CHAPTER FIVE
Element of death
Returning to his home and laboratory Quirke wasted no time in giving his instructions over the visiphone to those ‘thick-necked and not particularly erudite gentlemen’ who were to carry out the exhumation of Gyron de London deceased.
“Which means,” Quirke said, when he had a late tea sent into the laboratory for himself and the girl, “that you can now either quit for the day, m’dear, and go out with your boyfriend or give yourself a beauty treatment—or you can stay with a fat old man whilst he bounces ideas against you until the body comes.”
Molly shrugged. “I’ve no ties, so I may as well stay with the fat old man, providing he doesn’t ask me to examine that corpse.”
“Seriously, my dear, I won’t.” Quirke ate a sandwich with amazing daintiness considering his bulk. “Now let me bounce a few ideas and see how you react to them. Firstly we have the warnings which purported to come from Mars, and we also have two very likely suspects—even three—who had Martian connections at that time Namely, young de London and his part-Martian wife and Miss Turner. Right, let us examine them. First Miss Turner could have written, or rather contrived, the warnings and then have had them sent on by a friend at a given time. Correct?”
“Correct,” Molly agreed, pouring out tea.
“Why then,” Quirke asked, reclining in the big chair, “did she diffuse her activities to include Rogers? Why tell him at the same time?”
“One possibility,” Molly said. “Maybe—and I’m not trying lo be funny. A.Q.—the Turner creature is in love with Rogers and writhed to see how the old man kicked him around. Unable to control her glee at having discovered a watertight way of killing old man de London she had to tell Rogers too, assuring him he would soon be released from slavery.”
“Very ingenious, but the idea of Miss Turner being in love—” Quirke exploded and nearly choked over his sandwich. In about thirty seconds he came up for air, thumping his barrel of a chest.
“I gather,” Molly said, raising an eyebrow, “that the idea of Miss Turner being romantic does not convince you?”
“Hardly!” Quirke gulped for breath and mopped his face. “No, I think you’re dead off the beam there my dear. And yet your hypothesis is interesting insofar that it provides the one and only possible reason for Miss Turner being the culprit. Love of Rogers, hatred of her boss’s behaviour towards him. On the other hand cutting out the Rogers’ romantic angle, did she hate her boss so much that she wanted lo kill him?”
“Very probably. I imagine she was a girl with bright ideas, then she went into his employ but he smashed the life out of her, same as with everybody else. Possibly, having reached sour spinsterhood, she spent her off-time figuring out a way of wiping de London off the map.”
Quirke raised a thick finger. “Ah! Assuming all this m’dear, how do we reconcile the arid index-bound Miss Turner with the brilliant science that undoubtedly put paid to de London?”
“Brilliant science?”
“But definitely! Don’t you realize, girl, that even I am stuck in trying to discover the method! That suggests an uncommonly clever scientist. Is Miss Turner that? Hardly!”
“She might be, underneath.”
Quirke shook his bush of white hair. “She isn’t. A clever scientist can’t help but unwittingly betray the fact here and there, and that woman hasn’t a scientific bone in her body. She’s ledger-bound, acrimonious, and unimaginative.”
Molly handed over the filled teacup she had been holding and then gave a little sigh.
“Well, that seems to put paid to Miss Turner as a suspect, unless— Why, yes! Suppose she hired a scientist, or worked in connivance with one? Rogers, for instance?”
“So you’re back on the love angle again, are you?”
“Not necessarily. If Miss Turner and Rogers between them—”
“It won’t do, Molly! Miss Turner is a woman of the world and unless she did love Rogers—which I regard as definitely unlikely—she would never confide in him far enough to plan the murder of her employer. She’d never feel safe. No, that’s out—and so I think is Miss Turner herself as a suspect. Let’s move along a little—and another sandwich if you please.”
Molly held forth the sandwiches and Quirke munched contentedly. “Take Owena de London,” he mumbled. “I’ve my own ideas about that Earth-Mars girl, but let’s have yours.”
“That’s soon done, A.Q. I hate the sight of her.”
“In our business,” A.Q. said, “we cannot afford to have personal likes and dislikes. Your dislike of her is purely that of one woman to another and has nothing to do with the case itself. Am I right?”
“’Fraid so,” Molly admitted. “I don’t like these smart, super-sophisticated women who tell their husbands what to do, and the poor fools do it. You must have noticed how she as good as put words into young Harry de London’s mouth?”
“Never mind what she put in his mouth: do you regard her as a likely suspect?”
“Matter of fact I do. From all accounts de London senior hated her for marrying his son and had already shown his displeasure. No reason why Owena shouldn’t try and get her own back. On top of that she’d probably have the scientific skill necessary. The Martians are brilliant scientists, as anybody knows. Sort of natural heritage from the original settlers.”
“To the pure Martian, yes—but Owena is not pure Martian. In most respects she’s as Earthian as you or I, and I don’t think we can pin the Martian scientific genius on to her as a matter of course. She struck me as a girl who is really quite delightful, but very disturbed by events and conscious that she must be suspect because of her origin. For that reason her fear sought refuge in that icy sophistication which you found so irksome. Most certainly I cannot picture her as a careful, inhuman killer… So, then, to young Harry.”
“Couldn’t be less interested,” Molly said. “At least insofar as being a suspect is concerned. To my mind he’s perfectly harmless, impulsive—even hot-tempered—and dominated by Owena. But I’m convinced he did not kill his father. He had good reason, I know, as had Owena, but that doesn’t alter my opinion. Besides he doesn’t look the type.”
Quirke gave a disapproving glance. “Doesn’t look the type? My dear Molly, when will you learn not to judge from facial appearances. Criminal history shows that many of the most diabolical killers have had faces like a city clerk whilst women in this group have often looked as innocent as the Madonna… So you consider that Harry is out? Right. So be it. And what of friend Rogers?”
“Very dubious quantity, A.Q. One of the ‘still waters run deep’ type. For my money, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“No…” Quírke considered his sandwich pensively.
“Neither would I. A respectful, inscrutable man, admitting that he has an axe to grind with big business. True, he conveyed the impression that de London had been a friend, not an enemy, but words are cheap. And, as far as I can see he’s the only one with any scientific knowledge. I refuse to believe he could work as the Great Henry Rogers assistant, and be told the many things which a father automatically tells his son, without picking up a great deal of knowledge.”
“Did you say great Henry Rogers, boss?”
“I did. I knew Henry Rogers in the old days, though I did not admit as much to that taciturn young man. Henry Rogers was a genius, but too reticent. I can well understand that big business swindled and crushed him whilst using his ideas. I can even understand his son devoting his life to avenging his father—”
“Which means, A.Q., that you have as good as decided that Rogers is the culprit?”
“In my own mind, yes. Time may prove me wrong, of course, but I don’t think it will. The problem here, light of my life, is not so much who committed the murder, but how it was done? And right now I’ll be damned if I can nail anything down!”
Quirke sighed to himself, made an end of his sandwiches and tea, then lighted his short briar and sat thinking. Molly busied herself clearing away the cups and plates, knowing from long experience that this was not the time to start talking.
“For the basis of our deductive hypothesis we will accept the fact that Rogers is our man. Right! We accept as his motive the fact that he considered de London contributed in some way to the death of old man Rogers. Right! What, then, did Rogers do to dispose of de London? He somehow produced an effect that has been classified as syncope. What effect? It wasn’t radiation, at least, not from outside the cube-room; it wasn’t gas because there was no means of installing it, and the air-conditioning plant registers normal—which it would not if gas were in it. The medicine? No, not even that, because the doctor has said he discovered nothing unusual in the corpse. The electric light? The—electric—light…”
Quirke fell to musing again, his blue eyes narrowed.
“I keep coming back to that,” he muttered. “I am enough intrigued by it to learn all about the firm who manufactures the bulbs for the de London edifice, of which the cube-room electric bulb was one. Tomorrow I must go and see them. The only way we can sink our teeth into anything on this job, Molly, is for me to examine the corpse by myself and see if I can find anything unusual.”
“Just what do you hope to find?”
“I want to find something to account for the ten minutes when Rogers was with his master. I remain convinced that something happened in that ten minutes which will be the answer to the whole thing.”
Molly reflected, frowning. Quirke gave her a glance and then stabbed the stem of his briar towards her.
“Look at it this way, Molly. Whatever killed de London had somehow to be placed in the cube-room, and it certainly would not be put there in advance in case it was discovered—and besides, there was no place where anything could be concealed. We are faced with two alternatives: either something was given to de London in his medicine, which later produced death from apparent syncope—although that doesn’t seem likely to judge from the doctor’s report—or else the electric light came into it.”
“But how, boss?” Molly demanded, bewildered, gazing at the bulb lying on the bench. “What on earth could the electric light do?”
“I’ve no idea. I am only centring on it because it was the only other ‘gadget’—if I may call it such—in that very bare room. If, though, something was done to the electric light how in the same of Satan did Rogers manage it with the ceiling twelve feet high and de London right beside him?”
Molly relaxed, plainly beaten. Quirke bit hard on his pipe, then picked the bulb up again and studied it.
“So far,” he said, “I’ve only examined this thing for fingerprints. I might do worse than examine it completely—the interior I mean—whilst I’m waiting for de London’s corpse to be brought.”
His mind made up he went to work, first unsealing the normal glass outer casing. When he had done this he peered intently at a minute ashy deposit in the base of the pear-shaped glass.
“Queer,” he muttered. “I wonder how that got there?”
He shook some of the dust on to a slide from the spectrograph and then switched off the lights. The spectrum reading of the ash immediately appeared on the wall-screen.
“Copper and tungsten,” Quirke said, reading off the colours. “Wonder if there’s anything in the invisible spectrum?”
He switched in the automatic coupler by which radiations outside the visual range—beyond the infra-red or violet ends—could reveal themselves. And the surprising thing was that in the lower infra-red end there was a decided reaction!
“Ah, success!” Quirke murmured. “That means that, when this ash was in solid form, before being burned out, it was made up of metallic elements containing copper and tungsten—and maybe a gaseous element which—” Quirke thought and shook his head. “No, not a gaseous element otherwise it could not have deposited itself as ash. A metallic element, fused in with the copper and tungsten. A rare metallic element indeed with no ordinary spectrum, but one which only has a reading well below infra-red.”
“Which means heat,” Molly said, pondering.
“Uh-huh, to a great extent. Light of my life, I do believe we are getting somewhere! A metal that has a spectrum reading below the red is fascinating and unique. Let me see now…” Breathing like a walrus Quirke hauled himself forward and looked at the temperature reading. It showed the invisible spectrum to be in the region of 200 degrees F.
“More interesting than ever!” he commented. “To my mind there is no metal which answers this description, so whoever discovered it has a monopoly, at present. The thing to do is discover what the metal is and where it came from—and above all what it does. That can wait a moment, though. Let us see if this filament is all it is supposed to be.”
In a second or two he had removed it from its electrode rest and put it through the usual spectrographic tests. It emerged from them classified as perfectly normal tungsten steel filament with the usual protective long-burning coating.
“Any nearer?” Molly asked, her eyes bright.
“Somewhat, my love.” Quirke brooded, chewing his pipe stem. “But for the chance of analysing this microscopic dust we’d have been as far away as ever. I venture to think that the killer—or shall I say Rogers?—trusted to luck that the dust would never be noticed. To the careless worker it might not have been since a slight dust flaking of tungsten often falls from a lamp filament. But my guess is that originally this lamp had two filaments! The one normal, existing as an inner core filament, and the other made of a composite of copper, tungsten, and the unknown element…”
Molly was silent, waiting for the next. Quirke drew hard at his extinguished pipe.
“Not much I can do if I start searching for a rare metal,” he said finally. “Might take me the rest of my life. The better way will be to interview the managing director of the light company and see if I can glean anything worthwhile. But we’re on to something, Molly; I’m convinced of it.”
“Seems like it.” Molly made a restless movement. “Will there be anything else, boss, or have you finished bouncing your ideas against me?”
“For the moment I’ve finished bouncing—” Quirke broke off and surged and exploded with merriment. Molly put on her hat and coat, by which time the earthquake had ceased.
“That I should ever finish bouncing!” Quirke gulped, tears running down his cheeks. “Dammit, I never do anything else! Quite—quite the funniest thing I’ve said for some time.”
“Yes, A.Q.,” Molly agreed dutifully. “Shall I be here at the usual time tomorrow?”
“I hope so. By then I’ll have discovered something about the de London cadaver.”
Molly took her departure and for the next half-hour Quirke sat thinking and smoking, to be finally interrupted as the exhumed body of de London was carried into the laboratory, still inside its coffin. The thick-necked, burly men carrying the coffin laid it on the broad trestle table, which Quirke had cleared specially for the purpose.
“There it is, Mr. Quirke.” The tallest of the men motioned briefly. “Anything else?”
“Not at the moment, Nick. I’ll want you to take the body back later, but I’ll give you a ring.”
“Okay, Mr. Quirke. Good night.”
“Night,” Quirke murmured absently, picking up a screwdriver and going to work on the coffin lid.
* * * *
When Molly arrived at the laboratory around 9.30 the following morning she found Quirke looking as though he had never moved from the position in which she had left him the previous evening. He was half-lounging beside the bench, his hair tousled even more than usual, and his pipe clenched between his teeth. The air was warm and smelled vaguely of powerful antiseptics.
Molly took off her coat and glanced about her. There was no sign of the de London cadaver. She took off her hat and moved to where her employer stood.
“Remember me, A.Q.?” she enquired, and he stirred and beamed upon her.
“Remember you! Light of my life, I can never forget you. But let me apologise for my frowsy appearance. I’ve had very little sleep, no shave, a very meagre breakfast, and am somewhat weary from excess of thinking. But I have taken a big stride forward in the de London mystery.”
“You got the cadaver all right, then?”
“I did, and spent most of the night making examinations and tests. I can well see why the verdict was heart failure: a doctor of the normal school could hardly come to any other conclusion. But it was the bloodstream that I found most interesting. It contained not only traces of exilene, but also of miopadrax. And the miopadrax was greatly in excess of the exilene and noticeable not only in the bloodstream but also in the lungs, stomach and intestines.”
Molly looked somewhat blank. “What in the world’s miopadrax? I’ve never heard of it.”
“No blame attaches for that. Few people have, unless they be well versed in chemistry, as I hope I am. Miopadrax is a drug with vague relationship to one-time adrenalin. It produces extreme stimulation and well-being—for a time. Afterwards, when reaction sets in, intense depression occurs, verging on melancholia. If it doesn’t get that far it produces morbid and quite baseless fears.”
“In other words, nerves?”
“Right!” Quirke beamed with satisfaction. “My favourite girlfriend is extra bright this morning. Nerves! That’s it exactly. Now you know what I was fishing for when I asked that pathologist if de London’s condition could have been induced. It’s perfectly obvious now that he was made ill deliberately…”
“By the medicine, you mean?”
Quirke shook his mane of white hair sadly. “Molly, you are not so bright as I thought. How could the medicine produce the condition when it existed before the medicine?
“Sorry!” Molly looked contrite. “I hadn’t thought of that. How, then, was this miopasomething administered?”
“There’s one perfectly obvious solution—by means of cigars. To make sure of this possibility I infused a cigar with miopadrax solution during the night—not in a very great quantity—and then I smoked it. My test showed me I had all the symptoms of nerves and depression. They passed off after a while, but had I smoked cigars constantly, as de London did, and had each one been heavily impregnated, I’d very soon have become a nervous wreck.”
Molly perched herself on the bench edge. “So that’s it! Doctored cigars to produce nerves and make a medicine necessary— But what for? What has that got to do with murdering de London?”
“That,” Quirke said, “was what I asked myself, and the more I thought about it the more I appreciated the diabolical cunning of the mind behind the whole thing. The reason for the induced nerves was, I believe, to make an excuse to see de London at the last moment before he locked himself in the cube-room. An excuse to fix the gadget—whatever it was—that killed him.”
“You mean that the killer—or Rogers, if you prefer—caused de London to have nerves, knowing that he would seek medical advice?”
“That is my belief, and Rogers would also guess that a medicine would be prescribed, possibly containing the very potent exilene. Most medicines are prescribed for three times a day, and I think Rogers relied on that possibility knowing also that the task of reminding de London about the medicine times would probably fall to him. That, I repeat, gave him the normal excuse to see his master a short while before he locked himself in his cube-room.”
“Very ingenious,” Molly admitted, nodding in faint admiration. “He provided both cause and cure to serve his own ends?”
“So I think. I am satisfied from my examination of the corpse that neither exilene nor miopadrax caused death, therefore the murder was not committed by way of the medicine. That brings us back to the lamp, and before I can go much further in that direction I must see the Daylight Electric Company in Swanton, and that is where I intend to head this morning. Naturally you will alleviate the monotony of the journey, my love, by being present to pilot the helicopter.”
“I’ll get it out of the roof-garage,” Molly said, heading for the door, and Quirke observed that he would join her the moment he had had a shave.
The ‘moment’ proved to be fifteen minutes later then he squeezed his colossal bulk into the helicopter’s cabin and Molly started up the powerful atomic motor. To Swanton, in Gloucestershire, from London was only a brief hop and in another twenty minutes the managing director of the Daylight Electric Company—a small but obviously efficiently run concern in the heart of the countryside—was welcoming his two visitors.
“I’m Adam Quirke,” Quirke explained, struggling down into an armchair and puffing bronchially. “My secretary and right hand—Miss Brayson. My reason for visiting you is mainly a police matter.”
“Really?” The managing director, a sharp-nosed man with exceptionally well-brushed hair, looked vaguely uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I cannot just accept your word for that, Mr. Quirke. Shouldn’t you have a warrant-card, or something?”
“If I were an ordinary policeman, yes—but I’m not.” Quirke spread his hands. “I am a scientific specialist in crime, commissioned by the de Londons to investigate the true circumstances connected with the death of Gyron de London.”
“Indeed? Very interesting, of course, but what has that to do with me, or my firm?”
“Your firm? You are the owner of it?”
“That is the usual capacity of a managing director, is it not?”
“There are exceptions,” Quirke said amiably. “In certain cases the owner of a business docs not appear himself but leaves everything to a managing director. I fancied that might be so in this case.”
“No, Mr. Quirke. I am the sole owner of this business, and anything you may have to say concerning it should be directly addressed to me.”
“Mmmm, I see.” Quirke reflected, then: “I understand that you supply the de London enterprise with lamps, neon tubes, and all the usual lighting apparatus?”
“We do, yes. A very good contract it is, too.”
Silence. The managing director was looking puzzled. He pushed across the cigarettes but Quirke shook his white mane of hair and lighted his briar instead.
“Did you ever hear of a man called Rogers?” he asked. “And, mind you, sir, this is strictly confidential.”
“Rogers? Rogers? Not that I can recall, but then, we have a pretty large staff. I can probably check on it for you. You mean on the working staff?”
“I mean anywhere in this organisation.”
The managing director switched on the intercom and gave instructions for the names of the firm’s employees, past and present, to be checked. After a while the answer came through.
“No sign of anybody with that name, sir. I’ve gone through the list from the day the firm began business.”
“Right, Mason. Thanks.”
Quirke sat scowling to himself, and Molly guessed that for the moment he was up a gum tree. Then his slowly dawning smile showed that a new line of approach had occurred to him. He turned his sharp blue eyes on the managing director once again.
“Does your product appear in the shops in the usual manner or are you exclusively contractual? By that I mean, do you supply your lighting equipment on contract only, or is there general sale?”
“General sale. Any electrical shop has our product, and so do the big stores.”
“Ah!” Quirke fought his way to his feet and snorted for breath. “That, sir, solves my little problem, I think. You have been most co-operative—and I feel that I should warn you that at a later date your firm is liable to come in for a great deal of publicity, and not entirely favourable publicity either.”
“Oh? There’s nothing wrong with our material; I’ll swear to that!”
“I’ve no doubt of that, but one particularly clever scientist has used one of your lamps, with your firm’s name on it, to mature a most villainous scheme. For that reason, when the story is told, your lamps are bound to be mentioned.”
“I’ll take action if there is any reflection upon us!”
“It will hardly be necessary when the time arises,” Quirke smiled. “The person whom you would have to indict will then be impaled by the full panoply of justice. However, my thanks, sir, and good day. Coming, Molly?”
“Ready, A.Q.”
“What was all that about, anyway? Just kind words, or did something really occur to you?”
“Something really occurred to me. My first belief was that perhaps Rogers was the secret owner of the Daylight Electric Company, by which means he would be able to get at the lamps in the factory any time he chose and, perhaps, fashion one to his own design. That belief went down the drain, to be replaced with the only possible answer—that Rogers bought a perfectly normal lamp in a store somewhere and then secretly altered it to suit his own purposes.”
“Without a laboratory or equipment? That’s stretching things a bit, A.Q., isn’t it?”
“I don’t believe Rogers is without a laboratory,” Quirke replied. “What about his father’s laboratory? I know he had one, beautifully equipped, and I also know where it was located. It’s more than possible that Rogers never sold out to a scientist but used it—and still uses it, maybe—himself.”
“That,” Molly admitted, “really is something. What do we do, then? Take a look at this laboratory and see if it’s still in the name of Rogers?”
“That seems to be the best course, yes, but we’d better do it at night, and also at a time when we can be sure that Rogers is not likely to walk in on us.”
“No guarantee of that. In his off-duty time he might turn up at any hour.”
“Not if we make sure that he doesn’t,” Quirke grinned. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Molly. You took down in full the statements made by Harry and Owena de London. Didn’t you?”
“Every word.”
“Good! When we get back home have those statements made out in duplicate. Then ’phone Harry and Owena to come over to my place this evening and sign the statement after reading them through. That’s normal police procedure, anyway, and they won’t suspect a thing. Rogers will be compelled to bring them in the helicopter, wait for them, and take them home again. In that time I’ll be busy at the laboratory, assured that he can’t walk in on me.”
“Think of everything, don’t you?” Molly sighed, and Quirke chuckled until an upsurge of phlegm stopped him…and in a few more minutes they had reached home, and the laboratory, and Molly immediately went to work as instructed. Meantime Quirke visiphoned Harry de London and secured his rather grudging assent to come that evening, with his wife, to sign the necessary statements.
“Just routine, you understand,” Quirke explained genially, studying Harry’s troubled face in the screen. “It does not imply any direct suspicion to you or your wife.”
“How about Miss Turner and Rogers? Do they have to sign statements too?”
Quirke reflected swiftly. Here was an ideal chance to pin down Rogers completely.
“Rogers, yes,” he agreed. “He may as well since he’ll be piloting you over here. We’ll get around to Miss Turner later.”
“All right, Mr. Quirke. We’ll be there.”
Quirke nodded and switched off. Molly glanced around from her machine upon which the statements were being automatically printed and transcribed from her original notes.
“Rogers’ statement as well?” she asked.
“If you please…” Quirke lumbered over to the bench and picked up the lamp, which he was convinced had been the cause of the tycoon’s death. Thoughtfully he went through an examination—an examination purely of the eye since he had already made a microscopic and spectrographic analysis.
“Tell you one thing, light of my life…” Quirke made the observation after a long interval. “This brass cap on this lamp is of considerable age. I never noticed it before in my interest in the lamp proper. And what is left of the glass pear now I’ve finished shattering it—the part left welded into the brass, I mean—is comparatively new. An old cap, yet new glass. Mmmm—very interesting.”
“Can’t be that old, A.Q.” Molly turned from her task to look at him. “The Daylight Company wouldn’t put excessively old brass caps on their lamps. They’d go out of business.”
Quirke did not reply. Apparently discovering something of further interest in the lamp’s bayonet cap he put it in the vice-jaws and then studied it intently through a powerful lens. Wheezing and puffing he presently straightened up and jerked his head.
“Come here a moment, light of my life, and take a look at this…”
Inwardly wishing she did not have to keep being interrupted Molly obeyed, putting her eye to the microscope and studying the top end of the brass cap with its two lead electrode points and black plastic filling.
“Well?” Quirke asked, rubbing his chubby hands in anticipation. “See anything?”
“Nothing unusual, boss. Should I?”
“Should you! You can do better than that, Molly. Can’t you see a badly filled and extremely small hole in the plastic?”
Molly looked again and at last managed to discover what Quirke meant. In one place, slightly to the right of where the main stem of the lamp’s filament support was imbedded, there was a rough circular speck of material darker than the surrounding plastic insulation filling. But as far as Molly was concerned it did not mean a thing.
“Yes, I see it,” she confirmed, straightening up and rubbing her eye. “What does it mean, anyway?”
“It means, m’dear, that a hole has been driven through there and afterwards refilled. Now, let us view the business step by step. First—new glass with the Daylight Company name on it, a perfectly genuine pear-glass. But fitted into an old brass cap. Would a firm turn out a lamp like that? No! What is the answer?”
“I’d say that somebody used an old brass cap and, from a new lamp, took the Daylight pear-glass and carefully welded it to the old brass cap.”
“Good girl! And the hole in the insulation?”
“I dunno.” Molly frowned. “That beats me.”
“Surely it is plain enough?” Quirke asked. “In fitting a new glass round the filament the original gas would disperse. Fresh gas would have to be put in. So, a hole is drilled through the insulation, argon gas is pumped in to the required density, the hole is resealed—and there it is. But the resealing has been done with material slightly darker than the insulation, which is a direct giveaway.”
“It’s all very complicated,” Molly said, bewildered.
“Not when you follow it step by step. Rogers has a master lamp which—by a process we don’t yet know—does something. He has had it some time, hence the age of the brass cap. He wants to make the lamp look normal and up to date, and particularly wants it to match the lamps usually used by the de Londons. So what does he do? Buys a normal Daylight lamp, removes the glass pear, welds it onto the brass filament fixture he already has, pumps in argon gas—and there it is. Very clever: I must hand that much to him.”
Molly sighed as she returned to her keyboard. “How he must have hated de London to go to so much trouble!”
“Perhaps it was not hatred which drove him on so much as his love of scientific achievement: He wanted to produce a foolproof murder and very nearly managed it. Indeed,” Quirke finished, frowning, “he’ll get clean away with it unless I can discover what that missing element is which is spectographically beyond the red end…”
For the moment, however, there was nothing more he could do. His next moves could only come after he had had a chance to inspect the Rogers’ laboratory, granting it still existed—and that would not be until evening. So, as was characteristic of him, Quirke did not wear his highly trained mind to bits for the rest of the day. Instead he interested himself in some complicated chemical experiment, whilst Molly marvelled silently at his mental detachment. Then, towards eight o’clock, the time for the de Londons and Rogers to arrive, Quirke took his departure, leaving word with Molly to apologise for his absence and explain that urgent business had called him away. She took her instructions with complete assurance, quite confident that she could handle the visitors, and delay them in every possible way.
For his journey to the Rogers laboratory, which, as he recalled it lay at the north of the city, Quirke used his spacious car instead of the helicopter. This way there was no chance of him passing the de Londons en route… And to his immense satisfaction the laboratory was still there and looking no different from the time when he had formerly visited it during the lifetime of Henry Rogers.
But there remained the question: was the laboratory still a Rogers’ possession or had it changed hands in the interval? Quirke was not the kind of man to allow this imponderance to stand in his way so, with his usual immense geniality—which always succeeded in hiding his real purpose—he managed to wheedle from the owners of the properties near the Rogers’ laboratory all the information he needed. Yes, the laboratory was still owned by a Mr. Rogers. Old man Rogers himself had been dead for some time but his son had taken it over. No, he was not often seen at the laboratory—just now and again.
Which was all Quirke needed to know. He allowed an hour to pass after making his enquiries so that any suspicions that might have been aroused could have time to subside—then by way of the back route he gained the yard at the rear of the laboratory and advanced silently. He was thankful for the moonlessness of the night for his bulk was such that any intent watching eyes might descry him.
Keeping close to the high wall he headed for a lower window, opening it with an electronic cutter, which silently melted away a portion of the glass and allowed him to reach inside and pull back the catch. After which he spent a somewhat anxious five minutes struggling into the gloom of the room beyond. Here he paused only long enough to fuse new glass invisibly into place—by electrically stretching the orbital electrons of the rest of the pane and causing it to become ‘elastic’ and correspondingly thinner in texture—then he closed the shutters and switched on the light.
The investigation he made was thorough and minute and because of the scientific instruments he carried with him nothing stood in his way. Locked steel cabinets and an up-to-date safe were undetectably opened and their contents examined and photographed on micro-film. Then the benches and tools were carefully scrutinised. Altogether Quirke took nearly two hours over his task, keeping one ear constantly cocked for signs of interruption… But none came. And at last, satisfied that he had found out everything that was possible, Quirke departed silently by the normal door, magnetically shooting the steel catch into position from the outside. There was nothing to show that he had ever been.
It was nearly eleven when he landed back in his own laboratory to find Molly Brayson lounging in one of the big chairs and idling through a cigarette. She looked up expectantly as the Colossus came in.
“Any luck, boss?”
“In one way, yes; in another, no.” Quirke was looking faintly disappointed as he tugged off his overcoat. “Fix up some supper for the pair of us and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Molly obeyed promptly, taking ready prepared sandwiches from the electronic cooler and quickly reheating the coffee in the radiant energy coil. Then she seated herself and Quirke heaved and grunted down into a chair opposite her.
“On the one hand,” he said, “I came across a very sketchy, but nevertheless understandable formula, relating to invisible heat radiations—which carries us beyond the red end of the spectrum—but on the other hand I didn’t find a single thing to suggest that Rogers might have been at work on a lamp.”
“Explainable by the fact that he doubtless cleared everything away after him.”
“But why should he? He has no reason to think that anybody might explore his laboratory. Perhaps he might have made a general clean-up after his activities, but even that would not account for there not being the least trace of glass shards or brass filings, or plastic droppings. Indeed, most of the instruments—which he would have had to use for his glass-modification stunt—appear not lo have been used for ages. The laboratory is nearly a museum piece…”
“Then he perhaps did the job somewhere else—maybe in the de London garage or one of the estate workshops.”
“He’d never do that, Molly—not with a laboratory of his own in which to work unhindered.” Quirke sat for a moment with his brows knitted whilst he chewed a sandwich; then he continued: “On the other hand I did find a formula relating to invisible heat radiations, together with a number of rough sketches which, believe it or not, look very much to be like the embryonic designs of a lamp—”
“They do?” Molly’s face brightened considerably.
“I micro-photographed the formula and drawings, but I can give you the outline. The formula refers mainly to a metallic element that exists in the sun in enormous quantities, but as a gaseous element, of course. On Earth it does not exist in the pure state—and therefore isn’t classified—but it can be extracted in small quantities from uranium, magnesium, and one or two other well known elements, all of which also exist in the sun in gaseous form.”
“Naturally everything that exists in gas form in the sun must exist on Earth, too,” Molly said. “Earth is a child of the sun and contains the same elements, but in solid form.”
“True enough,” Quirke nodded. “It appears from this long and complicated formula that this unusual metal always combines with some other element in the process of cooling, hence the reason for it being found in uranium and so forth. I gather the quantities are so minute that no scientist—except Rogers—has considered them worth troubling about as a commercial proposition. Rogers, though, discovered the extraordinary electrical and radioactive properties of this element, which he called K-74, purely to apply a scientific label.”
“Very technical and very complicated,” Molly said, “but where does it all lead? Has it anything to do with the mystery lamp?”
“I think it may have.” Quirke nodded slowly. “What I intend to do is extract this element from the uranium, magnesium, and other elements which I have in the laboratory here—and extract it in the manner described by Rogers in his notes. Then I’ll see what happens when the element is made to carry an electric current…”
“You keep speaking of Rogers’ formula,” Molly remarked, musing. “Are you referring to the old Rogers or the young one?”
“I’m talking about the great Henry. Only a man like Henry Rogers, one of the greatest and most acknowledged scientists of all time, could have thought of a formula like that. Besides, the formula, sketches, and all the rest of it, are done in ox-gall ink and the tintometer I carried with me showed the ink to be some ten to fifteen years old. No doubt that Henry Rogers discovered K-74.”
“And his son cashed in on it by devising some sort of electric lamp with K-74 mixed up in it?”
“That’s a reasonable assumption at the moment, light of my life… And you’re looking sleepy. Best thing you can do is go home and preserve your beauty. Since I don’t need to preserve mine I’ll probably work all night.”
Quirke bellowed and roared through a paroxysm of merriment, gurgling something about ‘beauty sleep’ at intervals. By the time he had come up again for air Molly was in her outdoor things and looking at him impassively.
“See you tomorrow, boss,” she said, and with a nod he got to his feet.
“Yes, m’dear. And—by the by, how did things go with our friends tonight? The statements signed?”
“Perfectly. All three of them were very taciturn— In fact, Owena was openly insulting, but as you once pointed out that was perhaps only put up as a sort of defensive screen. Rogers looked ill at ease, but whether it was because he was with his employers and accordingly felt awkward, or whether he sensed he might be signing something to indict him, I don’t know. Anyway, I kept them occupied as long as I could.”
“You did admirably… Sleep well.”
Molly went on her way and Quirke lighted his briar in preparation for an all-night session. And an all-night session it was. Part of the time Quirke was in heavily insulated armour as he experimented with radioactive materials and, by cyclotron process, extracted the almost infinitesimal K-74 from the uranium and other elements he had stored in the laboratory.
It was towards four in the morning before he achieved the effect he wanted, and the outcome of a battering of electrical forces finally produced a small greyish lump of what seemed to be metal. It looked like pig iron, except that it had a much more crystalline quality. Here for the time being Quirke stopped his activities and instead retired to his largest chair to ponder the formula, sketches, and notes which by this time had been photographically restored to their original size.
Daylight came, and Quirke was still pondering. He took time out to shave, dress, and have breakfast—which included a dose of powerful restorative—then he returned to the laboratory to renew his attack, and found that Molly had arrived once more for the day’s work.
“Place is mighty stuffy, A.Q.,” she remarked, snapping back the shutters and opening the ventilators. “In fact it smells of an all-night session. Am I right?”
“Quite right.” Quirke spoke in a faraway voice and Molly looked at him enquiringly.
“How far did you get, boss?”
“Far enough to extract K-74, which is a good deal. This morning I intend to experiment with it. I waited until you came because I felt that you would like to be in on it. As to the stuff itself…” Quirke relapsed into thought.
“Yes?”
“When it is heated to maximum it produces a radiation, but what that radiation docs I don’t yet know. I have also discovered something else, from the Rogers’ notes which I photographed.”
Molly waited, interested.
“Rogers actually invented a lamp, based on K-74. He invented it many years ago and made a full-scale model. It was intended for defence purposes and, possibly, is now pigeonholed somewhere in the War Office. The lamp was based on the simple scientific principle that the invisible radiation of a normal electric lamp is eight times in excess of the visible. That is to say that eight times as much radiation is actually emanated than is ever turned to account. That includes heat and other types of radiation. K-74 on the other hand has visible radiation in the form of light when current is passed through it—or I assume so from the notes, since I haven’t actually tried it yet—but the invisible radiations from it arc in the neighbourhood of thirty-six times plus!”
Molly looked surprised. “You mean that thirty-six times as much radiation as is visible is generated?”
“Yes—and what kind of radiation it is I don’t yet know, but I suspect it may be lethal. For two reasons—one, that the lamp in its first stages was used for defence offering; and two, that a similarly constructed lamp, or even the same lamp perhaps, caused the death of Gyron de London. We’re dealing in deep things, m’dear, in the creation of a scientific genius whose wonderful idea has, in later years, been turned to cunning crime.”
“And you believe that Rogers the younger built such a lamp from his father’s original sketches and plans, or perhaps used the original lamp and converted it to make it look modern?”
“I’d like to think so.” Quirke’s brows knitted. “I said earlier that our problem is not so much who killed de London as how. Now I rather wish I had not been quite so casual. I accepted Rogers as the murderer because logic and circumstances seemed to combine to indicate him. Now I begin to wonder. The absence of signs of activity in the laboratory for one thing, and for another, if the original lamp was used—as seems very likely judging from the age of the brass cap—how the devil did Rogers ever get it from the War Ministry?”
“Are you sure it went to the War Ministry, boss?” Molly smiled a little. “Sometimes a secretary earns her money, and I mostly earn mine by reminding you of everyday facts which your far-reaching scientific prowess overlooks. Suppose—and this is only a theory, mind you—that Rogers took his invention to a financier to begin with? He’d get better terms than from the War Ministry, or at least he probably would.”
“Meaning, light of my life, that the said financier might have been tycoon de London?”
“As well as anybody.”
Quirke breathed bronchially and nodded his mane of white hair. “Excellent logic, m’dear. It would explain how Rogers could perhaps get the lamp. He certainly never would if the War Ministry had it… Well, to work! Let us see what K-74 can do. Get out two white mice, will you, and fix them on the experimental tray.”
Molly did as bidden. Meanwhile, working from a distance with heavily insulated tongs, and himself wearing a protective covering, Quirke went to work on the lump of mystery metal, a solidified gas whose prototype lay in the flaming incandescence of the sun, and finally sealed it in a matrix. The matrix was not insulated in any way so that the radiations from the lump could pass out freely once it was electrified. The rest of the task was simply a matter of wiring the matrix to the normal power feed.
“Right!” Quirke exclaimed. “Into your protective suit, Molly, and we’ll see what happens. Our white mice will tell us all we want to know, and for some reason I always feel a perfect fiend at having to put those harmless little devils through the hoops.”
“Well, we can’t go through the hoops every time,” Molly said, stepping into her suit.
“I couldn’t go through one at any time!” Quirke choked, and a full minute’s interval had to be declared whilst he surged and rolled out of his paroxysm of laughter. Then, seeing that the girl was ready, he dropped his visor in place over his grinning, empurpled face.
Crossing over to the switchboard he snapped on the current, and immediately he became the intent scientist instead of the man mountain reduced to hysteria by a vaguely humorous comment. In silence Molly stood beside him, a shapeless figure in her insulated covering. Together they watched the lump of K-74 begin to heat, like the element of a radiator coming slowly to maximum.
Quirke turned aside and looked at the instruments, which were registering the lamp’s emanations. They showed a considerable heat was being generated, and also one particular vibration which, being outside the normal known radiations, was playing havoc with the delicate instrument trying to cope with it.
This was no longer a matter for instruments. The white mice were showing exactly what was happening. They were scurrying wildly on the experimental tray directly beneath the K-74. Quirke watched them, then Molly gripped his arm as the mystery lump gradually began to give forth light. And what light! It was at first the normal glow of an electric lamp, but as time passed it became brighter and brighter, tinging to blue, until the whole laboratory was soaked in a pallid, unwavering glare that destroyed every shadow. There was considerable heat also, but not enough to make the place catch fire.
“Good job these vizors are insulated,” Quirke muttered. “That kind of light, to say nothing of the unknown radiations also being given off, would probably have destroyed our sight by this time otherwise.”
Molly nodded, watching in fascination. Until at length the glare became too intolerable and she had to turn away. Quirke too found it too much for him, but his determination to see the experiment through restrained him from switching off the current. So the light continued building up into an intolerable effulgence—then sudden extinction, like some ultra-powerful firework burned out. There remained a glowing red-hot lump of metal that very suddenly broke into fragments and then fell as fine dust onto the motionless mice below.
Quirke struggled out of his suit and then mopped his face. Molly, her hair damp and straggling down her forehead, gave him a questioning glance. He saw what she meant. The mice were quite plainly dead, but it had not been heat or light that had killed them. The generation of heat had not been anywhere near proportionate to the amount of light—and light alone does not kill unless built up into an unbearable photonic pressure.
The fact remained: the mice were dead. Quirke went over to them, but he did not immediately touch them. First he used a detector to discover whether or not they were electrified or radioactive, but neither appeared to be the case.
“In these two dead rodents I think we have a repetition of the something which killed de London,” Quirke said at last. “The next obvious move is to dissect one of them and discover what caused death.”
So he went to work whilst Molly cleared away the apparatus. After about half-an-hour Quirke disposed of the mouse which he had vivisected and sat in thought.
“Anything?” Molly questioned.
“I think so. Fix some coffee, sweetheart, and then I’ll tell you—if I can.”
Molly did so—only a few minutes’ work, then Quirke looked at her.
“The mouse I examined died from what seems to be syncope,” he said. “Presumably the other mouse died from the same cause. And so did de London—but what caused the syncope? That is my point. In this case—more clearly apparent in the delicate organism of the mouse than in the cadaver of de London—the indication; are that intense shock from the brain produced it. Only one thing could produce that shock—the radiations from the electrically charged K-74. Or, more specifically, one radiation in particular. A radiation that is approximately five percent light and ninety-five percent vibration. It is a form of calorescence, by which only the merest fraction of the radiation is in the visible spectrum. The rest is in the invisible, below the red end. And like many radiations which exist down there, it affects human tissue adversely.”
Quirke sipped his coffee slowly, no longer noticing that Molly was even there. His thoughts were plainly probing into the scientific deeps and he spoke as they crystallized.
“The sun,” he resumed, “gives forth endless radiations, the only one we notice being of the order of light. There is also heat of course, but that we feel and do not see. There are also X-rays, gamma, alpha and beta radiations. The whole works, together with one subtle radiation low down in the red end, and of tremendous wavelength, which is responsible for the many cases of heat prostration, sunstroke, and syncope on a hot summer day. Offhand, one says somebody died because of the heat. It is never that. Heat of itself, as far as the sun is concerned anyway, does not kill. It is the invisible radiation closely allied to the radiation of heat, which does the damage. In the main our atmosphere deflects this and other harmful radiations, but where it does get through human tissue suffers severely.
“What I am saying,” Quirke said deliberately, his blue eyes hard, “is that K-74 exists in the sun in gaseous form, and in vast quantities, according to Rogers’ observations. It is the radiation of this gaseous K-74 that strikes down many a living being on a summer’s day. So then, K-74 reproduced in the laboratory and electrically heated behaves exactly as it does in the sun. It gradually volatilises, and as it does so the light becomes unbearable—as in the solar photosphere—and at the same time energy in the form of K-74 radiation is bound to be given off. And it is fatal! Deadly! It strikes straight to the brain of any living object and produces such terrific shock that syncope is the result. There, I think, we begin at last to grasp at the Satanic truth of this unholy business.”
“Yes,” Molly said slowly, musing over her coffee, “but there is something that needs explaining, A.Q. The energy generated by an ordinary electric current cannot in any way be compared to the furious disintegrative atomic processes going on within the sun. So why is the effect the same at lower temperature? Or, more correctly, lower current power?”
“It simply means that K-74 volatilises at a fairly low temperature—as temperatures go. After all, if a metal volatilises at, say, three-thousand Centigrade—which is the melting point of tungsten—it doesn’t matter if you give it ten million Centigrade. It won’t melt or volatilise any more on that account. K-74 volatilises at low temperature. It doesn’t take solar power to make it break down. For instance, iron exists in the gaseous state in the sun, yet we too can make it into a gaseous state by temperatures inconceivably below those generated in the sun. Rogers obviously worked everything out and, offhand, I’d say the melting point of K-74 is around two-thousand Centigrade. The present current power passed through our normal cables is about two-thousand-five-hundred. That is an energy, and energy is only molecular action which the layman calls heat. So, then, during the process of reaching volatilising maximum, K-74 gives forth its substance in the form of unholy light, rising to lethal vibration, which ends in sudden extinction and ashes.”
“And that is what happened in the fatal lamp which killed de London?”
“I think so. Remember, we used a fair-sized lump of K-74. In the lamp design sketch I have seen a thin coating of K-74 is shown over the normal tungsten filament. Now, tungsten has to get a thousand degrees hotter than K-74 before it melts. So you see what happens? The current is switched on and the K-74 quickly lights up to apparent normal brilliance. Then it becomes rapidly super-brilliant—within a few seconds if there is only a thin coating. On again and the lethal radiation is blazed forth. Then extinction. All in a matter of perhaps three minutes from start to finish. The coating falls away in ash to the base of the globe and the normal tungsten filament goes on glowing in the usual way. And since heat is a negligible factor with K-74 the glass casing would not fuse or crack.”