“Proof? I can get you proof!” Adam was impatient and sweating with fear in the cold room. “See that little window over there? He filmed the experiments through it. That’s why he needs the big lights and the white paint. If you go next door into the filing room you’ll find there are reels still on the bottom shelf. Not labelled so I can’t help you there.”
Dorcas was swiftly on her knees working her way along a shelf of boxed film reels. “No names. No dates. Just numbers. I’m going to take the last two in the sequence. Experiments gather momentum and refinement. The last in a series is what you want. It’s a lucky dip, but here goes. They’ll just fit into my satchel if I move the pistol over a bit.”
Somewhere a door banged shut, and the sound was followed by absolute silence.
Desperate to leave now, they made for the door.
A sudden clang of metal on metal broke the silence. A signal. It was followed seconds later by a crescendo of noise as a steel stick was bounced from bar to bar along the cages, coming towards them. A bass accompaniment of nailed boots swelled the sound, clattering along the tiled floor of the monkey lab. They stopped, frozen for a moment in flight. Instinct took over. Dorcas pushed Adam behind her and ranged up behind Joe and Gosling who, without a word spoken, stepped out into the larger room, presenting a solid front to whoever was surging onward down the darkened laboratory.
“Well, what have we here?” A Cockney voice. “I can see you, Adam, yer carroty little runt! Hiding behind the skirt. Having a party are yer? Yer forgot to invite us.”
Joe looked with dismay at the guardians of this foul place. Adam’s description had not gone far enough. Over six feet tall and burly, both men wore not a reassuringly crisp lab coat but the coarse leather jerkin of a gunnery sergeant-or a London thug. They had the sleek muscled bulk and pitiless eyes of wild boar. Big boots and showy red neckerchiefs announced that they meant business. As did the short metal truncheon the spokesman held in one hand.
He smirked at Joe and Gosling and smacked the weapon suggestively into the palm of his other hand in a gesture he’d surely seen in a gangster movie. “Well, well! Two smart-arses caught abusing the boss’s hospitality! These men are intruders, Jonas. Did anyone warn you they were expected? Naw! Me neither! Show ’em how we welcome intruders, shall we?”
The man talked too much. Bored, belligerent show-offs whose moment had come at last, they were going to savour it. But it was their eyes, supercilious and mocking, that chilled Joe. These men were confident in their place and their position. Like bull mastiffs, they obeyed one master. And that master was not on hand to call them off. The pack instinct would take over. He’d encountered London thugs before; once they’d downed their prey they kicked their heads in. They owed no allegiance to law and order; they would be deaf to an upper-class voice. Useless to try to talk his way out of this encounter. Bluster or reason, either one would go unheard. He wondered if Gosling had come to the same conclusion. Better be certain.
“Give it ten, Hercules,” he muttered sideways.
He was spurred on by the click of a safety catch behind him.
Presenting a broad smile to the two slowly advancing thugs, Joe held up his left hand, waggling his Scotland Yard warrant card showily in front of their eyes.
“Ever seen one of these, eh?”
His right hand chopped sideways into the nearest man’s neck before he’d finished speaking. His left, dropping the warrant, slammed upwards into the wrist that was already raising the cosh, and the metal bar continued on its trajectory, shooting upwards out of the man’s grasp and clanging to the floor behind him. Joe followed with a fist to the undefended jaw to slake his own anger and then threw his weight onto the slumping body with the determination of a hound bringing down the heavier boar. He forced the man to the ground and applied more judicious pressure until the grunting stopped.
Gosling’s left hook on the other man’s jaw was a satisfying cruncher but not a disabling blow against a taller and heavier opponent. He needed to duck and dodge two swipes from an over-confident meaty fist before a second blow from his left put the man down to join his pal on the floor. He stepped back, looking slightly surprised.
“Do we need to do anything further with these louts, sir? Um.…” He glanced around him at the stark surroundings. “In the matter of restraining, I mean? A bit of rope, perhaps?”
Adam managed a grin. “With all these cages about? Naw!” He waved the key. “Shove the buggers in there,” he said. “In the ops room. It’s soundproofed. I’ll lock ’em in. There’s no way out. They’ll be there until the prof gets back from London. Could be midnight. Could be tomorrow morning.”
Joe had already grasped the ankles of the thug he’d knocked out and started to pull.
Before they left by a back service entrance, Dorcas dropped a kiss on Adam’s forehead. “Bless you, Adam. Come with us, we’ll take you to your mother’s-and don’t worry! Joe will see nothing bad happens to you. He’s not a ferret at all. More of a warhorse. He’ll pound Bentink under his hooves.”
Joe groaned. Living up to Dorcas’s expectations had always taken the stuffing out of him. “I’ve done quite enough pounding for one day,” he said. “Gosling? Are you fit to drive? Hands survived, have they? Thank God for that! Dorcas, I think this would be a good moment to break out the flapjack.”
CHAPTER 26
They made for the ground floor headquarters on return to St. Magnus.
Martin was still at work by the light of several electric lamps he’d requisitioned and set about the room. The radiators seemed to have been invigorated, and a warm tobacco-scented fug greeted them. The inspector had taken further steps to give a more professional air to the dingy place: A map of the county had gone up, stuck onto a blackboard on wheels: a rank of correspondence trays occupied the surface of a large table jammed in between a decaying vaulting horse and a rack of rotting tennis raquets. A second table in the centre of the room bore, surprisingly, a white cloth, four place settings, a flagon of cider, and a large cottage loaf with a pat of farm butter alongside on a breadboard.
Inspector Martin looked at his watch. With a gesture, he invited them to take a seat at the table.
“Right on cue. You made good time. Lots of information to exchange. Thought we’d do it over supper or after supper. Not sure how you lot are fixed, it being a Saturday. I thought perhaps the commissioner and Miss Joliffe might have stopped off at The Bells for an American cocktail or two. But just in case, I took the liberty of-Ah! There we are! Right on time.”
He hurried to the door to open it for a school steward who came in, red in the face and panting, laden with paper parcels.
“Well done, lad! No, keep the change. I hope these are still hot?”
“Piping, sir! I went on my bike. And I made sure old Arnie gave me this lot fresh out of the fryer. I said yes to salt and vinegar-hope that was all right.”
“Haddock and chips from the local chippie,” Martin announced, depositing a package on each plate.
“Glad I signed out of school supper. It’s bread and cheese on a Saturday. Staff all out cutting a rug somewhere.” Gosling’s eyes gleamed. “I say, I do hope you can eat haddock and chips, Dorcas?”
His nice manners obliged him to ask, and if the girl said no, Joe knew that poor hungry Gosling would forgo his steaming plate of fried fish to go in search of something she would like to eat. But Joe knew the boy’s supper was safe. The old Dorcas would have rejected the suggestion of a delicate palate and regaled him with stomach-turning tales of hedgehogs baked in clay and offal sausages. Joe, with silent approval, heard her say simply, “Certainly can! I’m a student-fish and chips is a treat. Gosh, these look good! Cider, everyone?”