Ferguson was back in ten minutes, fighting to restrain a wolf-like animal that lunged out madly at anyone who came near him. Rollo had a muzzle on but even that didn’t make me feel too confident. I didn’t need any persuasion to accept the sergeant’s word that the dog was a killer.
“Does that hound always act like this?” I demanded.
“Not usually.” Ferguson was puzzled. “In fact, never. Usually perfectly behaved until I let him off the leash — then he’ll go for the nearest person no matter who he is. But he even had a go at me this afternoon — half-hearted, like, but nasty.”
It didn’t take long to discover the source of Rollo’s irritation. Rollo was suffering from what must have been a very severe headache indeed. The skin on the forehead, just above eye-level, had a swollen pulpy feeling to it and it took four men all their time to hold the dog down when I touched this area with the tips of my forefingers. We turned him over, and I parted the thick fur on the throat till I found what I was looking for — two triangular jagged tears, deep and very unpleasant looking, about three inches apart.
“You’d better give your pal here a couple of days off,” 1 said to Ferguson, “and some disinfectant for those gashes on his neck. I wish you luck when you’re putting it on. You can take him away.”
“No chloroform, no fancy poisons,” Hardanger admitted when we were alone. “Those gashes — barbed wire, hey?”
“What else? Just the right distance apart. Somebody pads his forearm, sticks it between a couple of strands of barbed wire and Rollo grabs it. He wouldn’t bark — those dogs are trained never to bark. As soon as he grabs he’s pulled through and down onto the barbed wire and can’t pull himself free unless he tears his throat out. And then someone clouts him at his leisure with something heavy and hard. Simple, old-fashioned, direct and very very effective. Whoever the character we’re after, he’s no fool.”
“He’s smarter than Rollo, anyway,” Hardanger conceded heavily.
CHAPTER THREE
When we went up to “E “block, accompanied by two of Hardanger’s assistants newly arrived from London, we found Cliveden, Weybridge, Gregori and Wilkinson waiting for us. Wilkinson produced the key to the heavy wooden door.
“No one been inside since you locked the place after seeing Clandon?” Hardanger asked.
“I can guarantee that, sir. Guards posted all the time.”
“But Cavell here asked for the ventilation system to be switched on. How could that be done without someone going inside?”
“Duplicate switches on the roof, sir. All fuse-boxes, junctions and electrical terminals are also housed on the roof. Means that the repair and maintenance electricians don’t even have to enter the main building.”
“You people don’t miss much,” Hardanger admitted. “Open up, please.”
The door swung back, we all filed through and turned down the long corridor to our left. Number one lab was right at the far end of the corridor, as least two hundred yards away, but that was the way we had to go: there was only the one entrance to the entire block. Security was all. On the way we had to pass through half a dozen doors, some opened by photo-electric cells, others by handles fifteen inches long. Elbow handles. Considering the nature of the burdens that some of the Mordon scientists carried from time to time, it was advisable to have both hands free all the time.
We came to number one lab — and Clandon. Clandon was lying just outside the massive steel door of the laboratory, but he wasn’t any more the Neil Clandon I used to know — the big, tough, kindly, humorous Irishman who’d been my friend over too many years. He looked curiously small now, small and huddled and defenceless, another man altogether. Not Neil Clandon any more. Even his face was the face of another man, eyes abnormally wide and starting as one who had passed far beyond the realms of sanity into a total and terror-induced madness, the lips strained cruelly back over clenched teeth in the appalling rictus of his dying agony. And no man who looked at that face, at the convulsively contorted limbs could doubt that Neil Clandon had died as terribly as man ever could.
They were all watching me, that I was vaguely aware of, but I was pretty good at telling my face what to do. I went forward and stooped low over him, sniffing, and found myself apologising to the dead man for the involuntary wrinkling distaste of nose and mouth. No fault of Neil’s. I glanced at Colonel Weybridge and he came forward and bent beside me for a moment before straightening. He looked at Wilkinson and said, “You were right, my boy. Cyanide.”
I pulled a pair of cotton gloves from my pocket. One of Hardanger’s assistants lifted his flash camera but I pushed his arm down and said, “No pictures. Neil Clandon’s not going into anyone’s morgue gallery. Too late for pictures anyway. If you feel all that like work why don’t you start on that steel door there? Fingerprints. It’ll be loaded with them — and not one of them will do you the slightest damn’ bit of good.”
The two men glanced at Hardanger. He hesitated, shrugged, nodded. I went though Neil Clandon’s pockets. There wasn’t much that could be of any use to me — wallet, cigarette case, a couple of books of matches and, in the left hand jacket pocket, a handful of transparent papers that had been wrapped round butterscotch sweets.
I said, “This is how he died. The very latest in confectionery — cyanide butterscotch. You can see the sweet he was eating on the floor there, beside his head. Have you such a thing as an analytical chemist on the premises, Colonel?”
“Of course.”
“Hell find that sweet and possibly one of those butterscotch papers covered with cyanide. I hope your chemist isn’t the type who licks his fingers after touching sticky stuff. Whoever doctored this sweet knew of Clandon’s weakness for butterscotch. He also knew Clandon. Put it another way, Clandon knew him. He knew him well. He knew him so well and was so little surprised to find him here that he didn’t hesitate to accept a butterscotch from him. Whoever killed Clandon is not only employed in Mordon — he’s employed in this particular section of ‘ E’ block. If he weren’t, Clandon would have been too damn’ busy suspecting him of everything under the sun even to consider accepting anything from him. Narrows the field of inquiry pretty drastically. The killer’s first mistake — and a big one.”
“Maybe,” Hardanger rumbled. “And maybe you’re oversimplifying and taking too much for granted. Assumptions. How do you know Clandon was killed here? You’ve said yourself we’re up against a clever man, a man who would be more likely than not to obscure things, to cause confusion, to cast suspicions in the wrong place by killing Clandon elsewhere and then dragging him here. And it’s asking too much to believe that he just happened to have a cyanide sweet in his pocket that he just happened to hand to Clandon when Clandon just happened to find him doing what he was doing.”
“About the second part I don’t know,” I said. “I should have thought myself that Clandon would have been highly suspicious of anyone he found here late at night, no matter who he was. But Clandon died right here, that’s for sure.” I looked at Cliveden and Weybridge. “How long for cyanide poisoning to take effect?”
“Practically instantaneous,” Cliveden said.
“And he was violently ill here,” I said. “So he died here. And look at those two faint scratches on the plaster of the wall. A lab check on his finger-nails is almost superfluous; that’s where he clawed for support as he fell to the floor. Some ‘ friend’ gave Clandon that sweet, and that’s why I’d like the wallet, cigarette case and books of matches printed. There’s just a chance in a thousand that the friend may have been offered a cigarette or a match, or that he went through Clandon’s wallet after he was dead. But I don’t think there’s even that chance in a thousand. But I think the prints on that door should be interesting. And informative. Ill take a hundred to one in anything you like that the prints on that door will be exclusively of those entitled to pass through that door. What I really want to find out is whether there’s been any signs of deliberately smearing, as with a handkerchief or gloves, in the vicinity of the combination, time-lock or circular handle.”
“There will be,” Hardanger nodded. “12 your assumption that this is strictly an inside job is correct, there will be. To bring in the possibility of outsiders.”
“There’s still Clandon,” I said.