Donald Hamilton: The Devastators

In a way, it was a moment of achievement. I had gone the long way around the barn with the hatchet, but I had my chicken in sight at last.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to finish the job, alone in this cave with my hands tied. It would also be nice if I could manage to get out alive afterwards, but it wasn't, I knew, considered absolutely essential to a satisfactory operation. Mac had made that clear enough.

Madame Ling motioned me away from the foot of the stairs so the dark-faced man could descend. I moved back in a docile manner. I was careful not to look too long or too hard at the plump man in the white coat. I didn't want to scare him prematurely. It was McRow, all right, a little thinner both as to hair and figure than the description I'd been given-as if they'd been working him hard-but unmistakably the man I'd been sent to find.

"On second thought," Madame Ling said, "perhaps you had better inoculate him right away, Doctor. There is no time to waste. I would like to have our statistics as complete as possible when I send in my report."

McRow said, "We should wait six hours after administering the serum. And then we can't be sure of his reaction to the culture for two days, at least not if it should be negative."

She said impatiently, "I know all that. Cut the six hours to four; give him the culture just before we embark. We will take him on board the ship with us; we will bring along all the negative ones, so you can watch them for symptoms up to the last possible moment. I have arranged for a trustworthy courier to meet us at sea, but the ship is not very fast, and it will be a few days before we reach an area where he can safely make contact. Get what you need right away, and bring it down to my quarters."

"Yes, Madame."

McRow turned quickly and hurried out of the chamber, his dirty coat flapping about his knees. The dark-faced man signaled to the men above, and the shaft of daylight was cut off as the trapdoor settled into place solidly, like the lid of a well-made coffin.

"This way, Mr. Helm," said the Chinese woman. "Be careful. These passages were not made for people your height. The McRows-McRues as they were then called- have apparently always been short men, like our scientific friend, whom you obviously recognized."

She gestured toward the opening through which McRow had vanished. I moved that way, bending over so as not to crack my skull. An electric conduit had been strung along the rocky roof of the tunnel-presumably not by the ancient Mckues-with a neat glass globe every fifteen feet or so: a gasketed, damp-proof installation, I noticed. The lights gave adequate illumination, but I had to be careful not to scalp myself on them.

I said, without looking around, "Then he really is descended from the chiefs of Clan McRue?"

"Oh, yes," the woman behind me said. "That is not a fantasy, although he has many of them. There are a great many mad Scotsmen, you know. I think the damp climate must affect the brain. Certainly it would drive me to insanity if I had to endure a lifetime of it."

She was getting quite chatty. I decided that she must have a reason for trying to establish friendly relations- well, friendly for the circumstances-and that I might as well cash in on it, whatever it was.

I said, challengingly, "There's no record of an American branch of the family. I checked in a library in London."

"I know. They were all supposed to have been wiped out in a bloody feud, were they not? But apparently, when the castle was about to be overwhelmed, the young McRue sent his wife and baby to safety down these passages and went back to conceal the trapdoor and fight to the death beside his father. The wife never dared to reveal herself. She fled to America, taking the boy with her. The family name became corrupted over there as the family fortunes fell. But the story was passed on. He told it to me one night, boasting of his ancient lineage. Ancient!" Madame Ling laughed softly. "A mere two or three centuries! But his description of this place, as he had heard it, interested me, and I investigated and found that the ruins and caves actually did exist, almost unknown, and were suitable for our purposes… Just a moment. Stop, please. Open that door to your right."

I glanced at her, shrugged, and pulled the door open. It moved sluggishly, not so much because it was heavy, as because it seemed to be hooked onto a lot of machinery. There was a fine-mesh screen door beyond. The first thing I noticed was the smell. It reminded me of my childhood, when I'd raised white mice for some reason I can't recall.

Then I saw the cages, rows upon rows of them, on each side of the long, narrow room. Above them, down each side of the room, ran a long rod in bearings, geared to an electric motor at the end nearest the door. On each rod, above each vertical stack of cages, was a pulley, and from each pulley a chain ran down to the upper cage door, which in turn was linked to the one below it, and so on clear to the bottom.

That was the mechanical part of the display. The rest was just rats-or maybe I should say rodents. The cages held big rats, little rats, big mice, little mice, moles, ground squirrels, and real, honest-to-God squirrels, both gray and red, with fine bushy tails. There were other small ratty animals I couldn't identify, and I may have got some of the first ones wrong, since they didn't seem to be the American varieties with which I was familiar.

"I would not go any closer, Mr. Helm," Madame Ling said quietly. "You have not yet received your inoculation. In theory, the disease is transmitted from rats to humans by fleas, and we have tried to make sure there are no fleas here, to simplify the matter of control. We are assuming that a rodent will eventually pick up suitable fleas wherever he may be transported. However, there have been a few unfortunate occurrences indicating that Dr. McRow's hyper-active variety of the disease manages to find other means of transmission-perhaps fleas or mosquitoes, we are not sure-when there are no fleas available. So I would not open the screen door if I were you."

I hadn't the slightest intention of opening it. I looked at the collection of twittering, scratching, nose-twitching, stinking rodents. I drew a long breath, wondering if I were breathing death, and said, "They are all infected?"

"Of course." She laughed softly. "You have been wondering why I have been telling you so much, Mr. Helm. This is our secret weapon, and our insurance. If Colonel Stark should manage to locate us before we make our escape tonight, I want you to be able to confirm what I radio him about this. You have noticed the motors? There is a switch in a room below. It can be actuated either manually or electronically. If there is any threat to this place before we leave, or to the ship afterward, I will close that switch-either by hand or by remote control-and all these cages will open. They will also open automatically, after we have departed, if anyone disturbs certain warning devices hidden throughout these caves, which I will energize as I leave."

"Tricky," I said.

"Very tricky, Mr. Helm. You will note that the room narrows at the far end; it is actually only a crevice in the rock, which we have widened. The crevice goes on into the hill and meets other crevices, which come to the surface in various holes, like the one into which you fell. The switch also opens this door, allowing the animals to find other tunnels throughout the bluff. To accelerate their dispersal, a harmless gas is released that they find most unpleasant. Once they are loose, do you think anyone will ever catch them all? And if one, just one, escapes with the disease it carries, the population of Scotland is doomed. The population of Britain is doomed. And only rigorous quarantine measures will prevent the plague from spreading over the water to the Continent and further. And that is what will happen if the Colonel should act rashly. I am sure that, if the occasion arises, you will be glad to help me persuade him to be reasonable."