The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  “Yes,” Nick said. “That’s the one with rats. That’s the one that wiped off half the population of Europe some centuries ago. That’s the one they worry about even in the United States at ports like Mobile or New Orleans or San Francisco.”

  “Could it—really work?” Captain Malta asked, his voice awed. “It’s hard to think—”

  “It may still work,” Nick said. “If they’ve loaded those trucks with infected rats to establish various foci at the naval base, at various barracks, at the docks, and in the Chinese quarter, not I nor twenty like me will stop the fire once it begins to burn!”

  “But exactly how do the rats do it? Why is it so difficult? It’s easy enough to trap a rat.”

  “The rat doesn’t do it. The rat is the carrier. There are two types of fleas that do it, they are infected, cheopis and asta. They climb onto a rat, live on him, infect him. When he dies, they hide in the dust and leap onto the next living thing that comes by. Since the long-tailed black mus rattus makes his home with man, he brings the flea into man’s quarters, and you have plague. In septicemic plague, there is a ninety percent mortality, and no treatment of any avail. The ten percent are just lucky. In pneumonic plague, man can then directly contaminate man by merely coughing! The possibilities are gruesome to look upon. As for trapping the rat, Captain, I will pay you a fine reward if you will find me the resting place of the rat. Like the elephant, the rodent burying ground has never been found. Think of it, there is one rat for every two persons in the world, and yet his tomb has never been found. A famous scientist connected with the Rockefeller Institute once spent much time in Manila, trying to find the rat’s grave, and never succeeded. It is most difficult to catch a dead rat, Captain, and in this case, it is the dead rat who is likely to have carried the sinister boarders who strike plague.”

  Captain Malta made no comment. His silence was one of dismay. They turned into Bishop Street and proceeded to the address. They found that the constabulary had already done an excellent piece of work. The street was roped off on either side, and the quarantine fumigating equipment stood by, waiting, the truck with the big pumps, hoses and cylinders of deadly hydrocyanic gas.

  A tall dignified man with a fine mustache met Malta, and the captain introduced the newcomer as Major Henry Dinwoody, commanding the soldiers who had been rushed to the scene. “We must move quickly,” Dinwoody said. “It’s possible they aren’t aware of us yet. This was done quickly and quietly.”

  “Is the rear covered?” Nick asked.

  “Quite thoroughly.”

  “And they aren’t aware?”

  “No, Doctor,” Dinwoody said. “They are loading small crates into the trucks.”

  Nick shuddered and said: “Let’s go, Captain. Don’t storm the place, Major. Just make certain that no one leaves the front entrance. And have the fumigating crew ready to pump. If there are any other people in these shops along the way, get them out, and force them to leave until we are finished. It will take time.”

  aptain Malta joined Nick. They were directed to the alley, followed it in the dark until they reached the area way behind the stores. They approached the rear of Laboratories Limited, and were quietly halted by a tough sergeant, looking queer with white gloves and white leggings. He recognized Malta and apologized. They had reached the line.

  “What arrangements have you made?” Captain Malta asked the sergeant.

  “I blow my whistle and we go in with the bayonet,” the sergeant said. He was very tall.

  Nick watched. Bare-legged, bare-armed coolies, who didn’t even realize what they were doing, earning their daily shilling, were bringing small wire-netted crates from the sliding rear door of the building and piling them one on top of the other in the rear of the various trucks.

  Close by the door, his arms folded stoically, stood a little man. Nick assumed it was the same Mr. Kita whose name adorned the trucks.

  Captain Malta passed a pistol and a flashlight to Nick. Nick rejected the pistol. — “Never killed a man in my life”—but took the torch. Nick said: “No point waiting, Captain. Leave the trucks as they are; don’t have your men touch them. Take every man in sight prisoner. The important thing is for me to get inside and seal that building. This is it, no doubt of it.”

  “Blow your whistle, Sergeant,” Captain Malta said.

  The sergeant took a breath and blew piercingly on his whistle. Soldiers evolved out of the darkness in more quantity than Nick had ever expected. He found himself running, right in the vanguard, striving for the open door before Kita leaped in and closed it. There would be the devil to pay if they couldn’t get in.

  Kita, surprised by the whistle and the sudden rush of men, threw his head one way and another and started shooting. Nick had not even seen him take a gun out, but the shots were vivid enough. His stomach was terrified, a rocklike knob, but his legs kept moving and his head was cool enough. He had a momentary vision as he approached the door of Kita pointing a gun almost directly into his face. It couldn’t happen to me, Nick thought in a flash, not me!

  Captain Malta, just behind him, fired at Kita and killed the Jap before Kita ever pulled his trigger. The proximity of Malta’s pistol to Nick’s ear was such that Nick thought he had burst an eardrum. His left ear rang and kept ringing but other than that internal ring, it was as deaf as a stone. He saw the coolies yelling and chattering in a frantic fear. They were quickly taken, no resistance offered. Poor souls, he thought, they’ve lived with death tonight and don’t even know it. He wondered how many of them had been infected by the valveless epipharynx of the plague flea.

  When he reached the door, he turned and went in. It was damned reassuring to have a man like Captain Malta at his side. The place was well lighted when they went in, but almost instantly, the fluorescent tubes died, and the building plunged into darkness. Nick had had a quick vision of the interior, and the room in which he stood he knew to be a former loft, now containing shelves in quantity separated by little alleys, and the shelves which rose from the floor to a six-foot height were filled with meshed cages in which the oddly sinister scuffle of the rats could be heard. Some of the beasts were squealing. It was ugly.

  “There’s a staircase on the left,” Nick panted. “Must go up to the laboratory itself. No one can get out?”

  “No one,” Captain Malta said grimly.

  “I’ll take the staircase, they must be up there!”

  “Let me go first, Adams, you’re not armed!”

  “No, no, it’s all right.”

  Nick found the staircase with his electric torch. The stairs were old and creaky and he heard each one of his own steps as he ascended. A voice ahead of him called, “Adams?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  A rough hard hand grasped him, swung him around and pulled him. The torch fell from his hand. Nick felt the cold barrel of a gun against his cheek—in the dark his assailant had meant for it to be against his head. There was a grunt. He heard Captain Malta trip on the stairs and curse. Then Malta called: “Adams, are you safe?”

  Nick’s assailant said: “Is that you, Malta?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want safe conduct,” the man said. He was strong. “This is Zeller speaking. I’m holding Adams here. If you don’t give me safe conduct, I’ll kill him. I’ll take him with me and release him when I get clear.”

  “Has he got you, Doctor?”

  It occurred to Nick that he had a golden opportunity. The gun was hard against his cheek. He jerked his head backwards and found the right side of Zeller’s thumb cushion against his mouth. He bit it as savagely as any animal, and he felt his teeth go deep. Zeller roared at the pain and futilely pounded Nick’s back with his fist. Then Captain Malta’s torch spotlighted them both. At that moment, the pressure of Nick’s teeth opening the muscles of Zeller’s hand, Zeller dropped his gun. It clattered down the stairs. Captain Malta raised his gun as Nick released Zeller’s hand.

  “Kamerad,” Zeller said. He did not raise his ha
nds. He shook the one which had been bitten. “Kamerad, Malta. I am taken.” He said it very quickly, not frightened, but quickly nevertheless, for Malta was not being merciful in the press of things.

  “This is a dangerous man,” Captain Malta said, “and I don’t want to lose him in this melee. Can you wait a few seconds, Adams, while I deliver him to a guard downstairs?”

  “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

  A gun in his back, Fritz Zeller said, his voice ugly: “I trust you have not infected me, Adams.”

  “You never know,” Nick said. “Better have a Pasteur treatment, although a chap like yourself should certainly have built up an immunization against rabies.”

  “We should have wiped you off early,” Zeller said. He went down the stairs with Malta behind him, grumbling something about the damned stubborn Dutchman.

  Alone, Nick Adams stood on the landing. His eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness, and that, coupled with the reflection of the electric torches on the floor of the loft below, showed him a door with an opaque glass upper half, marked Private and closed. He was wary. Then he called: “Paul! Paul Cameron!”

  There was a voice beyond the door. “Nick?” Cameron’s voice, but not cold and impersonal as it had always been. It was a tired voice, quivering with emotion.

  “It’s no use, Paul,” Nick called. “It’s finished, Paul.”

  The door opened. Cameron said: “Come in quickly.”

  Nick shivered and went in. He heard Cameron lock the door. They stood in the darkness. He heard Cameron moving. “Walk directly ahead,” said Cameron wearily. “You’ll find a chair. You’re a fool. You realize I could kill you as easily as I’d step on a spider? I’ve a Mauser here, Nick, in my hand.”

  “Why would you kill me?” Nick said. “I’m the only friend you have left in this world.”

  “Sit down,” Cameron said. “Sit down.”

  Nick found the chair and sat. He wished, vainly, that he could see Cameron’s face, for the voice was tortured. He was not afraid. He said: “In the name of God, Paul, why did you do it?”

  He heard a sigh. “It was so perfect,” Cameron whispered. “Damn you, Nick. Damn you, damn you. You’ve ruined a lifetime, you’ve destroyed a dream.… No, I have. I’ve done it myself, committed hara-kiri because I was still capable of one human frailty. From the beginning Sze and Zeller wanted to murder you, but I would not sanction it. I should have stayed in character and let them finish you, and tonight, Oahu would have begun its decline and fall. Oh my God, why were you my friend in the beginning?” His voice broke, then choked into silence.

  There was a long and tense pause. Outside on the landing, Captain Malta called: “Adams! Where are you?” Then the door rattled.

  Cameron fired at the door without warning, and the shot raised Nick’s hair and took his breath away. He had not expected it. Cameron said: “You had better explain to your friend, Nick. I’ll kill any man who comes through that door now. I’m not to be taken alive tonight.”

  “Malta!” Nick called feverishly. “Don’t come in! I’m in here, I’m all right. Please don’t come in.”

  “You may tell him that you will be out presently unharmed,” Cameron said. “I want to talk with you, Nick.”

  “I’ll be out in a few minutes unharmed,” Nick said. “Please be patient, Captain.”

  “Are you saying that at gunpoint?” Malta called sharply.

  “No, no,” Nick said. “He could shoot me if he wished. Please stand by, Captain.”

  The logic was plain. “Very well, Adams.”

  “I am sitting here,” Cameron said huskily in the dark, “and wondering what is being thought in that neat and honest mind of yours, Nick.”

  “Incredulity mostly.”

  “You hate me,” Cameron said in a tight voice.

  “I’m incapable of hate,” Nick said. “But I can’t forgive you this, for any reason, because you are a doctor. I could forgive no man who had sworn his fidelity by the Hippocratic oath such a black rotten plot. It was your job to save lives, not extinguish them. It was your job to put everything else in life aside—all your personal wishes—and save, not destroy.”

  “You’d never understand,” Cameron said.

  “Right. A chauvinist perhaps. But not a doctor.”

  ameron’s teeth were gritted and his voice was fierce. “I’ve owed them this, the verdamnt Yankees, owed them it since April 1917. If they had stayed at home, tended their own business, we would not be at war today; we Germans would have won the first war, as it was intended we should! But you Yankees interfered; you did not defeat us, you tired us, and you postponed the war for twenty years. This time, I swore I would take care of you.”

  He coughed. Nick stunned, said: “We Germans, did you say?”

  “Yes. We Germans. I am a German. First, last, always. I saw the pattern of things to come so far back when my kin and friends were killed by American soldiers. I saw what would happen. The Armistice confirmed this. I knew at once I must work from within. The opportunity would come. I even assumed United States citizenship. Then the opportunity came. I saw what would happen—the same story again—but this time we had Japan with us. Oahu, the impregnable Pacific fortress—there was an objective to reduce!”

  Nick grimaced at the sound of jubilance in Cameron’s hard voice.

  “After the attack on Pearl Harbor, I knew more than ever that the base could not be taken from the outside unless first it was softened up on the inside. That was my task. Fortunately, I had been working on the premise long before the Japanese flew in from the west and decimated your fleet—”

  “How in God’s name—”

  Cameron raised his hands. “It took time and patience. I began a year ago, almost, with fifty rats, male and female. As you know, their gestation period is twenty-one days, and in three months, the newborn can also breed, so that by the end of the year when I reached a figure of five thousand rats, all mus rattus, the time had come to inoculate them. These rats had all been maintained in the lofts below in their cages, well fed and uninfected, as far as we could help. I imported cheopis and asta fleas from Haifa and Jaffa, from India and from Manila. In other words, under the seal of the Cardwell Institute I imported the bacillus pestis. The time had come. I proceeded to infect every rat in the loft with fleas, allowed a suitable incubation period for the vermin to sicken. Tonight they are alive with plague. In hours—”

  “That’s over,” Nick said harshly. “Do you hear? Finished.”

  Cameron said grimly: “It would have been ghastly, Nick. But it would have served its purpose. The Japanese did not have to take Oahu. They had only to reduce it to impotency, drive the U.S. fleet back to the coast, knowing it constituted no threat to their lines of communication.… I could have accomplished that, almost alone. But it is finished, as you say, and I am finished. I am very tired.”

  “What happened to MacFerson?” Nick said.

  “Gone in the sea. That was Zeller’s department. Venner was Zeller’s department. There was another, an American sergeant. Kita shot him in the stomach. I don’t know where he died. You were Zeller’s department, he put Sze on you. But I forbade violence.… In one way”—he spoke very slowly now—“I am glad that no cause contributed to my failure but the cause of friendship. The Jekyll frustrated the Hyde. There is something reassuring in the thought.” His voice hardened. “Rid the earth of malcontents, Nick, when you look for disease, for they are disease and while they exist, the meek shall never inherit the earth. Please leave me now, and I give you fair warning, don’t let me see you again.”

  “You’re going to give yourself up, Paul. Don’t be a fool. You’re surrounded here, we’re sealing the building, you’re alone.”

  “Get out, Nick. Tell Malta to try and take me. I’ve six bullets left in the pistol, good for six men.”

  Nick rose and felt his way to the door. “Good-bye, Paul,” he said. There was no point persuading. He knew from Cameron’s voice.

  Nick unlocked the
door and stepped out. The door was slammed and locked behind him. He ran into Malta’s arms. Captain Malta said, “Adams!”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In there.”

  “I’ve got to bring him out.”

  “You haven’t a chance. No windows, he’s in a closed room. He’d shoot you the instant you opened the door. He won’t give himself up.”

  “I want that man,” Malta said.

  “Come along,” Nick said. “The man is finished but the rats are not. The plague is more important than the man who fashioned it. I promise you that you’ll have Cameron, but first I want the life of every rat and flea in this pesthole. Tell your men to seal all windows, seal all doors, check the roof and sides for ventilators. The building is to be made as air-tight as possible. And remove all inhabitants from the buildings around in an area of five hundred yards.”

  “Very well, Adams.”

  Nick descended the stairs to the floor of the loft. There were electric torches flashing around. He saw the crated rats, red-eyed, scuffling, squealing, panicky. His skin crawled. He walked out of the place quickly. He borrowed a light to look at his trousers but they were devoid of fleas. The chances in that hole were terrific. He watched the men sealing up the building. When Captain Malta came out, Nick said: “These trucks will have to be driven some place and burned. They’re thoroughly infected at this point and we can’t openly spray them with the gas. It’s too deadly.”

  Captain Malta ordered the soldiers to drive the trucks out toward Barber’s Point and to set them all together out there and await instructions. “I’ll call the Army post and ask them if they can’t use a flame-thrower on the blasted things. That’s quick fire to kill everything in a hurry.”

  They went around through the alley to Bishop Street and soon the report came that the place was sealed. The quarantine crew made a quick inspection of their own, then ran a hose into the building. The pumps started, and the hydrocyanic gas went in.

  “But Cameron!” Malta said suddenly. “What about Cameron?”