For six weeks Brookfield had lived with the scientist in his rambling old house at East Minster on the Isle of Sheppey, keeping constant vigilance, but nothing untoward had happened. Even he had not been permitted to enter the large laboratory where the professor conducted his experiments. It was a chamber that possessed double doors, the inner one being constructed of steel, both of which were locked when Mason was inside. There were no windows, air being supplied in plentiful quantities through three ventilators. As soon as he was satisfied that his five years of careful experiment had proved successful, the professor informed the War Office and arranged a date for final demonstration of the efficacy of the gas, which he had named Veronite. Major Brien had been present with the experts on the day appointed and, like his companions, had been amazed and shocked by the manifestation.
‘It was devastating, catastrophic,’ he had told Sir Leonard Wallace on his return to the office. ‘I had never even imagined anything so dreadful, and I hope I never see the infernal stuff in action again.’
The War Office specialists had been enthusiastic, and had desired to take possession of the formula there and then, but Professor Mason had told them there was still one little experiment he wished to carry out before announcing that his work was complete. That morning he had failed to appear at breakfast, and repeated and loud knocking on the door of the laboratory had met with no response. Thoroughly alarmed Brookfield rang up Sir Leonard Wallace, who promptly sent down Cousins to help in the investigation. Two hours later Brookfield telephoned with the information that he and Cousins had broken in the first door and opened the second by means of a steel cutter to find the professor lying dead, shot through the brain. Cousins was then on his way to Town to make his report, whilst Brookfield remained awaiting orders.
‘Has it struck you,’ asked Brien suddenly looking up from his book, ‘that the most terrible consequences may result from this tragedy?’
‘Naturally,’ was the reply. ‘There would be something wrong with my mentality if the thought had not occurred to me.’ He glanced keenly at his friend. ‘What kind of a man was Mason, Billy? I never met him, you know.’
‘A genial little chap with a mop of white hair and the face of a schoolboy,’ returned Brien. ‘I was rather struck with the youthfulness of his complexion. It was as smooth as a woman’s, and hadn’t a line or wrinkle in it. It made me think of that big poster of a schoolgirl which advertises Palm Olive soap.’
‘Would you think he was the type of man to commit suicide?’
Brien shook his head emphatically.
‘Absolutely not,’ he declared. ‘Why? Do you think—’
‘I can hardly think anything until I’ve heard what Cousins has to say,’ interrupted Wallace. ‘It occurred to me, however, that the appalling nature of the force he was handing over to others may have suddenly caused him misgiving; a dread that he had no right to put such power into the hands even of Great Britain. You know what these savants are. Their minds are not normal like yours and mine.’ Brien smiled to himself. Nobody would ever have described Wallace’s mind as normal, a mind that had been on several occasions, spoken of as one of the most brilliant in England. ‘There is just a chance, therefore,’ went on Wallace, ‘that a sudden revulsion of feeling came to him, whereupon he destroyed his formula and shot himself.’
‘But,’ objected Billy, ‘Brookfield spoke as though he was certain of murder. If it had been suicide, a weapon would have been found, and he made no mention of one. I hope,’ he added reflectively, ‘that it does turn out to be suicide. The idea of the gas being in the hands of a nation that does not hesitate to employ agents, who commit murder to attain their object, does not bear thinking about.’
There was a knock on the door and, in response to Wallace’s call, one of the most remarkable and popular figures at Secret Service headquarters entered. Cousins, with his slim boyish figure and wrinkled face, was generally a source of amusement to his colleagues. But on this occasion neither Wallace nor Brien smiled a greeting at him. His sharp brown eyes had a look of solemnity in them; the humorous curves of his face had, in some extraordinary manner, changed into lines of grim solicitude. Without a word he sank into the chair his chief indicated, and accepted a cigarette from the silver box that was pushed across to him. Both his superior officers were watching him anxiously. He took two or three quick puffs at his cigarette before he spoke, then:
‘It’s murder without a doubt,’ he proclaimed, ‘and I’m just as certain that the formula has been stolen.’
A sharp intake of breath came from Brien. Sir Leonard gave no sign, but his steel-grey eyes were boring into the little man’s face as though he expected to read the solution of the mystery there.
‘You found no weapon, I suppose?’ he asked quietly.
‘No, sir. Apart from that there is no sign of singeing as there would have been if the bullet had been fired from very close range.’
‘Well, being certain that the professor was murdered, how did his assailant get into the laboratory?’
Cousins raised his hands in a helpless sort of gesture.
‘That’s what Brookfield and I have been trying to puzzle out all morning,’ he observed ruefully. ‘He not only got in, but he got out again, and left both doors locked from the inside.’
‘I suppose they are self-locking,’ put in Brien, ‘and all the murderer had to do was to pull them to after he was out.’
Cousins looked at him, the glimmer of a pitying smile on his face.
‘We happen to have noticed that neither latch was self-locking,’ he remarked with the slightest trace of sarcasm. ‘Also I found both keys lying on one of the tables in the laboratory. Not only that but Brookfield sat on an armchair close to the outer door all night, only leaving his post when the housekeeper told him breakfast was ready at eight this morning.’
‘There are no windows in the laboratory, are there?’
‘No sir. It is lit by half a dozen powerful electric lights. There’s not even a chimney.’
‘Then,’ declared Brien with conviction, ‘the professor must have killed himself, unless—’ he stopped as a sudden thought struck him. ‘Would it have been possible for the man, whoever he was, to have hidden in the room and made his escape when you and Brookfield were bending over the professor? You see there is a chance that Mason took the fellow in with him.’
‘Nobody went in with him,’ replied Cousins. ‘Both Brookfield and a maid saw him go in alone, and bade him good night; and it is out of the question that the murderer could have been hiding there. When we finally succeeded in opening the steel door we both stood at the entrance for some time while I bound up Brookfield’s hand which had been cut during the process. If anybody had been in there we would have been bound to have seen him. There’s nowhere a man could hide effectually. Besides, Mrs Holdsworth, the housekeeper, was standing outside in the passage.’
Brien, looking thoroughly mystified, sat back in his chair. ‘It beats me,’ he confessed. ‘He must have shot himself, but how?’
Wallace who had remained silent since his first question, and appeared to be deep in thought now looked up.
‘Any theory, Cousins?’ he demanded.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t,’ was the reply. ‘The whole thing is impossible on the face of it, and yet it has happened. Take the bare facts as they stand, sir: nobody could get into that room, yet somebody did; nobody could get out without going through the double doors, yet somebody did.’
‘Perhaps the murderer had duplicate keys!’
‘I have gone into that possibility, sir. But I ascertained that the locks were specially made with only one key for each door, which never under any circumstances left the professor’s possession.’
‘Why are you so sure that the laboratory was entered?’ asked Sir Leonard quietly.
‘How else could the professor have been murdered, sir, and the safe ransacked?’
‘Ah! The safe was ransacked, was it? Brookfield only told us on the telep
hone that you found the door open. How do you know it had been ransacked?’
‘It was full of papers mixed together in hopeless confusion, as though someone had conducted a hasty search. While the doctor was examining the body, I went through them. There was no sign of the formula for Veronite either there, in Professor Mason’s pockets, or in fact anywhere in the laboratory.’
‘How do you know?’ demanded Brien.
Cousins smiled.
‘I happen to have a fairly extensive knowledge of chemistry,’ he replied, as though he were confessing a weakness, ‘and there was certainly no formula concerning poison gas.’
‘Is there anything you don’t know, Cousins?’ asked Wallace.
The little man sighed.
‘A lot more than I should care to confess,’ he said. ‘What I do know can only be classed as extraneous knowledge, sir. I browse in the suburbs so to speak.’
‘They must be singularly well-informed suburbs,’ observed Brien.
‘“Give me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, that’s a’ the learning I desire”,’ murmured Cousins.
‘Were the lights on when you entered the laboratory?’ asked Wallace.
‘All of them, sir.’
‘Did you inform the Sheerness police?’
Cousins shook his head.
‘I thought you’d want to have a look round first,’ he pointed out.
‘Quite right. We’ll let Scotland Yard know. If they want to send a man down they can, but they’ll probably leave a matter like this to us entirely. Who is the doctor you called in?’
‘A man called Cummings, with a practice at Minster, sir. He wanted to call in the police, and was altogether an officious sort of person. I told him to stay in the house, and gave Brookfield the tip not to let him out. He’s the sort that would have blabbed the news to the whole countryside, if we had let him go. He made a bit of a fuss; imagines Brooky and I are criminals of the deepest dye, I think.’
‘The usual type of country practitioner, I suppose.’
‘Worse than the usual, sir. Simply oozed importance when he knew what we wanted him for, and talked an awful lot. Still he knew enough to be able to declare life extinct, which was clever of him considering poor old Professor Mason was shot right through the centre of his forehead.’
Wallace rose.
‘I’ll go along at once. Perhaps you’d better come with me, Billy, and you too, of course, Cousins. Is the sewing machine here, Bill?’
The sewing machine was his disrespectful name for Major Brien’s car and, after many protests against such a title, the latter had accepted the inevitable, and even used the designation himself. He nodded.
‘The car with the finest engine in London is below,’ he said firmly.
Wallace grinned.
‘Well, you shall have the privilege of driving Cousins and me to East Minster,’ he declared.
‘Thanks for nothing,’ retorted Brien.
Wallace rang up his wife to inform her that he would not be home for luncheon, then the three of them started in Brien’s somewhat ancient but thoroughly efficient car. They halted for some minutes outside New Scotland Yard where a startled Commissioner listened in amazed and angry silence to Sir Leonard’s story.
‘What a dastardly crime!’ he exclaimed when the Chief of the Secret Service had finished.
‘The theft of the formula,’ commented Wallace grimly, ‘and there is little doubt that it has been stolen, is even more dastardly. Can you imagine what the loss of that may signify?’
‘My God!’ ejaculated the Commissioner, and he spoke in little more than a whisper, while the blood drained slowly from his face. ‘That aspect did not strike me before. It may result in an appalling calamity.’
‘Of course it may. Even in the possession of a weak nation it would mean world domination until some sort of defence against it could be invented.’
They sat looking at each other for some seconds, the faces of them both indicating the grave nature of their thoughts. At last the Commissioner spoke.
‘You won’t want us to take a hand,’ he surmised. ‘A case of this nature comes under your purview, not mine. Besides, it asks for the unrestricted methods of your department, not the restrained red-tapism to which we have to submit in our investigations.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Sir Leonard; ‘but once I obtain a line leading me to the formula and thus to the murderer, you’d better take up the affair, and treat it as a common case of murder. The motive for the crime, in fact everything respecting the discovery of Veronite, must be hushed up.’
The grey-haired Chief of Police nodded.
‘We shall simply declare robbery to have been the motive,’ he said. ‘God grant you are able to recover the formula,’ he added earnestly as Wallace rose to go.
An hour’s rapid run took the car to Professor Mason’s house at East Minster. The building stood on a cliff overlooking the sea in grounds that had been badly neglected, and was half a mile from any other dwelling. It was a peculiar place having originally been a cottage of five rooms to which had been added others, from time to time, eventually to give it a strange appearance as though it was endeavouring to face in three directions at once. Only the front remained unaltered probably because it would have been impossible to extend in that direction.
Brookfield met them, and conducted them to the drawing room, where a sharp-featured woman was waiting with a stout, undersized man of about fifty-five. The latter, his little eyes gleaming angrily through his pince nez, greeted them with a snort of indignation.
‘I demand an explanation for my reasonless detention in this house,’ he commenced, looking from Brien to Wallace and back again. ‘It is scandalous that a man of my position and calling should have been treated in such a manner. During my thirty years’ experience I have never—’
‘Is this the doctor?’ asked Wallace turning to Brookfield.
‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Cousins and I thought it would be as well if he stayed here until you arrived. He didn’t approve, and I’ve had a great deal of difficulty in persuading him to remain.’
‘Approve!’ barked the doctor. ‘Of course I did not approve. I have been in this house for three and a half hours, and it is now past my luncheon hour. I want to know the meaning of it, sir. It is—’
‘All right, doctor,’ interrupted Wallace soothingly, ‘you’ll be paid for the time you have spent here. It was important that you remained on the premises.’ The little man was mollified to a great extent.
‘Well,’ he conceded, ‘that alters the complexion of the business somewhat. I did not understand that I was to be remunerated for the hours I have – er – wasted here. My time is valuable, and I have many patients – many patients. All the same I am mystified. Are you from Scotland Yard, sir?’
‘Not exactly from Scotland Yard,’ replied Sir Leonard, ‘but somewhere close by.’
The doctor blinked at him, and was about to ask further questions, but he turned away and, taking Brookfield by the arm, led him to a corner of the room.
‘Is everything as you found it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir, except the contents of the safe,’ replied the fair-haired, well-built man who had acted as the professor’s guardian and watch-dog. ‘Cousins sorted the mass of documents we found there in the hope that the formula for Veronite would be amongst them.’
‘I know that. The body has not been moved?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. It was your habit to sit outside there in the passage when the professor was in here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You were there last night?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you hear anything – a noise of any kind?’
‘No, sir. I can’t understand why I didn’t hear the shot. Of course the walls are thick and there are double doors, but even so, I should have expected to hear a muffled sort of sound.’
‘Perhaps the murderer used a silencer. Was the professor in the habit of w
orking at night?’
‘Not quite in the habit, but he did pretty frequently.’
‘I see. Have you searched anywhere else besides the laboratory for the papers?’
‘Yes; I have examined all Professor Mason’s clothing, drawers and cupboards. I have even looked inside his books.’
‘No result I suppose?’
Brookfield shook his head.
‘I can’t tell you how I feel about this, sir,’ he confided dismally. ‘I would give five years’ pension if it could be undone.’
Wallace nodded.
‘I can understand your feelings,’ he observed, ‘but it can’t be helped. You weren’t to blame as far as I can see. Take me to the laboratory.’
It was a large apartment built onto the rear of the house, the walls and floor of which were lined with slabs of white marble. Two long tables of the same material stood parallel to each other in the centre of the room. On these were various appliances of modern chemistry. Three of the walls contained shelves covered with bottles, most of them nearly full of powder or liquid, retorts, burettes and other articles. The other side of the room was bare except for a solitary chair and a large safe, the door of which was wide open. The laboratory was lit by six powerful electric bulbs so placed that no shadows could be thrown by anything, no matter where its position might be.
Wallace stood looking round appreciatively for a few moments; then walked to the silent form lying in the centre of the room between the two tables. Kneeling down, he examined the tiny hole in the forehead, and took note of the position in which the body was lying. Someone had closed the eyes, but Wallace raised the lids, and gazed long and earnestly into the glazed depths. Suddenly a puzzled frown wrinkled his brow. He raised the head, and carefully felt the back of it; then once more gazed into the eyes.
‘Ask Major Brien and the doctor to come here,’ he instructed Brookfield.
The two were soon standing by his side, and he looked up at the medical man.
‘How long do you think the professor had been dead, doctor, when you saw him?’ he asked.
‘Between six and eight hours without a doubt,’ replied the little man fussily. ‘There is no—’
Wallace of the Secret Service Page 9
