Fred White: Below Zero

And so matters drifted on till the end of November without the slightest clue to the identity of the real culprit. Who he was, and whence he came, no one knew, though Del Viantes had hinted vaguely at a foreign assistant who had been in his employ for some little time, and had been discharged for flagrant dishonesty.

It was a fine morning at the end of November when Hayter was interrupted in the laboratory by the entrance of one of his mechanics.

"Sorry to trouble you, sir," he said, "but aren't you going to open Number Three Tank to-day? It's been frozen for the last three months at two hundred below zero, and that bacteria must be ready now. Shall I get on with it, sir?"

"Perhaps you had better," Hayter said languidly. "Draw the slide back from the roof and take the iron shutters down from the front pf the tank. Let the light play on it as much as possible. I'll come along presently."

The assistant vanished only to return, a quarter of an hour later, with starting eyes and a peculiar green tinge on his cheeks that spoke of some unreasoning terror. He clutched Hayter by the shoulder.

"For Heaven's sake, come along with me, sir!" he said hoarsely. "No, sir, there's nothing wrong with the big tank, but when you see what is inside it "

The slide on the top of the tank that flanked the outer door of the conservatory and the iron shutters had been removed. Now that the light shooe through the roof, and the sunshine glittered on the specially prepared glass front, the ten-thousand-gallon tank revealed itself in the shape of a huge block of ice as clear as crystal.

But Hayter was not thinking of that—he was gazing with protruding eyes and a strange creeping of his spine at an object crystalised in the centre of the ice. It was a human form with hands upraised and grey face congealed into an expression of terror that seemed alive and appealing mutely for assistance. Every limb and feature was as clear as it had been months ago, when the sham Del Viantes, hastening away from Tulham Place, had stepped in the gloom over the open trap-door that Hayter had left, and had thus gone unconsciously to his doom. The weight of his body, no doubt, had carried him through the upper crust of the ice in an early stage of its formation, and his feet had evidently stuck in the foot or so of gelatine at the bottom of the tank.

It was a human form with hands upraised.

The man had been dead all these months, without the shadow of a doubt. He looked hideously and repulsively alive as he stood there, like a chrysalis in the centre of a transparent cocoon. Even a spray of orchids in his buttonhole retained their freshness and the delicate shades of mauve and gold.

"Well, I have had some curious experiences in my time," Inspector Jones said, an hour or two later, in somewhat shaky tones, as he stood before the unshuttered tank. "And, anyhow, it's all pretty plain now. Very likely his lordship gave a spray of his orchids to the man who murdered him, and the fellow, in his haste to get away, blundered into the tank. I shall be greatly surprised if we don't put our hands on the diamond, too, before we are through with this business."

It was nearly twelve o'clock the following day before the conditions were favourable for the removal of the unknown murderer from the tank, after which the body was laid on the table in the laboratory. It was Inspector Jones's unpleasant task to go over it in search of the missing treasure, the finding of which would establish Hayter's innocence beyond all doubt. But for a long time there was no sign of the stone, till the Inspector removed the spray of orchids from the dead man's buttonhole.

"Wonderful how they keep their freshness, isn't it?" he asked. "Some time ago I saw a bouquet of flowers that had come all the way from Australia frozen in a block of ice, and they might have been picked the day before. Hullo, here we are!"

As he spoke, the Inspector turned over the spray in his hand, and with a grunt of satisfaction plunged his little finger into the centre of one of the deep cups, and displayed a small round object carefully wrapped in cotton-wool.

"The missing stone," he exclaimed, "beyond the shadow of a doubt. I am glad to have my hands on this, Mr. Hayter, for your sake, because, you see—"

"Yes, I know," Hayter said grimly. "You needn't say any more about that. The man lying there, whoever he is, came down in a little two-seater car. He came alone, because I met him in the lane. What became of the car?"

"Well, that puzzled me, too," Jones admitted. "But, of course, the fellow had a confederate. That sort of robbery was too big a thing for one man. Probably the confederate loitered about till he got alarmed, and went off to save his own skin, as such men always do. But really it doesn't matter. To prove the identity of this criminal will be another question altogether. Personally, I don't believe it ever will be proved."

And, as usual, Inspector Jones was right.