The Satan Bug

CHAPTER THREE

When we went up to "E" block, accompanied by two of Hardanger's assistants newly arrived from London, we found Cliveden, Weybridge, Gregori and Wilkinson waiting for us. Wilkinson produced the key to the heavy wooden door.

"No one been inside since you locked the place after seeing Clandon?" Hardanger asked.

"I can guarantee that, sir. Guards posted all the time."

"But Cavell here asked for the ventilation system to be switched on. How could that be done without someone going inside?"

"Duplicate switches on the roof, sir. All fuse-boxes, junctions and electrical terminals are also housed on the roof. Means that the repair and maintenance electricians don't even have to enter the main building."

"You people don't miss much," Hardanger admitted. "Open up, please."

The door swung back, we all filed through and turned down the long corridor to our left. Number one lab was right at the far end of the corridor, as least two hundred yards away, but that was the way we had to go: there was only the one entrance to the entire block. Security was all. On the way we had to pass through half a dozen doors, some opened by photo-electric cells, others by handles fifteen inches long. Elbow handles. Considering the nature of the burdens that some of the Mordon scientists carried from time to time, it was advisable to have both hands free all the time.

We came to number one lab — and Clandon. Clandon was lying just outside the massive steel door of the laboratory, but he wasn't any more the Neil Clandon I used to know— the big, tough, kindly, humorous Irishman who'd been my friend over too many years. He looked curiously small now, small and huddled and defenceless, another man altogether. Not Neil Clandon any more. Even his face was the face of another man, eyes abnormally wide and starting as one who had passed far beyond the realms of sanity into a total and terror-induced madness, the lips strained cruelly back over clenched teeth in the appalling rictus of his dying agony. And no man who looked at that face, at the convulsively contorted limbs could doubt that Neil Clandon had died as terribly as man ever could.

They were all watching me, that I was vaguely aware of, but I was pretty good at telling my face what to do. I went forward and stooped low over him, sniffing, and found myself apologising to the dead man for the involuntary wrinkling distaste of nose and mouth. No fault of Neil's. I glanced at Colonel Weybridge and he came forward and bent beside me for a moment before straightening. He looked at Wilkinson and said, "You were right, my boy. Cyanide."

I pulled a pair of cotton gloves from my pocket. One of Hardanger's assistants lifted his flash camera but I pushed his arm down and said, "No pictures. Neil Clandon's not going into anyone's morgue gallery. Too late for pictures anyway. If you feel all that like work why don't you start on that steel door there? Fingerprints. It'll be loaded with them — and not one of them will do you the slightest damn' bit of good."

The two men glanced at Hardanger. He hesitated, shrugged, nodded. I went though Neil Clandon's pockets. There wasn't much that could be of any use to me — wallet, cigarette case, a couple of books of matches and, in the left hand jacket pocket, a handful of transparent papers that had been wrapped round butterscotch sweets.

I said, "This is how he died. The very latest in confectionery — cyanide butterscotch. You can see the sweet he was eating on the floor there, beside his head. Have you such a thing as an analytical chemist on the premises, Colonel?"

"Of course."

"He'll find that sweet and possibly one of those butterscotch papers covered with cyanide. I hope your chemist isn't the type who licks his fingers after touching sticky stuff. Whoever doctored this sweet knew of Clandon's weakness for butterscotch. He also knew Clandon. Put it another way, Clandon knew him. He knew him well. He knew him so well and was so little surprised to find him here that he didn't hesitate to accept a butterscotch from him. Whoever killed Clandon is not only employed in Mordon — he's employed in this particular section of 'E' block. If he weren't, Clandon would have been too damn busy suspecting him of everything under the sun even to consider accepting anything from him. Narrows the field of inquiry pretty drastically. The killer's first mistake — and a big one."

"Maybe," Hardanger rumbled. "And maybe you're oversimplifying and taking too much for granted. Assumptions. How do you know Clandon was killed here? You've said yourself we're up against a clever man, a man who would be more likely than not to obscure things, to cause confusion, to cast suspicions in the wrong place by killing Clandon elsewhere and then dragging him here. And it's asking too much to believe that he just happened to have a cyanide sweet in his pocket that he just happened to hand to Clandon when Clandon just happened to find him doing what he was doing."

"About the second part I don't know," I said. "I should have thought myself that Clandon would have been highly suspicious of anyone he found here late at night, no matter who he was. But Clandon died right here, that's for sure." I looked at Cliveden and Weybridge. "How long for cyanide poisoning to take effect?"

"Practically instantaneous," Cliveden said.

"And he was violently ill here," I said. "So he died here. And look at those two faint scratches on the plaster of the wall. A lab check on his finger-nails is almost superfluous; that's where he clawed for support as he fell to the floor. Some 'friend' gave Clandon that sweet, and that's why I'd like the wallet, cigarette case and books of matches printed. There's just a chance in a thousand that the friend may have been offered a cigarette or a match, or that he went through Clandon's wallet after he was dead. But I don't think there's even that chance in a thousand. But I think the prints on that door should be interesting. And informative. I'll take a hundred to one in anything you like that the prints on that door will be exclusively of those entitled to pass through that door. What I really want to find out is whether there's been any signs of deliberately smearing, as with a handkerchief or gloves, in the vicinity of the combination, time-lock or circular handle."

" There will be," Hardanger nodded. "your assumption that this is strictly an inside job is correct, there will be. To bring in the possibility of outsiders."

"There's still Clandon," I said.

Hardanger nodded again, turned away to watch his two men working on the door. Just then a soldier came up with a large fibre case and a small covered cage, placed it on the floor, saluted nobody in particular and left. I caught the inquiring lift of Cliveden's eyebrow.

"When I go into the lab," I said, "I go in alone. In that case is a gas-tight suit and closed circuit breathing apparatus. I'll be wearing that I lock the steel door behind me, open the inner door and take the hamster in this cage in with me. If he's still alive after a few minutes — well, it's clear inside."

"A hamster?" Hardanger turned his attention from the door, moved across to the cage and lifted the cover. "Poor little beggar. Where did you acquire a hamster so conveniently?"

"Mordon is the easiest place in Britain to acquire a hamster conveniently. There must be a couple of hundred of them within a stone's throw from here. Not to mention a few thousand guinea-pigs, rabbits, monkeys, parrots, mice and fowls. They're bred and reared on Alfringham Farm — where Dr. Baxter has his cottage. Poor little beggar, as you say. They've a pretty short life and far from sweet one. The R.S.P.C.A. and the National Anti-Vivisection Society would sell their souls to get in here. The Official Secrets Act sees to it that they don't. Mordon is their waking nightmare and I don't blame them. Do you know that over a hundred thousand animals died inside these walls last year — many of them in agony. They're a sweet bunch in Mordon."

"Everyone is entitled to his opinions," General Cliveden said coldly. "I don't say I entirely disagree with you." He smiled without humour. "The right place for airing such sentiments, Cavell, but the wrong time."

I nodded, acknowledgement or apology, he could take it how he liked, and opened the fibre case. I straightened, gas-suit in hand, and felt my arm gripped. Dr. Oregon. The dark eyes were intense behind the thick glasses, the swarthy face tight with worry.

"Don't go in there, Mr. Cavell." His voice was low, urgent, almost desperate. "I beg of you, don't go in there."

I said nothing, just looked at him. I liked Gregori, as did all his colleagues without exception. But Gregori wasn't in Mordon because he was a likeable man. He was there because he was reputed to be one of the most brilliant micro-biologists in Europe. An Italian professor of medicine, he'd been in Mordon just over eight months. The biggest catch Mordon had ever made, and it had been touch and go at that: it had taken cabinet conferences at the highest levels before the Italian government agreed to release him for an unspecified period. And if a man like Dr. Gregori was worried, maybe it was time that I was getting worried too.

"Why shouldn't he go in there?" Hardanger demanded. "I take it you must have very powerful reasons, Dr. Gregori?"

"He has indeed," Cliveden said. His face was as grave as his voice. "No man knows more about number one lab than Dr. Gregori. We were speaking of this a short time ago. Dr. Gregori admits candidly that he's terrified and I'd be lying if I didn't say that he's got me pretty badly frightened, too. If Dr. Gregori had his way he'd cut through the block on either side of number one lab, built a five foot thick concrete wall and roof round it and seal it off forever. That's how frightened Dr. Gregori is. At the very least he wants this lab kept closed for a month."

Hardanger gave Cliveden his usual dead-pan took, transferred it to Gregori, then turned to his two assistants. "Down the corridor till you're out of earshot, please. For your own sakes, the less you know of this the better. You, too, Lieutenant. Sorry." He waited until Wilkinson and the two men had gone, looked quizzically at Gregori and said, "So you don't want number one lab opened, Dr. Gregori? Makes you number one on our suspect list, you know."

"Please. I do not feel like smiling. And I do not feel like talking here." He glanced quickly at Clandon, looked as quickly away. "I'm not a policeman — or a soldier. If you would—"

"Of course." Hardanger pointed to a door a few yards down the passage. "What's in there?"

"Just a store-room. I am so sorry to be so squeamish-"

"Come on." Hardanger led the way and we went inside. Oblivious of the "No smoking" signs, Gregori had lit a cigarette and was smoking it in rapid, nervous puffs.

"I must not waste your time," he said. "I will be as brief as I can. But I must convince you." He paused, then went on slowly. "This is the nuclear age. This is the age when tens of millions go about their homes and their work in daily fear and dread of the thermo-nuclear holocaust which, they are all sure, may come any day, and must come soon. Millions cannot sleep at night for they dream too much — of our green and lovely world and their children lying dead in it."

He drew deeply on his cigarette, stubbed it out, at once lit another. He said through the drifting smoke, "I have no such fears of a nuclear Armageddon and I sleep well at nights. Such war will never come. I listen to the Russians rattling their rockets, and I smile. I listen to the Americans rattling theirs, and I smile again. For I know that all the time the two giant powers are shaking their sabres in the scabbards, while they're threatening each other with so many hundreds of megaton-carrying missiles, they are not really thinking of their missiles at all. They are thinking, gentlemen, of Mordon, for we — the British, I should say — have made it our business to ensure that the great nations understand exactly what is going on behind the fences of Mordon." He tapped the brickwork beside him. "Behind this very wall here. The ultimate weapon. The world's one certain guarantee of peace. The term 'ultimate weapon' has been used too freely, has come almost to lose its meaning. But the term, in this case, is precise and exact. If by 'ultimate' one means total annihilation."

He smiled, a little self-consciously.

"I'm being melodramatic, a little? Perhaps. My Latin blood shall we say? But listen carefully, gentlemen, and try to understand the full significance of what I'm going to say. Not the General and Colonel, of course, they already know: but you, Superintendent, and you, Mr. Cavell."

"We have developed in Mordon here over forty different types of plague germs. I will confine myself to two. One of them is a derivative of the botulinus toxin — which we had developed in World War II. As a point of interest, a quarter of a million troops in England were inoculated against this toxin just before D-Day and I doubt whether any of them know to this day what they were inoculated against."

"We have refined this toxin into a fantastic and shocking weapon compared to which even the mightiest hydrogen bomb is a child's toy. Six ounces of this toxin, gentlemen, distributed fairly evenly throughout the world, would destroy every man, woman and child alive on this planet to-day. No flight of fancy." His voice was weighted with heavy emphasis, his face still and sombre. "This is simple fact. Give me an airplane and let me fly over London on a windless summer afternoon with no more than a gramme of botulinus toxin to scatter and by evening seven million Londoners would be dead. A thimbleful in its water reservoirs and London would become one vast channel house. If God does not strike me down for using the term 'ideal' in this connection, then this is the ideal form of germ warfare. The botulinus toxin oxidises after twelve hours exposure to the atmosphere and becomes harmless. Twelve hours after country A releases a few grammes of botulinus over country B it can send its soldiers in without any fear of attack by either the toxin or the defending soldiers. For the defending soldiers would be dead. And the civilians, the men, the women, the children. They would ail be dead. All dead."

Gregori fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette. His hands were shaking and he made no attempt to conceal the fact. He was probably unaware of it.

I said, "But you used the term 'ultimate weapon', as if we alone possessed it. Surely the Russians and Americans…"

"They have it too. We know where Russia's laboratories in the Urals are. We know where the Canadians manufacture it — the Canadians were leaders in the field until recently— and it's no secret that there are four thousand scientists working on a crash programme in Fort Detrick in America to produce even more deadlier poisons, so hurried a crash programme that we know that scientists have died and eight hundred of them fallen ill over the past few years. They have all failed to produce this deadlier poison. Britain has succeeded which is why the eyes of the world are on Mordon."

" Is it possible?" Hardanger's tone was dry but his face was set. "A deadlier poison than this damn' botulinus? Seems kind of superfluous to me."

"Botulinus has its drawback," Gregori said quietly. "From a military viewpoint that is. Botulinus you must breathe or swallow to become infected. It is not contagious. Also, we suspect that a few countries may have produced a form of vaccine against even the refined type of drug we have developed here. But there is no vaccine on earth to counteract the newest virus we have produced — and it's as contagious as a bush-fire."

"This other virus is a derivative of the polio virus — infantile paralysis, if you will — but a virus the potency of which has been increased a million times by — well, the methods don't matter and you wouldn't understand. What does matter is this: unlike botulinus, this new polio virus is indestructible — extremes of heat and cold, oxidisation and poison have no effect upon it and its life span appears to be indefinite, although we believe it impossible — we hope it impossible— that any virus could live for more than a month in an environment completely hostile to growth and development; unlike botulinus it is highly contagious, as well as being fatal if swallowed or breathed; and, most terrible of all, we have been unable to discover a vaccine for it. I myself am convinced that we can never discover a vaccine against it." He smiled without humour. "To this virus we have given a highly unscientific name, but one that describes it perfectly — the Satan Bug. It is the most terrible and terrifying weapon mankind has ever known or ever will know."

"No vaccine?" Hardanger said. His tone wasn't dry this time but his lips were. "No vaccine at all?"

"We have given up hope. Only a few days ago, as you will recall, Colonel Weybridge, Dr. Baxter thought he had found it — but we were completely wrong. There is no hope, none in the world. Now all our efforts are concentrated on evolving an attenuated strain with a limited life-span. In its present form, we obviously cannot use it. But when we do get a form with a limited life-span — and its death must be caused by oxidisation — then we have the ultimate weapon. When that day comes all the nations of the world may as well destroy their nuclear weapons. From a nuclear attack, no matter how intense, there will always be survivors. The Americans have calculated that even a full-scale Soviet nuclear attack on their country, with all the resources at Russia's disposal, would cause no more than seventy million deaths— no more, I say! — with possibly several million others as a result of radiation. But half the nation would survive, and in a generation or two that nation would rise again. But a nation attacked by the Satan Bug would never rise again: for there would be no survivors."

I hadn't been wrong about Hardanger's lips being dry, he was licking them to make speaking easier. Someone should see this, I thought. Hardanger scared. Hardanger truly and genuinely frightened. The penitentiaries of Britain were full of people who would never have believed it.

"And until then," Hardanger said quietly. "Until you have evolved this limited life-strain?"

"Until then?" Gregori stared down at the concrete floor. "Until then? Let me put it this way. In its final form the Satan Bug is an extremely refined powder. I take a salt-spoon of this powder, go outside in the grounds of Mordon and turn the salt-spoon upside down. What happens? Every person in Mordon would be dead within an hour, the whole of Wiltshire would be an open tomb by dawn. In a week, ten days, all life would have ceased to exist in Britain. I mean all life. The Plague, the Black Death — was nothing compared with this. Long before the last man died in agony ships or planes or birds or just the waters of the North Sea would have carried the Satan Bug to Europe. We can conceive of no obstacle that can stop its eventual world-wide spread. Two months I would say, two months at the very most."

"Think of it, Superintendent, think of it. If you can, that is, for it is something really beyond our conception, beyond human imagination. The Lapp trapping in the far north of Sweden. The Chinese peasant tilling his rice-fields in the Yangtse valley. The cattle rancher on his station in the Australian outback, the shopper in Fifth Avenue, the primitive in Tierra del Fuego. Dead. All dead. Because I turned a salt-spoon upside down. Nothing, nothing, nothing can stop the Satan Bug. Eventually all forms of life will perish. Who, what will be the last to go? I cannot say. Perhaps the great albatross for ever winging its way round the bottom of the world. Perhaps a handful of Eskimos deep in the Arctic basin. But the seas travel the world over, and so also do the winds: one day, one day soon, they too would die."

By this time I felt like lighting a cigarette myself and I did. If any enterprising company had got around to running a passenger rocket service to the moon by the time the Satan Bug got loose, they wouldn't have to spend all that much on advertising.

"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 Oregon. "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 justifcation for never opening that door again. For if one is broken and one cubic centimetre 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 make 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 indestructible, 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 energised 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 mesmerised 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 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 had supervened before a true bruise had had time to form.

A few feet behind him, lying on the floor at the base of the wall farthest from the door, were fragments of 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 openmesh 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 appparatus. 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."