“Or I must. I’m dressing up and taking that hamster in there. If the hamster survives, good and well. If he doesn’t I don’t come out. Fair enough?”
“Of all the damned arrogance,” Cliveden said coldly. “For a private detective, Cavell, you have an awful lot of gall. You might bear in mind that I’m the commandant in Mordon and I take all the decisions.”
“You did, General. But not any more. The Special Branch has taken over — completely. You know that.”
Hardanger ignored us both. Grasping at straws, he said to Gregori, “You mentioned that a special air filtration unit was working inside there. Won’t that have cleared the air?”
“With any other virus, yes. Not with the Satan Bug. It’s virtually indestructible, I tell you. And it’s a closed circuit nitration unit. The same air, washed and cleaned, is fed back in again. But you can’t wash away the Satan Bug.”
There was a long pause, then I said to Gregori, “If the Satan Bug or botulinus is loose in this lab, how Long would it take to affect the ‘hamster?”
“Fifteen seconds,” he said precisely. “In thirty seconds it will be in convulsions. In a minute, dead. There will be reflex muscle twitchings but it will be dead. That’s for the Satan Bug. For botulinus only slightly longer.”
“Don’t stop me from going in,” I said to Cliveden. “I’ll see what happens to the hamster. If he’s O.K., then I’ll wait another ten minutes. Then I’ll come out.”
“If you come out.” He was weakening. Cliveden was nobody’s fool. He was too clever not to have gone over what I had said and at least some of it must have made sense to him.
“If anything — any virus — has been stolen,” I said, “then whoever stole it is a madman. The Kennet, a tributary of the Thames, passes by only a few miles from here. How do you know that madman isn’t bent over the Kennet this instant, pouring those damned bugs into the water?”
“How do I know you won’t come out if that hamster does die?” Cliveden said desperately. “Good God, Cavell, you’re only human. If that hamster does die, do you expect me to believe that you’re going to remain in there till you die of starvation? Asphyxiation, rather, when the oxygen gives out? Of course you’re going to come out.”
“All right, General, suppose I come out. Would I still be wearing the gas-suit and breathing apparatus?”
“Obviously.” His voice was curt. “If you weren’t and that room was contaminated — well, you couldn’t come out: You’d be dead.”
“All right, again. This way.” I led the way out to the corridor, indicated the last corridor-door we’d passed through. “That door is gas-tight. I know that. So are those outside double windows. You stand at that corridor door — have it open a crack. The door of number one lab opens on it — you’ll see me as soon as I begin to come out. Agreed?” “What are you talking about?”
“This.” I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the Hanyatti automatic, knocked the safety catch off. “You have this in your hand. If, when the lab door opens, I’m still wearing the suit and breathing apparatus, you can shoot me down. At fifteen feet and with nine shots you can hardly fail to. Then you shut the corridor door. Then the virus is still sealed inside ‘ E’ block.”
He took the gun from me, slowly, reluctantly, uncertainly. But there was nothing uncertain about eyes and voice when finally he spoke.
“You know I shall use this, if I have to?” “Of course I know it.” I smiled. But I didn’t feel much like it. “From what I’ve heard I’d rather die from a bullet than the Satan Bug.”
“I’m sorry I blew my top a minute ago,” he said quietly. “You’re a brave man, Cavell.”
“Don’t fail to mention the fact in my obituary in The Times. How about asking your men to finish off printing and photographing that door, Superintendent?”
Twenty minutes later the men were finished and I was all ready to go. The others looked at me with that peculiar hesitancy and indecision of people who think they should be making farewell speeches but find the appropriate words too hard to come by. A couple of nods, a half wave of a hand, and they’d left me. They all passed down the corridor and through the next door, except General Cliveden, who remained in the open doorway. From some obscure feeling of decency, he held my Hanyatti behind his body where I couldn’t see it.
The gas-suit was tight and constricting, the closed circuit breathing apparatus cut into the back of my neck and the high concentration of oxygen made my mouth dry. Or maybe my mouth was dry anyway. Three cigarettes in the past twenty minutes — a normal day’s quota for me, I preferred to take my slow poisoning in the form of a pipe — wouldn’t have helped any either. I tried to think of one compelling reason why I shouldn’t go through that door, but that didn’t help either, there were so many compelling reasons that I couldn’t pick and choose between them, so I didn’t even bother trying. I made a last careful check of suit, mask and oxygen cylinders, but I was only kidding myself, this was about my fifth last careful check. Besides, they were all watching me. I had my pride. I started spelling out the combination on the heavy steel door.
A fairly complicated and delicate operation at any time, the operation of opening that door was made doubly difficult by reinforced-rubber covered fingers and poor vision afforded by slanted goggles. But exactly a minute after I’d begun I heard the heavy thud as the last spin of the dial energised the powerful electro-magnets that withdrew the heavy central bolt: three complete turns of the big circular handle and the half-ton door eased slowly open under the full weight of my shoulder.
I picked up the hamster’s cage, eased in quickly through the opening door, checked its swing and closed it as swiftly as possible. Three turns of the inner circular handle and the vault door was locked again. The chances were that in so doing I had wiped off a fair number of prints but I wouldn’t have wiped off any prints that mattered.
The rubber-sealed frosted-glass door leading into the laboratory proper was at the other end of the tiny vestibule. Further delay would achieve nothing — nothing apart from prolonging my life, that was. I leaned on the fifteen-inch elbow handle, pressed open the door, passed inside and closed the door behind me.
No need to switch on any lights — the laboratory was already brilliantly illuminated by shadow less neon lighting. Whoever had broken into that lab had either figured that the Government was a big enough firm to stand the waste of electricity or he’d left in such a tearing hurry that he’d had no time to think of lights.
I’d no time to think of lights either. Nor had I the inclination. My sole and over-riding concern was with the immediate welfare of the tiny hamster inside the cage I was carrying.
I placed the cage on the nearest bench, whipped off the cover and stared at the little animal. No bound man seated on a powder keg ever watched the last few minutes of sputtering fuse with half the mesmerised fascination, the totally-exclusive concentration with which I stared at that hamster. The starving cat with up-raised paw by the mouse-hole, the mongoose waiting for the king-cobra to strike, the ruined gambler watching the last roll of the dice — compared to me, they were asleep on the job. If ever the human eye had the power of transfixion, that hamster should have been skewered alive.
Fifteen seconds, Gregori had said. Fifteen seconds only and if the deadly Satan Bug virus was present in the atmosphere of that lab the hamster would react. I counted off the seconds, each second a bell tolling towards eternity, and at exactly fifteen seconds the hamster twitched violently. Violently, but nothing compared to the way my heart behaved, a double somersault that seemed to take up all the space inside the chest wall, before settling down to an abnormally slow heavy thudding that seemed to shake my body with its every beat. Inside the rubber gloves the palms of my hands turned wet, ice-cold. My mouth was dry as last year’s ashes.
Thirty seconds passed. By this time, if the virus was loose, the hamster should have been in convulsions. But he wasn’t, not unless convulsions in a hamster took the form of sitting up on its hind legs and rubbing its nose vigorously with a couple of tiny irritated paws.
Forty-five seconds. A minute. Maybe Dr. Gregori had over-estimated the virulence of the virus. Maybe this was a hamster with an abnormally tough and resistant physique.