Men of Affairs Part 27

The light flashed up for a second--just long enough to reveal the fact that the room was empty.

"d.a.m.n funny," he said and sat up in bed puzzling. He remained thus for several minutes but no solution to the mystery presented itself.

Moreover, the scent had gone from the air and nothing but the memory remained.

"Suppose I can't have been fool enough to imagine it. Never heard of a man being haunted by a perfume."

He lowered his head to the pillow feeling, for no explainable reason, strangely disquieted, only to rise again almost instantly exclaiming:

"'Tany rate, this is no imagination."

For the reek of onions was in the air--gross and nauseous. You could have cut it with a knife.

Probably Richard's most violent antipathy was for the smell of onions.

He abhorred it as the devil abhors virtue. With an exclamation of disgust he disappeared beneath the bedclothes and stuffed the sheet into his mouth. He lay thus for a long while before venturing to emerge and sample the air. To his relief he found the detestable taint had vanished and the atmosphere had recovered its original slightly tomby flavour.

"That's a blessing any way," he said. "I suppose it's no use wondering how it's done or why it's done. Better get to sleep and ask questions in the morning."

And quite unexpectedly he found he was afraid--filled with a kind of nameless dread--a horrible prescience of some villainy about to happen.

There was a motive in this programme of changing scents, a deeper significance than the mere will to annoy. He knew without even asking himself how he knew that the smell of pineapple would be next. But why he should fear pineapple was not at the moment apparent. He only knew that when it came he would have to command every nerve to prevent crying out.

Sitting up in bed he sniffed the air tentatively.

"Nothing! (sniff) No, nothing. (sniff) Wait a bit, wasn't that--?

No. (sniff) No--"

And then it came--pungent, acrid, bitter sweet, gathering in intensity second by second.

With a stifled cry he clapped both hands over his mouth and swung a leg to the floor. His eyes wide open in the dark began to sting violently.

He caught his breath and burst into a spasm of coughing. Somewhere from the wall by the bedside came the faint sound of gas hissing from a cylinder.

"Phosgene!" shouted Richard Frencham Altar. "You dirty swine!

Phosgene!"

It is a smell that once learnt can never be forgotten--a smell pregnant with memories. As it invades the nostrils the doors of a dreadful past fly open. The white mist hanging over the sunken road, the clangour of beaten sh.e.l.l cases ringing out alarm, the whistle of the warning rockets and the noise of men choking in the spongy fog.

Richard struggled back to the farthest corner of the room. He had picked up his shirt and thrust it over his mouth and nostrils but even so his lungs were nearly bursting. "You rotten, rotten swine," he repeated. "I'll make you pay for this."

And a voice answered out of the dark:

"If you find the atmosphere oppressive, Mr. Barraclough, why not go into the next room. It's perfectly clear in there. But don't wait to collect your blankets because we're going to intensify this little lot."

There followed a louder hissing from the cylinder and Richard waited for no more. Somehow he located the door, dashed through into the adjoining room, and fell gasping on the uncovered boards. For several minutes he made no effort to rise, then he sat up and shivered. The air was like ice. A bitter freezing draught swept across him, cold as winter spray.

His inquisitors were following up an advantage. There was to be no remission in the warfare. Dark, poison and cold. These were the instruments of torture devised to make him speak.

Richard struggled to his feet and stood with clenched hands.

"All right, my lads," he said. "You go ahead but I'll see you d.a.m.ned before I talk."

He could hear the ice-cold wind whining through the registers as though in derision of his boast. It cut him to the bone through his thin silk pyjamas.

For the rest of the night Richard Frencham Altar paced the floor, stamping his feet and beating one hand against the other.

CHAPTER 13.

HARRISON SMITH.

When the young man named Smith left Laurence's house after his interview with Richard he was slightly angry and not a little puzzled.

The cause of his perplexity was the humorous lines round Richard's eyes and the cause of his anger was his failure to have noted them when first they met in the taxi and travelled home together on the Golders Green tube.

He had remarked on the peculiarity of this circ.u.mstance when he found Hipps and Van Diest in the dining room and had received no other comment than a snub from the American for his lack of observation.

These two gentlemen were in a state of exaggerated well being induced by enthusiasm over the capture they had made. Hipps was laying odds that after a course of treatment Anthony Barraclough would not only give away the secret but would breathe his first sweetheart's pet name.

Van Diest was more concerned with details for the notation of the future radium company.

They appeared to regard the intrusion of Mr. Smith as a nuisance.

"Seems to me, gentlemen," he said, "there's something queer about the whole business. Barraclough was known to be starting tonight--and instead you succeed in laying him by the heels."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing--except that it was all so infernally easy. Then again the fellow seems in such high spirits."

Van Diest wrinkled his forehead and nodded at this but Hipps waved it aside.

"Take it from me, he's in darn sight lower spirits than he wants us to think. Anthony's a sport and he'll sure pull the cuc.u.mber act as long as the cool weather lasts."

"You may be satisfied, gentlemen, but I'm not! You don't think he'd have given the information to anyone else."

Van Diest looked at the young man with a pitying smile.

"If you wa.s.s possessed millions and millions of pounds, my friend, iss it very likely you would trust anyone to look after it?"

"Perhaps not----"

"Very well then."

"Still I'm sure there's something fishy. If I might be allowed to investigate----"

But Van Diest negatived this suggestion very heartily. He argued that persons prying about at this stage of the game would bring suspicions on themselves.

"Mr. Torrington and all those peoples are very happy to believe that Barraclough ha.s.s given us the slip. S'no goot to make them miserable."

"Still if--without attracting attention----"