“She’s gone, sir.”
“What!”
“Yes. I suppose he must have been satisfied to have let her go. My husband has had a very hard day, and he’s fast asleep in the parlor. I didn’t like to disturb him.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
Nayland Smith spoke as angrily as he ever spoke to a woman. Accompanied by the hastily attired Mrs. Isles, we stood in a little sitting room. A heavily built man who wore a tweed suit was lying on a couch, apparently plunged in deep sleep. Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho chewed ominously and glared at the woman.
“I think it’s just that he’s overtired, sir,” she said. She was a plump, dark-eyed, hesitant sort of a creature, and our invasion seemed to have terrified her. “He has had a very heavy day.”
“That is not the point,” said Smith rapidly. “Inspector Gallaho here sent out a description of a car seen by an A.A. man near a call box on the London Road. All officers, on or off duty, were notified to look out for it and to stop it if sighted. Your husband telephoned to Great Oaks twenty minutes ago saying that he had intercepted this car and that the driver, a woman, was here in his custody. Where is she? What has occurred?”
“I don’t really know, sir. He was just going to bed when the phone rang, and then he got up, dressed, and went out. I heard a car stop outside, and then I heard him bring someone in. When the car drove away again and he didn’t come up I went to look for him and found him asleep here. When he’s like that I never disturb him, because he’s a bad sleeper.”
“He’s drugged,” snapped Smith irritably.
“Oh no!” the woman whispered.
Drugged he was, for it took us nearly ten minutes to revive him. When ultimately Constable Isles sat up and stared about I thought that I had rarely seen a more bewildered man. Smith had been sniffing suspiciously and had examined the stubs of two cigarettes in an ash tray.
“Hello, Constable,” he said, “what’s the meaning of this? Asleep on duty, I’m afraid.”
Constable Isles sat up, then stood up, clenched his fists and stared at all of us like a man demented.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he muttered thickly. “I don’t know!”
He looked again from face to face.
“I’m Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho. Perhaps you know what’s happened now! You reported to me less than half an hour ago. Where’s the car? Where’s the prisoner?”
The wretched man steadied himself, outstretched hand against a wall.
“By God, sir!” he said, and made a visible attempt to pull himself together. “A terrible thing has happened to me!”
“You mean a terrible thing is going to happen to you,” growled Gallaho.
“Leave this to me.” Nayland Smith rested his hand on Isles’s shoulder and gently forced him down on to the couch again. “Don’t bother about it too much. I think I know what occurred, and it has occurred to others before. When the general order came you dressed and went out to watch the road. Is that so?”
“Yes sir.”
“You saw what looked like the car described, coming along this way. You stopped it. How did you stop it?”
“I stood in the road and signaled to the driver to pull up.”
“I see. Describe the driver.”
“A woman, sir, young—” The speaker clutched his head. Obviously he was in a state of mental confusion. “A very dark young woman; she was angry at first and glared at me as though she was in half a mind to drive on.”
“Do you remember her eyes?”
“I’m not likely to forget them, sir—they were bright green. She almost frightened me. But I told her I was a police officer and that there was a query about her car. She took it quietly after that, left the car at the gate out there and came in. That was when I telephoned to the number I had been given and reported that I had found the wanted car.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well sir, I could see she was a foreigner, good looking in her way, although”—glancing at his buxom wife—”a bit on the thin side from my point of view. And she was so nice and seemed so anxious not to want to wake the missus, that I felt half sorry for her.”
“What did she say to you? What did she talk about?”
“To tell you the truth, sir,” he stared pathetically at Nayland Smith, “I can’t really remember. But while we were waiting she asked me to have a cigarette.”
“Did you do so?”
“Yes. I lighted it and one for her at the same time, and we went on talking. The reason I remember her eyes, is because that’s the last thing I do remember—” He swallowed noisily. “Although there was nothing, I give you my word, there was nothing to give me the tip in time, I know now that that cigarette was drugged. I hope, sir”—turning to Gallaho—”that I haven’t failed in my duty.”
“Forget it,” snapped Nayland Smith. “Men far senior to you have failed in the same way where this particular woman has been concerned.”
A Modern Vampire
“There are certain features about this case, Kerrigan,” said Nayland Smith, “which I have so far hesitated to mention to you.”
Alone in the police car we were returning to London. The night remained mistily gloomy, and I was concerned with my own private thoughts.
“You mean perhaps in regard to the woman known as Mrs. Milton?”
“Yes!” He pulled out his pipe and began to load it. “She is a phenomenon.”
“You referred to her, I remember, as a zombie.”
“I did. A dead woman moving among the living. Yes, unless I am greatly mistaken, Kerrigan, Mrs. Milton is a modern example of the vampire.”
“Ghastly idea!”
“Ghastly, if you like. But there is very little doubt in my mind that Mrs. Milton is the woman who was concerned—although as it seemed at the time, remotely—in the death of General Quinto. Those descriptions which we have had unmistakably tally. Stress this point in your notes, Kerrigan. For there is a bridge here between life and death.”
Tucked into one comer of the car as it raced through the night, I turned and stared at my companion.
“You think you know her?”
“There is little room for error in the matter. The facts we learned from Constable Isles go to confirm my opinion. That so simple a character should fall victim to this woman is not surprising. She is as dangerous to humanity at large as Ardatha is dangerous to you.”
I did not reply, for he seemed to have divined that indeed I had been thinking about Ardatha. Of one thing I was sure: Ardatha was not the harbinger of death employed by Dr. Fu Manchu in the assassination of General Quinto and in that of Osaki.
Chief Detective Inspector Gallaho had been left in charge of the inquiry in Suffolk. Among his duties was that of obtaining a statement from Dr Martin Jasper regarding the exact character of the vacuum charger and the identity of the man known as Osaki. That he, with local assistance, would come upon a clue to the mystery of the Green Death was unlikely, since London experts had failed in an earlier case.
Nayland Smith had worked himself to a standstill in the laboratory. The mystery of why Osaki, locked in there alone, should have died remained a mystery. I began to feel drowsy but became widely awake again when Nayland Smith, striking a match to light his pipe, spoke again.
“Whoever was watching that laboratory, Kerrigan, must have been prepared with some second means of dealing with Doctor Jasper.”
“Why?”
“Well, they could not have known that he would open the door. They must have assumed when he did open the door that he was returning to the house and would come back.”
“Why should they suppose that he would come back?”