I was looking for a hose and I found one almost immediately. I carried it outside, screwed it on to a standing plug and turned the tap on full: the results in the way of volume and pressure would have done justice to any city hydrant. I clambered awkwardly on to a hay wagon that was standing nearby and said to the General, “Come on, sir, you first.”
He came directly under the earthward-pointed nozzle and the jet of water on head and shoulders from a distance of only a few inches made him stumble and all but fall. But he stuck it gamely for all of the half-minute that I insisted he remain under the hose, and by the tune I was finished he was as sodden as if he’d spent the night in the river and shivering so violently that I could hear his teeth chatter above the hiss of the water: but by the time he was finished I knew that any toxin that might have been clinging to face or body would have been completely washed away. The other four all submitted to it in turn and then Hardanger did the same for me. The force of the water was such that it was like being belaboured by a non-stop series of far from lightweight clubs and the water itself was ice-cold: but when I thought of the man who had died and how he had died a few bruises and the risk of pneumonia didn’t even begin to be worth considering. When he had finished with me Hardanger switched off the water and said quietly, “Sorry, Cavell. You had the right of it.”
“It was my fault,” I said. I didn’t mean my voice to sound dull and lifeless but that was the way it came out, to my ears anyway. “I should have warned him. I should have told him not to touch his mouth or nose with his hand.”
“He should have thought of that himself,” Hardanger said, his voice abnormally matter-of-fact. “He knew the dangers as well as you — they’ve been published in every paper in the land to-day. Let’s go and see if the farmer has a phone. Not that it’ll make much difference now. Gregori knows that the police Jaguar is too hot to hang on to for a second longer than is necessary. He’s won all along the line, damn his black soul, and nothing is going to stop him now. Twelve hours he said. Twelve hours and then he would be done.”
“Twelve hours from now Gregori will be dead,” I said.
“What?” I could sense him staring at me. “What did you say?”
“Hell be dead,” I repeated. “Before dawn.”
“It’s all right,” Hardanger said. Cavell’s mind had cracked at last, but let’s play it casual, let’s not any of us make a song and dance about it. He took my arm and started out for the lamp-lit rectangles which showed where the house stood. “The sooner this is over the sooner we’ll all get the rest and food and sleep we need.”
“111 rest and sleep when I’ve killed Gregori,” I said. “I’m going to kill him to-night. First I get Mary back. Then I’ll kill him.”
“Mary will be all right, Cavell.” Mary in that madman’s hands, that was what had sent Cavell’s last few remaining grey cells tottering over the brink, he thought. “He’ll let her go, he’ll have no reason to do anything to her. And you had to do what you did. You thought mat if she stayed there with us in the cider house she would die. Isn’t that it, Cavell?”
“I’m sure the superintendent is right, my boy.” The General was walking on my other side now, and his voice was quiet because loud voices excite the unhinged. “She won’t be harmed.”
I said rudely, to both, “If I’m round the bend, what the hell does that make you two?”
Hardanger stopped, tightened his grip on my arm and peered at me. He knew that those whose minds have gone off the rails never talk about it, for the simple reason that they are unshakably convinced that their minds are still on the track. He said carefully, “I don’t think I understand.”
“You don’t. But you will.” I said to the General: “You must persuade the Cabinet to go on with this evacuation of the Central London area. Continuous radio and TV broadcasts. They’ll have no difficulty in persuading the people to leave, you can believe that. It shouldn’t cause much trouble — that area’s pretty well unlived in by night, anyway.” I turned again to Hardanger. “Have two hundred of your best men armed. A gun for me, too — and a knife. I know exactly what Gregori intends to do to-night. I know exactly what he hopes to achieve. I know exactly how he intends to leave the country — and exactly where he will be leaving from.”
“How do you know, my boy?” The General’s voice was so quiet that I could hardly hear above the drumming of the rain.
“Because Gregori talked too much. Sooner or later they all talk too much. Gregori was cagier than most, even when he I was convinced that we would all be dead in a minute he still said very little. But that little was too much. And I think I’ve really known ever since we found MacDonald’s body.”
“You must have heard things that I didn’t hear,” Hardanger said sourly.
“You heard it all. You heard him say he was going to London, if he really wanted the bug set loose in London to have Mordon destroyed he’d have stayed in Mordon to see what happened and have had some stooge do the job in London. But he has no interest in seeing Mordon destroyed, he never had. There’s something he has to do in London. Another of his never-ending red herrings — the Communist red herring, of course, was purely fortuitous, he’d no hand in that at all. That’s the first thing. The second — mat he was going to achieve some great ambition to-night. The third — that he had twice saved Henriques from the electric chair. That shows what kind of a man he is — and I don’t mean a criminal defence lawyer of the U.S. Bar Association — and what kind of ambition he has in mind: I’ll take long odds not only that he’s on the Interpol files but also that he’s an ex big-time American racketeer who has been deported to Italy — and the line of business in which he used to specialise would make very interesting reading, because the criminal leopards, even the biggest cats in the jungle, never change their spots. The fourth thing is that he expects to be clear of this country in twelve hours’ time. And the fifth thing is that this is Saturday night. Put all those things together add see what you get.”
“Suppose you tell us,” Hardanger said impatiently.
So I told them.
The rain still fell as vertically, as heavily as ever, just as heavily as when we had left that farmhouse some hours previously, where the torrential rain in conjunction with the quick evacuation of the area had robbed the botulinus toxin of all victims other than the unfortunate policeman who had died so terribly before our eyes. Now, at twenty minutes past three in the morning, the rain was ice-cold, but I didn’t really feel it. All I could feel was my exhaustion, the harsh stabbing pain in my right ribs that came with every breath I took and the continuous rending worry that, in spite of the confidence I’d shown to the General and Hardanger, I might be hopelessly wrong after all and Mary lost to me for ever. And even if I were right, she might still as easily be lost to me. With a conscious and almost desperate effort of will, I turned my mind to other things.
The high-walled courtyard where I’d been standing for the past three hours was dark and deserted, as dark and deserted as the heart of London itself. Evacuation of the centre of the city, the temporarily homeless going to prepared halls, ballrooms and theatres, had begun shortly after six o’clock, just after the last of the offices, businesses and shops had closed: it had been hastened by radio broadcasts at nine o’clock saying that, according to the latest message received, the time for the release of the botulinus toxin had been advanced from four a.m. to half past two: but there had been no hurry, no panic, no despair, in fact there would have been no sense of anything unusual happening had it not been for the unusual number of people carrying suitcases: the phlegmatic Londoners who had seen the City set on fire and suffered a hundred nights of mass area bombing during the war weren’t to be stampeded into anything for anybody.