Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

“That’s what they say. Unless the water has been stored and covered beforehand, that is. My God, what’s going to come of it all? I’ve never felt so damned helpless in my life. We don’t seem to have a single solitary lead into this business. If only we had a suspicion, the slightest pointing finger as to whom was behind all this – well, by heaven, if we could get to him I’d turn my back and let Cavell here get to work on him.”

I drained my glass and put it down. “You mean that, sir?”

“What do you think?” He glanced up from his glass then stared at me with his tired grey eyes. “What do you mean? Cavell? Can you point a finger?”

“I can do better than that, sir. I know. I know who it is.”

The General was a great disappointment as far as reaction went. He always was. No gasps, no wide-eyed stares, no emotional pyrotechnics. He murmured: “Half of my kingdom, Pierre. Who?”

“The last proof,” I said. “The last proof and then I can say. We missed it and it was staring us in the face. At least, it was staring me in the face. And Hardanger. To think the country depends on people like us to safeguard them. Policemen, detectives. We couldn’t detect the holes in Gruyére cheese.” I turned to Hardanger. “We’ve just made a pretty thorough search of the garden. Agreed?”

“Agreed. So?”

“Hardly missed a square foot?” I persisted.

“Go on,” he rumbled impatiently.

“Did you see any signs of freshly-built masonry? Huts? Sheds? Walls? Fishponds? Decorative stonework? Any thing?”

He shook his head, his eyes wary. I was going off my rocker. “Nothing. There was nothing of the kind.”

“Then what happened to all the cement in the empty cement bags in the tool-shed? The ones we saw when we found the tarpaulin there? It didn’t vanish. And the few breeze-blocks we saw? Probably only the remainder of a fair stack of them. If outdoor masonry work wasn’t a hobby of MacDonald’s, then what would be the most likely place to find such masonry work? In a dining-room? In a bedroom?”

“Suppose you tell me, Cavell?”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you.” I left them, went out to the tool-shed and hunted around for a crowbar or pick. I could find neither. The nearest was a small sledge. It would have to do. I picked it up along with a bucket, went into the kitchen where the General and Hardanger were waiting for me, filled the bucket at the kitchen sink and led the way down the stairs to the cellar. Hardanger, apparently oblivious of the presence of the dead man dangling from the ceiling, said heavily, “What do you propose to demonstrate, Cavell? How to make coal briquettes?”

The telephone rang in the hallway upstairs. Automatically, we all looked at each other. Dr. MacDonald’s incoming calls might be very interesting. Hardanger said, “I’ll answer it,” and left.

We heard his voice on the phone, and then my name being called. I started up the stairs, conscious of the General following me.

Hardanger handed me the phone. “For you. Won’t give his name. Wants to speak to you personally.”

I took the receiver. “Cavell speaking.”

“So you are on the loose and the little lady wasn’t lying.” The words came over the wire like a deep, dark and throaty whisper. “Lay off, Cavell. Tell the General to lay off, Cavell. If you want to see the little lady alive again.”

These new synthetic resins are pretty tough so the receiver didn’t crush in my palm. It must have been pretty close, though. My heart did a long slow summersault and landed on its back with a thud. I kept my voice steady and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The beautiful Mrs. Cavell. I have her. She would like to speak to you.”

A moment’s silence, then her voice came. “Pierre? Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry–” Her voice broke off abruptly in a gasp followed by a scream of agony. Silence. Again the dark whisper, “Lay off, Cavell,” and then the click of a replaced receiver. I replaced mine, the receiver making a sharp staccato rattle against the rest. My hand was the hand of a man with the ague.

Shock or fear or both may have frozen my face into an expression of normalcy or maybe the make-up on my face didn’t transmit expression too well. Whichever it was, they didn’t notice anything amiss for the General said, “Who was it?” in a normal curious tone.

“I don’t know.” I paused and went on mechanically, “They’ve got Mary.”

The General had had his hand on the door. Now he dropped it to his side in a ridiculously slow-motion gesture that took almost ten seconds while something in his face died. Hardanger whispered something, something unprintable: his face was like a stone. Neither of them asked me to repeat what I had said, neither was in the slightest doubt as to what I had meant.

“They told us to lay off,” I went on in the same wooden voice. “Or they’d kill her. They have her, all right. She spoke a few words and then screamed. They must have hurt her, badly.”

Hardanger said, almost desperately, “How could he have known that you had escaped? Or even suspected? How–”

“Dr. MacDonald is how,” I said. “He knew – Mrs. Turpin told him – and the killer learnt from MacDonald.” I stared almost unseeingly at the General’s face, a face still impassive, but with all the life and animation gone from it. I went on, “I’m sorry. If anything happens to Mary it will be my fault. My own criminal folly and negligence.”

The General said, “What are we going to do, my boy?” The voice was tired and listless to match the dullness that had replaced the soldierly tire in his eye. “You know they are going to kill your wife. People like that always kill.”

“We’re wasting time,” I said harshly. “Two minutes, that’s all I need. To make sure.”

I ran down to the cellar, picked up the bucket and tossed half its contents against the opposite wall. The water spread and ran down quickly to the floor. As a cleaning agent it was a dead failure, making hardly any impression whatsoever on the ingrained coal dust of a score or more of years. With the General and Hardanger still watching uncomprehendingly I threw the remainder of the bucket’s contents against the rear wall, where the coal had been piled so high before my recent excavation. The water splashed off and ran down into the coal, leaving the wall almost as clear and clean and fresh as if it had been built only a few weeks previously. Hardanger glared at it, then at me then back at the wall again.

“My apologies, Cavell,” he said. “That would be why the coal was piled so high against the wall – to conceal the traces of recent work.”

I didn’t waste time speaking, time was now the one commodity we’d run clear out of: instead I picked up the sledgehammer and swung at the upper line of breeze work – the lower portion was solid concrete. One swing only. I felt as if someone had slid a six-inch stiletto between my right ribs. Maybe the doctor had been right, maybe my ribs weren’t as securely anchored as nature had intended. Without a word I handed the sledge to Hardanger and sat down wearily on the upturned bucket.

Hardanger weighed sixteen stone and in spite of the calm impassivity of his features he was just clear mad all the way through. With all the power and vicious determination that was in him he attacked that wall of breeze as if it were the archetype of all things evil on earth. The wall hadn’t a chance. On the third stroke the first block of breeze was splintered and dislodged and within thirty seconds he had hammered in a hole about two feet square. He stopped, looked at me and I rose to my feet like the old, old man I felt I was and switched on my torch. Together, we peered into the peephole.