CHAPTER FOUR

Quirke is baffled

The ambling, dryly quipping man-mountain who presented himself to the outside world, and thereby hid the activity of his analytical mind, was a very different man from the Adam Quirke who worked in his laboratory with the all-understanding secretary-assistant at his side. Here he had no time or need for quips, no need for the leisurely questioning. From his secretary he had nothing to hide.

“It is possible, my dear,” he commented, when he and Molly met in the laboratory after a lunch in town, “that we may here have a problem after our own hearts. Certainly I never saw one with less to work on. A cushion and air-conditioning apparatus! I ask you!”

“First an analysis of the cushion, I suppose?” the girl asked, and at Quirke’s nod she placed the cushion on an insulated stand directly within the focus of a battery of instruments which Quirke began to line up. It was in these instruments that the real genius of the man revealed itself. Every one of them were his own construction, some just modified versions of apparatus in use every day at police headquarters, and others which would have caused many an expert scientist to scratch his head in wonder.

“First, routine dust analysis and see if it tells us anything,” Quirke said, and Molly went to work with the small hand-vacuum sucking the invisible mites and grains from the silk exterior of the cushion and the soft hidden wadding beneath. When she had enough she handed the container to Quirke and he placed it in the spectroscope.

The lights dimmed; the window shutters descended. Light streamed through the slit in the spectroscope and upon the wall screen there appeared the colours of the various elements involved in the burning dust. Quirke read them off from heart and then sighed.

“Ordinary, common or garden dirt,” he commented. “Back where we were, Molly.”

In a few moments it was daylight again. Adam Quirke stood thinking while the girl cleaned out the spectroscope, pushed the cushion in a huge cellophane bag and labelled it, and then waited for the next.

“Bad start,” Quirke muttered.

“Very. What did you expect to find in the cushion, anyway?”

“Something the experts had missed, naturally. We’d better give it a different work-over.”

“X-ray?”

“Uh-huh, though I hardly think there’s anything concealed in it.”

In its transparent bag the cushion went through the X-ray process and failed to reveal anything. After which it was put in the focus of ultrasonic and electronic beams, Quirke working on the assumption that if there were any peculiarity in the wadding or the silk of the cushion one or other of the instruments he was using would find it.

He was disappointed. At the end of half an hour it was clear that the cushion was entirely inoffensive, nor had anything ever been on it. The colourgraph, which would have shown a chemical stain or mark not apparent to the eye or less sensitive instruments, remained undisturbed.

“Which means it is not the cushion,” Quirke said finally. “File it away, Molly, and let’s think of something else.”

“We’d do better, A.Q.,” the girl said, “if we went along to the cube-room and took our instruments with us—as you said you would. Frankly, I think radiation of some kind put paid to de London. It got through a fault in the insulation.”

“I agree with that possibility, Molly, but how did the killer know there was a fault in the insulation and use it so opportunely? And secondly, why was only de London affected and not the guards? Remember, they were outside the cube-room, and since radiation moves in an outwardly spreading circle—unless specially projected—it would certainly have involved the guards as well. They didn’t feel a thing.”

“That,” Molly admitted, bothered, “is a point.”

Quirke was ridding himself of his smock as he continued speaking. “I have a hunch on this business, Molly. The killer was damned clever enough to use the insulation in reverse—if we postulate radiation as the cause of death. By that, I mean that if a radiation within the cube-room killed de London—if that radiation was generated in that room and nowhere else—it would not be able to go beyond it because of the insulated walls.”

“True. Then that centres us on the air-conditioning apparatus, the only piece of equipment in the death room.”

“Right!” Quirke gave a nod. “For that reason we’re going to take a close look at the apparatus—at the whole cube-room in fact—and see what the instruments have to say. Whatever is wrong will inevitably reveal itself.”

Quite sanguine that his range of detectors would give him some basis upon which to work, Quirke began to assemble them, and then he and Molly transported them to the big brake which he invariably used when actively engaged on a case. And in the later afternoon he was back again in the private office of the de London building, watched with covert curiosity by Harry and Miss Turner as they endeavoured to conduct their business amidst whirrings, electric flashings, and frequent clangorous hammerings.

It became clear as the time passed that Quirke was most dissatisfied. The detectors, sending ultrasonic beams at the insulated walls of the cube-room, failed to register.

Molly, working inside the room with a magnetic receiver, waited for something to happen as Quirke projected every known radiation at each wall, including cosmic waves. Not one of the radiations passed through, and not one section of wall or roof was overlooked.

“Disturbing, but interesting,” Adam Qirirke commented, his moonlike face thoughtful. He was seated like a Buddha on the top of the twelve-foot high cube, the tall stepladders close by.

“No nearer?” Harry asked, glancing up from the desk.

“I am satisfied,” Quirke said, “that insulation here is one hundred percent efficient. Which precludes any possibility of radiation having been projected from the outside.”

“That leaves only the inside,” Molly said, angling her face upwards from the airlock doorway. “How about this air-conditioning apparatus? I think there ought to be something there.”

“We’ll see. Hold the ladders, m’dear.”

Molly obeyed, and by degrees Quirke lowered his vast bulk down to the floor. Snorting like a grampus and mopping his face he lumbered into the cube-room and looked about him, some unexpected thought chasing through his mind. Evidently it did not resolve for he directed his attention to the air-conditioning machine.

“Standard type,” Molly told him. “Hutton and Edwards product. I can’t see anything unusual about it, and I know the layout well enough. Same as used on all space machines. Absorbs and neutralizes carbonic acid and converts it back to oxy-hydrogen.”

Quirke nodded briefly, eyeing the equipment from every angle. Finally, with a colossal amount of hard breathing, he squeezed his titanic girth into the angle of the corner behind the equipment and in this pinned position contrived to remove the plastic backing. He succeeded eventually and scrutinised the set-up of the equipment’s ‘entrails’.

“By and large quite normal,” he admitted finally. “Let me get out and then use the X-ray. We’ll have a photo of it and make a microscopic study. If anything unusual presents itself we can come and look at the real thing again.”

“Right!”

Molly left the cube-room and went for the portable X-ray equipment, wheeling it in on its rubber-wheeled stand. In a matter of five minutes the photography had been completed and the plates only awaited development.

“Anything else?” Molly asked, and Quirke eyed her.

“In the midst of such profound complexity, my dear, that is a rather naive question! Anything else indeed! Yes, I want surface scrapings of the walls, ceiling and floor. More spectrum analysis is called for.”

“Right!”

The tireless Molly went to work again. It was not that Adam Quirke believed in making her work hard for her salary, or that he was shirking his own part of the job. The truth was that his mighty size made it impossible for him to indulge in any sustained effort. Quirke was a man of mental accomplishments, not physical.

The noise that followed when Molly switched on the scraper made work impossible for Harry and Miss Turner, as they sat wincing and watching. Quite unconcerned, the din of a dozen buzz saws ringing in her ears, Molly took metallic surface scrapings from the walls and floor, and then grabbed the step-ladders and climbed them so she could deal with the ceiling.

Quirke stood watching. He was not concerned with the vision of Molly’s well-moulded legs so blatantly on view; something else was troubling him.

“Damn!” he growled.

“You speak, A.Q.?” Molly looked down at him, hands over her head as she held the scraper with its little repository bag.

“I said ‘damn’, m’dear. Y’know, I’ve had a sort of hunch that the ceiling or the electric light might be mixed up in this lot somewhere, but now I see it couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the height up. Even I can’t reach the lamp at the limit of my height, and I’m far beyond average. You need the stepladders and so would anybody else— I had ideas about a last minute act involving the lighting system, maybe some form of electrocution. It won’t fit, though. The killer would have no way of reaching the ceiling unless he dashed back into the office for a chair.”

“Nothing like that happened,” Molly said, scraping vigorously. “According to the Commissioner the guards testified that nobody monkeyed about with the office furniture. Old man de London was alive and kicking when he shut this airlock—and that was that.”

“Yes—” Quirke brooded profoundly, his blue eyes squeezed shut. “That was that. There are hidden scientific implications in this business which I never even suspected.”

After another fifteen minutes Molly had finished her scraping activities and descended from the ladder. She spent a moment or two marking separate bags so the scrapings from any particular portion could be identified, then she glanced at her employer.

“Let us away,” he murmured. “Doubtless Mr. de London and Miss Turner will be glad to see the back of us.”

Definitely an understatement—they were. And in half an hour Quirke and the girl were back in the laboratory the girl wasting no time in getting the spectroscope inti action. In another half-hour the analyses were complete and Quirke was perched on the edge of the bench, sucking at a short and somewhat foul briar pipe.

“We’re getting deeper in, Molly,” he muttered.

“’fraid so, boss. Not a single thing that’s unusual. Walls, floor and ceiling all show normal tungsten steel spectra— If it’s not a silly question, what did you expect?”

“I’d rather hoped this might be a chemical murder, in which case the gases, though apparently dispersed as far as normal detection goes, would have faintly affected the surface electrons of the tungsten steel, enough to slightly alter the normal spectrum reading. But I guessed wrong. Gases did not do it, and we’re up a gum tree— Better see what the X-ray plates of the air-conditioner have to tell us.”

Quirke did this photographic task himself and once the prints were finished he and the girl both studied them intently through micro-projectors, to arrive once again at a blank wall. Not in the slightest particular was the cube-room air conditioner any different from those in everyday use on space machines.

“Annoying—and surprising,” Quirke commented, tightening his cushiony lips. “That wipes out everything except the electric light, and I cannot see where that comes in. Mmmm, maybe I should have told you to bring along the electric bulb and let’s have a look at it.”

“I can go back for it.”

“Good! It will give me time to think whilst you’re gone.”

It seemed to Molly that when she returned from her quick second visit to the de London edifice that Quirke had not moved in the interval. He was still seated in the broad chair beside the micro-apparatus, his extinguished briar clamped between his teeth.

“I got it,” Molly said, and put it on the bench. “Normal two hundred watt, though I don’t know the manufacturer. New one on me.”

Quirke took the bulb from her and considered it. It was of the clear glass variety, the filament plainly visible within. Embedded in the base of the bulb was the name ‘Daylight Electric Company, Swanton. Glos.’

“I hope,” Quirke said, still holding the bulb by its brass bayonet cap, “that you did not smudge your delectable fingerprints all over the glass?”

Molly smiled. “You know me better than that, A.Q. I only touched the brass, same as you are doing. How does it signify, though? The Commissioner’s boys will surely have fingerprinted everything, including this bulb.”

“Perhaps. I’m none too sure the Commissioner’s boys, as you so loosely term them, would think of including the electric lamp. We’d better see for ourselves— The insufflator, please.”

Molly found it and handed it over, together with the necessary powders. Quirke busied himself for a while and then gave a wry smile.

“Clean as a dog’s tooth,” he commented. “If this lamp does play any part in this business the murderer was clever enough to keep his prints away from it, or else cleaned them off afterwards.”

“I know I’m just a moron compared to you, boss, so that is why I cannot see what possible connection the electric light can have with de London’s death.”

“I can’t see the connection either,” Quirke confessed. “I am simply left with this as the only possible answer because everything else fails to register. In the realm of the more concrete things this lamp is our last hope. I’m a drowning man clutching at a straw—”

Quirke broke off and bellowed with laughter. Molly Brayson waited patiently, her arms folded, whilst Quirke became purple in the face with merriment and finally coughed and exploded himself into silence again.

“Imagine me clutching at a straw!” he gasped, wiping his eyes.

“We’re not sunk yet,” Molly said, irrelevantly. “How about the very ordinary prospect of poison? Maybe the thing isn’t scientific at all but just a straightforward job.”

“Poison!”

“Well, the Commissioner said that old man de London had a medicine dose before he sealed himself up. Rogers gave him the dose. Suppose Rogers is responsible for the killing and the medicine was poisoned? The sort that doesn’t show any trace?”

Quirke grinned. “You’re reading too many detective novels, m’girl. Poison without trace! There’s no such animal. Besides the pathology report was exhaustive and simply confirmed the M.D.’s certificate—syncope. No reason to suspect foul play.”

Molly became silent; then bethinking herself after she had glanced at her watch she prepared the mid-afternoon cup of tea. Quirke put aside the bulb and thought for a moment or two; then he turned suddenly to the visiphone and dialled the de London edifice number.

Eventually it was Miss Turner’s uninteresting face that came into view.

“Oh, Mr. Quirke!” She smiled faintly. “Can I help you?”

“Possibly yes, possibly no. Can you tell me if you have a lighting contract with the Daylight Electric Company of Swanton, in Gloucester?”

“Er—” Miss Turner hesitated and reflected for a moment, then she turned away from the screen, saying: “Just a moment, Mr. Quirke. I’ll just make sure.”

Quirke relaxed and hummed a ditty to himself, nodding genially to Molly as she handed him a cup of tea.

“One thing I like about secretaries,” he commented. “They’re so efficient.”

Since Molly did not know whether this was intended to be sarcasm or a compliment she did not respond—then Miss Turner reappeared on the screen.

“Yes, Mr. Quirke, we have a contract with the Daylight Electric Company,” she confirmed. “Mr. de London arranged it some months ago.”

“The firm,” A.Q. said, “is not familiar to me.”

“No, it’s quite a small one, but for some reason Mr. de London took a fancy to it, chiefly because of the low prices of the lamps, I think. They deal in neon tubes, daylight diffusers and all the rest of it.”

“Mmmm—” Quirke took a long drink of tea whilst Miss Turner watched him in sour interest through the screen.

“Anything else, Mr. Quirke?”

“Yes. I’d like the name of the managing director of this company.”

Miss Turner looked down at the memorandum she was holding.

“Douglas Jerome,” she said.

“I am indebted to you, Miss Turner, for being so explicit.”

“That’s all right— Might I ask where all this is leading?”

The huge shoulders rose and fell and Quirke beamed genially.

“I haven’t the vaguest idea. I’m just slinging around my bait like an inexperienced angler.”

Looking rather irritated, Miss Turner switched off, and with a sigh of satisfaction Quirke slid his ponderous mass into the nearest heavy chair and finished his tea in comfort. Molly, perched somewhat uncomfortably on the edge of the nearby bench, gave him a quizzical look.

“I don’t get it, A.Q. Why the interest in the electric light?”

“I told you once, light of my life. I’ve only the electric light to go on. Just as well to have all particulars of where the lamp came from.”

Silence, and Quirke stared hard into the base of his teacup.

“According to this,” he said, grinning, “I shall soon meet a thin woman with an angular jaw and positively no sex appeal. Couldn’t possibly be you, m’dear, so it must be Miss Turner!”

Molly sighed, took the cup away from him, added it to her own, then went over to the laboratory sink. When she turned again it was to discover her huge employer struggling into his outdoor clothes.

“I feel it incumbent upon me to have words with the police pathologist who examined de London,” he explained, “to say nothing of an interview with Rogers, who so far has not been added to the jigsaw. You’d better come with me, Molly. You know how helpless I am.”

Molly nodded, grabbed her notebook, and accompanied A.Q. out to his parked car. Before long they were being shown into the private office of the police pathologist, and at length he himself joined them.

“Not often I see you, Quirke,” he smiled, seating himself. “Still as slender as ever, I see.”

Neither the pathologist nor Molly could speak for a moment, flattened as they were before the hurricane of laughter. Then Quirke wiped his eyes, rumbled once or twice, and came to the point.

“You examined de London. What did you find? Anything unusual?”

“Why, no. You hardly think I would have kept it to myself if I had, do you?”

“I wondered,” Quirke explained, “if you had perhaps found something inexplicable, and rather confess to professional ignorance, had kept quiet about it.”

The pathologist smiled rather coldly. “Knowing you as I do, Quirke, I’ll accept that statement. Otherwise I’d be inclined to resent it— And incidentally, why all this sudden interest in de London?”

“It should be obvious, man. I’m trying to find out who had the good sense to send him packing. Damned clever, whoever it was. It’s even got me stopped, and that’s some admission from Adam Quirke. Look—” Quirke hunched forward, his huge equator overflowing his knees. “You’re absolutely sure there was nothing unusual about de London’s corpse?”

“Nothing unusual at all.”

“What did the bloodstream test show?”

“Only the usual deposits. I did notice, though, that there seemed to be a rather unusual amount of exilene.”

“Exilene? That’s a sleeping draught, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. One of the very latest. Sends you to sleep in about ten seconds, gives you about thirty seconds extremely deep sleep, and then you wake up fit enough to knock over a spaceship. Good stuff, but mighty potent.”

“And the big noise had traces of it in his system?”

“Definitely, but I imagine that can be accounted for the medicine he had been ordered to take. There would certainly be exilene in it since he had bad nerves and needed a sedative.”

Quirke sat back again, his equator heaving and his lips tight little bolsters in his full moon of a face. Molly wrote silently, then raised her eyes and waited.

“To need a medicine,” Quirke mused, “you must have a physical complaint—and the last thing I can imagine de London suffering from was nerves!”

“It was on account of those threats A.Q.,” Molly reminded him, and she was rewarded with a broad grin.

“A man who practically rules the country getting nerves because of pettifogging threats? No, light of my life, I don’t believe it!” Quirke looked at the pathologist. “You knew de London well enough before his death. Did he ever strike you as a man likely to suffer from nerves?”

“Most certainly he did not!”

“Very well, then. If you don’t have ‘nerves’ in the normal way and yet suddenly develop them there’s only one explanation. They have been induced. I think,” Quirke finished, “a word with the doctor who prescribed de London’s medicine is called for.”

“He’s Edgar Warren, the neurologist,” the pathologist said. “Desmond Chambers, mid-City.”

“Much obliged. My delectable secretary and I will pay him a visit within the next hour.”

They did, and found the specialist affable enough even though it was plain he did not quite like the idea of having been caught out without an appointment. Quirke’s heavy-handed good nature, however, seemed to take care of everything.

“I’m looking into the cause and effect connected with Mr. de London’s death,” Quirke explained. “I understand he came to you a little while before his decease because his nerves were bad?”

“He did, yes. I overhauled him, and…” Warren hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Quirke invited. “Professional ethics don’t come into this: I want the facts.”

“Well, I found that his nerves and his heart were both suffering from severe overstrain, and I told him so. He admitted he had business worries, even though I suspected there was more to it than that—”

“I see. You prescribed a medicine to be taken three times a day?”

“I did, yes.”

“And there was exilene in it?”

“There was—a fair percentage. I considered it would act as a sedative.”

For some reason Quirke looked vaguely disappointed; then the mood passed, and he asked another question.

“In your opinion, was de London’s sudden nervous state the outcome of natural strain or could it have been induced?”

“Well, I suppose it could have been induced,” the specialist admitted, “but how would I be able to tell? I merely looked at the effect, not the cause.”

“Quite so,” Quirke surged to his feet, and Molly put her notebook away promptly. “Thank you so much for your observations, Mr. Warren. I shall look further.”

“No trouble at all, I assure you.” And first the specialist and then the receptionist bowed the pair out. In the car Quirke sat thinking, Molly at the wheel as usual.

“Where to now, A.Q.? To see Rogers?”

“Not just yet. I want to stop in Whitehall and have a word with the Director of Public Control.”

Just why he wanted this Quirke did not explain. Molly guessed it was not so much because he did not intend to—for she was always kept informed of his moves—but because he was following some inner line of thought. What this line was became clear enough to the girl when they were seated in the office of the Director of Public Control, a thin-nosed, acid man responsible for the statistics of births, deaths and marriages, and also having complete authority over the isolation of the unfit and the disposal of the dead.

“Yes, Mr. Quirke, what can I do for you?”

“I require permission to exhume the body of the late Gyron de London.” Quirke spread his fat hands. “It’s as simple as that.”

“Not quite, I’m afraid. There has to be a very good reason for exhumation, Mr. Quirke. Celebrated though you are in the field of scientific investigation, I cannot grant you an exhumation order just on your say-so. Can you supply a convincing reason?”

“Isn’t it enough reason that Gyron de London was murdered and that the surest way of proving it is to have his body brought out for further examination?”

The Director frowned. “You mean you have been engaged to examine the facts of his death?”

“Exactly. Confirmation can be obtained from Mr. De London junior if you care to contact him.”

“No, no. I accept your word, of course. But surely the medical report on Mr. de London’s death is sufficient? Is there any reason to doubt the official cause of death?”

“Every reason in the world,” Quirke replied calmly. “I am of the opinion that de London was murdered in the most ingenious fashion, but I cannot hope to start piecing my case together until I am permitted a full examination of his body… I hardly need to add, I think, that any failure on your part to comply with my wishes could be interpreted as an obstruction of justice.”

The Director cleared his throat. “Er, naturally I shall not place any obstacles in your way, Mr. Quirke.” He reached a form from the desk and scribbled upon it swiftly, finally handing it over. “There is the necessary permission, but I must inform you that you yourself must remove and return the body. If this were an exhumation granted by Government licence the necessary men would be supplied. As it is I am taking undue advantage of my authority and granting a favour. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” Quírke smiled, rising, “and many thanks.”

He beamed broadly as he lumbered past the receptionist in the adjoining office; then Molly gave him a doubting look when they were in the car again.

“I hope, A.Q., that you haven’t got ideas about my helping with the corpse! I’ll do almost anything for you but I put a ban on corpses.”

Quirke chuckled. “Have no fear, light of my life! Neither of us will go near the body—as far as the exhumation is concerned. I know certain thick-necked and not particularly erudite gentlemen who will be glad to earn a pittance transporting a corpse from the de London mausoleum to my laboratory— And let us be moving, m’dear. The afternoon has become evening and we have the outstanding factor of Rogers to interview yet.”

Molly nodded and started the car forward down the brightly lighted main street. In fifteen minutes the residence of the de Londons had been gained and a stiff-necked manservant finally sent Rogers into the lounge. As wooden-faced as ever he stood looking as Quirke surveyed him, his cushion of a mouth broken into a genial smile.

“Rogers, the man of all work?”

“Yes, sir. I’m Rogers.”

“My name’s Adam Quirke and I’m—”

“Investigating the death of my late master, sir, I suppose?”

Quirke nodded, studying the immovable face.

“Your name is not unknown to me, sir,” Rogers explained. “Or indeed to anybody who follows the course of scientific crime and its exposure.”

Quirke grinned and looked at his secretary. “Molly, tell me if I am starting to blush, won’t you? Now, Rogers, I have had long conversations with all the others closely connected with your late master, and now I think it’s time I had one with you. On the night of his death, what happened? You were the last person to see him alive, I think, except for the guards?”

“Yes, sir. I took him his medicine, as I had been instructed to do, and he seemed in reasonably good spirits.”

“What time was this?”

“Six o’clock, sir.”

“I see. All in all, how long were you with your master?”

“About ten or twelve minutes. When I left him I said I would report at seven in the morning.”

“Mmmm…” Quirke stretched forth his block-like legs and squinted down them. “Y’know something, Molly? I’m getting no thinner!”

Explosions, an earthquake of laughter, and at last Quirke emerged with streaming eyes and purple cheeks. Then as abruptly as his merriment had commenced it ceased again and his piercing blue eyes pinned the handyman.

“When did you first enter Mr. de London’s employ, Rogers?”

“Ten years ago, sir.”

“Did you seek the employment voluntarily?”

“Partly sir, and partly not. It’s rather a complicated story, really. At that time I was acting as an assistant to my father, Henry Rogers. He was an experimental scientist, and never made a great deal of money. When he died I was more or less on my beam ends, but since Mr. de London had financed one or two of my father’s inventions I thought he might care to take me on. He did, and I became the general handyman.”

“You refer to your father being an experimental scientist. I find that very vague, Rogers. Surely he must have invented something worthwhile in order to have made any living at all?”

“Yes, one or two things.” Rogers’ expression was negative. “Household gadgets, mainly. Never anything big. The ones that might have amounted to something somehow never seemed to hit the jackpot. He died a very dispirited and broken old man.”

“And you, as his son, doubtless had the very human urge to draw the fangs of those responsible for his unsung death?”

Rogers gave a faint smile. “I must admit that at times such thoughts did occur to me, but what could I do? One very small man with no financial power against the giants of commerce? It was they who smashed my father, sir. They used his brilliance to their own ends. Stole his brain-children, in fact, and he was too preoccupied to notice or do anything about it.”

Quirke reflected; then: “Was Gyron de London one of these giants of commerce?”

“I have already said he supplied my father with money sir. An enemy would hardly do that…”

Quirke struggled to his feet, straightening the deep creases down the front of his clothes; then he gave Rogers a sideways glance.

“Nothing more I can tell you, sir.”

Quirke nodded and gave his disarming smile. “So far so good, Rogers. If I need you again I’ll send for you. Are you ready, light of my life?”

Molly nodded, put away her notebook, and rose to her feet.