Mobels’ face was expressionless. ‘It must be several months since they were returned,’ he said.
Gatt banged his cup down on the table with savage force. ‘You fools! You bloody, half-baked, incompetent fools! You, Mobels! You spend fifteen minutes running down your employer, telling me he “isn’t greatly taken with scientific matters”, and, at the same time, display a degree of negligence yourself which is perilously near the actually criminal. You’re quite happy to take his money, yet you sit back and permit the most incredible hazards to public safety that one could possibly have conceived. You carry out so-called “tests” on some contaminated fluid and come to the conclusion that it is “perhaps calcium”. Incredibly, you leave it at that. Well, I’ll concede that in small concentrations it is impracticable to discriminate between calcium and other substances with very similar characteristics. But you could at least have sent a sample for outside analysis. Or would that have been too much trouble?’
Infuriatingly, Mobels still didn’t react. Just sat there with a slight, humourless smile on his face, enjoying the performance. ‘I fail to see,’ he said, in his own good time, ‘what you’re getting all worked up about, Mr Gatt. Nobody’s going to eat the contents of the condemned tins.’
Gatt answered him equally quietly. ‘Is your knowledge of chemistry so rusty that you have forgotten your Periodic Tables?’
The cynical smile broadened slightly on Mobels’ smug, self-satisfied face. ‘I don’t think so. Let me see: calcium is number 20, isn’t it?’
‘It is. And what is the one that is normally written immediately below it?’
Mobels gave the matter thought, still quite unhurriedly, screwing up his face in the process. ‘Number 38 would have similar characteristics, wouldn’t it? That would be strontium.’ And the smile disappeared from his face as if it had never been there. He added, flatly, the single word ‘Christ.’
‘It’s a little late for blasphemy,’ said Gatt grimly, ‘but I see you get the point, Radio-strontium, actually.’ He paused for one loaded moment, staring over the man’s shoulder. ‘There’s just one thing that doesn’t add up,’ he said, as if to himself. Then: ‘Well, we’ll have to do what we can to protect the unsuspecting workers in this deadly place. Spigett, where’s the amplifier room? I want to speak over the Tannoy.’
Spigett’s voice was low and hoarse. ‘I suppose you’re going to close down my factory?’ Gatt’s expression was enough. The canning magnate said: ‘I’ll take you there,’ in a voice his employees would not have recognised.
Gatt had almost forgotten Richards. Now he had something for him to do. ‘Is there a master-switch that will stop the production line? Without turning off the amplifier?’
‘Yes. In the power room.’
‘Get to it.’
‘I’ll have to fetch the key from Main Gate.’
‘I don’t care if you have to get a hatchet from the Fire Station. But I want that line stopped.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Richards departed at the double.
‘Mobels, get me a man — any man, quickly. When you’ve done that get through to Whitehall 0011 and ask for Sir Robert Hargreaves. Give him the gist of what has come to light and ask him to hang on for me. Got it?’
Mobels hesitated and Spigett snarled ‘Get cracking!’ through his clenched teeth. Mobels shrugged and left the room without hurrying. But he returned with a workman in surprisingly quick time. Gatt sent the man off to his car, with instructions to fetch a large leather box from the back. ‘Here’s the key. The box is heavy and fragile, so be careful with it. Bring it into the factory — Dispatch Department… I’ll meet you there.’ The man departed.
Gatt nodded tersely to Spigett, and the two men left at a brisk walk for the amplifier room.
Inside the sheds the blank-faced women and the white-coated men were going about their familiar tasks while the ‘Music While You Work’ programme somehow penetrated the din of the machinery.
Abruptly the music stopped and a few of the workers stared in perplexity at the loudspeakers. Others hardly noticed until a man’s voice, clear and compelling, echoed and throbbed round the factory. Gaping, they listened to a few short, startling sentences and obediently stood away from their machines, gathering round in little groups near the speakers while the unattended machinery pounded on and the clicking, clattering tins paraded along in never-ending streams above their heads. Then, as that staccato voice jabbed into the metallic atmosphere with some concise instructions, there came a change in the note of the machinery. And gradually the motors died, slowing the cans on the conveyors, retarding the sadistic machinery of the sealing equipment, arresting the gear-wheels that turned and the pinions which engaged with them until the heartbeat of the factory was stilled.
For a few moments there was only the continued relaying of Gatt’s amplified voice, unreal but deafening now. The groups of workers stood as still as the stanchions that rose all around them to the roof. Then, after a firm warning against panic, even the voice ceased. There was utter silence.
Until the murmurs of uncomprehending people began to build from a sibilant whisper to a concerted crowd effect that could not have been simulated in any broadcasting studio.
And slowly, just as the residual air is expelled from the body of a dead person, so the people, stunned into a state of calm, uncomprehending obedience, drifted out of the factory exits.
But the cancer that was alive in those ten thousand tins sent the pointer of an instalment, set in the casing of a heavy leather box, right across the dial — into the red segment.
Gatt said very quietly: ‘Spigett, I want a list of every man or woman in the factory who has reported sick since these cans were returned…’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Frank Gresham had said nothing since Manson had been confronted with the results of Simmel’s overnight discovery. For one thing, it was a technical matter that he did not altogether understand, and for another he was embarrassed to see anyone put on the spot — even Alec Manson.
But now he looked up from his private game of tiddlywinks, quite startled at Hargreaves’ sudden ejaculation. He made no comment to Sir Robert, but greeted Jack Seff as he came into the room.
Jack had also heard the Director’s sfortzando observation. ‘How have we all been “blithering idiots”?’ he demanded, closing the door behind him. He looked surprisingly fresh after his flight down from Glennaverley. ‘I’m quite willing to concede the point — but in what way?’
The Director hailed him from where he was standing by the window. ‘Jack, I think we’re pretty near the truth at last.’ In a few long strides he had crossed the room, stood alongside Seff. ‘Let’s see if it hits you the same as it does me.’ He picked up two cans that were lying on top of the filing cabinet. ‘Say the one in my left hand gives a reading on the geiger instrument and the one in my right hand doesn’t.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you open up both cans and find the contents of both are “hot”. What do you deduce?’
Seff made a whistling noise through his teeth. ‘I think I’m beginning to see what you’re driving at. But didn’t Alec —?’
‘Remember, the assumption was that it was the metal that was radioactive.’
‘Quite. My assumption.’
‘And everybody else’s too.’
Seff glanced across at Alec, wondering why he hadn’t tried every combination as part of investigation routine. Alec Manson averted his eyes, and suddenly found something very interesting on the wall. ‘Well,’ said Seff, ‘the snappy catch answer is that there must be two kinds of radiation: gamma rays (which penetrate the tin) and alpha (or beta) — which don’t.’