Death at Swaythling Court

by J. J. Connington

  At the Bungalow, the old housekeeper opened the door.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Pickering,” said the Colonel, with more heartiness than he had shown with Flitterwick. “All right again, I hope? Rheumatism quite gone? Good. But I’m afraid this place is a bit damp for you, too much down in the hollow, perhaps. Is Mr. Leigh disengaged?”

  “If you’ll step this way, sir.”

  She ushered them into Jimmy Leigh’s work-room: a big low-ceilinged apartment at the back of the house, with a french-window opening out on to a lawn. It seemed to be half-laboratory and half smoke-room, to judge by the furnishing. Big saddle-bag arm-chairs were grouped about the fire, whilst round the walls were workbenches of the laboratory pattern.

  As the Colonel entered, he became aware that there was to be a fourth in the party, and only politeness kept him from showing his distaste for the company into which he had been brought. He shook hands with Jimmy and nodded stiffly to the remaining occupant of the room.

  Hubbard was not an attractive character. He was a big clumsy man with an expression of watchful slyness which sat ill upon a person of his bulk. Somehow, with his little close-set eyes, his red face, his ugly hands with their vulgar display of rings, his large and slightly flat feet, he looked out of place between Jimmy and the Colonel. At their first meeting, Colonel Sanderstead had felt an instinctive antipathy for him. There was something about his manner, not furtiveness, exactly, but something akin to it, which had jarred on the Colonel’s nerves. A nasty type, the Colonel had judged him: a man who would try to gain his ends by soap if he were dealing with a strong man, but would bully to the extreme if he got a weaker man into his power.

  Hubbard seemed to have missed the cavalier touch in the Colonel’s nod.

  “Good morning, Colonel Thanderthead. Very pleathant weather to-day; but lookth a bit like rain, eh?”

  The combination of the lisp with a naturally rough voice subconsciously irritated the Colonel. He nodded again, as stiffly as before, and then, to avoid further conversation with his bête noire, he glanced round the room in search of something which would enable him to address Jimmy Leigh. His eye was caught by a long metal tube running out from the french-window on to the lawn, an apparatus resembling the protector of the shooting galleries which occasionally appeared at the fairs of Fernhurst Parva.

  “What’s that thing?” he asked.

  Jimmy Leigh grinned.

  “That? That’s the Lethal Ray Shooting Gallery—patent not yet applied for. Place a penny in the slot, press the button, and down comes a rat, rabbit, or guinea-pig. No aiming, no ranging. A perfect toy for the youngest child. A novelty. Likewise a curiosity. Buy one to take home with you to-day.”

  The Colonel went forward and peered into the long metal chamber; but there was nothing which specially attracted his interest. The thing was simply an iron tube, about eighteen inches in diameter and built up in sections to a length of fifteen feet. The two ends were closed by means of glass plates; and the whole thing was supported on rough wooden trestles. As Colonel Sanderstead examined it, he was relieved to hear Hubbard engaging Flitterwick in conversation.

  “You’ve never come acroth to thee my collecthion, parthon. Any morning you like, after ten o’clock. But perhapth you’re not much interethted in butterflieth?”

  The Colonel absent-mindedly noted Flitterwick’s annoyance at Hubbard’s form of address. Parson! What an outsider the fellow was. And what was Jimmy Leigh doing with a creature like that in his house? It wasn’t like Jimmy. Usually he was careful in his choice of associates—more particular than most people.

  “I shall be delighted to take an early opportunity, Mr. Hubbard, delighted.” Flitterwick’s voice hardly expressed the pleasure that his words implied. There was a sort of duty-to-be-gone-through tinge in his tone. “You may expect me on the first morning which my duties leave unoccupied. I understand that your collection is a wonderful one.”

  “Itth very fair, thertainly. Itth cotht me a lot o’ trouble to put together.”

  “Ah, quite so; you must be an enthusiast, Mr. Hubbard, a lover of beauty, evidently. Alas! Beauty is frail ware. You remember the verse in the Ars Amatoria? Forma bonum fragile est. A reprehensible writer, Ovid, though full of beauty.”

  “I never read him, parthon. They didn’t teach Greek in my thcool. I gather he’th amuthing, from what you thay. Got the goodth, eh? Hot thtuff? You fellowth know where to nothe it out.”

  He nudged Flitterwick meaningly in the ribs; then, growing confidential, he put his arm round the Vicar’s thin shoulder.

  “There’th a nithe little butterfly I’ve got my eye on up in Upper Greenthtead. I marked her down one day I wath pathing in the car. I’d like to add her to my collecthion.”

  The Colonel winced, relaxed his lips as if to say something, then thought better of it and continued his inspection of the apparatus. Jimmy Leigh gave him an excuse by dragging forward a large trolly loaded with some complicated machine, which evidently formed part of the “shooting gallery.” The Colonel helped him to place it in position at the end of the iron tube. Meanwhile Flitterwick was making efforts to steer the conversation on to other lines.

  “Butterfly-collecting must be a most interesting recreation, Mr. Hubbard. Could you give me some idea of the modus operandi, the way you go about it? I fear that I am deeply ignorant of the whole affair.”

  Unobtrusively he made a successful effort to free himself from Hubbard’s affectionate embrace.

  “There’th really nothing in it, parthon. After you’ve caught a butterfly with the net, you take it out with your fingerth and put it into the killing-bottle. . . .”

  “The killing-bottle? Really? And what is the killing-bottle?”

  Flitterwick knew all the little tricks to suggest intense interest in a conversation; but through continual use they had grown slightly mechanical. His eager questions might seem verbally to imply a keen desire for further information; but the tone in which they were uttered could not conceal his boredom. Hubbard, however, was too obtuse to notice that.

  “It’th a wide-mouthed bottle with thome crystalth of thyanide of potash at the bottom of it. The thyanide give-th off pruthic athid fume-th; and that killth the butterfly.”

  “I understand. Cyanide of potash in the bottle; and it gives off prussic acid; and that kills the butterfly. Really? Indeed? Most ingenious.”

  “That preventth the butterfly from damaging itth wing-thcale-th in the death-thtruggle. Itth killed inthtantly.”

  “Ah, most ingenious, most ingenious. And then, Mr. Hubbard?”

  “Then you have to mount the butterfly before it getth thtiff. Pin it on a thetting-board, you know, with a cork cover and a groove for the body and bitth of cardboard to fix the wingth in pothithion.”

  “Ah! very ingenious, Mr. Hubbard.”

  Hubbard seemed to take this tribute as a personal one. He made another endeavour to lay his hand on the Vicar’s shoulder, and invited him to visit Swaythling Court as soon as possible so that he might see the actual apparatus.

  By this time, however, Jimmy Leigh, with the Colonel’s help, had got his apparatus arranged in the position which he desired. He was now busy connecting wires with terminals; and when this was finished, he drew the attention of the company to the complete machine.

  “Pass on to the next caravan, gentlemen. Here you see the Lethal Ray Shooting Gallery or Painless Destructor. Supersedes all rifles, revolvers, automatic pistols, bludgeons and knuckle-dusters. Kills instantaneously and leaves absolutely no marks. A pocket edition will enable householders to eliminate a burglar without soiling the carpet. The full-size machine will kill anything from a flea to an elephant. Makes an enjoyable recreation for long winter evenings. You press the button; it does the rest.”

  “Suppose you tell us something about it, for a change,” interrupted the Colonel, caustically.

  Jimmy Leigh became serious.

  “The trouble is, Colonel, that it’s very difficult to make a complex thing li
ke this clear to laymen. I really can’t go into the whole affair, because it would probably take me until to-morrow if I did. You see, you people don’t even know what a choke-coil is; you haven’t the groggiest notion of the effect produced by changing the surface-area of a condenser. And this affair is a pretty complicated stunt depending upon the mutual influence of induced currents. Will it be enough if I give you the backbone and leave out the rest?”

  “Quite enough,” said the Colonel, who abhorred technicalities which he did not understand—as Jimmy Leigh already knew.

  “Very well. First Steps in Murder, page one. Every time a muscle contracts in your body, there’s a slight flow of electricity in one direction or another. Now a current of electricity in one direction can be neutralized by another, equal current, flowing through the same material in the opposite direction. They cancel each other out, as it were. Got that?”

  The Colonel nodded. His other two hearers seemed to be paying little attention.

  “Your heart, Colonel, is simply a mass of muscle; and with every beat of it, a slight current of electricity is generated. They use that in the electro-cardiograph to determine whether the heart is normal or not. Suppose, now, you could interfere with that generation of electricity, stop it—to take an extreme case—you would knock the heart out of action; and your subject would suffer from something that would look like a bad attack of heart-disease. If your experiment was prolonged, you could throw the heart so much out of gear that the subject would find his vital machinery stopped completely. See that?”

  “I’m not out of my depth yet,” the Colonel admitted with some pride.

  “Well, that’s all there is in it. This machine here sends out a ray which I can direct to any point. That ray has the heart-interfering property; it disorganizes the electrical action of the heart-muscle. It affects all the muscles of the body, of course, but the heart-muscle is the only one we need bother about just now. Consequently, if the ray passes over an animal, the beast collapses. Don’t take my word for it. I’m going to show you the thing actually at work. I’ve got a rat I trapped yesterday and you can touch it off yourself if you like. Just wait a jiffy till I get the beast.”

  “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili, by all means,” interjected Flitterwick.

  “Quite right. ‘Try it on the dog,’ as we used to say. I’ll be back in half a mo’.”

  While Jimmy Leigh was absent from the room, the Colonel occupied himself with an examination of the apparatus which now stood opposite the glass-fronted end of the iron tube. It seemed an extremely complex affair. A huge bobbin of black ebonite occupied the lower floor of the trolly, along with something that looked like an electromotor of peculiar construction. The upper platform was crowded with coils of wire, glass tubes blown into peculiar shapes, apparently empty jars partly coated with tin-foil, things which the Colonel supposed to be switches, and one or two electric lamps with buffed glasses. Terminals held wires which were connected at the other end to binding-screws on the bench near at hand. The Colonel could make neither head nor tail of the machine; and his admiration for Jimmy Leigh’s scientific attainments rose a few degrees higher than before. He must be a wonderful fellow if he could see his way through such a complicated affair, more wonderful still if he could invent a thing like that.

  Hubbard put his hand on the Colonel’s shoulder and leaned down to look at the apparatus. Colonel Sanderstead abruptly broke off his examination and retreated a few paces. Hubbard paid no attention to this; evidently he was quite accustomed to people resenting his familiarity. He stared for a few moments at the machine, then gave it up.

  “I can’t thay I care much for thith thort of thtuff. All I’m interethted in ith the finanthial thide of it. If Jimmy Leigh can do what he thay he can do, then itth a thound affair and I’m willing to put money into it, lotth of money.”

  “Damned dividend-hunter,” was the Colonel’s reflection. “I must persuade Jimmy to cold-shoulder this person. He’s not the sort of fellow Jimmy should be mixed up with at all. Jimmy got his other patents marketed without any bother. Why should he want to encourage an outsider in this case?”

  But his further meditations on this unwelcome topic were broken by Jimmy’s return with a large wire cage in which a fair-sized rat was imprisoned

  “Now then, uncle,” Jimmy addressed his captive, “we’re just going to give you a whiff of chloroform to quieten you down a bit; and then we’ll proceed to put you into a happier world where all the walls are cheese.”

  The Colonel pricked up his ears.

  “Are you going to chloroform the brute? Won’t the ray work on a normal animal?”

  “Certainly it will. But it’s better to give the beast a whiff, not more than a whiff, at the start. Otherwise you’d have it scampering about too much. I want you to be able to watch exactly how it behaves. Besides, to be quite frank with you, Colonel, the ray works best when the patient is not over-excited. If he’s slightly narcotized, it seems to help the action; though it isn’t absolutely necessary. I guarantee to kill a sheep with this machine, just as it stands.”

  “That’s all right, Jimmy,” said the Colonel, hastily. “I wasn’t doubting you, of course. I only asked for information.”

  “Well, here goes.”

  Jimmy Leigh poured a few drops of chloroform on a clear space on one of the benches, placed the rat’s cage over it, and covered it with a cloth for a few moments.

  “That’s about enough, I think.”

  He lifted the cloth, placed the cage in front of the tube of the “shooting gallery,” withdrew both the glass slide and the sliding door of the cage, and bundled the rat into the iron cylinder, replacing the glass slide behind it.

  “Now have a look at uncle; make sure there’s no deception and that I haven’t a dead rat up my sleeve.”

  The chloroform had evidently dazed the animal, for at first it sat still and paid no attention to movements on the part of the observers. Gradually, however, it seemed to recover and began to move about, though languidly. Jimmy Leigh clicked home a switch and immediately the rising whine of a motor contact-breaker sounded, which seemed to disturb the rat slightly. It retreated slowly down the steel tube, away from the nearer window. Jimmy Leigh busied himself with the manipulation of a series of further switches.

  “Now, look out!”

  A big tube in the apparatus suddenly shot out a flare of deep red light; there was a deafening report as a huge spark leapt between two electrodes. The rat gave a convulsive start, retreated an inch or two farther, and dropped dead on the floor of the tube.

  “Stand clear till I switch off.”

  Jimmy Leigh went through some further manipulations; the angry glare died away in the glass tube; and the whine of the contact-breaker faded out into silence.

  “All safe now. We’ll hook him out for inspection. Perhaps you’ll remove uncle’s carcass yourself, Colonel, so that there can be no suspicion that I’m using a trained rat for the purpose of this experiment?”

  With the help of a long rod furnished with a hook at the end, the Colonel succeeded in raking the rat out of the death-chamber. It was undeniably dead, struck down as if by a thunderbolt. The Colonel gingerly handed the little corpse to Hubbard, who examined it with interest.

  “Itth thertainly ath dead ath mutton. Hath it any thpecial thymptomth, Leigh?”

  Jimmy seemed to consider for a moment.

  “It has. The eye-pupils are always widely dilated; and, funny thing, I’ve always found traces of cyanide—prussic acid anyway—in the stomach afterwards. Quite a big dose, too. Rum start, that. I can’t explain it.”

  Hubbard seemed a trifle sceptical on one point.

  “Thith arrangement here theemth a trifle elaborate. Are you thure you can direct the ray in any directhion you pleathe?”

  Jimmy Leigh smiled indulgently at the query.

  “Doesn’t it strike you that unless the ray had been directed last time, it wouldn’t have been only the rat that went west? That machi
ne would kill you just as easily as the rat; and yet you weren’t touched when the shot was fired, so to speak. See this pointer?”

  He indicated a slender brass needle screwed to the edge of the table, which in its present position was directed down the axis of the iron tube.

  “That pointer gives you the danger-line. Everything else round about is quite safe.”

  “And what about the range of the machine? That’th a very important point.”

  Jimmy Leigh led them out into the garden, from which they had an open view of the country-side. He took his stand under a telephone wire which cut across the garden and extended away towards Micheldean Abbas.

  “See old Swaffham’s phone cable? Follow the line of that into the village. See the cottage on the hill right above? Two thousand—say two thousand two hundred. I could make the thing work over there just as easily as in this garden. Now look farther to the right. The church-tower; four o’clock; three finger-breadths; see that isolated oak? That’s within range. Fernhurst Manor is just outside the radius. Now almost due north, Swaythling Court’s well within the fatal radius. I could knock out anyone up there with this machine as easy as look at it. Your gate-lodge—ditto. High Thorne and Carisbrooke House are outside the range. That satisfy you?”

  Hubbard seemed hardly to relish the information about his own house.

  “There’th no chanth of that thing getting out of gear, ith there? I mean going off when you’ve got it pointed at thomething without meaning it?”

  “You needn’t worry,” Jimmy replied, rather contemptuously. “If it hits you at Swaythling, it won’t be an accident.”

  “I don’t like that kind of joke,” said Hubbard, rather viciously.

  Flitterwick apparently made up his mind to change the conversation.

  “A most surprising instrument, I think. Did it take you long to devise it, or was it just a flash of genius?”

  Jimmy Leigh hardly suppressed his amusement over the latter suggestion.