“Take me away from this horrible man, Pierre,” Mary murmured. Her voice was low and not steady. “I — I don’t care what he does.”
“He won’t do anything, my dear,” I said quietly “He doesn’t dare to. And he knows it.”
“Quite the little psychologist, aren’t you?” Gregori said in the same conversational tone. Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, his back braced against the side of the car, he sent Mary catapulting towards me with a vicious thrust of both arms. I broke ground to lessen the impact, staggered back two steps before steadying us both and by the time I’d put her to one side and was bringing my gun up again Gregori was holding something in his outstretched hand. A glass ampoule with a blue sealed top. In the other hand he held the steel flask from which he’d just abstracted it. I looked at Oregon’s impassive face then back at the ampoule in his hand and I could feel the sudden moisture between my palm and the butt of the Hanyatti.
I turned my head and looked at the General, Hardanger and the two policemen behind me — both the General and Hardanger, I saw, with heavy pistols in their hands — turned front again and looked at the other two policemen under Henriques’ gun. I said slowly and distinctly, “Don’t do. anything, anybody. That ampoule in Oregon’s hand contains the Satan Bug. You’ve all read the papers to-day. You all know what will happen if that glass breaks.”
They all knew, all right. We’d have made the figures in any waxworks look like characters with the St. Vitus’s dance doing the Twist. How long would it be, Gregori had said yesterday, before all life in Britain would become extinct if that refined polio virus escaped? I couldn’t remember. But not long. It didn’t matter much, anyway.
“Correct,” Gregori said calmly. “The crimson top for the botulinus virus, the blue top for the Satan Bug. When Cavell was gambling with his wife’s life just now there was an element of bluff involved. I would beg you to believe that I am not bluffing. To-night I hope to achieve something that I have set my heart on.” He paused and looked at us all individually, his eyes glittering emptily in the glare of the police searchlight. “If I am not permitted to go unmolested then I cannot achieve this object and have little wish to prolong this life of mine. I shall then smash this ampoule. I would beseech you all to believe that I am in the most complete and deadly earnest.”
I believed him implicitly. He was as mad as a hatter. I said, “Your lieutenant. Henriques. How does he feel about your casual attitude towards his life?”
“I have once saved Henriques from drowning and twice from the electric chair. His life is mine to dispose of as I see fit. He understands that. Besides, Henriques is a deaf mute.”
“You’re insane,” I said harshly. “You told us yesterday that neither fire nor ice, seas nor mountains, can stop the spread of the Satan Bug.”
“I believe that to be essentially correct. If I have to go it matters nothing to me if the rest of mankind accompanies me.”
“But—–” I paused. “Good God, Gregori, no sane man, not even the most monstrous criminal in history, would ever dream of such, of such—– In the name of heaven, man, you can’t mean it.”
“It may be that I am not sane,” he said.
I didn’t doubt it. Not then. I watched him, gripped with fear and fascination such as I had never known, as he handled the ampoule carelessly then stooped swiftly and laid it on the wet road, under the sole of his left shoe. The left heel was still on the ground. I wondered briefly if a couple of heavy slugs from the Hanyatti would drive him over backwards, jerking his foot off the ampoule, but the thought died as it came. A madman could juggle carelessly with the lives of his fellow-men, but I had no justification of madness. Even had there been only one chance in ten million of being executioner instead of keeper, I could never have taken it.
“I have tested those ampoules in the laboratory — empty ones, I need hardly say,” Gregori went on conversationally, “and have discovered that a pressure of seven and a half pounds is sufficient to shatter them. Incidentally, I have taken the precaution of providing concentrated cyanide tablets for Henriques and myself: death from the Satan Bug, as we have observed from experiments on animals, is rather more prolonged than death from botulinus and most distressing. You will each come forward one at a time and hand me your guns, butt foremost, at arm’s length. You will take the greatest care to do nothing that might upset my balance, so transferring my weight to my left foot. Yon first, Cavell.”
I reversed the gun and handed it to him slowly and deliberately at the full extent of my arm, taking excruciating care indeed not to upset his balance. Our complete defeat, the fact that this madman and murderer would now escape and almost certainly achieve what evil and desperate ends he had in mind, just didn’t matter a single solitary damn then. The only thing that mattered was that Oregon’s balance should not be in the slightest upset.
One by one we all handed our guns over to him. After that he ordered us all to line up while Henriques, the deaf mute, passed along behind us searching swiftly and skilfully for further weapons. He found none. Then, and not until then, did Gregori carefully remove his foot from the ampoule, stoop, pick it up and slide it back inside its steel jacket.
“I think conventional weapons will serve us now,” he said pleasantly. “One is so much less liable to make mistakes of a — well — a permanent nature.” He picked up two of the guns that Henriques had piled on the bonnet of the Humber, checked that the safety catches of both were off. He beckoned to Henriques and spoke rapidly to him. It was a weird sight — because there was no sound — Gregori doing his speaking with exaggerated lip movements, in complete silence. I know a little lip-reading but could make out nothing: possibly he talked in a foreign language, not French or Italian. He stopped speaking and Henriques nodded comprehension, looking at us with a queer anticipation in his eyes. I didn’t like the look one bit: Henriques struck me as altogether a very nasty piece of work. Gregori pointed one of his guns at the two policemen who had been in the pursuing car.
“Off with your uniforms,” he said curtly. “Now!”
The policemen looked at each other and one said through clenched teeth, “I’ll be damned if I will!”
“You’ll be dead if you don’t, you fool,” I said sharply. 14 Don’t you know what kind of men you are dealing with? Take it off.”
“I won’t take my clothes off for any man.” He swore bitterly.
“It’s an order!” Hardanger barked savagely, urgently. “It won’t give him much more trouble to remove your uniforms when there is a bullet between your eyes. Take it off,” he finished with slow and heavy emphasis.
Reluctantly, sullenly, the two officers did as they were told and stood there shivering in the cold heavy rain. Henriques collected the uniforms and threw them into the police Jaguar.
“Who operates the short-wave radio in this Jaguar?” Gregori said next. I felt as if somebody had run a skewer through my middle and given it a twist: but I had been expecting it, all the same.
“I do,” the sergeant admitted.
“Good. Get through to headquarters. Tell them that you have taken us and are proceeding to London. Tell them to, call all police cars in the area back to their stations — except, of course, those on routine patrol duties.”
“Do as he says,” Hardanger said wearily. “I think you’re too intelligent to try any fancy stuff, Sergeant. Exactly as he says.”
So the sergeant did exactly as he was told. He didn’t have much option, not with the muzzle of one of Gregori’s pistols grinding into his left ear. When he had finished, Oregon nodded his satisfaction.
“That will do very well.” He watched Henriques climb into the stolen Humber. “Our car and the one belonging to our two shivering friends here will be driven into the woods and their distributors smashed for good measure. They won’t be found before dawn. With the search called off, the other police car and those two uniforms we should have little trouble in clearing this area. Then we switch cars.” He looked regretfully at the Jaguar. “When your H.Q. catch on to the fact that you are missing this car is going to become very hot property indeed. That leaves only the problem of what to do with you,”