Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

“Sure. In a couple of weeks. Or a couple of months. Our friend with the Satan Bug has promised to do his stuff in a few hours. Damn it, Superintendent, we can’t just wait for something to turn up. Organisation, no matter on how massive a scale, won’t do it. Method number two, lighting a meerschaum and making like Sherlock, isn’t going to get us far either. We have to provoke a reaction.”

“You already provoked a reaction,” Hardanger said sourly. “See where it got you? You want more reactions. How?”

“As a starter, investigate every financial transaction and every bank book entry of everyone working in number one, every entry in the past year – and don’t forget Weybridge and Cliveden. Let the suspects know. Then squads of policemen to every house. Search each house from top to bottom and have the searchers list every tiniest thing they find. This will not only worry the man we’re after – it might actually turn up something.”

“If we’re going to go that far,” Inspector Wylie put in, “we might as well throw the lot of them in the cooler. It’s one sure way of taking our man out of circulation.”

“Hopeless, Inspector. We may be dealing with a maniac but he’s a brilliant maniac. He’d have thought of that possibility months ago. He’s got an organisation – nobody in Mordon could possibly have delivered those letters in London this morning – and you can bet your pension that the first thing he’d have done after getting the viruses would be to get rid of them.”

“We’ll try stirring things up,” Hardanger said reluctantly. “Though where I’m going to find all the men to–”

“Pull them off the house-to-house questioning. It’s a waste of time.”

He nodded, again reluctantly, and spoke at length on the phone while I finished dressing. When he put the phone down he said to me, “I’m not going to waste my breath arguing. Go ahead and kill yourself. But you might think of Mary.”

“I’m thinking of her all right. I’m thinking that if our unknown friend gets careless with the Satan Bug there’ll soon be no Mary. There’ll be nothing.”

This seemed to be a pretty effective conversation stopper but after some time Wylie said thoughtfully, “If this unknown friend does give a demonstration I wonder if the Government really would close down Mordon.”

“Close it? Our pal wants it flattened to the ground. It’s impossible to guess what they will do. Things are only at the badly-scaring stage so far – no one’s out and out terrified.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hardanger said sourly. “And just what are you thinking of doing now, Cavell? If you’ll be kind enough to tell me,” he added with heavy irony.

“I’ll tell you. Don’t laugh, but I’m going to disguise my self.” I fingered the scars on my left cheek. “A little assistance from Mary and her war-paint and these will be gone. Horn-rim spectacles, a pencil moustache, grey suit, credentials identifying me as Inspector Gibson of the Metropolitan Police and I’m a changed man.”

“Who’s going to supply the credentials?” Hardanger asked suspiciously. “Me?”

“Not necessary. I always carry them around with me, anyway, just in case.” I ignored his stare and went on, “And then I’ll call again on our friend Dr. MacDonald. In his absence, if you understand. The good doctor, on a modest salary, manages to live like a minor Eastern potentate, everything except the harem, and maybe he discreetly keeps that somewhere else. Also drinking heavily because he’s worried stiff, about the Satan Bug and his own personal safety. I don’t believe him. So I’m calling on him.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Hardanger said heavily. “MacDonald is above suspicion. Long, distinguished and spotless record. Spent twenty mintues this morning going over it.”

“I’ve read it,” I said. “Some of the star turns in the Old Bailey over the past few years have had immaculate records – until the law caught up with them.”

“He’s a highly respected character locally,” Wylie put in. “Bit of a snob, associates only with the very best people, but everyone speaks very well of him.”

“And there’s more to his record than you’ve read, Cavell,” Hardanger went on. “In the report there’s only a brief mention of his wartime service in the Army but it so happens I’m a personal friend of the colonel who commanded MacDonald’s regiment in the last two years of the war. I rang him up. Dr. MacDonald, it seems, has been strangely reticent about himself. Did you know that as a second lieutenant in Belgium in 1940 he won the D.S.O. and the bar, that he finished up as a lieut-colonel in a tank regiment with a string of medals as long as your arm?”

“I didn’t and I don’t get it,” I admitted. “He struck me as a phoney-tough type, who, if ever he’d done any valorous deeds, wouldn’t have been backward about admitting them. He wanted me to think he was afraid: he didn’t want me to think he was brave. Why? Because he knew he had to justify his heavy drinking so he put it down to personal fear. But, in view of his record, it almost certainly wasn’t that. Queer item number one. Queer item number two – why wasn’t all this listed in his security report? Easton Derry compiled most of those dossiers – and Derry would be unlikely to overlook so large a gap in a man’s history.”

“I don’t know about that,” Hardanger admitted. “But this much is certain – if the report I had on MacDonald is correct then on the face of it it seems highly unlikely that a man so brave, selfless and patriotic could possibly be mixed up in anything like that.”

“This colonel of MacDonald’s regiment who told you about him – could you get him down here immediately?”

Hardanger let me have his cool speculative look. “Thinking he’s a phoney in every sense? That this man’s been substituted for the real MacDonald?”

“I don’t know what to think. We must have another squint at his record card and check that Derry really did compile it.”

“We can soon fix that,” Hardanger nodded. This time he was on the phone for almost ten minutes and when he’d finished with that so had Mary with my face and I was all ready to go. Hardanger said, “You look bloody awful but I wouldn’t recognise you if I saw you in the street. The file’s in the safe in my hotel. Shall we go there?”

I turned to leave the room. Hardanger took a look at the palms and fingers of my hands, still slowly welling blood from the hack-saw scratches. He said irritably, “Why didn’t you have the doctor bandage your fingers as well? Want to get blood poisoning?”

“Have you ever tried to use a gun with your fingers bandaged together?” I asked sourly.

“Well, man, a pair of gloves then. That’s ridiculous.”

“Just as bad. Couldn’t get a finger through the trigger guard.”

“Rubber gloves,” he said impatiently. “Plastic.”

“It’s a point,” I agreed. “Certainly it would hide those damn’ scratches.” I stared at him without seeing him then sat down heavily on the bed. “Hell’s bells!” I said softly.

I sat very still for a few seconds. Nobody spoke. I went on, speaking more to myself than anyone else, “Rubber gloves. To cover the scratches. Then why not elastic stockings? Why not?” I looked up vaguely and saw Hardanger glancing at Wylie, maybe thinking that they had let the doctor go too soon, but Mary came to my rescue.

She touched my arm and I turned to look at her. Her face was set and the big green eyes wide with apprehension and the birth of an unpleasant certainty.

“Mordon,” she whispered. “The fields round it. Gorse, they’re covered with gorse. And she was wearing elastic stockings, Pierre.”