The Satan Bug (26 page)

" Suppose you tell me, Cavell ?"

" I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you." I left them, went out to the tool-shed and hunted around for a crowbar or pick. I could find neither.

The nearest was a small sledge. It would have to do. I picked it up along with a bucket, went into the kitchen where the General and Hardanger were waiting for me, filled the bucket at the kitchen sink and led the way down the stairs to the cellar. Hardanger, apparently oblivious of the presence of the dead man dangling from the ceiling, said heavily, " What do you propose to demonstrate, Cavell? How to make coal briquettes?"

The telephone rang in the hallway upstairs. Automatically, we all looked at each other. Dr. MacDonald's incoming calls might be very interesting.

Hardanger said, " I’ll answer' it," and left.

We heard his voice on the phone, and then my name being called. I started up the stairs, conscious of the General following me.

Hardanger handed me the phone. " For you. Won't give his name. Want's to speak to you personally."

I took the receiver. " Cavell speaking."

" So you are on the loose and the little lady wasn't lying." The words came over the wire like a deep, dark and throaty whisper. " Lay off, Cavell. Tell the General to lay off, Cavell. If you want to see the little lady alive again."

These new synthetic resins are pretty tough so the receiver didn't crush in my palm. It must have been pretty close, though. My heart did a long slow summersault and landed on its back with a thud. I kept my voice steady and said, " What the hell are you talking about?"

"The beautiful Mrs. Cavell. I have her. She would like to speak to you."

A moment's silence, then her voice came. "Pierre? Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry-----" Her voice broke off abruptly in a gasp followed by a scream of agony. Silence. Again the dark whisper, " Lay off, Cavell," and then the click of a replaced receiver. I replaced mine, the receiver making a sharp staccato rattle against the rest. My hand was the hand of a man with the ague.

Shock or fear or both may have frozen my face into an expression of normalcy or maybe the make-up on my face didn't transmit expression too well. Whichever it was, they didn't notice anything amiss for the General said, "Who was it?" in a normal curious tone.

" I don't know." I paused and went on mechanically, "They've got Mary."

The General had had his hand on the door. Now he dropped it to his side in a ridiculously slow-motion gesture that took almost ten seconds while something in his face died. Hardanger whispered something, something unprintable: his face was like a stone. Neither of them asked me to repeat what I had said, neither was in a the slightest doubt as to what I had meant.

" They told us to lay off," I went on in the same wooden voice. "Or they'd kill her. They have her, all right. She spoke a few words and then screamed. They must have hurt her, badly."

Hardanger said, almost desperately, " How could he have known that you had escaped? Or even suspected? How-----"

"Dr. MacDonald is how," I said. "He knew—Mrs. Turpin told him—and the killer learnt from MacDonald." I stared almost unseeingly at the General's face, a face still impassive, but with all the life and animation gone from it. I went on, "I'm sorry. If anything happens to Mary it will be my fault My own criminal folly and negligence."

The General said, " What are we going to do, my boy?" The voice was tired and listless to match the dullness that had replaced the soldierly fire in his eye. "You know they are going to kill your wife. People like that always kill."

" We're wasting time," I said harshly. " Two minutes, that's all I need.

To make sure."

I ran down to the cellar, picked up the bucket and tossed half its contents against the opposite wall. The water spread and ran down quickly to the floor. As a cleaning agent it was a dead failure, making hardly any impression whatsoever on the ingrained coal dust of a score or more of years. With the General and Hardanger still watching uncomprehendingly I threw the remainder of the bucket's contents against the rear wall, where the coal had been piled so high before my recent excavation. The water splashed off and ran down into the coal, leaving the wall almost as clear and clean and fresh as if it had been built only a few weeks previously. Hardanger glared at it, then at me then back at the wall again.

" My apologies, Cavell," he said. " That would be why the coal was piled so high against the wall—to conceal the traces of recent work."

I didn't waste time speaking, time was now the one commodity we'd run clear out of: instead I picked up the sledgehammer and swung at the upper line of breeze work—the lower portion was solid concrete. One swing only. I felt as if someone had slid a six-inch stiletto between my right ribs. Maybe the doctor had been right, maybe my ribs weren't as securely anchored as nature had intended. Without a word I handed the sledge to Hardanger and sat down wearily on the upturned bucket.

Hardanger weighed sixteen stone and in spite of the calm impassivity of his features he was just clear mad all the way through. With all the power and vicious determination that was in him he attacked that wall of breeze as if it were the archetype of all things evil on earth. The wall hadn't a chance. On the third stroke the first block of breeze was splintered and dislodged and within thirty seconds he had hammered in a hole about two feet square. He stopped, looked at me and I rose to my feet like the old, old man I felt I was and switched on my torch.

Together, we peered into the peephole.

Between the false wall and the real cellar wall behind there was a gap of under two feet and jammed at the bottom of this narrow space and half-covered with broken masonry, chips and dust from the fractured breeze-blocks lay the remains of what had once been a man. Broken, twisted, savagely mutilated, but still undoubtedly the remains of a man.

Hardanger said in a voice ominously calm and steady, " Do you know who this is, Cavell?"

" I know him. Easton Derry. My predecessor as security chief in Mordon."

" Easton Derry." The General was as unnaturally controlled as Hardanger. " How can you tell? His face is unrecognisable."

" Yes. That ring on his left hand has a blue Cairngorm stone. Easton Derry always wore a ring with a blue Cairngorm. That's Easton Derry."

" What—what did this to him?" The General stared down at the half-naked body. " A road crash? Some—some wild animal?" For a long minute he stared down in silence at the dead man, then straightened and turned to me, the age and weariness in his face more accentuated than ever, but the old eyes bleak and icy and still. " A man did this to him. He was tortured to death."

"He was tortured to death," I said.

" And you know who did it? Hardanger reminded me.

" I know who did it."

Hardanger pulled a warrant form and pen from an inside pocket and stood waiting. I said, " You won't need that, Superintendent. Not if I get to him first. In case I don't make it out in the name of Dr. Giovanni Gregori. The real Dr. Gregori is dead."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Eight minutes later the big police Jaguar braked hard to a stop outside Chessingham's house and for the third time in just under twenty-four hours I climbed the worn steps over the dried-out moat and pressed the bell. The General was close behind me; Hardanger was in the radio van, alerting the police of a dozen counties to be on the lookout for Gregori and his Fiat, to identify, follow but not for the present apprehend : Gregori, we felt, wouldn't kill until desperate and we owed Mary at least that slender hope of life.

" Mr. Cavell!" The welcome Stella Chessingham gave me bore no resemblance to the one I had received from her at dawn that morning.

The light was back in her eyes, the anxiety vanished from her face. "How nice! I—I'm so sorry about this morning, Mr. Cavell. I mean—it is true what my mother told me after they'd taken him away?"

"It's perfectly true, Miss Chessingham." I tried to smile, but with the way I felt and with my face still aching from the hasty scrubbing away of the now useless disguise before leaving MacDonald's house, I was glad I couldn't see what sort of attempt I'd made at it. As far as our respective positions were concerned, compared to twelve hours ago, the boot was on the other foot now, and with a vengeance. " I am sincerely sorry but it was at the time necessary. Your brother will be released to-night. You saw my wife this afternoon?"

" Of course. It was so sweet of her to come to see us. Won't you and your—um—friend come in to see Mother? She'd be delighted I'm sure."

I shook my head. " What time did my wife leave here?"

" About five-thirty, I should say. It was beginning to get dark and—has something happened to her?" she ended in a whisper.

"She's been kidnapped by the murderer and held as hostage."

"Oh, no! Oh, no, Mr. Cavell, no." Her hand clutched her throat. " It—it's not possible."

"How did she leave here?"

" Kidnapped? Your wife kidnapped?" She stared at me, round-eyed in fear. " Why should anyone want-----"

" For God's sake answer my question," I said savagely " Had she hired a car, taxi, bus service—what was it?"

" A car," she whispered. " A car came to pick her up. The man said you wanted to see her urgently . . ." Her voice trailed away as she realized the implications of what she was saying.

"What man?" I demanded. "What car?"

" A—a middle-aged man," she faltered. " Swarthy. In a blue car. With another man in the back seat. I don't know what kind except that—of course! It was a foreign car, a car with left-hand drive. Has she-----"

" Gregori and his Fiat?" the General whispered. " But how in God's name did he know that Mary was out here?"

"Simply by lifting the telephone," I said bitterly. "He knew we were staying at the Waggoner's Rest. He asked for Mary and asked if she was there and that fat fool behind the bar said why no, Mrs. Cavell wasn't there, he himself had just driven her out to Mr. Chessingham's house less than a couple of hours ago. It would be on Gregori's way, so he stopped by to see. He'd everything to gain, nothing to lose."

We didn't even tell Stella Chessingham good-bye. We ran down the steps, intercepted Hardanger changing over from the radio van to the police Jaguar, and almost bundled him into the car. " Alfringham," I said quickly. " The Fiat. He took it after all. I didn't think he would take the chance-----"

" He didn't," Hardanger ground out. " Had a report just now. He ditched it in the village of Grayling, not three miles from here, in a side street—

and not twenty yards from the local constable's cottage. The constable -

was just listening to our radio broadcast, lifted his eyes and there it was."

"Empty, of course."

" Empty. He wouldn't have ditched it unless he'd another lined up. An all-station alert is out for stolen cars. It would be stolen in Grayling, hardly more than a hamlet, I understand. We'll soon find out."

We soon found out and it was ourselves that did the finding. Just two minutes later, running into Grayling, we saw a character doing a sort of war dance on the pavement and flagging us down with a furiously waving brief-case of sorts held in his right hand. The Jaguar stopped and Hardanger wound down his window.

" It's monstrous," the man with the brief-case shouted. "Thank God you're here. An outrage, a damnable outrage! In broad daylight-----"

" What's the matter?" Hardanger cut in.

"My car. In broad daylight! Stolen, by God! I was just paying a call in this house and-----"

" How long were you in there?"

" Eh? How long? What the hell-----"

" Answer me!" Hardanger roared.

" Forty minutes. But what-----"

" What kind of car?"

"A Vanden Plas Princess 3-litre." He was almost sobbing with rage. "

Brand new, I tell you. Turquoise. Three weeks old—"

" Don't worry," Hardanger said curtly. The police Jaguar was already in motion. "We'll get it back for you." He wound up the window, leaving the man standing behind us, open-mouthed, and spoke to the sergeant in front.

" Alfringham. Then the London road. Cancel the call for the Fiat. It's now a turquoise Vanden Plas Princess 3-litre. All stations. Locate, follow, but don't close in."

" Blue-green," the General murmured. " Blue-green, not turquoise. It's policemen you're talking to, not their wives. Half of them would think you were talking about their Christmas dinner."

"It all started with MacDonald," I said. The big police car was hissing along the wet tarmac, the pine trees lining the road cart wheeling back into the pitch darkness behind, and it seemed easier to talk than to sit there going quietly crazy with worry. Besides, the General and Hardanger had been patient long enough. " We all know what MacDonald wanted, and it wasn't just to serve the cause of the Communist world. Dr. MacDonald had only one deeply-felt and abiding interest in life—Dr. MacDonald. No question but that he was a genuine dyed-in-the-wool fellow-traveller at one time—Madame Halle did not strike me as a person who would make a mistake over anything—and I don't see how he could otherwise have formed his contacts with the Communist world. He must have earned a great deal of money over the years—you'd only to look at the contents of his house—but he spent it fairly judiciously and wisely, not splashing it around too much at a time."

" The Bentey Continental he had," Hardanger said. " Wouldn't you call that splashing it around a bit?"

" He'd that expense well covered, with a water-tight explanation. But," I acknowledged, " he got greedy. He was getting in so much money during the past few months that it was burning a hole in his pockets."

" Working overtime sending samples to Warsaw and information to Vienna?" the General asked.

"No," I said. "Blackmailing Gregori."

"Sorry." The General stirred wearily in his corner seat. " I'm not with you."

" It's not difficult," I said. " Gregori—the man we know as Gregori—had two things: a beautiful plan and a stroke of very bad luck. You will remember that there was nothing sub rosa about Gregori's arrival in this country—it sparked off a minor international crisis, the Italians being hopping mad that one of their top-notch bio-chemists should turn his back on his own country and go to work in Britain. Somebody— somebody with more than a smattering of chemistry and a fairly close resemblance to Gregori—read all about it and saw in Gregori's impending departure for Britain the opportunity of a lifetime and made his preparation accordingly."