‘Perfectly.’
‘Very well. Now, if, when the analyser is thus turned to darkness, I place the solution of an optically active substance between the two slices of tourmaline the light will — you can tell me that yourself — it’s a band of light, remember.’
‘I remember. Yes. The band of light will be rotated as it passes through.’
‘That’s right. It will come round into line with the foliations of the analyser, and—’
‘Come through!’ said I, triumphantly.
‘Thank God for a man of intelligent mind. As you rightly say, it will come through. And therefore you will see—’
‘Light!’ said I.
(Pom, pomty; pom, pomty — if I could have got rid of that relentless drum-beat. My heart seemed to be going very heavily too.)
‘But if,’ went on Waters, with his eye on Sir James, who was stirring his solutions with a glass rod over the sink, ‘if the substance should be optically inactive — if, for example, it should turn out to be a synthetic product, prepared from inorganic substances in the laboratory — then it will not rotate the beam of polarised light. The darkness will persist.’
I saw that.
‘Well, now you perfectly understand. If, when we put the muscarine solution in the polariscope, we get light, it proves nothing. Either the stuff is natural, or else the synthetic preparation has already been split up into its two active forms, and we can make no pronouncement about it. But if we get darkness — then it’s a pretty dark business, Mr Munting.’
I nodded.
‘Well, Waters,’ said Sir James, cheerfully, ‘finished your lecture?’
‘Quite. The pupil is highly commended.’
‘Good. Now, I’m in your hands, Waters. What do you want me to do?’
‘I think we’ll have the control solution first, if you don’t mind. Now, Mr Munting you will see how this substance, prepared from the living tissue of a fungus, rotates the beam of polarised light. Right you are, sir.’
Sir James handed me a glass cylinder, filled with a colourless solution. I sniffed at it, but it had no smell.
‘I shouldn’t taste it if I were you,’ said Sir James, a little grimly. He struck a match and lit a Bunsen burner, the flame of which played upon a small mass of something held above it by a platinum projection.
‘Sodium chloride,’ said Waters. ‘In fact, not to make unnecessary mystery about it, common salt. Shall I switch off?’
He snapped off the lights, and we were left with only the sodium flame. In that green, sick glare a face floated close to mine — a corpse-face — livid, waxen, stamped with decay — sharp-shadowed in the nostrils and under the orbits — Harrison’s face, as I had seen it in ‘The Shack’, opening a black mouth of complaint.
‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’ said Sir James, pleasantly, and I pulled myself together and realised that I must look just as ghastly to him as he to me. But for the moment the face had been Harrison’s, and from that moment Lathom was nothing to me any more.
Sir James settled down to his experiment with comfortable deliberation. He placed the cylinder containing the solution in the polariscope, adjusted the eyepiece and looked. Then he turned to Waters.
‘So far,’ he said, dryly, ‘the laws of Nature appear to hold good. Do you want to see?’
‘I should like Mr Munting to see,’ said Waters. ‘Here you are. Wait a minute. We’ll take the cylinder out for a moment. Come along. You shall do it yourself.’
My heart was thumping. To my excited imagination it seemed to shake the table as I took Sir James’s place before the polariscope.
‘We’ll start,’ said Waters, ‘with the analyser parallel to the polariser. Right you are. You see your beam of light? Now here’s the adjustment. Turn it yourself.’
I turned it, and the light vanished.
‘Hold on to it,’ said Waters, cheerfully, ‘so that you can be sure there’s no hanky-panky. I’m putting the muscarine solution in again. Now then!’
As he slipped the glass cylinder into place the circle of light returned.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I see it.’
‘Convincing demonstration of a miracle,’ said Waters, ‘and the lopsidedness of things in general. That’s all right, then. Now we’ll have a look at the stuff that killed Harrison. No. Respect for our governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters. We’ll let Sir James have a go first.’
Sir James, with a shrug, took my place at the instrument. Waters put his hand on my arm.
With maddening deliberation, the analyst set the first cylinder carefully on one side and took up the other. My mouth was dry as I watched him. He put the cylinder into the polariscope and looked. There was a pause. Then a grunt. Then his hand came up, feeling for the adjustment. There was another pause and an exclamation of impatience. Then his eye was jerked back from the eyepiece and his head peered round to examine the exterior of the instrument. Waters’s grip on my arm became painful in its tightness. Sir James’s hand came round again, feeling, this time, for the cylinder. He took it out, held it up, looked at it and replaced it with very great care. He looked again, and there was a long silence.
Then came Sir James’s voice, queer and puzzled.
‘I say, Waters. There’s something funny here. Just have a look, will you?’
With a final squeeze, Waters loosened his grip of me and took Sir James’s place before the instrument. He moved the cylinder back and forth once or twice and said, in a judicial tone, ‘Well!’
‘What do you make of that?’ said Sir James.
‘One of two things,’ said Waters, briskly, ‘either it’s a suspension of the laws of Nature, or this muscarine of yours is optically inactive.’
‘What do you suggest?’ demanded Sir James.
‘I suggest,’ said Waters, ‘that this is a synthetic preparation in racemic form.’
‘But how could—?’ Sir James broke off, and in the corpse-light I watched his face as he revolved the possibilities in his mind. ‘You know what that means, Waters.’
‘I might hazard a guess.’
‘Murder.’
‘Yes, murder.’
There was another pause, in which the silence seemed to become absolutely solid. Then Sir James said, very slowly:
‘The man was murdered. My God, this is a lesson to me, Waters. Never to overlook anything. Who would ever have thought—? But that’s no excuse. I shall have to — I must verify it first, though. Do the preparations again. But — what put you on to this?’
‘Let’s go and get a drink,’ said Waters, ‘and we’ll tell you all about it. You’d better have a look at this first, Mr Munting.’
I looked through the instrument. Dead blackness. But if the thing had shown all the colours of the rainbow, I should have been in no state to draw any conclusion from it. I sat stunned while somebody switched on the lights, extinguished the Bunsen burner and locked all the apparatus up again.
Then I found myself straggling after the other two, while they talked about something or other. I had an idea that I came into it, and presently Waters turned back and thrust his arm into mine.
‘What you want,’ he said, ‘is a double Scotch, and no soda.’
I don’t very well remember getting home, but that, I think, was not due to the double Scotch, but to bewilderment of mind. I do remember waking my wife up and blurting out my story in a kind of confused misery, which must have perplexed and alarmed her. And I remember saying that it was quite useless to think of going to bed, because I should never sleep. And I remember waking this morning very late, with the feeling that someone was dead.
I have written all this down. I don’t know whether it is necessary, because, of course, Sir James will be doing something about it by now. But I promised a statement, and here it is.