The Plague of Silence

by John Creasey

  “Named Kathleen. Hmm.”

  “Sap,” Matt said quietly, “what difference does it make? She was bitten. I saw the damned brute on her arm. If the man hadn’t interrupted I might have been able to get the poison out.”

  “Could be,” Palfrey said, as Matt finished drying himself, and stretched out for one of the bathrobes. “She is a sister of Maureen O’Shea, and came here to work a month or so after Maureen disappeared—about the same time as Rondivallo disappeared. That much we know. By your description the man in the forest was Kurt Larsen, who owns the hotel. He’s an Anglo-Swede who’s been here for several years.” Palfrey stood up abruptly. “We can’t try to keep anything under cover now, we’ve got to come right out into the open in the search for Rondivallo.” He went on with quiet, telling vehemence. “We have to find him, because he’s our only real line of inquiry on this plague of silence. If this thing could happen here as quickly and suddenly as it did, what would happen if a larger town was invaded? What would happen if London was?” He led the way into the big room, still talking in a low-pitched voice, and approached the big bay window, with the beautiful, panoramic view beyond. “We’ve got to find Rondivallo. We’ve got to find how the mosquitoes and the satellites become infected. We can kill the mosquitoes once we know where they are, but we don’t know where the larvas are. We don’t know where they might be breeding at this very minute, and we don’t yet know what this ‘dust’ is. We can guess that Mrs. Hill was bitten, and that the two doctors were killed because they examined her soon after the seizure. The fact that trouble always starts in the throat and this new fungoid growth found on an infected larynx, might be related. But that’s as far as we can go. We may only have a little while to work in. Matt. This could soon get absolutely out of control.”

  Matt said huskily: “I didn’t know I could be so scared.”

  “We can be scared,” Palfrey said, and smiled faintly. “Now we’ve got to start questioning every one who knew Maureen O’Shea, everyone on the staff and the managements, everyone who was here when Rondivallo stayed here.”

  He glanced away from Matt towards the window, and instead of turning back, stopped speaking and stared.

  Matt darted forward.

  He saw the waitress, Kathleen O’Shea, cycling along the outer circular drive, obviously going towards the back of the hotel and the servants’ quarters. The sun was shining on her lovely hair, on the green dress, on her slim arms and legs.

  Palfrey said softly: “Are you sure that she was bitten?”

  “Quite sure,” Matt said, and his voice was hoarse with unbelief.

  Chapter Thirteen

  KATHLEEN O’SHEA

  Palfrey studied Matthew Stone’s face.

  He had known Stone for a long time, and the reports which had come after the screening to which he’d been subjected before entering the service of Z5 had been remarkable. There was no member with better qualifications or a finer record. He was the son of a wealthy newspaperman in the Middle West of the United States, and his interest in journalism had first started his travels and now gave a sound excuse for them. He could go anywhere as a newspaperman and be accepted. He had been in the heart of a dozen trouble centres, including the Middle East and Eastern Europe, during fierce troubles there, and had shown an absolute courage allied to a quick understanding of the factor involved. He had a remarkable memory for events of all kinds and an insatiable thirst for information, as well as the courage and determination to keep trying to get what he wanted.

  Few of his qualities ever showed on his face; he was a pleasant-looking young American with a crew cut, a clear complexion, keen eyes, an easy laugh, a pleasant, drawling voice which attracted many people.

  Above all his other qualifications was the fact that he could stand up to unexpected pressures well: he had once been interrogated by Security Police for eight days without yielding an item of information.

  No agent had ever been subjected to greater shocks and pressures than he had during the past few hours. When he had come in here, the effect of the pressures had shown clearly in his eyes, but Palfrey had seen the way he had driven up to the hotel, seen the way he had hurried up the steps, and knew whatever had happened he hadn’t been subdued. During their talk he had shown that his nerves had been torn. He had been jerkier in speech than usual, hardly knowing what to do with his hands, but his mind had been clear and the details of his story convincing.

  Now, as Palfrey studied him, a new expression chased the unbelief away. He watched the girl cycling until she was out of sight, then he turned to Palfrey and said:

  “So she has a kind of resistance to it.”

  “Either that, or the mosquito which bit her wasn’t infected.”

  “Could be either. We want to find out.”

  Palfrey asked, deliberately obtuse: “Why?”

  Matt said without a pause: “If she’s built up a resistance against the poison, others may have done the same. We want to find them. We want to know how the resistance developed.

  We—” he broke off, and then brushed his hand agitatedly

  over his hair. “You know as well as I do.”

  “I know,” Palfrey agreed. “We can’t be positive that it was the carrier mosquito, though, as we’ve no proof that any were as near.” He turned to the big map on the table by his side. “Here’s the road you came along.” He indicated it with his forefinger, and traced it slowly. “You say you met the girl about here, three miles from the spot where you turned off?”

  “About three.”

  “Here are cottages,” Palfrey said, and pointed to little dots, some distance off the road. “There’s a small experimental farm in a clearing in the forest here too, all about the same place, but there’s no response to telephone calls.” He sat down and picked up a receiver, and spoke almost immediately. “Reggie? … Is there any report from any of the people believed to be in Area 23?” The map was divided into squares, each with a number, and the spot where Matt had met Kathleen O’Shea was inside that square. “Any response to telephone calls, or any reports of a visit? … Yes, ring me back as soon as you can.” He rang off, and saw an odd little smile at Matt Stone’s lips. “Now what’s on your mind?”

  “You’ve got it organized down to the last detail,” Matt said. “I hand it to you.”

  “We’ve known this as a suspect area for some time, and we’ve been preparing plans for a yard by yard search to try to trace Rondivallo,” Palfrey told him. “So we were ready for it. We’re always terrified that some lunatic will unleash a bacteriological attack. One chemist plus one laboratory could kill millions. Our job is to be ready to act if the need arises.” He changed the subject abruptly: “Think you scared the wits out of this girl?”

  “It looked like it.”

  “If it proves that she has a resistance to infection, we have to find how she developed it,” Palfrey said. “It could be a natural resistance, like some people’s to ordinary mosquito bites, but I needn’t waste words. You’d better talk to her. She’ll soon know what’s happening, and will know you weren’t lying to her. That should have softened her mood.”

  “I can try,” Matt conceded.

  “Fine,” said Palfrey briskly. “If I were you, I’d get dressed.” He broke off when the telephone bell rang, and again picked up the receiver very quickly. “Yes?” He listened; and he was so affected that his knuckles showed white where he gripped the instrument. “All right Reggie, thanks,” he went on. “Yes, Mitchison’s on the spot, let me know if that fungi on the larynx shows again.”

  He rang off.

  He could see Matt Stone’s tension, and guessed that his own manner caused it; it was affecting all of them in much the same way. He smoothed down the silky hair at his forehead, and then said quietly:

  “Seven people in Area 23, three of them within half a mile of the road you were on, have collap
sed with all the usual symptoms, so those mosquitoes were the plague carriers all right. And there’s another thing you don’t know yet.”

  “Yes?”

  “Larsen is back. He walked and rode through part of the area and wasn’t touched,” Palfrey said. He tried to judge Matt’s reaction, and after a pause he went on: “You didn’t take to Larsen, did you?”

  “I wouldn’t have taken a liking to any man under those conditions,” Matt said. “I’ve been arguing about it with myself. If I’d been in his position, maybe I would have done the same thing. It must have looked as if I was trying to ravish the girl.”

  Palfrey thought: “He’s got a quality of honesty that doesn’t come often, honesty with himself. And they don’t come with more guts.”

  But Matt Stone had come through the infected area unhurt.

  There was another thing. He had been in it for hours, had walked about, moved in the open not once but several times, and had not been bitten; or if he had been bitten, had not suffered. That was a fact which could not be ignored. Stefan Andromovitch and any of the other leaders of Z5 would be quick to seize upon it. Other people in cars had been infected; Matt hadn’t. And although he’d used the insecticide at times, at others he hadn’t.

  Andromovitch would say: “We must be very careful with him, Sap.” A man could serve Z5 for years and then betray it; loyalty had to be tested time and time again.

  Matt said: “What do you want me to do right now?”

  “Order some tea in your room,” Palfrey said promptly. “I’ll arrange for Kathleen O’Shea to bring it. Talk to her, and see what you can find out.”

  Matt said slowly: “Fair enough. Thanks. If you know my room number, I’ll go along.”

  “Twenty-eight,” Palfrey said, and saw him to the door, and then turned back into the room. The knuckly Sarak, who was no more than five feet six in height, was taking a telephone message. When he put the receiver down, he spoke in his careful, heavily-accented English:

  “There iss von child, a girl, in Area 31, not hurt.”

  “Is she being taken to Lauriston?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mitchison is there,” Palfrey remarked. “He’d better be warned to be ready for her.” He stood by the window, staring across the forest, then glanced at the map and saw the little redheaded pins, indicating places where people had been bitten and had collapsed.

  As far as they knew, just four people had come through without hurt: Kathleen O’Shea, Larsen, this girl child, and Matt Stone.

  He sat down and telephoned Lauriston Hospital. Mitchison came on the line at once.

  “Hallo, Palfrey, I wanted a word with you. Several of the latest victims have the fungi infection of the larynx, and we’re trying to isolate it. There are indications of similar infections in the gums, too. I should say that the trouble is infectious— through the mouth.”

  “The dust,” Palfrey said, in a taut voice. “Have you had any samples of dust?”

  “Yes. We’ve found that the larger insect discharges it,” Mitchison said. “The insect isn’t a true mosquito, by the way, we haven’t yet identified it. We’re checking sputum and the fungi from the larynx of infected people with the so-called dust.”

  “Living organism, that dust?”

  “Oh yes,” said Mitchison.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’ll call you when there’s any development,” Mitchison promised.

  Palfrey rang off.

  He was ashen pale and his hands trembled a little.

  He needed every man he could use, but dare he use Matt Stone any longer?

  He spent ten minutes at the desk, going through reports, checking everything that had been done, satisfied that nothing could have been more swift or effective in this area. The civil and military authorities had sprung into action, and that in itself was reassuring, but they knew practically nothing yet. Even the precautions at the other centres where Rondivallo had been and where Z5 men had collapsed, and were now dead, might be pointless: there was no proof that widespread danger existed in any of those places.

  The only indication here had been the murder of Dr. Korven after the stroke which Mrs. Hill had suffered. Korven and then Dimmock, and next the Carters, had all been killed after they had seen Mrs. Hill, and possibly because they had seen her immediately after the seizure.

  Was that the reason?

  Three of the Z5 agents were at the cottage, which had been thoroughly decontaminated. Reports should soon be in. There were probably isolated spots in the forest where the paralytic insects were still alive, but the spray used would almost certainly kill all the mosquitoes which flew from the breeding ponds for the next twenty-four hours; After that, another spray from air would be necessary. It wasn’t absolutely certain that the mosquitoes were carriers for the satellite dust, but it seemed likely.

  Surely the research men working on the specimens would get results soon.

  If not, and if the plague spread …

  That was the fear which haunted Palfrey.

  It was on his mind every waking minute, driving out every other thought, and he was trying to cope when the telephone connected with Andromovitch in London came through.

  “Hallo, Stefan,” he said, and pictured the Russian giant sitting at the huge desk. “Anything fresh?”

  “There has been a plague of mosquitoes and satellites in Buenos Aires,” Andromovitch said. “A section of one of the suburbs is badly stricken, nearly everyone in it is paralysed.”

  Palfrey felt coldness spreading through him as the meaning of this struck home.

  Here, in this peaceful English village, there was the horror of the plague.

  Five thousand miles away the same plague was ravaging the people, the young and old together, the helpless and the innocent.

  “Anywhere else?” Palfrey made himself ask.

  “Yes,” the Russian said. “There is a warning from the British Government that Matthew Stone is a bad security risk. I have asked for details but none are forthcoming.”

  Palfrey asked very softly: “Did anyone in particular name Matt?”

  “I had an official memo, signed by the Prime Minister’s

  secretary. That is all I know,” Stefan said.

  Matt went into his own room for the first time since arriving at the hotel. It was at a corner, and overlooked the rolling countryside as much as the forest. He saw a road winding over a hill, and, at the highest spot, a great oak tree; that was the look-out point where he had stood with Yvonne, who had been so aloof and cold, and yet now seemed to obsess him because the mark of death was on her.

  He found his two suitcases in the room, his clothes unpacked; was that hotel service or done by Z5? He changed slowly, hanging the bathrobe in his own bathroom. He felt much less tired and harassed, but there had been something in Palfrey’s manner which he hadn’t really understood, or greatly liked.

  He went to the large single bed, walking on thick yielding carpet. The hotel was the height of luxury; all the furnishings and the fittings were good, the decor was excellent; it was a kind of millionaire’s home from home. He lifted the telephone, asked for tea, and remembered being served by the grey-haired woman at Palfrey’s office yesterday—a thousand years ago. He lit a cigarette and stood by the window, looking for tiny dots representing houses and buildings. On a road a long way off he thought he saw a string of moving cars.

  What was in Palfrey’s mind?

  How far could the plague spread?

  How had the girl Kathleen O’Shea escaped without harm?

  He heard a tap at the door, called come in, and turned round slowly, the cigarette at his lips. The maid had a small white cap on her beautiful coppery hair, carried the tray easily, had a bearing which reminded him of women of the East. It was not until she was halfway towards the tab
le in the window that she recognized him. The cup and saucer chinked as she stopped abruptly.

  Matt said: “Hallo, there. Remember me?”

  “Yes, I remember you,” she said, with that touch of Irish brogue. “Only too well, sir.”

  “Have you heard what’s been happening?”

  “Indeed I have, and a terrible thing it is.” She put the tray down, and glanced at her arm, covered now by a black silk dress; the curves of her figure was hinted at by the absurd little white lace apron. “When I heard that what you said was really true it was a panic I was in, and you were to blame for it!”

  “But you’re all right?”

  “Except that I’m badly worried,” she said. “Perhaps there could be delayed action, sir. But there’s been a doctor to examine me, and he says that the bite on my arm is an ordinary mosquito. I didn’t think the time would ever come when I was grateful to a mosquito, but there it is. Will that be all?”

  “Do mosquitoes usually bite you badly?” Matt asked.

  “Sure they do, and I have my share of them.”

  “Have you taken anything to stop them from poisoning you, and making sure the bites don’t swell up too much?”

  “I’ve never had to take a medicine against mosquito bites,” she scoffed. “There was a big water scare here only a few weeks ago, sir, and all of the staff had to take medicine to make sure it didn’t upset them, but to be sure no one said anything about mosquitoes.” She paused, and Matt tried to make sure he couldn’t see the effect her words had on him, could not guess at the way his heart began to race. “I’m not sure now—is it you who should apologize to me, or do I owe myself an apology?” Her eyes were glowing.

  In spite of the situation, Matt laughed.

  “I’ll apologise,” he said, and went on quietly, laughter soon dying: “I thought you would be paralysed in the next few minutes. Are you sure that you’ve never taken anything to help you from the ill effects of mosquito bites?”