Алексей Николаевич Толстой - The Garin Death Ray

"Do you want to arrest me?"

"Not the slightest intention. I want to warn you that the Pole who just ran away wants to kill you, just as he killed Engineer Garin on Krestovsky Island yesterday."

The bearded man thought for a moment. He did not lose either his calm demeanour or his politeness.

"All right, then," he said, "let's go, I have a quarter of an hour to spare."

Out in the street the detective from the Post-Office came running up to Shelga, his face flushed and patchy.

"Comrade Shelga, he got away."

"Why did you let him go?"

"He had a car waiting, Comrade Shelga."

"Where's your motor-bike?"

"It's over there," said the detective pointing to his motor-cycle, some hundred steps from the Post-Office, "he ripped a tyre with a knife. I blew my whistle and he jumped into a car and drove off."

"Did you get the number of the car?"

"No."

"I'll report you for this."

"But I couldn't... the number had been plastered with mud."

"All right, go back to headquarters, I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Shelga caught up with the bearded man. For some minutes they walked side by side in silence. They turned into the Trade-Union Boulevard.

"You're astonishingly like the dead man," began Shelga.

"I've heard that many times already," the other answered readily. "My name is Pyankov-Pitkevich. I read about the murder in yesterday evening's paper. It's an awful business. I knew him very well, a competent fellow, excellent chemist. I've often been in his laboratory on Krestovsky Island. He was developing an important discovery connected with chemical warfare. Do you know anything about smoke candles?"

Shelga glanced sideways at him; instead of answering he asked a further question.

"Do you think Garin's murder is connected with Polish interests?"

"I don't think so. There are much deeper reasons for his murder. Information concerning Garin's work has found its way into the American press. Poland could be nothing more than an intermediary."

On the boulevard Shelga suggested sitting down. There was nobody about. Shelga took a number of Soviet and foreign newspaper cuttings from his briefcase and smoothed them out on his knee.

"You say that Garin was working on some chemical discovery and information concerning it had reached the foreign press. Some of the things here support your statement, but some things are not quite clear to me. Read this."

"In America some interest has been aroused by a report from Leningrad concerning the work of a Russian inventor. It is believed that his apparatus has greater destructive power than anything yet known."

Pitkevich read it and laughed.

"That's funny," he said. "I don't know... I've never heard of anything like that. It can't be about Garin."

Shelga offered him another cutting.

"In connection with the U.S. Navy's forthcoming grand manoeuvres in Pacific waters the War Department has been asked whether information is available concerning weapons of great destructive power being manufactured in Soviet Russia."

Pitkevich shrugged his shoulders: "Nonsense!" and took a third cutting.

"Rolling, the multimillionaire chemical king, has left for Europe. His trip is connected with cartelizing factories processing coal tar and salt products. In an interview given in Paris Rolling said that his monster chemical concern will bring peace to the countries of the Old World that are shaken by the forces of revolution. Rolling spoke very aggressively about the Soviet Union, where, it is rumoured, mysterious experiments are being made to transmit heat energy over long distances."

Pitkevich read it attentively. He sat for some time wrapped in thought, a frown on his face.

"Yes," he said at last, "it is quite possible that Garin's murder is in some way connected with this newspaper story."

"Do you go in for sport?" asked Shelga suddenly. He took Pitkevich's hand and turned it palm upwards. "I'm awfully keen on sport."

"Are you looking for blisters from rowing, Comrade Shelga? You see these two, that's proof that I'm a rotten oarsman and that two days ago I had to row a boat for about an hour and a half when I took Garin to Krestovsky Island... Does that satisfy you?"

Shelga dropped his hand and laughed.

"You're pretty smart, Comrade Pitkevich. I wouldn't mind having a real tussle with you."

"I'm not the one to avoid it."

"Listen, Pitkevich, did you know that four-fingered Pole before?"

"You want to know why I was astonished when I saw his hand with a finger missing? You're very observant, Comrade Shelga. Yes, I was astonished, more than that, I was scared."

"Why?"

"That's what I'm not going to tell you."

Shelga glanced indifferently along the empty boulevard.

"He not only has a finger missing," continued Pitkevich, "he also has a ghastly scar across his chest. Garin did that in 1919. The man's name is Stas Tyklinski..."

"Did Garin disfigure him in the same way as he cut through three-inch boards?" asked Shelga.

Pitkevich turned his head sharply towards his interlocutor and for a brief space of time they gazed into each other's eyes: one of them calm and impenetrable, the other frank and merry.

"So you do intend to arrest me, Comrade Shelga?"

"No... There's plenty of time for that."

"You're right. I know a lot. But you must understand that no sort of coercion will force me to tell you what I don't want to. I was not mixed up in the crime, you know that yourself. If you like we can play an open hand. The conditions are: after a good blow has been struck we meet for an open discussion. It will be like a game of chess. We're not allowed to kill one another. Incidentally, all the while we have been talking you have been in grave danger of your life—believe me, I'm not joking. If Stas Tyklinski had been sitting in your place, I'd have looked round, nobody in sight... and would have walked away calmly to, let us say, Senate Square, and he would have been found stone dead on this bench with horrible patches all over his body. Once again, however, those tricks are not for you. Do you accept?"

"All right. I agree," said Shelga, his eyes flashing. "I'll make the first move, eh?"

"Naturally, if you had not caught me at the post-office I would never have suggested the match. As far as Four-Fingers is concerned I promise to help in your search for him. Wherever I chance to meet him I will immediately inform you by telephone or telegraph."

"Good. Now, Pitkevich, show me that gadget that you threatened me with..."

Pitkevich shook his head and then smiled. "Have it your way, we're playing an open hand." And he cautiously pulled a flat box out of his side pocket. Inside the box lay a metal tube about the thickness of a finger.

"That is all there is, only if you press one end a glass capsule inside will be broken..."

On his way back to the Criminal Investigation Department Shelga suddenly stopped as though he had run into a telegraph pole. "Huh!" he snorted and stamped his foot madly, "huh, what an actor! He's as smart as they make 'em."

Shelga realized that he had been completely fooled. He had stood within two paces of the murderer (of that he no longer had any doubt) and had not arrested him; he had spoken with a man who apparently knew all the ins and outs of the affair and that man had managed to tell him exactly nothing. That Pyankov-Pitkevich was in possession of some secret... Shelga suddenly realized that this was a secret of state, even international importance. And he had had Pyankov-Pitkevich by the tail... "One twist, damn him, and he slipped away!"

Shelga ran up the stairs to his office on the third floor. On his table lay a package wrapped in newspaper. In the deep window niche sat a fat, humble-looking individual in heavy jackboots. Pressing his cap to his stomach he bowed to Shelga.