The Satan Bug

anything — and I don't see how he could otherwise have formed his contacts with the Communist world. He must have earned a great deal of money over the years — you'd only to look at the contents of his house — but he spent it fairly judiciously and wisely, not splashing it around too much at a time.'

'The Bentiey Continental he had,' Hardanger said. 'Wouldn't you call that splashing it around a bit?'

'He'd that expense well covered, with a water-tight explanation. But,' I acknowledged, 'he got greedy. He was getting in so much money during the past few months that it was burning a hole in his pockets.'

'Working overtime sending samples to Warsaw and information to Vienna?' the General asked.

'No,' I said. 'Blackmailing Gregori.'

'Sorry.' The General stirred wearily in his corner seat. 'I'm not with you.'

'It's not difficult,' I said. 'Gregori — the man we know as Gregori — had two things: a beautiful plan and a stroke of very bad luck. You will remember that there was nothing sub rosa about Gregori's arrival in this country — it sparked off a minor international crisis, the Italians being hopping mad that one of their top-notch bio-chemists should turn his back on his own country and go to work in Britain. Somebody— somebody with more than a smattering of chemistry and a fairly close resemblance to Gregori — read all about it and saw in Gregori's impending departure for Britain the opportunity of a lifetime and made his preparation accordingly.'

'The real Gregori was murdered?' Hardanger asked.

'No question of that. The Gregori who set off from Turin with all his worldly wealth stacked in the back of his Fiat was not the Gregori who arrived in Britain. The original Gregori met with a very permanent accident en route and the impostor, no doubt with a few judicious alterations to his features to make his resemblance to the now dead man even closer, arrived in Britain in Gregori's car complete with clothes, passport, photographs — the lot. So far, so very good.'

'Now the bad luck. Apart from the reports of his work, the original Gregori was completely unknown in Britain — as a person, that is. There was probably only one man in Britain who knew him well — and by a one in a million chance Gregori found himself working in the very same laboratory as this man. MacDonald. Gregori didn't know that. But MacDonald did — and knew that Gregori was a fake. Don't forget that MacDonald had for many years been a delegate to the W.H.O. and I'll wager anything you like that the original Gregori held a similar position for Italy.'

'Which accounts for the missing photographs in the album,' the General said slowly.

'The two of them — MacDonald and the original Gregori — standing arm in arm, no doubt. In Turin. Anyway, probably after weighing up the situation for a day or two, MacDonald told the spurious Gregori that he was on to him. We can guess what happened. Gregori would have produced a gun and said that it was just too bad but that he would have to silence him and MacDonald, nobody's fool, would have produced a piece of paper and said that that would be just too bad because if he died suddenly his bank — or the police— had orders to open immediately a sealed envelope containing a copy of that paper, which would contain a few interesting facts about Gregori. Gregori would then have to put his gun away and they would have made a deal. A one-way deal. Gregori to pay MacDonald so much per month. Or else. Don't forget MacDonald was now in a position to pin a murder rap on Gregori.'

'I don't get it,' Hardanger said flatly. 'It doesn't make sense. Can you imagine the General here having two men working for him on the same project in, say, Warsaw, men who were not only unknown to each other but completely at cross purposes and potentially at each other's throats. I'm afraid, Cavell, that I have a higher opinion of Communist intelligence than you seem to have.'

'I agree with Hardanger,' the General said.

'So do I,' I agreed. 'All I said was that MacDonald was working for the Communists. I never once said that Gregori was or that this Satan Bug has anything to do with Communism. It was you and Hardanger who made that assumption.'

Hardanger bent forward to see me better. 'You mean— you mean that Gregori is just a raving crack-pot after all?'

'If you still believe that,' I said nastily, 'it's time you had a long holiday. There was a very powerful and pressing reason why Gregori wanted the viruses and I'll stake my life that he told MacDonald what it was. He would have had to ensure his co-operation. If he'd told MacDonald that he just wanted to take off with the botulinus I doubt if MacDonald would have touched the business. But if he'd offered him, say, ?10,000, MacDonald would have changed his mind pretty fast, that being the kind of man MacDonald was.'

We were fairly into Alfringham now, the big police Jaguar with its siren switched on, doing twice the legal speed limit, dodging in and out among the thinning evening traffic. The driver was an expert, the pick of Hardanger's own London men, and he knew exactly how much he and the car could do without killing the lot of us in the process.

'Stop the car!' Hardanger interrupted me suddenly. 'That traffic policeman.' We were closing rapidly on Alfringham's one and only set of traffic lights, apparently hand-controlled at what passed for Alfringham's rush hour. A policeman, white cape glistening in the lamp-lit rain, was still standing by a control box attached to a lamp-post. The car stopped, and Hardanger, window wound down, beckoned the man across.

'Superintendent Hardanger, London,' he said abruptly. 'Did you see a bluish-green Vanden Plas Princess pass this way this evening? An hour ago, slightly less?'

'As a matter of fact I did, sir. He was coming at a fair lick on the amber and I saw he would be on the intersection when it was red. I blew my whistle and he stopped just after he'd passed the second lights. I asked the driver what he thought he was up to and he said his back wheels had locked on the wet road when he tried to brake and when he took his foot off he was frightened to brake again, or brake hard, because his daughter was asleep in the back seat and might have been injured if he'd stopped too suddenly and she'd been flung forward. I looked in the back seat and she was asleep. Sound asleep, even our voices didn't waken her. There was another man beside her. So — so I gave him a warning and waved him on…' His voice trailed away uncertainly.

'Exactly,' Hardanger roared. 'Now you're realising. Can't you tell the difference between someone sleeping and someone being forced to fake sleep with a gun in her side? She slept on, forsooth,' he said fiercely. 'You miserable nincompoop, I'll have you drummed out of the Force!'

'Yes, sir.' The policeman, eyes staring unseeingly over the roof of the Jaguar, stood at rigid attention, a dead ringer for a guardsman on parade about to collapse with the thumbs still at the seams of the trousers. 'I'm sorry, sir.'

'Which way did he go?' Hardanger demanded.

'London, sir,' the policeman said woodenly.

'It would be too much to expect you to have taken his number, I suppose,' Hardanger said with heavy sarcasm.

'xow 973, sir.'

'What!'

'xow 973.'

'Consider yourself reinstated,' Hardanger growled. He wound up the window and we were off again, the sergeant talking softly into the hand microphone. Hardanger said, 'Bit rough on him, I suppose. If he had been smart enough to notice anything he'd have been twanging his harp by now instead of playing about with his traffic light buttons. Sorry for the interruption, Cavell.'

'It doesn't matter,' I said. I was glad of the interruption, glad of anything that would take my mind off Mary, Mary with a killer's gun in her side. 'MacDonald — I was speaking of MacDonald. Money mad — but also a pretty shrewd character. Very shrewd — he must be to have survived so long in the espionage racket. He knew the theft of the botulinus — I'm certain Gregori never mentioned his intention of taking the Satan Bug as well — would start off an intensive probing into the past life of all the suspects — those working in number one lab. He may also have suspected that his own espionage activities were liable to start a re-check on all scientists. He knew that all the known details of his life were down on his security record card and he was pretty certain that one or more of those details, the ones referring to his immediate post-war activities, wouldn't stand up to rigorous examination. He knew the security chief, Derry, held those records. He told Gregori that there would be no dice, no co-operation, unless he saw that record first. MacDonald had no intention of being the fall guy in subsequent police investigations.'

'So Easton Derry — or what's left of him — lies down in that cellar now,' the General said quietly.

'Yes. I'm only guessing now, but they're pretty safe guesses. Apart from the records MacDonald wanted,