by Unknown
“What?” Nick whispered, awed.
“So it was an impostor.”
“Yes,” Nick said in a low voice. “Good-bye, Captain.” He hung up the telephone and sat down, his eyes troubled.
or a few minutes, Nick Adams said nothing. Eddie Wing smoked a cigarette detachedly. Nick went to the window and looked out upon the ocean. It kept coming home to him that the baby had been left on his doorstep. In one way, he was being released from any obligation. What the devil, he knew nothing at all about the forty-eight-hour disaster; he had kept his word to Venner, come down to Honolulu at once. If Venner was dead, how could anyone expect him to keep on with the mystery? On the other hand, several things he had not appreciated began to make themselves clear.
First, H. H. Sze’s attempt to divert him from the plane to Waiana finally took on an aspect of logic. By itself it was incredible. But when you put it with the word of the impostor officer who had assured him the case was closed, it made sound sense. Sze had been commissioned to get him off the plane and hidden because someone knew he was coming to Honolulu and didn’t want him there. This failing, the bogus Venner had arrived instantly to assure him the “plot” had been nipped in the bud, and that he was free to return to Molokai. The red-faced officer had made a great point of telling Nick that he was free to go. Not free to remain and enjoy his visit in Honolulu. Free to go back.
They didn’t want him in town. He didn’t know a damned thing, and yet they were afraid of him.
That line of reasoning really made up his mind. He felt rather useless and helpless, but since they considered him such a potential menace to the catastrophic plans Venner had stumbled on, he would stay and try to do a job of it. He had no idea where to begin. But it was his baby and he adopted it on the spot.
The imminent disaster was, obviously, no longer forty-eight hours away. Colonel Venner had set that hour in his telegram at 8:33 the evening before. It was now nearly six p.m. Almost twenty-two hours had elapsed since the telegram had been dispatched. Twenty-two from forty-eight equaled twenty-six. A little more than a full day.
Nick felt panic-stricken.
“Eddie,” he said, “you’ve got to help.”
“I knew that,” Eddie Wing said. “Say the word, sweetheart. E hele kaua!”
“Read this.” Nick gave him the telegram. Secrecy essential. Well, by God, you had to trust someone. There was no one in the East or the West he could have trusted as much as Eddie Wing. Dr. Wing read the message without expression, paused to consider it with eyes closed, and then returned it to Nick.
“I am not surprised,” he said. “Some fun, chum!”
“Some fun,” Nick said. “But this may surprise you. I was just talking with Captain Malta of Army Intelligence. He told me that your friend Colonel Venner is dead.”
“Dead?” Wing said, in a whisper.
“Yes. I’m sorry, Eddie. He’s dead. Make. He was murdered last night. They found his body today at noon. I don’t have any details.”
Eddie Wing’s face became hard. “Tough, Nick. He was a swell guy. Good medico. And the culprit?”
“Anonymous and at large.”
Eddie Wing said slowly, after a long breath: “Guess I’d better talk. I had lunch with Colonel Venner yesterday. He was scared. He mentioned your name. He had never met you. But he was familiar with your work in Cairo, where he had been stationed before the war. Not only familiar, he was fervent concerning it. He said he wished you were here. I mentioned that you were, that I had the dope on your location in Molokai. He asked for it. And thus it began. Yowzuh.”
Nick sat down. “There’s an angle here,” he said. “Maybe we can talk something out of it. Eddie, you’ve got to use the old bean. Remember everything. Did he say anything which might give us a clue to this message he sent? Please think about it.”
“You are going to continue with the case, sweetheart?”
“What else can I do?” Nick said. His voice was hard. “The man was depending upon my help. No one else seems to have had any word of it. I can’t just let it ride. If he meant what he said, something rotten is breeding. If he was a friend of yours, I can’t take his message lightly. I’ve got to work on it.”
“He was murdered for his pains,” Wing said.
“Oh hell, that part of it doesn’t bother me,” Nick said. His chin began to point out a little. “I’ve never been afraid and God knows there have been more things to fear than men in the pest-holes of the earth.”
“You’ve got something there,” Wing said. “O.K., Nick, can do. Hiki no. Now get this. Dr. Venner was disturbed at luncheon. Greatly disturbed. I didn’t ask him what was none of my affair, but presently he told me that he had unearthed a ghastly business. What were his words? ‘If I don’t break this thing cleanly, every mother’s son in Oahu will walk in the valley of death within two days.’ A very close translation.”
“What did you suggest?”
“I suggested that perhaps his problem was meant for the Army Intelligence, and I pointed out the impossibility of a single man attempting to handle a threat of such proportions. But he disagreed with me. He was afraid that the Intelligence might muddle it, and that if it were ever muddled, the result would be catastrophic.” Wing blinked. “Boy, can I sling the lingo!”
“He should have confided in either the Intelligence or the police,” Nick said. “As a result we’re left with our hands tied. You can be too secretive. Look at this blank wall we start from.”
“He was afraid of panic.”
“Panic?”
“Panic. Mob panic.”
“How could he have— Eddie, look here. Did he say anything—anything—as to how he found it out—what it was—”
“No,” Eddie Wing said. “He didn’t trust me with such information. But whatever it was, it was real to him. He could barely eat.”
Nick pounded his fist into his hand and stalked around the room. It didn’t help much. My God, he thought desperately, I want something to work with!
“I have been thinking,” Eddie Wing said. “John was very close to his aide, Bertram Woolton, a sergeant. From Brooklyn. Not a medico. Maybe the sergeant—”
“Good. We’ll get in touch with him at once. The Schofield Barracks?”
“Yowzuh. Sergeant Woolton was on Venner’s staff at the Stafford Hospital. I think he drove the car and such.”
“Will you drive out with me?”
Dr. Wing studied him very carefully. “No,” he said finally. “No can do, Nick.”
“Eddie, you’re not afraid?” Nick scoffed.
“Who, me? No, palsy. Got another date.”
Nick said, nodding: “I’ll drive out alone. If this doesn’t give us anything, we’ll have to work backwards from Venner’s body. That’s outright detective work and doubtless the trail won’t be any too fresh. But I’ll do what I can.”
“O.K.,” Eddie Wing said. “But look, Nick. Be very careful and don’t forget for an instant that Colonel Venner is dead as a red herring from following this same road you’re starting on.”
“I’ll remember,” Nick said.
CHAPTER THREE
THE DAY BEFORE DOOMSDAY
he Stafford Hospital was located out in Wahiawa, east of the barracks and Wright Field. Nick Adams was taken pleasantly by the sight of it, for it was a fresh and new building, impressive in architecture and set against an excellent job of landscaping, the lawns studded with giant palms. He went in and stopped at the information desk and asked if he could see Sergeant Bertram Woolton.
The reception nurse was a big-boned, pink-faced woman with straight hair and a strong jaw. The plaque on her desk said Miss Farrar. She smiled very faintly and remarked: “Then you would be Dr. Nicholas Adams of the Cardwell Institute?”
“That’s correct,” Nick said, surprised. “How the devil—”
“We expected you, Doctor. Captain Malta is at the hospital, and wishes to see you. I was to send you in to him when you arrived. I believe he’s in the waiting room on
the second floor. As for Sergeant Woolton, Doctor, he isn’t in the hospital. He is not a medico, as you may be aware. He is simply on Colonel Venner’s staff, an aide-de-camp,” she explained.
“Any idea where I might locate him?”
“Probably at the barracks.”
“Thanks very much,” Nick said. “I’ll give it a try.”
“You won’t forget Captain Malta?”
“I’ll go right up and see him.”
Nick passed her desk to the elevator without another word. He was impressed. Of course Captain Malta had been in touch with Eddie Wing in some way and had learned he was going out to the Stafford. But even so, they rather kept track of him. Considering they were the right people, he was not displeased at all.
On the next floor he found a gentleman writing on a small scratch pad in the waiting-room. It was obviously Captain Malta, in uniform. He was quite an elderly man, his eyebrows dead white, his hair white, his skin coppery. His face was characteristically long and mild where it should have been severe, but his gray eyes were shrewd and sharp and his mouth had a wry practical twist.
“Captain Malta?”
“Dr. Adams, I believe. A real pleasure for me, Doctor.”
They shook hands. Nick said, with a smile: “You don’t look like your voice, Captain. Glad to meet you.”
“Sit down,” Captain Malta said. “Why did you come out here, Adams?”
“Same reason as you,” Nick said. “Only how did you know I was coming?”
“Oh, that. Dr. Wing called and asked for police protection for you. Naturally they called me out here to report it. Anything to do with the Venner case comes to me. Did you know you had a sergeant of police on your trail?”
“Not in the slightest!” Nick said, surprised. “Damn Eddie, so that was the engagement he had! I can take care of myself, Captain.”
“I should have thought Colonel Venner could take care of himself too.”
Nick shrugged off the inference.
“Now, Doctor,” Captain Malta said, “are you after Woolton?”
“Yes.”
“So am I. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were after you. He’s not at the barracks. So I imagine he’s downtown and moving rather cautiously after what happened to Dr. Venner. You and I have some things to talk about. There are elements here beyond me. Here is the picture as I have been able to gather it together. First, I have not located the gentleman who posed as Venner and I haven’t the faintest notion what his purpose would be.”
Nick told him what the purpose might be and mentioned the episode with H. H. Sze at Waiana.
Captain Malta shook his head. “Venner made a great mistake in not working with the Army. We’d have co-operated one hundred percent. As it is, we’re batting with a split stick.”
Nick handed him the telegram. “The reminder has chastened me, Captain. Perhaps you’d better have a look at this.”
Captain Malta glanced at it. “I’ve seen a copy at the R.C.A. offices on South King Street.”
“Captain, you’re amazing! How did you know—”
“Found your wireless in reply to the one he sent. Right on his desk at his quarters, unopened. He was murdered before he ever received it. Naturally I could tell from your wire something of what he had sent and got in touch with R.C.A. Rather startling, wasn’t it? Forty-eight-hour disaster.”
“Twenty-five hours now,” Nick said. “And we sit wasting time.”
“You are never wasting time when you are thinking,” Captain Malta said. “A culprit can be captured in sixty seconds if you know where to take him and what for. So please let’s discuss this. What sort of disaster did you think Venner insinuated?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “There was no way of telling. He mentioned the idea to Dr. Wing at lunch yesterday and said something about secrecy being essential to avoid panic among the people. So that would make it a universal disaster. I’d considered an artificial epidemic of cholera. You see, the impregnable fortress of Oahu is impregnable only so long as the men and women inside the fortress are able to man it. A sweeping epidemic of cholera would wreak havoc. I’m not much of a cholera man myself, never was much interested in the disease because its causes and its remedies were so simple.”
“Well, now,” Captain Malta said, frowning heavily, “you may have hit the nail on the head.”
“It would be the easiest sort of thing to start rolling, and the easiest way of reaching the entire populace of Oahu Island. It’s a horrible idea, but it’s quite possible it wouldn’t work.”
“It’s not contagious, is it?” the captain asked.
“Oh no. You have to drink cholera to catch it. It’s in the water. That’s what I mean about it not working. You have a high percent Chinese and Japanese population on the island. The Chinese learned about cholera hundreds of years ago when they became a nation of tea drinkers. In other words, I’m quite sure your Chinese population would not come down with it because they boil their water for tea. We Americans ourselves are coffee drinkers so that the disease would not be apt to decimate us, and the moment you had more than the average cases, you’d warn everyone to boil water and you would nip it in the bud. It’s not contagious. There’s the crux. So I’m almost certain you can discard the premise,” Nick said. “And that leaves me absolutely without another theory, because that is the only epidemic I know of which could possibly be started artificially.”
“Then we must look for a different disaster. Now see if what I have to tell you suggests anything to you. Today is Tuesday. Monday morning, a soldier from Schofield Barracks named Robert MacFerson reported in here at the hospital, violently ill. The nurse on duty downstairs—Miss Farrar I think her name is—she said he was in poor shape, to express it mildly. Dr. Venner brought him up to Isolation and put him off in a room by himself with a nurse—Miss Agatha Wilson. Then Dr. Venner came down with his aide, Woolton, and said that no one was to see the patient without his permission. By Monday noon, the patient apparently failing, Dr. Venner went down to Honolulu. Where he went we have no idea. Why he left a dying man is also something I don’t understand.
“You say that he lunched with Dr. Wing. This wasn’t all, obviously. He never returned to the hospital. He was alive to send you the radiogram at 8:33 p.m. but he never returned to Stafford Hospital.”
Nick said: “It’s possible he deserted his patient and went downtown because of the urgency of the terrible secret he had unearthed. If the patient were in a hopeless condition—though why he isolated the patient so thoroughly interests me. Captain, I think it might do us no harm to visit the Isolation Ward and see the patient.”
“Oh, he’s probably dead,” Captain Malta said.
“Do you know what was wrong with him?”
“Not an iota.”
“Well, couldn’t we have a word or two with Miss Agatha Wilson? The nurse would certainly have his nursing charts all handy.”
“Of course,” Captain Malta said suddenly and grimly. “We’ve been fools! Of course that’s it! This all began when MacFerson reported in. Up to that time, obviously, there had been no intimation of any disaster. Venner was going about his business normally here. But after MacFerson reported in, things began to pop.”
“I don’t quite get it, Captain,” Nick said.
“Don’t you see, Adams? A dying man always relieves his sinful soul, and if MacFerson were part of this plot, or even were aware of it, he might have poured out his soul to Venner and revealed the very crux we’re after. Consider it, Venner’s isolating him, the secrecy involved, Venner rushing downtown, seeing Wing, speaking of disaster, trying to find you, finally wirelessing you in desperation. It all goes back to this MacFerson patient and stops. There is nothing beyond MacFerson.”
“In that case, let’s see the man or corpse as the case may be,” Nick said, jumping to his feet. “And Miss Wilson should be able to unburden herself to a great extent. Where is Isolation, Captain?”
solation was on the third floor. They took
the elevator up, and reported to a Dr. Hugh Hollister, a grumpy little man with spectacles and a reddish mustache. He and Malta seemed to know each other.
“It’s Venner’s patient, Hugh,” Captain Malta said. “The Robert MacFerson in Isolation. I beg your pardon, this is Nicholas Adams of the C.I. offices. Adams, this is Dr. Hollister, in charge here now.”
“How do, Doctor,” Hollister grumbled. “Glad to meet you. Heard a lot about you. If you want to see MacFerson you’re out of luck.”
Nick’s heart fell. “Even if he’s dead—”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Hollister. “But I’m damn sick of John’s hocus-pocus on this thing. Why, he left strict orders that no one was to take a look at MacFerson unless he ordered it in writing. And since he’s the commanding officer, that’s the way it was. Of course, Wilson was his pet nurse, and he trusted her implicitly, along with Woolton.”
“I’d like to talk with her,” said Nick.
“You can’t,” said Hollister. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Captain Malta said sharply. “What the devil are you talking about, Hugh? Gone where?”
“Well, you don’t have to be popping off at me! Tell it to John Venner! It’s all his fault, this whole abracadabra. Agatha Wilson went out with MacFerson, about an hour ago.”
“With MacFerson?” Nick exclaimed, appalled.
“Are you surprised?” Dr. Hollister grumbled. “My word, I’d have expected you, at least, to know all about it. MacFerson was switched down to the Cardwell Institute laboratories for further treatment. Don’t ask me what kind of treatment, I don’t even know what was wrong with him. All I know is an efficient sort of snob from the government offices, a colonel at that, came in here with a release for the patient signed by John Venner, along with credentials from the Cardwell Institute verifying MacFerson’s removal and admittance to the C.I. labs.”
“Who signed the Cardwell Institute papers?” Nick asked sharply, his hands trembling.
“Why, Paul Cameron, of course! He’s the chief down there—”
