"Yes, Madame."
McRow turned quickly and hurried out of the chamber, his dirty coat flapping about his knees. The dark-faced man signaled to the men above, and the shaft of daylight was cut off as the trapdoor settled into place solidly, like the lid of a well-made coffin.
"This way, Mr. Helm," said the Chinese woman. "Be careful. These passages were not made for people your height. The McRows-McRues as they were then called- have apparently always been short men, like our scientific friend, whom you obviously recognized."
She gestured toward the opening through which McRow had vanished. I moved that way, bending over so as not to crack my skull. An electric conduit had been strung along the rocky roof of the tunnel-presumably not by the ancient Mckues-with a neat glass globe every fifteen feet or so: a gasketed, damp-proof installation, I noticed. The lights gave adequate illumination, but I had to be careful not to scalp myself on them.
I said, without looking around, "Then he really is descended from the chiefs of Clan McRue?"
"Oh, yes," the woman behind me said. "That is not a fantasy, although he has many of them. There are a great many mad Scotsmen, you know. I think the damp climate must affect the brain. Certainly it would drive me to insanity if I had to endure a lifetime of it."
She was getting quite chatty. I decided that she must have a reason for trying to establish friendly relations- well, friendly for the circumstances-and that I might as well cash in on it, whatever it was.
I said, challengingly, "There's no record of an American branch of the family. I checked in a library in London."
"I know. They were all supposed to have been wiped out in a bloody feud, were they not? But apparently, when the castle was about to be overwhelmed, the young McRue sent his wife and baby to safety down these passages and went back to conceal the trapdoor and fight to the death beside his father. The wife never dared to reveal herself. She fled to America, taking the boy with her. The family name became corrupted over there as the family fortunes fell. But the story was passed on. He told it to me one night, boasting of his ancient lineage. Ancient!" Madame Ling laughed softly. "A mere two or three centuries! But his description of this place, as he had heard it, interested me, and I investigated and found that the ruins and caves actually did exist, almost unknown, and were suitable for our purposes… Just a moment. Stop, please. Open that door to your right."
I glanced at her, shrugged, and pulled the door open. It moved sluggishly, not so much because it was heavy, as because it seemed to be hooked onto a lot of machinery. There was a fine-mesh screen door beyond. The first thing I noticed was the smell. It reminded me of my childhood, when I'd raised white mice for some reason I can't recall.
Then I saw the cages, rows upon rows of them, on each side of the long, narrow room. Above them, down each side of the room, ran a long rod in bearings, geared to an electric motor at the end nearest the door. On each rod, above each vertical stack of cages, was a pulley, and from each pulley a chain ran down to the upper cage door, which in turn was linked to the one below it, and so on clear to the bottom.
That was the mechanical part of the display. The rest was just rats-or maybe I should say rodents. The cages held big rats, little rats, big mice, little mice, moles, ground squirrels, and real, honest-to-God squirrels, both gray and red, with fine bushy tails. There were other small ratty animals I couldn't identify, and I may have got some of the first ones wrong, since they didn't seem to be the American varieties with which I was familiar.
"I would not go any closer, Mr. Helm," Madame Ling said quietly. "You have not yet received your inoculation. In theory, the disease is transmitted from rats to humans by fleas, and we have tried to make sure there are no fleas here, to simplify the matter of control. We are assuming that a rodent will eventually pick up suitable fleas wherever he may be transported. However, there have been a few unfortunate occurrences indicating that Dr. McRow's hyper-active variety of the disease manages to find other means of transmission-perhaps fleas or mosquitoes, we are not sure-when there are no fleas available. So I would not open the screen door if I were you."
I hadn't the slightest intention of opening it. I looked at the collection of twittering, scratching, nose-twitching, stinking rodents. I drew a long breath, wondering if I were breathing death, and said, "They are all infected?"
"Of course." She laughed softly. "You have been wondering why I have been telling you so much, Mr. Helm. This is our secret weapon, and our insurance. If Colonel Stark should manage to locate us before we make our escape tonight, I want you to be able to confirm what I radio him about this. You have noticed the motors? There is a switch in a room below. It can be actuated either manually or electronically. If there is any threat to this place before we leave, or to the ship afterward, I will close that switch-either by hand or by remote control-and all these cages will open. They will also open automatically, after we have departed, if anyone disturbs certain warning devices hidden throughout these caves, which I will energize as I leave."
"Tricky," I said.
"Very tricky, Mr. Helm. You will note that the room narrows at the far end; it is actually only a crevice in the rock, which we have widened. The crevice goes on into the hill and meets other crevices, which come to the surface in various holes, like the one into which you fell. The switch also opens this door, allowing the animals to find other tunnels throughout the bluff. To accelerate their dispersal, a harmless gas is released that they find most unpleasant. Once they are loose, do you think anyone will ever catch them all? And if one, just one, escapes with the disease it carries, the population of Scotland is doomed. The population of Britain is doomed. And only rigorous quarantine measures will prevent the plague from spreading over the water to the Continent and further. And that is what will happen if the Colonel should act rashly. I am sure that, if the occasion arises, you will be glad to help me persuade him to be reasonable."
I said, "What if you release the plague and it spreads clear to Asia?"
"Ah, but we have a serum. It does not, as yet, give full protection-we are still checking its effectiveness, as you heard-but we are realists, Mr. Helm. We know that we can afford losses approaching forty per cent if the rest of the world suffers ninety-five to one hundred per cent. Besides, by the time the disease reaches us, we may have perfected the serum, with Dr. McRow's help."
"It's quite a threat," I said. "If you get away successfully, what demands are you going to make? I assume your country is not backing this project just to enrich Dr. McRow."
"Demands?" She seemed amused, for some reason. "Oh, yes, demands. Political demands. That is the logical next step, is it not? Blackmail. Worldwide political blackmail, such as you Americans have tried, and the Russians also, not very successfully, with your big bombs. It is an intriguing notion." She gave her soft laugh again, dismissing the subject, and murmured, "Close the door, Mr. Helm, and proceed. We call that the upper animal room. Now we pass the observation ward. I will not show it to you now, since you will see it soon enough."
I glanced at her over my shoulder, to see what she meant by this, but she was answering the salute of an armed man at the door in question, inclining her head slightly, and her expression told me nothing. I moved ahead, feeling a draft of cool air coming to greet me.
Her voice checked me. "No, turn right, please. That one is a blind corridor ending high above the sea. We go down here. Be careful, this portion is quite steep and low. Stop at the light at the bottom. The stairs you see ahead lead down to the lower animal room-where other rodents are being prepared for shipment-to the personnel quarters, the laboratory, and the cove where boats can land at low tide. As you see, we have quite an installation. Here are my quarters. Please enter."