by Sapper
“Then, if necessary, go to war. Go to war for one day – against both of them. And at the end of that day say to them – ‘ Now will you stop? If you don’t, the same thing will happen to you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until you do!’”
“But what will happen to them?” I cried.
“Universal, instantaneous death over as large or as small an area as is desired.”
I think it was at that moment that I first began to entertain doubts as to Robin’s sanity. Not that people dining near would have noticed anything amiss with him: his voice was low-pitched and quiet. But the whole idea was so utterly far-fetched and fantastic that I couldn’t help wondering if his brilliant brain hadn’t crossed that tiny bridge which separates genius from insanity. I knew the hideous loathing he had always felt for war: was it possible that continual brooding on the idea had unhinged him?
“It was ready at Armistice time,” he continued, “but not in its present form. Today it is perfected.”
“But, damn it all, Robin,” I said, a little irritably, “what is this IT?”
He smiled and shook his head.
“Not even to you, old man, will I tell that. If I could I would keep it entirely to myself, but I realise that that is impossible. At the moment there is only one other being in this world who knows my secret – the great-hearted pacifist who has financed me. He is an Australian who lost both his sons in Gallipoli, and for the last two years he has given me ceaseless encouragement. Tonight I am meeting him again – I haven’t seen him for three months – to tell him that I’ve succeeded. And tomorrow I’ve arranged to give a secret demonstration before the Army Council.”
He glanced at his watch and stood up.
“I must be off, John. Coming my way?”
Not wanting to go back so early I declined, and I watched his tall spare figure threading its way between the tables. Little did I dream of the circumstances in which I was next to meet him: a knowledge of the future has mercifully been withheld from mortal man. My thoughts as I sat on idly at the table finishing my cigar were confined to what he had been saying. Could it be possible that he had indeed made some stupendous discovery? And if he had, was it conceivable that it could be used in the way he intended and achieve the result he desired? Reason answered in the negative, and yet reason didn’t seem quite conclusive.
“Universal, instantaneous death.”
Rot and rubbish: it was like the wild figment of a sensational novelist’s brain. And yet – I wasn’t satisfied.
“Hullo, Stockton! how goes it? Has she left you all alone?”
I glanced up to see Toby Sinclair grinning at me from the other side of the table.
“Sit down and have a spot, old man,” I said. “And it wasn’t a she, but a he.”
For a while we sat on talking, and it was only when the early supper people began to arrive that we left. We both had rooms in Clarges Street, and for some reason or other – I forget why – Sinclair came into mine for a few minutes before going on to his own. I mention it specially, because on that simple little point there hung tremendous issues. Had he not come in – and I think it was the first time he had ever done so: had he not been with me when the telephone rang on my desk, the whole course of events during the next few months would have been changed. But he did come in, so there is no good speculating on what might have happened if he hadn’t.
He came in and he helped himself to a whisky-and-soda and he sat down to drink it. And it was just as I was following his example that the telephone went. I remember wondering as I took up the receiver who could be ringing me up at that hour, and then came the sudden paralysing shock.
“John! John! Help. My rooms. Oh! my God.”
So much I heard, and then silence. Only a stifled scream, and a strange choking noise came over the wire, but no further words. And the voice had been the voice of Robin Gaunt.
I shouted down the mouthpiece, and Sinclair stared at me in amazement. I feverishly rang exchange, only to be told that the connection was broken and that they could get no reply.
“What the devil is it, man?” cried Sinclair, getting a grip on my arm. “You’ll wake the whole bally house in a moment.”
A little incoherently I told him what I’d heard, and in an instant the whole look of his face changed. How often in the next few weeks did I see just that same change in the expression of all that amazing gang led by Drummond, when something that necessitated action and suggested danger occurred. But at the moment that was future history: the present concerned that agonised cry for help from the man with whom I had just dined.
“You know his house?” said Sinclair.
Down in Kensington, “I answered, Got a weapon of any sort?”
I rummaged in my desk and produced a Colt revolver – a relic of my Army days.
“Good,” he cried. “Stuff some ammunition in your pocket, and we’ll get a move on.”
But there’s no necessity for you to come,” I expostulated.
“Go to hell,” he remarked tersely, and jammed his top hat on his head. “This is the sort of thing I love. Old Hugh will turn pea-green with jealousy tomorrow when he hears.”
We were hurtling West in a taxi, and my thoughts were too occupied with what we were going to find at the other end to inquire whom old Hugh might be. There was but little traffic – the after supper congestion had not begun – and in less than ten minutes we pulled up outside Robin’s house.
“Wait here,” said Toby to the taxi-driver. “And if you hear or see nothing of us within five minutes, drive like blazes and get a policeman.”
“Want any help now, sir?” said the driver excitedly.
“Good lad!” cried Sinclair. “But I think not. Safer to have someone outside. We’ll shout if we do.”
The house was in complete darkness, as were those on each side. The latter fact was not surprising, as a “To be Sold” notice appeared in front of each of them.
“You know his rooms, don’t you? “said Sinclair. “Right! Then what I propose is this. We’ll walk straight in as if we’re coming to look him up. No good hesitating. And for the love of Allah don’t use that gun unless it’s necessary.”
The front door was not bolted, and for a moment or two we stood listening in the tiny hall. The silence was absolute, and a light from a lamp outside shining through a window showed us the stairs.
“His rooms are on the first floor,” I whispered. “Then let’s go and have a look at ’em,” answered Toby.
With the revolver in my hand I led the way. One or two stairs creaked loudly, and I heard Sinclair cursing under his breath at the noise. But no one appeared, and as we stood outside the door of Robin’s sitting-room and laboratory combined, the only sound was our own breathing.
“Come on, old man,” said Toby. “The longer we leave it the less we’ll like it. I’ll open the door, and you cover anyone inside with your gun.”
With a quick jerk he flung the door wide open, and we both stood there peering into the room. Darkness again and silence just like the rest of the house. But there was one thing different: a faint, rather bitter smell hung about in the air.
I groped for the switch and found it, and we stood blinking in the sudden light. Then we moved cautiously forward and began an examination.
In the centre of the room stood the desk, littered, as usual, with an untidy array of books and papers. The telephone stood on one corner of it, and I couldn’t help thinking of that sudden anguished cry for help that had been shouted down it less than a quarter of an hour before. If only it could speak and tell us what had happened!
“Good Lord! Look at that,” muttered Toby. “It’s blood, man: the place is running in blood.”
It was true. Papers were splashed with it, and a little trickle oozed sluggishly off the desk on to the carpet.
The curtains were drawn, and suddenly Toby picked up a book and hurled it at them.
One of Drummond’s little tricks,” he remarked. “If there’s anyone
behind you can spot it at once, and with luck you may hit him in the pit of the stomach.”
But there was no one there: there was no one in the room at all.
“Where’s that door lead to?” he asked.
“Gaunt’s bedroom,” I answered, and we repeated the performance.
We looked under the bed, and in the cupboard: not a sign of anybody. The bed was turned down ready for the night, with his pyjamas laid in readiness, and in the basin stood a can of hot water covered with a towel. But of Robin or anyone else there was no trace.
“Damned funny,” said Toby, as we went back into the sitting room.
“What’s that scratching noise?”
It came from behind the desk, and suddenly a little short-tailed, tawny-coloured animal appeared.
“Holy smoke!” cried Toby, “it’s a guinea-pig. And there’s another of ’em, Stockton: dead.”
Sure enough a little black one was lying rigid and stretched out close to the desk.
“Better not touch it,” I said warningly. “Leave everything as it is.”
And then a thought struck Toby.
“Look here, Stockton, he can’t have been whispering down the ‘phone. Isn’t there anyone else in the house who would have heard him?”
“There is no other lodger,” I said. “His landlady is probably down below in the basement, but she’s stone deaf. She’s so deaf that Gaunt used generally to write things down for her in preference to talking.”
“I think we ought to see the old trout, don’t you?” he said, and I went over and rang the bell.
“She may or may not hear it,” I remarked, as we waited. “Incidentally, what on earth is this strange smell?”
Sinclair shook his head.
“Search me. Though from the look of those bottles and test-tubes and things I assume your pal was a chemist.”
A creaking on the stairs, accompanied by the sounds of heavy breathing, announced that the bell had been heard, and a moment later the landlady appeared. She stared at us suspiciously until she recognised me, which seemed to reassure her somewhat.
“Good-evening,” I roared. “Have you seen Mr Gaunt tonight?”
“I ain’t seen him since yesterday morning,” she announced. “But that ain’t nothing peculiar. Sometimes I don’t see ’im for a week at a time.”
“Has he been in the house here since dinner? I went on.
“I dunno, sir,” she said. “He comes and he goes, does Mr Gaunt, with ’is own key. And since ’e pays regular, I puts up with ’im in spite of all those ’orrors and chemicals and things. I even puts up with ’is dog, though it does go and cover all the chairs with white ’airs.”
“Dog,” said Toby thoughtfully. “He’d a dog, had he ?
A wire-haired terrier called Joe,” I said. Topping little beast.”
“Then I wonder where the dickens it is?” he remarked. “Good Lord! what’s all that?”
From the hall below came the sound of many footsteps, and the voice of our taxi-driver.
“This will give the old dame a fit,” said Toby with a grin. “I’d forgotten all about our instructions to that stout-hearted Jehu.”
There were two policemen and the driver who came crowding into the room amidst the scandalised protests of the landlady.
“Five minutes was up, sir, so I did as you told me,” said the driver.
“Splendid fellow,” cried Toby. “It’s all right, constable: that revolver belongs to my friend.”
The policeman, who had picked it up suspiciously from the desk, transferred his attention to me.
“What’s all the trouble, sir? “he said. “Don’t be alarmed, mother: no one’s going to hurt you.”
“She’s deaf,” I told him, and he bellowed in her ear to reassure her.
And then, briefly, I told the two constables exactly what had happened. I told them what I knew of Gaunt’s intentions after he had left me, of the cry for help over the telephone, and of our subsequent movements. The only thing I did not feel it incumbent on me to mention was the object of his meeting with the Australian. I felt that their stolid brains would hardly appreciate the matter, so I left it at business.
“Quarter of an hour you say, sir, before you got here. You’re sure it was your friend’s voice you heard?
“Positive,” I answered. “Absolutely positive. He had an unmistakable voice, and I knew him very well.”
And at that moment from the window there came a startled exclamation. The second constable had pulled the curtains, and he was standing there staring at the floor.
“Gaw lumme,” he remarked. “Look at that.” We looked. Lying on the floor, stone dead, and twisted into a terrible attitude was Robin’s terrier. We crowded round staring at the poor little chap, and it seemed to me that the strange smell had become much stronger.
Suddenly there came a yell of pain, and one of the policemen, who had bent forward to touch the dog, started swearing vigorously and rubbing his fingers.
“The little beggar is burning hot,” he cried. “Like touching a red-hot coal.”
He looked at his finger, and then there occurred one of the most terrible things I have ever seen. Literally before our eyes the fingers with which he had touched the dog twisted themselves into knots: then the hand: then the arm. And a moment later he crashed to the ground as if he’d been pole-axed, and lay still.
I don’t know if my face was like the others, but they were all as white as a sheet. It was so utterly unexpected, so stunningly sudden. At one moment he had been standing there before us, a great, big, jovial, red-faced man: the next he was lying on the carpet staring at the ceiling with eyes that would never see again.
“Don’t touch him,” said a hoarse voice which I dimly recognised as my own. “For God’s sake, don’t touch him. The poor devil is dead anyway.” The other policeman, who had gone down on his knees beside the body, looked up stupidly. Ordinary accidents, even straightforward murder, would not have shaken him, but this was something outside his ken.
“I don’t understand, sir,” he muttered. “What killed him?”
“He was killed because he touched that dead dog,” said Sinclair gravely. “We can none of us tell any more than that, officer. And this gentleman is afraid that if you touch him the same thing may happen to you.”
“But it’s devil’s work,” cried the constable, getting dazedly to his feet. “It ain’t human.”
For a while we stood there staring at the dead man, while the landlady rocked hysterically in a chair with her apron over her head. Of the four of us only I had the remotest idea as to what must have happened: to the others it must have seemed not human, as the policeman had said. And even to me with my additional knowledge the thing was almost beyond comprehension.
Robin’s wonderful invention; the strange smell which seemed to be growing less, or else I was getting accustomed to it; the dead dog, from which the smell obviously came; and finally the dead policeman, were all jumbled together in my mind in hopeless confusion. That Joe had been killed by this damnable thing his master had perfected was fairly obvious; but why in Heaven’s name should Robin have killed a dog whom he adored? The guinea-pig I could understand – but not Joe.
“It looks as you say, constable, like devil’s work,” I said at length. “But since we know that that does not happen we can only conclude that the devil in this case is human. And I think the best thing to do is to ring up Scotland Yard and get someone in authority here at once. This has become a little above our form.”
“I agree,” said Sinclair soberly. “Distinctly above our form.”
The constable went to the telephone, and the taxi-driver stepped forward.
“If it’s all the same to you, gents,” he said, “I think I’ll wait in the cab outside. I kind of feel safer in the fresh air.”
“All right, driver,” said Sinclair. “But don’t go away: they’ll probably want your evidence as well as ours.”
“Inspector MacIver coming at once, sir,�
� said the constable, replacing the receiver with a sigh of relief. “And until he comes I think we might as well wait downstairs. Come along, mother: there ain’t no good your carrying on like that.”
He supported the old landlady from the room, and when we had joined him in the passage he shut and locked the door and slipped the key in his pocket. And then, having sent her down to her basement, we three sat down to wait for the Inspector.
“Cigarette, Bobby?” said Sinclair, holding out his case. “Helps the nerves.”
“Thank you, sir: I don’t mind if I do. It’s fair shook me, that has. I’ve seen men killed most ways in my time – burned, drowned, hung – not to say nothing of three years in the war; but I’ve never seen the like of that before. For ’im just to go and touch that there dead dog, and be dead ’imself.” He looked at us diffidently. “Have you got any idea, gentlemen, as to what it is that’s done it?”
“It’s some ghastly form of poison, constable,” I said. “Of that I’m pretty certain. But what it is, I know no more than you. Mr Gaunt was a marvellous chemist.”
“A damned sight too marvellous,” said the policeman savagely. “If it’s ’im what’s done it I’m thinking he’ll find himself in Queer Street when he comes back.”
“I think it’s if he comes back,” I said. “There’s been foul play here – not only with regard to that dog, but also with regard to Mr Gaunt. He idolised that terrier: nothing will induce me to believe that it was he who killed Joe. Don’t forget that cry for help over the telephone. Look at all that blood. It’s my firm belief that the clue to the whole mystery lies in the Australian gentleman whom he was going to meet tonight. He left me at Prince’s to do so. Find that man, and you’ll find the solution.”
“Have you any idea what he looks like?” asked Toby.
That’s the devil of it,” I answered. “I haven’t the slightest. All I can tell you is that he must be a fairly wealthy man who had two sons killed in Gallipoli.”
The policeman nodded his head portentously.
“The Yard has found men with less to go on than that, sir,” he remarked. “Very likely he’ll be putting up at one of the swell hotels.”