The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “What’s that noise?” cried Toby.

  It sounded like a motor bicycle being ridden over undulating ground, or a distant aeroplane on a gusty day. It was the drone of an engine—now loud, now almost dying away, but all the time increasing in volume. Shout after shout of mad laughter came from Gaunt, and once he rushed dancing into the room with arms outstretched above his head.

  “He comes,” he cried. “And the war will cease.”

  And now the noise of the engine was loud and continuous and seemed to come from close at hand. Gaunt in a frenzy of joy was shouting meaningless phrases whilst we stood there marooned in his foul poison, utterly bewildered. For the moment intense curiosity had overcome all other thoughts.

  Suddenly Gaunt reappeared again, staggering and lurching with something in his arms. It was a pipe similar to the one which had so nearly caused our death, and he dropped the nozzle in the liquid.

  “I’ll cheat him,” chuckled Gaunt. “The traitor.”

  It was Drummond who noticed it first, and his voice almost broke in his excitement.

  “It’s sinking, you fellows: it’s sinking.”

  It was true: the level of the liquid was sinking fast. Hardly daring to believe our eyes we watched it disappearing: saw first one and then another of the dead men come to rest on the floor and lie there sodden and dripping. And all the time Robin Gaunt stood there chuckling and muttering.

  “Go on, pump: go on. I will give you the last drop.”

  “But where’s it being pumped to?” said Jerningham dazedly. “I suppose we aren’t mad, are we? This is really happening. Great Scott! look at him now.”

  Holding the pipe in his hands, Gaunt went to pool after pool of the poison as they lay scattered on the uneven floor. His one obsession was to get enough, but at last he seemed satisfied.

  “You shall have more,” he cried. “The tank is still half full.”

  He lurched up the passage with the piping, and a few seconds later we heard a splash.

  “Go on,” came his shout. “Pump on: there is more.”

  “Devil take it,” cried Drummond. “What is happening? I wonder if it’s safe to cross this floor.”

  “Be careful, old man,” said Jerningham. “Hadn’t we better let it dry out a bit more? Everything is still ringing wet.”

  “I know that. But what’s happening? We’re missing it all. Who has pumped up this stuff?”

  He gave a sudden exclamation.

  “I’ve got it. Chuck me a handkerchief, someone. These two books will do.”

  He sat down on the table, and tied a book to the sole of each of his shoes. Then he cautiously lowered himself to the ground.

  “On my back—each of you in turn,” he cried.

  And thus did we escape from that ghastly room, to be met with a sight that drove every other thought out of our mind. Floating above the wooden hut so low down that it shut out the whole sky was a huge black shape. It was Wilmot’s dirigible.

  Standing by the tank of which Helias had spoken was Robin Gaunt, and the piping which had drained the liquid from the room was now emptying the main reservoir.

  “Enough: there will be enough,” he kept on saying. “And this time he will succeed. The war will stop. Instantaneous, universal death. And I shall have done it.”

  “But there isn’t any war, Robin,” I cried.

  He stared at me vacantly through his goggles.

  “Instantaneous, universal death,” he repeated. “It is better so—more merciful.”

  We could see the details of the airship now: pick out the two central gondolas and the keel which formed the main corridor of the vessel. And once I thought I saw a man peering down at us—a man covered with just such a garment as Robin was wearing.

  “Pumping it into a ballast tank,” said Toby, going to the door. “You see that: they’re letting water out as this stuff goes in.”

  He pointed to the stern of the vessel, and in the dim light it was just possible to see a stream of liquid coming out of the airship.

  “To think,” he went on dazedly, “that ten days ago I went for one of Wilmot’s Celebrated Six-hour Trips and had Lobster a l’Américain for lunch.”

  Suddenly the noise of the engine increased, and the airship began to move. I glanced at Robin and he was nodding his head triumphantly.

  “I knew there would be enough,” he cried. “Go: go, and stop the senseless slaughter.”

  The poor devil stood there, his arms thrown out dramatically while the great vessel gathered speed and swung round in a circle. Then she flew eastwards, and five minutes later was lost to sight.

  “Well, I’m damned,” said Jerningham, sitting down on the grass and scratching his head.

  “You’re certain it was Wilmot’s?” said Drummond.

  “Absolutely,” said Toby. “There’s no mistaking her.”

  “Can’t we get any sense out of Gaunt?” cried Jerningham.

  “Where is he anyway?”

  And just then he appeared. He had taken off his suit of india-rubber, and I gave an exclamation of horror as I saw his face. From chin to forehead ran a huge red scar; the blow that gave it to him must have well-nigh split his head open. He came towards us as we sat on the ground, and stopped a few yards away, peering at us curiously.

  “Who are you?” he said. “I don’t know you.”

  “Don’t you know me, Robin?” I said gently. “John Stockton.”

  For a while he stared at me: then he shook his head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I went on. “Tell us why your poison is pumped up into the airship.”

  “To stop the war,” he said instantly. “It flies over the place where they are fighting and sprays the poison down. And everyone touched by the poison dies.”

  “It sounds fearfully jolly,” remarked Drummond. “And what happens if a shell bursts in the airship; or an incendiary bullet?”

  A sudden look of cunning came on Robin’s face.

  “That would not matter,” he answered. “Not one: nor even two. And an incendiary bullet is useless. Just death. Instantaneous, universal death.”

  He stared out over the sea, and Drummond shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.

  “Or better still, as I have told them all,” went on Robin dreamily, “is a big city. The rain of death. Think of it! Think of it in London…”

  “Good God!” With a sudden gasp Drummond got to his feet. “What are you saying, man? What do you mean?”

  “The rain of death coming down from the sky. That would stop the war.”

  “But there isn’t a war,” shouted Drummond, and Robin cringed back in terror.

  “Steady, Drummond,” I said. “Don’t frighten him. What do you mean, Robin? Is that airship going to spray your poison on London?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps if the war doesn’t stop he will do it. I have asked him to.”

  He wandered away a few paces, and Jerningham shook his head.

  “Part of the delusion,” he said. “Why, damn it, Wilmot is trying to float a company.”

  “I know that,” said Drummond. “But why has he got that poison on board?”

  “It’s possible,” I remarked, “that he is taking the stuff over to some foreign Power to sell it.”

  “Then why not make it over there and save bother?”

  To which perfectly sound criticism there was no answer.

  “Anyway,” said Drummond, “there is obviously only one thing to do. Get out of this, and notify the police. I should think they would like a little chat with Mr Wilmot.” And then suddenly he stared at us thoughtfully. “Wilmot! Can it be possible that Wilmot himself is Peterson?”

  He shook both his fists in the air suddenly.

  “Oh! for a ray of light in this impenetrable fog. Who was down there last night? Whom did we see signalling from the sea? Why did they want the poison? Why does the airship want it? In fact, what the devil does it all mean? Hullo! What’s Ted got hold of?”

  Jerningham was c
oming towards us waving some papers in his hand.

  “Just been into another room,” he cried, “and found these. Haven’t examined them yet, but they might help.”

  With a scream of rage Robin, who had been standing vacantly beside us, sprang at Jerningham and tried to snatch the papers away.

  “They’re mine,” he shouted. “Give them to me.”

  “Steady, old man,” said Drummond, though it taxed all his strength to hold the poor chap in his mad frenzy. “No one is going to hurt them.”

  “It’s gibberish,” I said, peering over Jerningham’s shoulder. He was turning over the sheets, on which disconnected words and phrases were scrawled. They had been torn out of a cheap notebook and there seemed to be no semblance of order or meaning. Stray chemical formulae were mixed up with sentences such as “Too much to the sea. I have told him.”

  “Just mad gibberish,” I repeated. “What else can one expect?”

  I turned away, and as I did so Jerningham gave a cry of triumph.

  “Is it?” he said. “That’s where you’re wrong. It may not help us much, but this isn’t gibberish.”

  In his hand he held a number of sheets of paper covered with Robin’s fine handwriting. He glanced rapidly over one or two, and gave an excited exclamation.

  “Written before he lost his reason,” he cried. “It’s sense, you fellows—sense.”

  And the man who had written sense before he lost his reason was crying weak tears of rage as he still struggled impotently in Drummond’s grip.

  CHAPTER X

  In Which We Read the Narrative of Robin Gaunt

  Many times since then have I read that strange document, the original of which now lies in Scotland Yard. And whenever I do my mind goes back to that September morning, when, sitting in a circle on the short clipped turf two hundred feet above the Atlantic, we first learned the truth. For after a while Robin grew quiet, though I kept an eye on him lest he should try and snatch his precious papers away. But he didn’t: he just sat a little apart from us staring out to sea, and occasionally babbling out some foolish nonsense.

  Before me as I write is an exact copy. Not a line will be altered: not a comma. But I would ask those who may read to visualise the circumstances under which we first read that poor madman’s closely guarded secret with the writer himself beside us, and the gulls screaming discordantly over our heads.

  I am going mad.

  [Thus it started without preamble.]

  I, Robin Caxton Gaunt, believe that I shall shortly lose my reason. The wound inflicted on me in my rooms in London: the daily torture I am subjected to, and above all the final unbelievable atrocity which I saw committed with my own eyes, and for which, so help me God, I feel a terrible personal responsibility, are undermining my brain. I have some rudimentary medical knowledge: I know how tiny is the dividing line between sanity and madness. And I have been seeing things lately that are not there: and hearing things that do not exist.

  It may be that I shall never complete this document. Perhaps my brain will go first: perhaps one of these devils will discover me writing. But I am making the attempt, and maybe in the future the result will fall into the hands of someone who will search out the arch monster responsible and kill him as one kills a mad dog. Also—for they showed me the newspapers at the time—it may help to clear my character from the foul blot which now rests on it. Though why John Stockton, who I thought was my friend, didn’t say what he knew at the inquest I can’t imagine.

  [That hurt, as you may guess.]

  I will begin at the beginning. During the European war I was employed at Headquarters on the chemical branch. And just before the Armistice was signed I had evolved a poison which, if applied subcutaneously, caused practically instant death. It was a new poison unknown before to toxicologists, and if it were possible I would like the secret to die with me. God knows, I wish now I had never discovered it. Anyway I will not put down its nature here. Sufficient to say that it is the most rapid and deadly drug known at present in the civilised world.

  As a death-dealing weapon, however, it suffered from one grave disadvantage: it had to be applied under the skin. To impinge on a cut or a small open place was enough, but it was not possible to rely on finding such a thing. Moreover, the method of distribution was faulty. I had evolved a portable cistern capable of carrying five gallons, which could be ejected through a fine-pointed nozzle for a distance of over fifty yards when pressure was applied by means of a pump, on the principle of a pressure-fed feed in a motor-car. But a rifle bullet carries considerably more than fifty yards, and therefore rifle fire afforded a perfectly effective counter except in isolated cases of surprise.

  The possibilities of shells filled with the liquid, of distribution by aeroplane or airship, were all discussed and rejected for one reason or another. And the scheme which was finally approved consisted of the use of the poison on a large scale from fleets of tanks.

  All that, however, is ancient history. The Armistice was signed: the war was over: an era of peace and plenty was to take place. So we thought—poor deluded fools. Six years later found Europe an armed camp with every nation snarling at every other nation. Scientific soldiers gave lectures in which they stated their ideas of the next war: civilised human beings talked glibly of raining down myriads of disease germs on huge cities. It was horrible—incredible: man had called in science to aid him in destroying his fellow men, and science had obeyed him—at a price. It was a price that had not been contemplated: it was a case of another Frankenstein’s monster. Man had now to obey science, not science man: he had created a thing which he could not control.

  It was in the summer of 1924 that the idea first came to me of inventing a weapon so frightful that its mere existence would control the situation. The bare fact that it was there would act as the presence of the headmaster in a room full of small boys. One very forgetful lad might have to be caned once, after that the lesson would be learned. At first it seemed a wildly fanciful notion, but the more I thought of it the more the idea gripped me. And quite by chance in the July of that year when I was stopping in Scotland playing golf I met a man called David Ganton—an Australian—whose two sons had been killed in Gallipoli. He was immensely wealthy—a multi-millionaire, and rather to my surprise when I mentioned my idea to him casually one evening he waxed enthusiastic over it. To him war was as abhorrent as it was to me: and he, like I, was doubtful as to the efficacy of the League of Nations. He immediately placed at my disposal a large sum of money for research work, and told me that I could call on him for any further amount I required.

  My starting-point, somewhat naturally, was the poison I had discovered during the war. And the first difficulty to be overcome was the problem of the subcutaneous injection. A wound, or an opening of some sort, must be caused on the skin before the poison could act. For months I wrestled with the problem till I was almost in despair. And then one evening I got the solution—obvious, as things like that so often are. Why not mix with the poison an irritant blister which would make the little openings necessary?

  Again months of work, but this time with renewed hope. The main idea was, I knew, the right one: the difficulty now was to find some liquid capable of blistering the skin, which when mixed with the poison would not react with it chemically and so impair its deadliness. The blister and the poison had, in short, though mixed together as liquids, each to retain its own individuality.

  In December 1925 I solved the problem: I had in my laboratory a liquid so perfectly blended that two or three drops touching the skin meant instantaneous death.

  Then came the second great difficulty—distribution. The tank scheme, however effective it might have been when a war was actually raging, was clearly an impossibility in such circumstances as I contemplated. Something far more sudden, far more mobile was essential.

  Aeroplanes had great disadvantages. Their lifting power was limited: they were unable to hover: they were noisy.

  And then there came to my mi
nd the so-called silent raid on London during the war when a fleet of Zeppelins drifted downwind over the capital with their engines shut off. Was that the solution?

  There were disadvantages there too. First and foremost—vulnerability. Silent raids by night were not my idea of the function of a world policeman. But by day an airship is a comparatively easy thing to hit; and once hit she comes down in flames.

  The solution to that was obvious: helium. Instead of hydrogen she would be filled with the non-inflammable gas helium.

  Which brought me to the second difficulty—expense. Hydrogen can be produced by a comparatively cheap process—the electrolysis of water: helium is rare and costly.

  I met Ganton in London early in 1926 and told him my ideas. His enthusiasm was unbounded: the question of expense he waved aside as a trifle.

  “That’s my side of the business, Gaunt: leave that to me. You’ve done your part: I’ll do the rest.”

  And then, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, he calmly announced his intention of having a rigid dirigible constructed of the Zeppelin type.

  For many months after that I did not see him, though I was in constant communication with him by letter. Difficulties had arisen, as I had rather anticipated they might, but with a man like Ganton difficulties only increased his determination. And then there came on the scene the man—if such a being can be called a man—who goes by the name of Wilmot. What that devil’s real name is I know not; but if these words are ever read, then to the reader I say, seek out Wilmot and kill him, for a man such as he has no right to live.

  From the very first poor Ganton was utterly deceived. Letter after letter to me contained glowing eulogies of Wilmot. He too was heart and soul with me in his abhorrence of war; and, what was far more to the point, he was in a position to help very considerably with regard to the airship. It appeared that a firm in Germany had very nearly completed a dirigible of the Zeppelin type, to be used for commercial purposes. It was to be the first of a fleet, and the firm was prepared to hand it over when finished provided they secured a very handsome profit on the deal. They made no bones about it: they were constructing her for their own use and they were not going to sell unless it was really made worth their while.