‘Do you really think so?’ he muttered unhappily.
‘I do. And oh, Jack! Do think of the awful cruelty of letting that poor man die such a painful, lingering death, all alone in that place, without a soul to come near him. Anyone who could do that would be an absolute monster. I don’t care what excuse he had.’
‘That’s been haunting me,’ said Munting — and he did look very white and ill. ‘All right, Harrison. I’ll see it through. Look here, I’ll come along to the place with you.’
We walked in complete silence till we came to St Anthony’s. There were numbers of people passing in and out through the wide entrance, and nobody took the slightest notice of us.
‘I think the labs are up this staircase,’ said Munting, leading the way. ‘And here’s where we hang up the hats and coats,’ he added, rattling his umbrella into a hat-stand placed inside the heavy swinging door.
‘Is that usual?’ I inquired.
‘We did it last time,’ said Munting, ‘I remember it distinctly. And as the idea is to see whether it’s feasible to roam unchallenged about the place, we may as well look as much like the inhabitants as possible. If Lathom did come here poison-hunting, he’d scarcely omit that precaution.’
Having thus shed the outward insignia of visitors, we found ourselves in a wide corridor, smelling faintly of chemists’ shops, with numbered doors on either side. A few men in white overalls passed us, but took no notice of us. We walked briskly, as though with a definite objective, and, selecting at random a door near the end of the corridor, pushed it boldly open.
A big room, full of sinks and tables and well-lit by large windows, presented itself to our view. A student sat at a bench near us with his back to the door. He was boiling something in a complicated apparatus of glass tubes over a Bunsen burner. He did not look up. Over by the window four men were gathered round some sort of experiment, which apparently absorbed all their attention. A sixth man, mounted on a pair of steps, was searching for something in a cupboard. He glanced round as we entered, but, seeing that we did not look likely to assist him in finding what he wanted, ignored us, and, coming down, went up to the student with the apparatus.
‘What’s become of. .?’ (something I didn’t catch) he asked irritably.
‘How should I know?’ demanded the other, who was pouring some liquid into a funnel and seemed annoyed at the interruption. ‘Ask Griggs.’
We backed out again, unregarded, and tried another door. Here we found a small room, with a solitary, elderly man bending over a microscope. He removed his eye from the lens and looked round with a scowl. We begged his pardon and retired. Before we had closed the door, his head was back at the eyepiece again, while his right hand, which had never stopped writing, continued to take notes.
We intruded, with equal ease and equally unchallenged, into a lecture-room, where forty or fifty students were gathered round a demonstrator at a blackboard; into two more laboratories, one empty and the other containing two absorbed men and a dead rabbit, and finally into a fourth laboratory, where a dozen or so students were laughing and talking and seemed to be waiting for somebody.
One of these, having nothing particular to do, came forward and asked if we wanted anybody in particular. Munting replied that he was looking for Mr Leader.
‘Leader?’ said the student. ‘Let me see. He’s a second-year man, isn’t he? Where’s Leader, anybody know?’
A young man in spectacles said he fancied Leader was in Room 27.
‘Oh, yes, to be sure. Try 27 — along the corridor on the right, up the steps and the second door on the left. If he’s not there, I expect they’ll be able to tell you. Not at all, pleasure.’
We found our way to Room 27, and there, among a group of students, found Leader, who greeted Munting with loud demonstrations of joy. I was introduced, and explained that I was anxious for a little information, if he could spare the time.
He led us to a quiet corner, and Munting reminded him of his previous visit with Lathom and the conversation about synthetic poisons. He was only too delighted to assist us, and led us along at once to another room, inhabited only by the usual couple of absorbed men in a far corner, who took no notice of us.
‘Here you are,’ said Leader, cheerfully, displaying an open cupboard stacked with glass bottles. ‘Convincing demonstration of the way we’ve got Mother Nature beat. Synthetic thyroxin — same stuff you produce in your own throat, handy and available without the tedious formality of opening you up. A small daily dose gives you pep. Camphor, our own brand, cures cold and kills beetles. Take a sniff and admire the fine, rich, natural aroma. Cinchona, all my own work, or, strictly speaking, Professor Benton’s. Adrenalin — that’s the stuff to make your hair stand on end; full of kidney punch. Muscarine — not so pretty as scarlet toadstools, but just as good for giving you tummy-ache. Urea—’
‘That’s very interesting, isn’t it?’ said Munting.
‘Very,’ said I. My hand shook a little as I took the bottle from Leader. It was a squat, wide-mouthed glass jar, about half-full of a whitish powder, and clearly labelled ‘Muscarine (Synthetic) C5H15NO8’.
‘It’s rather deadly, I suppose,’ I added, with as much carelessness as I could assume.
‘Fairly so,’ said Leader. ‘Not quite as powerful as the natural stuff, I believe, but quite disagreeable enough. A teaspoonful would settle your hash all right, and leave a bit over for the dog. Nice symptoms. Sickness, blindness, delirium and convulsions.’ He grinned fondly at the bottle. ‘Like to try some? Take it in a little water and the income-tax won’t bother you again.’
‘What’s it made of, Leader?’ asked Munting.
‘Oh — inorganic stuff, you know — all artificial. I couldn’t say offhand. I can look it up if you like.’ He hunted in a locker and produced a notebook. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Cholin. You start with artificial cholin.’
‘What’s that? Something to do with the liver?’
‘Well, yes, in the ordinary way. But you can make it by heating ethene oxide with triethylamine. That gives you your cholin. Then you oxidise it with dilute nitric acid — the stuff you etch with, you know. Result, muscarine. Pretty, isn’t it?’
‘And if you analyse it again chemically, could you tell the difference between that and the real stuff?’
‘Of course not. It is the real stuff. I don’t think we’ve got any of the natural muscarine about the place, or you’d see. But there’s no difference at all, really. Nature’s only a rather clumsy kind of chemist, don’t you see. You’re a chemical laboratory; your body, I mean — so am I — so’s everybody — only rather a careless and inaccurate one, and given to producing unnecessary flourishes and ornaments, like your face, or toadstools. There’s no need to make a toadstool when you want to produce muscarine. If it comes to that, I don’t suppose there’s any real need for your face — from a chemical point of view. We could build you up quite easily in the labs if we wanted to. You’re mostly water, you know, with a little salt and phosphates and all that kind of thing.’
‘Come, Leader, that won’t quite do. You couldn’t make me walk and talk, could you?’ (This was Munting, of course.)
‘Well, no. There’s a trifling hitch there, I admit — always supposing anybody wants to hear your bright conversation.’
‘Then there is something — what I call Life — which you can’t imitate.’