less thinking straight. Let's look at the central fact— central supposition, rather. Dr. Gregori bases all his fears on the assumption that someone has broken in and stolen the viruses. He thinks there's one chance in a thousand that one of the containers may have been broken, so if that door is opened there's one chance in a thousand of menace to mankind. But if he has actually stolen the Satan Bug, then the menace to mankind becomes not one in a thousand—but a thousand to one. For heaven's sake take the blinkers off for a moment and try to see that a man on the loose with the viruses presents an infinitely greater danger than the remote chance of his having broken one inside those doors. Simple logic says that we must guard against the greater danger. So we must get inside the room—how else can we begin to get any trace of the thief and killer, to try to guard against the infinitely greater danger? We must, I say."
" Or I must. I'm dressing up and taking that hamster in there. If the hamster survives, good and well. If he doesn't I don't come out. Fair enough?"
"Of all the damned arrogance," Cliveden said coldly. " For a private detective, Cavell, you have an awful lot of gall. You might bear in mind that I'm the commandant in Mordon and I take all the decisions."
" You did, General. But not any more. The Special Branch has taken over—completely. You know that."
Hardanger ignored us both. Grasping at straws, he said to Gregori, " You mentioned that a special air filtration unit was working inside there.
Won't that have cleared the air?"
" With any other virus, yes. Not with the Satan Bug. It's virtually indestructable, I tell you. And it's a closed circuit nitration unit. The same air, washed and cleaned, is fed back in again. But you can't wash away the Satan Bug."
There was a long pause, then I said to Gregori, " If the Satan Bug or botulinus is loose in this lab, how Long would it take to affect the
'hamster?"
" Fifteen seconds," he said precisely. " In thirty seconds it will be in convulsions. In a minute, dead. There will be reflex muscle twitchings but it will be dead. That's for the Satan Bug. For botulinus only slightly longer."
" Don't stop me from going in," I said to Cliveden. " I'll see what happens to the hamster. If he's O.K., then I'll wait another ten minutes.
Then I'll come out."
"If you come out." He was weakening. Cliveden was nobody's fool. He was too clever not to have gone over what I had said and at least some of it must have made sense to him.
"If anything—any virus—has been stolen," I said, "then whoever stole it is a madman. The Kennet, a tributary of the Thames, passes by only a few miles from here. How do you know that madman isn't bent over the Kennet this instant, pouring those damned bugs into the water?"
" How do I know you won't come out if that hamster does die?" Cliveden said desperately. " Good God, Cavell, you're only human. If that hamster does die, do you expect me to believe that you're going to remain in there till you die of starvation? Asphyxiation, rather, when the oxygen gives out? Of course you're going to come out."
"All right, General, suppose I come out. Would I still be wearing the gas-suit and breathing apparatus?"
" Obviously." His voice was curt. " If you weren't and that room was contaminated—well, you couldn't come out: You'd be dead."
"All right, again. This way." I led the way out to the corridor, indicated the last corridor-door we'd passed through. " That door is gas-tight. I know that. So are those outside double windows. You stand at that corridor door—have it open a crack. The door of number one lab opens on it— you'll see me as soon as I begin to come out. Agreed?" "What are you talking about?"
" This." I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the Hanyatti automatic, knocked the safety catch off. " You have this in your hand. If, when the lab door opens, I'm still wearing the suit and breathing apparatus, you can shoot me down. At fifteen feet and with nine shots you can hardly fail to. Then you shut the corridor door. Then the virus is still sealed inside ' E' block."
He took the gun from me, slowly, reluctantly, uncertainly. But there was nothing uncertain about eyes and voice when finally he spoke.
"You know I shall use this, if I have to?" " Of course I know it." I smiled.
But I didn't feel much like it. " From what I've heard I'd rather die from a bullet than the Satan Bug."
" I'm sorry I blew my top a minute ago," he said quietly. " You're a brave man, Cavell."
" Don't fail to mention the fact in my obituary in The Times. How about asking your men to finish off printing and photographing that door, Superintendent?"
Twenty minutes later the men were finished and I was all ready to go.
The others looked at me with that peculiar hesitancy and indecision of people who think they should be making farewell speeches but find the appropriate words too hard to come by. A couple of nods, a half wave of a hand, and they'd left me. They all passed down the corridor and through the next door, except General Cliveden, who remained in the open doorway. From some obscure feeling of decency, he held my Hanyatti behind his body where I couldn't see it.
The gas-suit was tight and constricting, the closed circuit breathing apparatus cut into the back of my neck and the high concentration of oxygen made my mouth dry. Or maybe my mouth was dry anyway. Three cigarettes in the past twenty minutes—a normal day's quota for me, I preferred to take my slow poisoning in the form of a pipe—wouldn't have helped any either. I tried to think of one compelling reason why I shouldn't go through that door, but that didn't help either, there were so many compelling reasons that I couldn't pick and choose between them, so I didn't even bother trying. I made a last careful check of suit, mask and oxygen cylinders, but I was only kidding myself, this was about my fifth last careful check. Besides, they were all watching me. I had my pride. I started spelling out the combination on the heavy steel door.
A fairly complicated and delicate operation at any time, the operation of opening that door was made doubly difficult by reinforced-rubber covered fingers and poor vision afforded by slanted goggles. But exactly a minute after I'd begun I heard the heavy thud as the last spin of the dial energized the powerful electro-magnets that withdrew the heavy central bolt: three complete turns of the big circular handle and the half-ton door eased slowly open under the full weight of my shoulder.
I picked up the hamster's cage, eased in quickly through the opening door, checked its swing and closed it as swiftly as possible. Three turns of the inner circular handle and the vault door was locked again. The chances were that in so doing I had wiped off a fair number of prints but I wouldn't have wiped off any prints that mattered.
The rubber-sealed frosted-glass door leading into the laboratory proper was at the other end of the tiny vestibule. Further delay would achieve nothing—nothing apart from prolonging my life, that was. I leaned on the fifteen-inch elbow handle, pressed open the door, passed inside and closed the door behind me.
No need to switch on any lights—the laboratory was already brilliantly illuminated by shadowless neon lighting. Whoever had broken into that lab had either figured that the Government was a big enough firm to stand the waste of electricity or he'd left in such a tearing hurry that he'd had no time to think of lights.
I'd no time to think of lights either. Nor had I the inclination. My sole and over-riding concern was with the immediate welfare of the tiny hamster inside the cage I was carrying.
I placed the cage on the nearest bench, whipped off the cover and stared at the little animal. No bound man seated on a powder keg ever watched the last few minutes of sputtering fuse with half the mesmerized fascination, the totally-exclusive concentration with which I stared at that hamster. The starving cat with up-raised paw by the mouse-hole, the mongoose waiting for the king-cobra to strike, the ruined gambler watching the last roll of the dice—compared to me, they were asleep on the job. If ever the human eye had the power of transfixion, that hamster should have been skewered alive.
Fifteen seconds, Gregori had said. Fifteen seconds only and if the deadly Satan Bug virus was present in the atmosphere of that lab the hamster would react. I counted off the seconds, each second a bell tolling towards eternity, and at exactly fifteen seconds the hamster twitched violently. Violently, but nothing compared to the way my heart behaved, a double somersault that seemed to take up all the space inside the chest wall, before settling down to an abnormally slow heavy thudding that seemed to shake my body with its every beat. Inside the rubber gloves the palms of my hands turned wet, ice-cold. My mouth was dry as last year's ashes.
Thirty seconds passed. By this time, if the virus was loose, the hamster should have been in convulsions. But he wasn't, not unless convulsions in a hamster took the form of sitting up on its hind legs and rubbing its nose vigorously with a couple of tiny irritated paws.
Forty-five seconds. A minute. Maybe Dr. Gregori had over-estimated the virulence of the virus. Maybe this was a hamster with an abnormally tough and resistant physique.
But Gregori didn't strike me as the sort of scientist who would make any mistakes and this looked like a pretty puny hamster to me. For the first time since entering the room I started to use the breathing apparatus.
I swung the top of the cage back on its hinges and started to lift out the hamster. He was still in pretty good shape as far as I could tell, for he wriggled from my hand, jumped down on to the rubber-tiled floor and scurried away up a long passage between a table and a wall-bench, stopping at the far end to get on with scratching his nose again. I came to the conclusion that if a hamster could take it I could too: after all, I outweighed him by about five hundred to one. I unbuckled the straps behind my neck and pulled off the closed circuit breathing apparatus. I took a long deep lungful of air.
That was a mistake. I admit you can hardly heave a vast sigh of relief at the prospect of keeping on living yet awhile just by sniffing cautiously at the atmosphere, but that is what I ought to have done. I could understand now why the hamster had spent his time in rubbing his nose with such disgusted intensity. I felt my nostrils try to wrinkle shut in nauseated repugnance as the vile smell hit them. Sulphuretted hydrogen had nothing on it.
Holding my nose I started moving around the benches and tables. Within thirty seconds, in a passage at the top of the laboratory, I found what I was looking for, and what I didn't want to find. The midnight visitor hadn't forgotten to switch out the lights, he'd just left in such a tearing hurry that the thought of light switches would never even have crossed his mind. His one ambition in life would have been to get out of that room and close both doors tightly behind him just as quickly as was humanly possible.
Hardanger could call off his search for Dr. Baxter. Dr. Baxter was here, still clad in his white knee-length overall, lying on the rubber floor. Like Clandon, he'd obviously died in contorted agony. Unlike Clandon, whatever had killed him hadn't been cyanide. I knew of no type of death associated with this strange blueness of the face, with the outpouring of so much fluid from eyes, ears and nose, above all with so dreadful a smell.
Even to look was revolting enough. The idea of making a closer approach was more repugnant still, but I forced myself to do it anyway.
I didn't touch him. I didn't know the cause of death, but I had a pretty fair idea, so I didn't touch him. Instead I stooped low over the dead man and examined him as carefully as was possible in the circumstances.
There was a small contused area behind the right ear, with a little blood where the skin had been broken, but no noticeable swelling. Death bad supervened before a true bruise had had time to form.