The Documents in the Case (28 page)

‘I don’t know,’ said Perry, ‘but I give it a name. I call it God. You don’t know what the aether is, but you give it a name, and deduce its attributes from its behaviour. Why shouldn’t I do likewise? You people are making it all very much easier for me.’

It was no good. I had to ask my question. I burst in violently, inappropriately, on this theological discussion:

‘You mean to tell me,’ I said, ‘that it is possible to differentiate a substance produced synthetically in the laboratory from one produced by living tissue?’

‘Certainly,’ said Waters, turning to me in some surprise, but apparently accepting my tardy realisation of this truth as mere vagary of my slow and unscientific wits. ‘So long, of course, as the artificial substance remains in the first or racemic form, for this would be optically inactive, while that from the living tissues would rotate the beam of polarised light, when viewed in the polariscope. If, however, that racemic form had been already split up by the intelligent operator, or some other living agency, into its two dextro-and laevo-rotary forms, it would be impossible, to distinguish between them.’

I saw a path of escape opening up. Surely the synthetic muscarine at St Anthony’s would have had this other operation performed on it. There was no reason at all why I should interfere. I relapsed into silence, and the conversation wandered on.

I was recalled to myself by a movement about me. Matthews was explaining that he had to be getting home. Waters rose to accompany him. In a minute he would be gone and the opportunity lost. I had only to sit still.

I got up. I made my fatuous farewells. I said I had a perfectly good wife to go home to. I thanked my host and said how much I had enjoyed the evening. I followed the other men out into the narrow hall, with its loaded umbrella-stand and ugly, discoloured wall-paper.

‘Dr Waters,’ I said.

‘Yes?’ He turned smiling towards me. I must say something now or he would think me a fool.

‘May I have a word with you?’

‘By all means. Which way do you go?’

‘Bloomsbury,’ said I, hoping desperately that he lived at Hendon or Harringay.

‘Excellent, I am going that way myself. Shall we share a taxi?’

I murmured something about Professor Matthews.

‘No, no,’ said he, ‘I’m going by tube to Earls Court.’

We found our taxi and got in.

‘Well, now?’ said Waters.

I was in for it now. I told him the whole story.

‘By God,’ he said, ‘that’s damned interesting. Fine idea for a murder. Of course, any jury in the country would be only too ready to believe it was accident. Tempting Providence, and all that. And unless your man was fool enough to use the synthetic muscarine in its racemic form, you know, I’m very much afraid he’s pulled it off. There’s a chance, of course. They may not have gone further than that. Why didn’t you ask Benson while you were about it?’

‘I thought of doing so,’ I admitted. ‘At least, I didn’t know about this racemic business, but I thought there might be some way of telling the artificial stuff from the real. But Harrison seemed satisfied—’

‘He would be. I know these people. Wrapped up in their own subjects. An engineer — he ought to know something about molecular structure. But no. He’s no occasion to study Organic, so it doesn’t occur to him that there’s anything to know about it. The word of a first-year student at Anthony’s is enough for him. You have more imagination. Why didn’t you—?’

‘I don’t know that I quite wanted to.’

‘Let bad alone, eh? But damn it, it’s interesting. I say, what a scoop for the papers, if it comes off! “First murder ever caught by the polariscope.” Better than Crippen and the wireless. Only they’ll have a bit of a job explaining it. Now, look here, what are we going to do about it? Who did the analysis?’

‘Lubbock.’

‘Oh, yes — Home Office man, of course. We’ll have to get on to him. It’s chance if he’s kept the stuff by him. What? Oh, he has. That’s all right then. We’ve only got to take a squint at it and then we shall know. I mean, if the stuff really is racemic, we shall know. If not, we never shall. What’s the time? Quarter-past eleven. No time like the present. Here, driver!’

He thrust his head out of the window and gave an address in Woburn Square.

‘It’s all on our way, and Lubbock never goes to bed before midnight. I know him well. He’ll be keen on this.’

His energy swept me up, feebly protesting, and in a few minutes’ time we were standing on Sir James Lubbock’s doorstep, ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a manservant, of whom Waters inquired whether Sir James was at home.

‘No, sir. He is working late tonight, sir, at the Home Office. I think it’s the arsenic case, sir.’

‘Oh, of course. That’s luck for us, Munting. We’ll run down and catch him there. You might give him a ring, Stevens, and say I’m coming down to see him on an urgent matter. You know who I am?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Dr Waters. Very good, sir. You’ll find him in the laboratory, sir.’

‘Right. We’d better hurry up, or we may just miss him.’

We plunged back into the taxi.

‘Shall we find any difficulty in getting in?’

‘Oh, no. I’ve been there before. We’re making very good time. Provided he hadn’t started before Stevens got through to him, he’ll wait for us. Ah! here we are.’

We drew up at a side door in the big Government building. After a short colloquy with the man on duty, we were passed through. I stumbled at Waters’s heels through a number of dreary corridors, till we fetched up in a kind of small anteroom.

‘I feel strongly persuaded,’ I said, ‘that I am on a visit to the dentist.’

‘And you hope very much he’ll say there’s nothing to be done to you this time. I, on the contrary, hope very much that it’s something malignant and unusual. Have a fag.’

I accepted the fag. I tried to think of Harrison, perishing horribly in his lonely shack, but instead I could only see Lathom with his hair rumpled and his teeth set, painting with his usual careless brilliance. I got the idea that God or Nature or Science or some other sinister and powerful thing had set a trap for him, and that I was pushing him into it. I thought it was ruthless of God or whoever it was. Pom, pomty; pom, pomty; pom, pomty; pom, pomty — I was nervously humming something and I couldn’t think what. Oh, yes — Haydn’s Creation — that bit, where the kettle-drums thump so gently, so ruthlessly, on one note — ‘And-the-spi-rit-of-God (pomty) moved-upon-the-face-of-the-waters-(pom)’ — only apparently it wasn’t the spirit of God, but an asymmetric molecule, which didn’t fit the rhythm. Somebody was walking down the corridor, with a soft, muffled beat, rather like kettle-drums. ‘Let there be light (pomty-pom) and there was—’

The door opened.

I recognised Sir James Lubbock at once, of course, though now, in a white overall and pair of crimson carpet slippers, he presented an appearance less point-device than he had done at the inquest. He greeted Waters cordially and received my name with a faint look of puzzledom.

‘Mr Munting? Yes — let me see, haven’t we met before?’

I reminded him of Manaton.

‘Of course, of course. I knew I knew your face. Mr Munting, the novelist. Delighted to make your acquaintance under more pleasant auspices.’

‘I don’t know that they are much more pleasant,’ said Waters. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s the Harrison case we wanted to see you about.’

‘Really? Has something fresh turned up? You know, the other day I had a letter from the man’s son. Rather an odd letter. He seemed to have got the idea that there was more in the case than met the eye. Hinted that we might have found something else — strychnine or something. Quite ridiculous, of course. There wasn’t the faintest doubt about the cause of death. Muscarine poisoning. Perfectly straightforward.’

‘Just so. By the way, Lubbock, did it by any chance occur to you to give that muscarine the once-over with the polariscope?’

‘With the polariscope? Good heavens, no. Why should it? That wouldn’t tell one anything. You know all about muscarine. Dextro-rotatory, Nothing abstruse about it.’

‘Oh, quite. But we’ve been having a little discussion, and — as a matter of fact, Lubbock, it would relieve Mr Munting’s mind — and mine — considerably, if you would just check up on that point.’

‘Well, if you insist, there’s nothing easier. But what’s the mystery?’

‘Nothing at all, probably. Just an extra bit of collateral evidence, that’s all.’

You’ve something at the back of your mind, Waters Can’t I be allowed to know?’

‘I’ll tell you after you’ve done it?’

Sir James Lubbock shook his handsome grey head.

‘That’s Waters all over. He’s like Sherlock Holmes. Never can resist a touch of the dramatic.’

‘No,’ said Waters. ‘It’s just native caution. Don’t want to commit myself and be made to look foolish.’

‘Oh, well, come along and we’ll get it over?’

‘Aren’t we interrupting your work?’ I said. I hope this question was prompted by politeness, but I think I spoke in a vain hope of delaying the crisis.

‘Not a bit. I’d just finished — was packing up, in fact, when I got your message.’

We traversed some more corridors and eventually came out into a large laboratory, faintly lit by a single electric bulb. An attendant was just locking a cupboard. He turned as he saw us.

‘It’s all right, Denis. I’ll see to things. You can trot away home.’

‘Very well. Good-night, Sir James.’

‘Good-night.’

Sir James switched on some more lights, flooding the gaunt room with what Poe has called somewhere a ‘ghastly and inappropriate splendour’. Stepping across to a tall cupboard labelled with his name, he unlocked it with a key that hung upon his watch-chain.

‘Here’s my bluebeard’s chamber,’ he said, smiling. ‘Relics of all kinds of crimes and tragedies. Bottled murders. Bottled suicides. Plenty of plots for novels here, Mr Munting.’

I said I supposed so.

‘Here we are, Harrison. Extract from stomach. Extract from vomit. Extract from dish of fungus. Which is it you particularly want, Waters?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Try the extract from the dish of fungus. It’ll be less open to — that is, it is possibly better for our purpose. What’s this, Lubbock?’

‘That? Oh, that’s a fresh solution of muscarine I made myself for control purposes, to assist in determining the strength.’

‘Made from the fungus?’

‘Yes. I don’t altogether guarantee that I’ve isolated the principle. But it’s near enough.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d like to have a look at that, too, if I may.’

‘By all means.’

He brought the bottles out and set them on one of the laboratory tables. In appearance they were indistinguishable — the same white salt that I had seen before in the laboratory at St Anthony’s.

Sir James Lubbock unlocked another cupboard, and produced a large heavy instrument, rather like a telescope fixed to a stand. He put it down beside the two bottles and departed in search of water. While he was preparing solutions from the respective bottles of muscarine, Waters turned to me.

‘You’d better have this quite clear in your mind — I mean, you’d like to know what you may expect to see, exactly.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At present I feel rather like the good lady in The Moonstone, who wanted to know when the explosion would take place.’

‘I’m afraid it won’t be so exciting at that. Cheer up, man, you look as white as a sheet. At the further end of the instrument is a thin plate of the semi-transparent mineral, tourmaline. You’ve seen it in jewellers’ shops. Pretty stuff, and all that, and, what is more to the purpose, it has a very finely foliated structure. In a ray of ordinary light, the vibrations take place in all directions, but when passed through a slice of tourmaline they are confined to one plane, and the light is then polarised. We talked about that at dinner — you remember. This slice of tourmaline is called the polariser. Right. Now at this end, near the eyepiece, is a second slice of tourmaline, which can be rotated, and which is called the analyser. Now, when the analyser is turned so that its foliations are parallel to those of the polariser, light will pass through both, but if the analyser is turned so that its foliations are at right angles to those of the polariser, then no light will pass and there will be darkness. All clear so far?’

29

‘Perfectly.’

‘Very well. Now, if, when the analyser is thus turned to darkness, I place the solution of an optically active substance between the two slices of tourmaline the light will — you can tell me that yourself — it’s a band of light, remember.’

‘I remember. Yes. The band of light will be rotated as it passes through.’

‘That’s right. It will come round into line with the foliations of the analyser, and—’

‘Come through!’ said I, triumphantly.

‘Thank God for a man of intelligent mind. As you rightly say, it will come through. And therefore you will see—’

‘Light!’ said I.

(Pom, pomty; pom, pomty — if I could have got rid of that relentless drum-beat. My heart seemed to be going very heavily too.)

‘But if,’ went on Waters, with his eye on Sir James, who was stirring his solutions with a glass rod over the sink, ‘if the substance should be optically inactive — if, for example, it should turn out to be a synthetic product, prepared from inorganic substances in the laboratory — then it will not rotate the beam of polarised light. The darkness will persist.’

I saw that.

‘Well, now you perfectly understand. If, when we put the muscarine solution in the polariscope, we get light, it proves nothing. Either the stuff is natural, or else the synthetic preparation has already been split up into its two active forms, and we can make no pronouncement about it. But if we get darkness — then it’s a pretty dark business, Mr Munting.’

I nodded.

‘Well, Waters,’ said Sir James, cheerfully, ‘finished your lecture?’

‘Quite. The pupil is highly commended.’

‘Good. Now, I’m in your hands, Waters. What do you want me to do?’

‘I think we’ll have the control solution first, if you don’t mind. Now, Mr Munting you will see how this substance, prepared from the living tissue of a fungus, rotates the beam of polarised light. Right you are, sir.’