The phone rang. Boyle’s replacement, Migeon, picked it up, while Carnegie concluded his pep talk to the assembled officers.
“I want him in the next twenty-four hours, gentlemen. That’s the time scale I’ve been given, and that’s what we’ve got. Twenty-four hours.”
Migeon interrupted. “Sir? It’s Johannson. He says he’s got something for you. It’s urgent.”
“Right.” The inspector claimed the receiver. “Carnegie.
The voice at the other end was soft to the point of inaudibility. “Carnegie,” Johannson said, “we’ve been right through the laboratory, dug up every piece of information we could find on Dance and Welles’s tests-”
“And?”
“We’ve also analyzed traces of the agent from the hypo they used on the suspect. I think we’ve found the Boy, Carnegie
“What boy?” Carnegie wanted to know. He found Johann son’s obfuscation irritating.
“The Blind Boy Carnegie.”
“And?”
For some inexplicable reason Carnegie was certain the man smiled down the phone before replying: “I think perhaps you d better come down and see for yourself. Sometime around noon suit you?”
JOHANNSON could have been one of history’s greatest poisoners. He had all the requisite qualifications. A tidy mind (poisoners were, in Carnegie’s experience, domestic paragons), a patient nature (poison could take time) and, most importantly, an encyclopedic knowledge of toxicology. Watching him at work, which Carnegie had done on two previous cases, was to see a subtle man at his subtle craft, and the spectacle made Carnegie’s blood run cold.
Johannson had installed himself in the laboratory on the top floor, where Doctor Dance had been murdered, rather than use police facilities for the investigation, because, as he explained to Carnegie, much of the equipment the Hume organization boasted was simply not available elsewhere. His dominion over the place, accompanied by his two assistants, had, however, transformed the laboratory from the clutter left by the experimenters to a dream of order. Only the monkeys remained a constant. Try as he might Johannson could not control their behavior.
“We didn’t have much difficulty finding the drug used on your man,” Johannson said, “we simply cross-checked traces remaining in the hypodermic with materials found in the room. In fact, they seem to have been manufacturing this stuff, or variations on the theme, for some time. The people here claim they know nothing about it, of course. I’m inclined to believe them. What the good doctors were doing here was, I’m sure, in the nature of a personal experiment.”
“What sort of experiment?”
Johannson took off his spectacles and set about cleaning them with the tongue of his red tie. “At first, we thought they were developing some kind of hallucinogen,” he said. “In some regards the agent used on your man resembles a narcotic. In fact-methods apart-I think they made some very exciting discoveries. Developments which take us into entirely new territory.”
“It’s not a drug then?”
“Oh, yes, of course it’s a drug,” Johannson said, replacing the spectacles, “but one created for a very specific purpose. See for yourself.”
Johannson led the way across the laboratory to the row of monkeys’ cages. Instead of being confined separately, the toxicologist had seen fit to open the interconnecting doors between one cage and the next, allowing the animals free access to gather in groups. The consequence was absolutely plain-the animals were engaged in an elaborate series of sexual acts. Why, Carnegie wondered, did monkeys perpetually perform obscenities? It was the same torrid display whenever he’d taken his offspring, as children, to Regent’s Park Zoo; the ape enclosure elicited one embarrassing question upon another. He’d stopped taking the children after a while. He simply found it too mortifying.
“Haven’t they got anything better to do?” he asked of Johannson, glancing away and then back at a menage a’ trois that was so intimate the eye could not ascribe member to monkey.
“Believe me,” Johannson smirked, “this is mild by comparison with much of the behavior we’ve seen from them since we gave them a shot of the agent. From that point on they neglected all normal behavior patterns. They bypassed the arousal signals, the courtship rituals. They no longer show any interest in food. They don’t sleep. They have become sexual obsessive. All other stimuli are forgotten. Unless the agent is naturally discharged, I suspect they are going to screw themselves to death.”