“Gaunt said he’d perfected it,” I remarked.
“Quite,” answered Jackson. “But, according to Dallas, it isn’t merely a process of growth along existing lines, but the introduction of something completely new. I’m no chemist, so I can’t say if the old boy is talking out of the back of his neck or not.”
He hailed a passing taxi.
“It’s serious, Stockton; deuced serious. Our only hope lies, as the General said yesterday, in the fact that the distribution question may defeat them. Because we’ve gone through every single available paper of Gaunt’s, and that point doesn’t appear anywhere. You see”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“aeroplanes are impracticable—they travel too fast, and they couldn’t take up sufficient bulk. And a dirigible—well, you remember sausage balloons, don’t you, falling in flames like manna from the heavens in France? One incendiary bullet—and finish. That’s the point, but don’t pass it on. Has he solved that? If so …”
With a shrug of his shoulders he left his sentence uncompleted, and I stood watching the car as it drove away towards Whitehall.
“Universal, instantaneous death.”
Robin’s words came back to me, and they continued to come back to me all through the day, when, for very shame’s sake, I was making a pretence of work. They danced between my eyes and the brief in front of me, till in despair I gave up trying to concentrate on it.
“Universal, instantaneous death.”
I lit a pipe and fell to reviewing the events of the past few days. And after a time the humour of the situation struck me. My elderly clerk, I felt, regarded me with displeasure: evidently he thought that a man of law displayed carelessness in getting mixed up in such a matter. As a set-off against that, however, I realised that I had seriously jeopardised Douglas Fairbanks in the office boy’s estimation.
But the point I had to consider was my own future action. It was all very well for Hugh Drummond and a crowd of his irresponsible friends to go about committing breaches of the peace if they chose to: it was a very different matter for me. And Inspector MacIver had definitely told him that such activities were to cease. Yet, dash it all …
I took a pull at myself and lit another pipe. Undoubtedly it was folly on my part to continue. The police had it in hand: almost certainly I should be getting myself into trouble. Yes, I’d be firm: I’d point out exactly to Drummond and the others how matters stood: my reputation as a lawyer and the impossibility of my countenancing such irregularities. Besides, this brief …
And at that stage of my deliberations I heard a loud and well-known voice in the office outside.
“Is Mr. Stockton in? I can’t help it if he is busy. I’ve just killed my grandmother and I want his advice.”
I went to the door and opened it. Drummond stood there beaming cheerfully at my outraged clerk, and as soon as he saw me he waved his hand.
“Bolted the badger,” he cried. “My boy, I must have words with you. Yonder stouthearted lad says you’re busy.”
“A brief,” I said a little doubtfully, “which I ought to get on with. However, come in.”
“Blow your old brief,” he answered. “Give the poor girl custody of the children and be done with it.”
He sat down and put his legs on the desk, whilst I, with a glance at my clerk’s face of scandalised horror, hurriedly shut the door.
“Look here, Stockton,” said Drummond, lowering his voice. “I thought I’d rout you out here, because it was a bit too long to say over the telephone. And since you’re really the principal in this affair, you ought to know at once. To start at the end of the matter, I haven’t the faintest doubt in my own mind now that my suspicions about Number 12 are correct.”
He lit a cigarette and I felt my determination weakening. At any rate I wasn’t committed to anything by hearing what he had to say.
“As you know,” he continued, “I went up to see my long-lost aunt—Miss Simpson. I put on a slouch hat, and made one or two slight alterations in my appearance. The first thing I did was to call at one or two of the local food shops, and at the greengrocer’s who supplied the house. I discovered her name was Amelia. Apparently she sometimes paid by cheque—in fact, they’d had one only last week.”
“Well, that was a bit of a jolt to start off with: however, I thought I’d have a shot at it since I’d got so far. So off I strolled to Number 12. Two of the most obvious policemen I’ve ever seen in my life are watching Number 10, but they paid no attention to me as I went past.
“I rang the bell, and for some time nothing happened. And then a curtain in the room next the front door moved slightly. I was being inspected, so I rang again to show there was no ill-feeling. An unpleasant-looking female opened the door about four inches, and regarded me balefully.
“ ‘Good morning,’ I remarked, getting my foot wedged in that four inches. ‘I’ve come to see Aunt Amelia.’
“ ‘Who are you?’ she said suspiciously.
“ ‘Aunt Amelia’s nephew,’ I answered. ‘It’s ten years now since my father—that’s her brother Harry—died, and his last words to me were, “Wallie, my boy, if ever you go back to England, you look up sister Amelia.” ’
“You see, Stockton, I’d already decided that if it was a genuine show I’d get out of it by pretending that it must be another Miss Simpson.
“ ‘Miss Amelia’s ill,’ said the woman
