Live, Love, and Cry

by George B Mair

The girl studied him thoughtfully. ‘You look competent,’ she said. ‘Or is this an everyday sort of job?’

  Grant shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m a doctor. Research stuff. Labs and things. So it isn’t everyday work.’

  He loosened Carpenter’s jacket and unclipped his braces. ‘Give me five minutes and then bring a hot-water bottle. Or if you’d like to call in your family doctor that’s O.K. with me. But even so we had still better try and bring him round.’ He hesitated. ‘Where is your mother? Or are you living alone?’

  ‘Alone. She went off yesterday to see if Dad had turned up in any of his old haunts. With the car,’ she added. ‘He might have gone fishing. Done anything.’

  ‘Fishing?’

  The girl nodded briefly. ‘He did a lot of fishing. But do what you can and I’ll make coffee.’

  She left a whiff of freshness behind her which lightened the stench of stale liquor and Grant whipped off Carpenter’s clothes, wondering how it was going to end. The girl had something on her mind. Her eyes seemed haunted. She was unnaturally pale. What had she meant by ‘fishing’? But, above all, she had shown neither uneasiness or embarrassment. And yet she was the most feminine thing he had seen in months. Her legs were at least three inches longer than average from crutch to heel for her height and her figure was superb.

  Carpenter stripped well and Grant saw that even his belly muscles were firm. Drink or not, the man was in good condition and his hands seemed beautifully sensitive. Almost artistic. With fingers ending in carefully manicured nails.

  ‘Here, pyjamas.’ A hand threw a bundle of clothes into the room. ‘And coffee ready in two minutes.’

  He forced Carpenter into the trousers, laid the jacket loosely across his chest and pulled up the sheets.

  ‘And hot-water bottle.’ The thing landed with a thud on the floor by his feet. ‘Coffee poured. Come out when you’re ready.’

  He switched on the electric radiator, opened a window and threw the drink-sodden coat into the garden. Pausing for a moment to straighten his tie, he then turned off the light and walked into a narrow corridor which led to the hall. The girl was waiting for him and she had taken out her curlers. Her ash-blonde hair dropped over both shoulders and she ignored the light which threw her figure into bold outline beneath an almost transparent shortie nightie and house-coat. She had laid a slash of apricot-coloured lipstick across her mouth and a trace of eye-shadow darkened against her cheeks.

  ‘If I’m competent you are unconventional,’ said Grant.

  She laughed. ‘We’re an unconventional family.’

  ‘We? How many?’

  ‘When you’ve met my mother you’ll know us all.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  ‘None.’ She hesitated. ‘Parents are enough. How do you like your coffee?’

  ‘Black. With a lot of sugar.’

  ‘Hot, sweet and strong, in other words?’ She eyed him carefully. ‘Or is that not original?’

  He grinned. ‘Not. But true just the same. And you?’

  She looked at him steadily. ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘Paris. An international laboratory near the university. Just here on leave. I schooled at George Watson’s and thought I’d have ten days at the Festival.’

  ‘Are you fixed with rooms? The city is booked up.’

  The cue had come quicker than he expected and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Never thought of that. Nothing even at the North British?’

  She shook her head. ‘The Festival is on and the city is full of artistes. Musicians and actresses and things. You won’t get a bed nearer than Berwick.’

  He carefully lit his pipe. ‘Not even a bed-sitter?’

  ‘I doubt it. Though we can see tomorrow. The Festival Club will know. But since you brought the old man home you’d better stay here. Mother should be back before lunch.’ She was sitting against a low armchair, her legs crossed at the ankles and wiggling the pom-poms of her bedroom slippers. ‘Suppose you tell me more about this. Why didn’t you just take him straight to hospital?’

  ‘Because the letter in his pocket said “Professor” and I figured he wouldn’t thank me for any publicity.’

  ‘And is every unconscious man at the roadside a drunk?’ Her eyes were very wary.

  ‘He was reeking of drink. Clothes soaked. It seemed likely enough.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have been knocked down by a car and the driver stop, lace his clothes with spirits and then push off hoping that whoever found him would be taken in and think just what he wanted them to think?’

  Grant forced a look of admiration. ‘Say,’ he laughed, ‘it could be. But though I looked him over for injury I never really thought of that one.’

  ‘And where were you coming from?’

  Grant hesitated. The question had taken him off-guard.

  ‘Paris. Crossed a few days ago. Night or two to do some shows in London and then up north by car. Quite a treat, really, to come home.’

  ‘Home?’

  He hesitated. ‘A man taps his roots early in life. For a wanderer like myself the place where I was at school has made deeper impressions than anywhere else.’

  ‘But being an Edinburgh man and a scientist, doesn’t my father’s name ring a bell?’

  He tapped his teeth with the stem of his pipe and then broke into a broad smile. ‘Carpenter! Of course. But I never associated——’

  ‘You didn’t think that a roadside drunk could be an important biologist.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. But maybe there is more to all this than meets the eye. Maybe it is another case of memory loss or something.’

  ‘Or something,’ she agreed dryly.

  ‘You sound mysterious. What sort of something?’

  ‘Now that’s what I call a really important question. What sort of something indeed.’ The voice froze Grant into rock-steady immobility. He had last heard it in a house not far from Canterbury[3] when the man had got away by moving just a shade faster than anyone else after the shooting started.

  He sighed gently. ‘Zero! So I was right, after all,’ he said.

  The girl was sitting rigid by his side, but he could see the racing pulse in her neck and guessed that she was ready to scream. ‘Take it easy,’ he whispered. ‘And do exactly whatever you may be told.’

  He hardly breathed as a young man moved lightly in front of him and whipped a scarf round the girl’s mouth. In the same twenty seconds he snapped on a pair of handcuffs and anchored her to the chair with a thick leather strap passed round her waist and through the tall spars behind.

  ‘Splendid.’ The voice sounded efficient. ‘And I see that you have a good memory. Voices are always difficult for ordinary people to disguise. And God knows I’m no Peter Sellers or Stanley Baxter. But I’m a little sorry that you didn’t try to take one of your celebrated chances. Because few things would please me more than to see you dead. However, maybe in due course you will do something stupid and give me the moral right to destroy you.’

  Grant sat motionless. ‘How did you know where to come?’

  The girl was missing nothing, but Grant sensed that she had begun, slightly, to relax when the younger man gave a final tug at the belt and then stood aside as an older figure sat down in a lug-chair near the fire. He tried to remember everything he had ever heard of the man. Managing director he had once described himself. Managing director of a business organisation with tentacles deep inside the government of most major powers. An organisation which ADSAD had once called Force X but which they had later discovered was known as the Society for the Advancement of Terror, Anarchy and Nihilism. Probably the same top-flight power-behind-the-cabinet set-up which both Disraeli and Lord Acton had hinted at even in the nineteenth century. But with a constitution and staff which adapted itself to the times and which could still pull off major coups against any government with a secret capable of being developed by private individuals.

  The board must number some of the wealthiest men alive. Yet their chairm
an had always operated through the pseudonym ZERO. All melodramatic enough on the surface. But grimly real when one got down to brass tacks. Zero for the nihilism and destruction of civilised order which it represented. Zero for the faceless leader who usually remained in the background. Zero for the boss-man of a terror which disciplined even the most junior of SATAN’s members into gibbering fear and prevented them ever from squealing. Zero for the man whose name must never be mentioned in public. Zero the unknown nothing. Zero, symbol of the closed circle which aimed eventually at back-room control of every government body. Zero, the closed circle which probably aimed in the very long term even at world dictatorship through infiltrating into the key positions of UNO and every other international group which held real power. ‘Where did we slip up?’ he asked again. ‘How could you know where to come?’

  The younger man was holding a Biretta and Grant was sitting with both hands loose on his knees as Zero snapped open a cigarette case and loaded a small white ‘aquafilter’ holder. ‘How stupid can some people be?’ he said quietly. ‘But perhaps you were caught off balance. This was the obvious place to come. Professor Carpenter has been known to interested parties for several months. And it is probably giving nothing away to tell you that he has been playing a small but important part in drug-running. And judging from the efforts which were made to kill any man who might have been lurking on your Perthshire moors this afternoon, or should I have said yesterday afternoon, one must suppose that something very important happened up there. Now if you were looking for someone on the moors you must have believed that there was someone there who must be either caught or killed. And since I employed a man at your local headquarters I was obliged to suppose that my agent had been discovered. But more, that he had talked and that others of my men had attracted attention either by killing or wounding him. In fact that you were reacting by trying to kill or capture my own people.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘All of which would have meant little if I hadn’t heard hints about Professor Carpenter’s most recent discovery and arranged to have his movements continually recorded. He was traced to Glasgow last Tuesday and every person who left the building which he visited was accounted for. Especially when the Professor failed to come out even for luncheon or tea. And, naturally, when I learned from reports that one particular car had been followed from Glasgow to Perthshire and to a place which we now know to be a regional headquarters of sorts for your own organisation it seemed clear that our paths had once more become entangled.’

  He nodded to his assistant. ‘Bring a fresh cup, Tony. I feel like some coffee. Now then,’ he continued, ‘what would you have done? I suspected that Carpenter had gone to your headquarters, though I didn’t know for sure until trouble broke out and you started to fire the hills. But that was then enough to entitle me to suppose that the man had been taken there. Though almost certainly not of his own free will. I realised, of course, that things must have got out of hand or that your people would never have done so much that was bound to attract publicity unless the situation was desperate. And when my own men failed to report I guessed that they had either been caught or killed. So I again followed the Glasgow technique and tailed every car leaving the place. One seems to have taken the American Ambassador to Turnhouse airport. But a second delivered a mysterious patient to a nursing home in Perth.’

  He looked cynically at Grant. ‘Another of my people called there a few hours ago to enquire after the invalid. He was allowed to see him for a short time. Enough, I may add, to deal with him. You see,’ he said apologetically, ‘we had no way of knowing what the man might have admitted to you and the rules of our combine are quite definite. Where there is reasonable grounds for suspicion that a man has spoken out of turn he is formally executed. In this case we used old-fashioned prussic acid and my only regret is that we may never know exactly what happened unless you care to tell the story yourself. But I must say,’ he added grimly, ‘that I shall sleep rather better for knowing that we took no chances.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he continued. ‘I have accounted for two cars. But there was a third, and up to date I don’t precisely know where it went or who it carried, although I also expect to have a full report about that before so very long and I won’t be surprised to hear that it held anyone from the editor of The Times to the Prime Minister himself, because the whole set-up has long ago begun to look as though some very major development is taking place.

  ‘However, there was also a fourth car,’ he added gently. ‘A fourth car which carried your own good self. So we decided to trace you through to the bitter end, wherever that might be, and you can imagine how annoyed I was when you disappeared somewhere near Lanark. But my men were convinced that you had been carrying someone in your car. That there was a bundle of sorts in the back. Various people had passed you on the way south and on two separate occasions they were cars driven by men in whose judgement I always place the greatest reliance. So when they said that there was someone in the back, then there was someone in the back. And taking everything into consideration it was likely to be Professor Carpenter.

  ‘Naturally, of course,’ he said dryly, ‘I had other tentacles operating in other places, but this house was such an obvious possibility that I decided to come here myself and see what happened. We waited for less than an hour and I can hardly tell you how gratified I felt when you justified my deductions. In fact, for a few seconds life had little more to offer.’

  He sipped his coffee and nibbled at a biscuit. ‘Let me correct that. Because life still does have one or two important things to offer before this incident can be written off the books. In particular I want to know where the Professor keeps his research records and exactly what he has done which is important enough to bring yourself and your colleagues hot foot from Paris to discuss it with the American Ambassador and other high-ups. So would you care to tell me?’

  Grant glanced at his pipe lying on the floor by his feet. ‘May I smoke?’

  Zero nodded to the young man who was covering them from near the door. ‘Keep a very sharp eye on Dr. Grant while he picks up his pipe. And move very slowly, Doctor. Very slowly indeed. Do nothing, in fact, to make either Tony or myself suspicious.’

  Grant gently lifted his briar and Zero handed over a box of his own matches. ‘And keep on being equally co-operative if you want to save the young lady trouble.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘You are too much of a realist to expect much for yourself, but it is always possible that she may live to tell the tale. Provided you answer my questions. And answer without hesitation. Because at the first sign of lying I shall shoot her through the right knee.’ He eased a pistol from an armpit holster and laid it easily across his thighs. ‘Then if you lie a second time I shall shoot you through the stomach.’ He poured out some more coffee. ‘And I must in fairness to myself say that I detest this sort of situation. I believe in getting things as far as possible without violence and I feel acutely self-conscious when circumstances force me to behave like a Middle Ages Grand Inquisitor. However, you can understand that since this situation has now arisen the best thing we can all do is behave reasonably and avoid trouble.’

  Grant puffed carefully and spoke to the girl. ‘Relax, Miss Carpenter. I’ll start nothing. And I’m sorry that I’ve landed you into this.’

  ‘All of which is very nice,’ said Zero quietly, ‘but having put Deirdre Carpenter’s mind at ease would you care to answer my first question? What is the general nature of Professor Carpenter’s discovery?’

  Grant knew when not to take chances. The best he could hope for was to save the girl and then somehow try to save himself. After that he could clear up any mess which might be made by so-called confession. ‘A new birth-control pill,’ he said curtly. ‘Pill or fluid. Both can be used.’

  ‘And why is it so important? After all, we’ve already got Anovlar and Conovid, quite apart from Volidan, Ovulen and Lyndiol and various others, all said to be perfectly effective. What is the particular advantage of Professor Carpen
ter’s discovery?’

  Grant took a deep breath. ‘One single dose is enough to sterilise a woman for life.’ There was no way of guessing how much Zero already knew or whether he was being tested by questions to which the man already had the answers. If the girl was to be saved he could take no chances on even the most far-fetched bluff. This was the ultimate moment of truth and Zero carried out his promises.

  ‘I see.’ There was a purr of deep-seated satisfaction. ‘Yes, David Grant. I see. And see very well. No wonder your leaders were worried. So the unidentified car must have been either the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister. And, incidentally, just to put my mind at ease. Who was it? I’ll know in any case by morning but I’m anxious to see if one has still got the knack of fitting a jigsaw puzzle like this together. So which of them was it?’

  ‘The Prime Minister,’ said Grant curtly. The girl was staring at him in blank astonishment and a look of contempt had replaced the earlier fear in her eyes.

  Zero poured a third cup of coffee and lit still another cigarette. ‘How very, very, interesting! And you all spoke about the tactical implications of this as a new weapon with long-term significance. A new idea really,’ he mused. ‘Instead of killing them, stop them from being born. But to continue. Can this new chemical be used in a practical manner? Is it effective in minutely fractional dilution?’

  ‘About one in two and a half million,’ said Grant.

  ‘And since you are being so co-operative what is its provisional name?’

  ‘PENTER 15.’

  ‘Neat and descriptive,’ smiled Zero. ‘Presumably Professor Carpenter is like all of God’s creatures and a little vain. Hence the PENTER. But why 15?’

  Grant shook his head. Perhaps because it was the fifteenth experiment. But who could tell?

  ‘Who indeed?’ agreed Zero. ‘And it hardly matters. But has the Professor manufactured much of this stuff?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Zero stared at him intently. ‘I’m inclined to believe you. But let’s put it another way. Does any PENTER 15 now exist at all? And if so where is it?’