by Sax Rohmer
We crowded together to look through the thick glass behind the grille.
I saw a long, narrow workroom, well lighted. It resembled less a laboratory than a machine shop, but I noticed chemical impedimenta, mostly unfamiliar. That which claimed and held my attention was the figure of a short, thick-set man wearing a white linen coat. He lay face downward, arms outstretched, some two paces from the door. Owing to his position, it was impossible to obtain more than a glimpse of the back of his head. But there was something grimly significant in the slump of the body.
The workmen carried on unceasingly. I thought I had heard few more mournful sounds than those of the blows of the hammer and splintering of stout wood as they struggled to force a way into the locked laboratory.
“This is ghastly,” Smith muttered, “ghastly! He may not be dead. Have you sent for a doctor?”
“I am myself a qualified physician,” Bailey replied, “and following Inspector Gallaho’s advice, I have not notified the local police.”
“Good,” said Gallaho.
“I am still far from understanding the circumstances,” snapped Nayland Smith, with the irritability of frustration. “You say that Doctor Jasper has been locked in his laboratory all day?”
“Yes. His ways have become increasingly strange for some time past. Something—I can only guess what—evidently occurred which threw him into a state of nervous tension some ten days or a fortnight ago. Then again, last Wednesday to be exact, he seemed to grow worse. I have come to the conclusion, Sir Denis, that he had received two of these notices. The third—I dictated its contents to the inspector over the telephone—must actually have come by the second post this morning.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“All his mail passes through my hands, and I now recall that there was one letter marked ‘Personal & Private’ which naturally I did not open, delivered at eleven forty-five this morning.”
“Eleven forty-five?”
“Yes.”
I saw Smith raise his wrist watch to the light shining out from the grille.
“Two minutes short of midnight,” he murmured. “The message gave him twelve hours. We are thirteen minutes too late.”
“But do you realise, Sir Denis,” the secretary cried, “that he is alone, and locked in? This door is of two-inch teak set in an iron frame. To batter it down would be impossible—hence this damnable delay! How can the question of foul play arise?”
“I fear it does,” Smith returned sternly. “From what you have told me I am disposed to believe that the ultimate result of these threats was to inspire Doctor Jasper to complete his experiments within the period granted him.”
“Good heavens!” I murmured, “you are right, Smith!”
The chauffeur and the mechanic laboured on the door feverishly, their hammer blows and the splintering of tough wood punctuating our conversation.
“He doesn’t move,” muttered Gallaho, looking through the grille.
“Might I ask, Mr Bailey,” Smith went on, “if you assisted Doctor Jasper in his experiments?”
“Sometimes, Sir Denis, in certain phases.”
“What was the nature of the present experiment?”
There was a perceptible pause before the secretary replied. “To the best of my belief—for I was not fully informed in the matter—it was a modified method of charging rifles—”
“Or, one presumes, machine guns?”
“Or machine guns, as you say. An entirely new principle which he termed ‘the vacuum charger.’ ”
“Which increased the velocity of the bullet?”
“Enormously.”
“And, in consequence, increased the range?”
“Certainly. My employer, of course, is not a medical man, but a doctor of physics.”
“Quite,” snapped Smith. “Were the doctor’s experiments subsidised by the British government?”
“No. He was working independently.”
“For whom?”
“I fear, in the circumstances, the question is rather an awkward one.”
“Yet I must request an answer.”
“Well—a gentleman known to us as Mr Osaki.”
“Osaki?”
“Yes.”
“You see, Kerrigan”—Smith turned to me—“here comes the Asiatic element! No description of Mr Osaki (an assumed name) is necessary. Descriptions of any one of Osaki’s countrymen sound identical. This Asiatic gentleman was a frequent visitor, Mr Bailey?”
“Oh yes.”
“Was he a technician?”
“Undoubtedly. He sometimes lunched, with the doctor and spent many hours with him in the laboratory. But I know for a fact that at other times he would visit the laboratory without coming through the house.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“There is a lane some twenty yards beyond here and a gate. Osaki sometimes visited the doctor when he was working, entering by way of the gate. I have seen him in the laboratory, so this I can state with certainty.”
“When was he here last?”
“To the best of my knowledge, yesterday evening. He spent nearly two hours with Doctor Jasper.”
“Trying, no doubt, to set his mind at rest about the second notice from the Si-Fan. Then this morning the third and final notice arrives. But Mr Osaki, anxious about results, phones at noon—”
“Binns, the butler, thinks the caller this morning was Osaki—”
“Undoubtedly urging him to new efforts,” jerked Smith. “You understand, Kerrigan?”
“For heaven’s sake are you nearly through?” cried Bailey to the workmen.
“Very nearly, sir. It’s a mighty tough job,” the chauffeur replied.
To the accompaniment of renewed hammering and wrenching:
“There are two other points,” said Bailey, his voice shaking nervously, “which I should mention, as they may have a bearing on the tragedy. First, at approximately half past eleven, Binns, who was in his pantry at the back of the house, came to me and reported that he had heard the sound of three shots, apparently coming from the lane. I attached little importance to the matter at the time, being preoccupied about the doctor, and assuming that poachers were at work. The second incident, which points to the fact that Doctor Jasper was alive after eleven-thirty, is this:
“A phone call came which Binns answered. The speaker was a woman—”
“Ah!” Smith murmured.
“She declined to give her name but said that the matter was urgent and requested to be put through to the laboratory. Binns called the doctor, asking if the line should be connected. He was told, yes, and the call was put through. Shortly afterwards, determined at all costs to induce the doctor to return to the house, I came here and found him as you see him.”
A splintering crash announced that the end of the task of forcing the door was drawing near.
“Had the doctor any other regular visitors?” jerked Smith.
“None. There was one lady whom I gathered to be a friend, although he had never spoken of her—Mrs Milton. She lunched here three days ago and was shown over the laboratory.”
“Describe Mrs Milton.”
“It would be difficult to describe her. Sir Denis. A woman of great beauty of an exotic type, tall and slender, with raven-black hair—”
“Ivory skin,” Smith went on rapidly, “notably long slender hands, and unmistakable eyes, of a quite unusual colour, nearly jade green—”
“Good heavens!” cried Bailey, “you know her?”
“I begin to believe,” said Nayland Smith, and there was a curious change of quality in his voice, “that I do know her. Kerrigan”—he turned to me—“we have heard of this lady before?”
“You mean the woman who visited General Quinto?”
“Not a doubt about it! I absolve Ardatha: this is a zombie—a corpse moving among the living! This woman is a harbinger of death and we must find her.”
“You don’t suggest,” cried Bailey, “that Mrs Milton is i
n any way associated—”
“I suggest nothing,” snapped Smith.
A resounding crash and a wrenching of metal told us that the lock had been driven through. A moment later and the door was flung open.
I clenched my fists and for a moment stood stock still.
An unforgettable, unmistakable, but wholly indescribable odour crept to my nostrils.
“Kerrigan!” cried Smith in a stifled voice and sprang into the laboratory—“you smell it, Kerrigan? He’s gone the same way!”
Bailey had hurried forward and now was bending over the prone body. In the stuffy atmosphere of this place where many queer smells mingled, that of the strange deathly odour which I must always associate with the murder of General Quinto predominated to an appalling degree.
“Get those blinds up! Throw the windows open!”
Hale, the chauffeur, ran in and began to carry out the order, as Smith and Bailey bent and turned the body over…
Then I saw Bailey spring swiftly upright. I saw him stare around him like a man stricken with sudden madness. In a voice that sounded like a smothered scream:
“This isn’t Doctor Jasper,” he cried; “it’s Osaki!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IN THE LABORATORY
“The Green Death! The Green Death again!” said Nayland Smith.
“Whatever is it?” There was awe in my voice. “It’s ghastly! In heaven’s name what is it?”
We had laid the dead man on a sort of day bed with which the laboratory was equipped, and under the dark Asiatic skin already that ghastly greenish tinge was beginning to manifest itself.
The place was very quiet. In spite of the fact of all windows being opened that indescribable sweetish smell—a smell, strange though it may sound, of which I had dreamed, and which to the end of my life I must always associate with the assassination of General Quinto—hung heavily in the air.
Somewhere in a dark background beyond the shattered door the chauffeur and mechanic were talking in low voices.
Mr Bailey had gone back to the house with Inspector Gallaho. There was hope that the phone call which had immediately preceded the death of Osaki might yet be traced.
The extension to the laboratory proved to be in perfect order, but the butler was in so nervous a condition that Gallaho had lost patience and had gone to the main instrument.
“This,” said Smith; turning aside and staring down at a row of objects which lay upon a small table, “is in many ways the most mysterious feature.”
The things lying there were those which had been in the dead man’s possession. There was a notebook containing a number of notes in code which it would probably take some time to decipher, a wad of paper money, a cigarette case, a, railway ticket, a watch, an ivory amulet and a bunch of keys on a chain.
But (and this it was to which Nayland Smith referred) there were two keys—Yales—unattached, which had been found in the pocket of the white coat which Osaki had been wearing. “We know,” Smith continued, “that both these keys are keys of the laboratory, and Mr Bailey was quite emphatic on the point that Doctor Jasper possessed only one. What is the inference, Kerrigan?”
I sniffed the air suspiciously and then stared at the speaker. “I assume the inference to be that the dead man also possessed a key of the laboratory.”
“Exactly.”
“This being the case, why should two be found in his possession?”
“My theory is this: Doctor Jasper, for some reason which we have yet to learn, hurried out of the laboratory just before Osaki’s appearance, and—a point which I think indicates great nervous disturbance—left his key in the door. Osaki, approaching, duplicate, key in hand, discovered this. Finding the laboratory to be empty, he put on a white jacket—intending to work, presumably—and dropped the key in the pocket in order to draw Doctor Jasper’s attention to this carelessness when the doctor returned.”
“No doubt you are right, Smith!”
“You are possibly wondering, Kerrigan, why Osaki, finding himself being overcome by the symptoms of the Green Death, of which we know one to be an impression of beating drums, did not run out and hurry to the house.”
“I confess the point had occurred to me.”
“Here, I think, is the answer. We know from the case of General Quinto that the impression of beating drums is very real. May we not assume that Osaki, knowing as he certainly did know that imminent danger overhung Doctor Jasper and himself, believed the menace to come from the outside—believed the drumming to be real and deliberately remained in this place?”
“The theory certainly covers the facts, but always it brings us back to—”
“What?”
“The mystery of how a man…”
“A man locked in alone,” Smith snapped, “can nevertheless be murdered and no clue left to show what means has been employed! Yes!” the word sounded almost like a groan. “The second mystery, of course, is the extraordinary behaviour of Doctor Jasper…”
He paused.
From somewhere outside came the sound of running footsteps, a sudden murmur of voices, then—I thought Hale, the chauffeur, was the speaker:
“Thank God, you’re alive, sir!”
A man burst into the laboratory, a short, thick-set, dark man, hair dishevelled and his face showing every evidence of the fact that he had not shaved for some time. His eyes were wild—his lips were twitching; he stood with clenched hands looking about him. Then his pale face seemed to grow a shade paler. Those staring eyes became focussed upon the body lying on the sofa.
“Good God!” he muttered, and then addressing Smith:
“Who are you? What has happened?”
“Doctor Martin Jasper, I presume?”
“Yes, yes! But who are you? What does this mean?”
“My name is Nayland Smith; this is Mr Bart Kerrigan. What it means, Doctor Jasper, is that your associate Mr Osaki has died in your place!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DR. MARTIN JASPER
“You are indeed a fortunate man to be alive.” Nayland Smith gazed sternly at the physicist. “You have been preparing a deadly weapon of warfare—not for the protection of your own country, but for the use of a belligerent nation.”
“I am entitled,” said Dr. Jasper, shakily wiping his wet brow, “to act independently if I choose to do so.”
“You see the consequences. As he lies, so you might be lying. No, Doctor Jasper. You had received three notices, I believe, from the Si-Fan.”
Dr. Jasper’s twitching nervousness became even more manifest.
“I had—but how do you know?”
“It happens to be my business to know. The Si-Fan, sir, cannot be ignored.”
“I know! I know!”
The doctor suddenly dropped on to a chair beside one of the benches and buried his dishevelled head in his hands.
“I have been playing with fire, but Osaki, who urged me to it, is the sufferer!”
He was very near to the end of his resources; this was plain enough, but:
“I am going to suggest,” said Nayland Smith, speaking in a quiet voice, “that you retire and sleep, for if ever a man needed rest, you do. But first I regret duty demands that I ask a few questions;”
Dr. Jasper, save for the twitching of his bands, did not stir.
“What were the Si-Fan’s orders?”
“That I deliver to them the completed plans and a model of my vacuum charger.”
“This invention I take it, gives a great advantage to those employing it?”
“Yes.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “It increases the present range of a rifle rather more than fifty per cent.”
“To whom were you to deliver these plans and model?”
“To a woman who would be waiting in a car by the R.A.C. call box at the corner of the London Road.”
“A woman!”
“Yes. A time was stated at which the woman would be waiting at this point. Failing my compliance, I was told th
at on receipt of a third and final notice at any hour during the twelve which would be allotted to me, if I cared to go to this call box, I should be met there by a representative.”
“Yes?” Smith urged gently. “Go on.”
The speaker’s voice grew lower and lower.
“I showed these notes to Osaki.”
“Where are they now?”
“He took them all. He urged me, always he urged me, to ignore them. By tonight I thought that my experiments would be completed, that I should have revolutionised the subject. He was to meet me here in the laboratory, and we both fully anticipated that the charger would be an accomplished fact.”
“He had a key of the laboratory?”
“Yes.”
Nayland Smith nodded to me.
“Just before half past eleven an awful dread possessed me. I thought that the price which I should receive for this invention would be useless to a dead man. Just before Osaki was due I took my plans, my model—everything, slipped on a light coat, in the pockets of which I placed all the fruits of my experiments, and ran—I do not exaggerate—ran to the appointed spot.”
“What did you find? By whom were you met?” Smith snapped. “There was a car drawn up on the north side of the road. A woman was just stepping into it—”
“Describe her.”
“She is beautiful—dark—slender. I know her as Mrs Milton. I know now she is a spy!”
“Quite enough. What happened?”
“She seemed to be much disturbed as I hurried up. Her eyes—she has remarkable eyes—opened almost with a look of horror.”
“What did she do—what did she say?”
“She said: ‘Doctor Jasper, are you here to meet me?’ I was utterly dumbfounded. I knew in that awful moment what a fool I had been! But I replied that I was.”
“What did she say then?”
“She enumerated the items which I had been ordered to deliver up—took them from me one by one… and returned to the car. Her parting words were, ‘You have been wise.’ ”
“Then your invention, complete and practical, is now in the hands of the Si-Fan?”
“It is!” groaned Dr. Jasper.