"I don't get it," Hardanger said flatly. "It doesn't make sense. Can you imagine the General here having two men working for him on the same project in, say, Warsaw, men who were not only unknown to each other but completely at cross purposes and potentially at each other's throats. I'm afraid, Cavell, that I have a higher opinion of Communist intelligence than you seem to have."
"I agree with Hardanger," the General said.
"So do I," I agreed. "All I said was that MacDonald was working for the Communists. I never once said that Gregori was or that this Satan Bug has anything to do with Communism. It was you and Hardanger who made that assumption."
Hardanger bent forward to see me better. "You mean— you mean that Gregori is just a raving crack-pot after all?"
"If you still believe that," I said nastily, "it's time you had a long holiday. There was a very powerful and pressing reason why Gregori wanted the viruses and I'll stake my life that he told MacDonald what it was. He would have had to ensure his co-operation. If he'd told MacDonald that he just wanted to take off with the botulinus I doubt if MacDonald would have touched the business. But if he'd offered him, say, £10,000, MacDonald would have changed his mind pretty fast, that being the kind of man MacDonald was."
We were fairly into Alfringham now, the big police Jaguar with its siren switched on, doing twice the legal speed limit, dodging in and out among the thinning evening traffic. The driver was an expert, the pick of Hardanger's own London men, and he knew exactly how much he and the car could do without killing the lot of us in the process.
"Stop the car!" Hardanger interrupted me suddenly. "That traffic policeman." We were closing rapidly on Alfringham's one and only set of traffic lights, apparently hand-controlled at what passed for Alfringham's rush hour. A policeman, white cape glistening in the lamp-lit rain, was still standing by a control box attached to a lamp-post. The car stopped, and Hardanger, window wound down, beckoned the man across.
"Superintendent Hardanger, London," he said abruptly. "Did you see a bluish-green Vanden Plas Princess pass this way this evening? An hour ago, slightly less?"
"As a matter of fact I did, sir. He was coming at a fair lick on the amber and I saw he would be on the intersection when it was red. I blew my whistle and he stopped just after he'd passed the second lights. I asked the driver what he thought he was up to and he said his back wheels had locked on the wet road when he tried to brake and when he took his foot off he was frightened to brake again, or brake hard, because his daughter was asleep in the back seat and might have been injured if he'd stopped too suddenly and she'd been flung forward. I looked in the back seat and she was asleep. Sound asleep, even our voices didn't waken her. There was another man beside her. So — so I gave him a warning and waved him on…" His voice trailed away uncertainly.
"Exactly," Hardanger roared. "Now you're realising. Can't you tell the difference between someone sleeping and someone being forced to fake sleep with a gun in her side? She slept on, forsooth," he said fiercely. "You miserable nincompoop, I'll have you drummed out of the Force!"
"Yes, sir." The policeman, eyes staring unseeingly over the roof of the Jaguar, stood at rigid attention, a dead ringer for a guardsman on parade about to collapse with the thumbs still at the seams of the trousers. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Which way did he go?" Hardanger demanded.
"London, sir," the policeman said woodenly.
"It would be too much to expect you to have taken his number, I suppose," Hardanger said with heavy sarcasm.
"xow 973, sir."
"What!"
"xow 973."
"Consider yourself reinstated," Hardanger growled. He wound up the window and we were off again, the sergeant talking softly into the hand microphone. Hardanger said, "Bit rough on him, I suppose. If he had been smart enough to notice anything he'd have been twanging his harp by now instead of playing about with his traffic light buttons. Sorry for the interruption, Cavell."
"It doesn't matter," I said. I was glad of the interruption, glad of anything that would take my mind off Mary, Mary with a killer's gun in her side. "MacDonald — I was speaking of MacDonald. Money mad — but also a pretty shrewd character. Very shrewd — he must be to have survived so long in the espionage racket. He knew the theft of the botulinus — I'm certain Gregori never mentioned his intention of taking the Satan Bug as well — would start off an intensive probing into the past life of all the suspects — those working in number one lab. He may also have suspected that his own espionage activities were liable to start a re-check on all scientists. He knew that all the known details of his life were down on his security record card and he was pretty certain that one or more of those details, the ones referring to his immediate post-war activities, wouldn't stand up to rigorous examination. He knew the security chief, Derry, held those records. He told Gregori that there would be no dice, no co-operation, unless he saw that record first. MacDonald had no intention of being the fall guy in subsequent police investigations."
"So Easton Derry — or what's left of him — lies down in that cellar now," the General said quietly.
"Yes. I'm only guessing now, but they're pretty safe guesses. Apart from the records MacDonald wanted, Gregori also wanted something — the combination of number one lab door which was known only to Derry and Dr. Baxter. I think they arranged for MacDonald to ask Derry to call at his house, saying that he had something of importance to tell him. Derry came, and when he passed through MacDonald's door he was already as good as dead. Gregori, who would have been waiting hidden, gun in hand, saw to it that he did die. First of all they took the keys from him, the keys to the safes in Derry's house where the records were kept: the security chief had always to carry those keys on his person. Then they tried to make him tell the combination of number one lab door. At least, Gregori tried — I don't see MacDonald having any part in this, although he must have known — or seen — what was going on. While Gregori may not be a crackpot, I think he must be some sort of psychopath — a man with a streak of sadistic blood-lust a yard wide. Look what he did to Derry, to the back of Mrs. Turpin's head, not to mention my ribs and hanging MacDonald alive."
"And defeated his own ends," Hardanger said heavily. "He tortured and mutilated Derry so savagely that Derry died before he could talk. It shouldn't be too difficult to find out who this fake Gregori is. A man with his records and techniques is bound to have a record. Given his prints and cephalic index Interpol in Paris will identify him within the hour." He leaned forward, gave instructions to the sergeant.
"Yes," I said. "It won't be hard. But it's not important now. Having killed Derry before he could talk, Gregori had to find another way into number one lab. First of all they searched his house — and I would bet, incidentally, that they searched his private effects also and came across a photograph showing Derry as the best man at a wedding. My wedding. The General is in the photograph too, of course. That's why they kidnapped me, then Mary. They knew. Anyway, they unlocked the safe, abstracted the dicey page from MacDonald's dossier — and had a damned good look at the other dossiers while they were there. They found out about Dr. Hartnell's financial troubles — and decided he could be blackmailed into helping them by acting as decoy from the break-out from Mordon. For, having failed to get the lab combination from Derry, Gregori had to devise a new plan to get the viruses."