The Satan Bug. Alistair MacLean
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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.”
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 specialising 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 M.I.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