Free The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean Page A

opened both doors, reached up and brought down a small rectangular box. He opened the lid and stared inside. After a moment his shoulders sagged and he seemed different altogether, curiously deflated, head bowed very low.
    " They're gone," he whispered. " All of them. All nine of them have been taken. Six of them were botulinus—he must have used one on Baxter!"
    "And the others," I said harshly to the bowed back. "The other three?"
    " The Satan Bug," he said fearfully. " The Satan Bug. It's gone."

CHAPTER FOUR
    The management refectory canteen at Mordon had something of a reputation among the more gourmet-minded of the staff and the chef that had prepared our lunch was right on form: maybe the presence at our table of Dr. MacDonald, a colleague of Gregori's in number one lab and president of the mess,- had something to do with it. However it was, it seemed that I was the only person with an appetite at all that day.
    Hardanger only picked at his food and neither Cliveden nor Weybridge made hardly any better a showing. Gregori ate nothing at all, just sat staring at his plate. He excused himself abruptly in the middle of the meal and when he came back in five minutes he looked white and shaken.
    Probably, I thought, he'd been sick. Violent death wouldn't be much in the line of a professor specializing in the cloistered work of chemical research.
    The two fingerprint experts weren't there. They were still hungry.
    Aided by three other detectives recruited locally through Inspector Wylie they'd spent over an hour and a half fingerprinting the entire inside of the laboratory and were now collating and tabulating their results. The handle of the heavy steel door and the areas adjoining the combination lock had been heavily smeared with a cotton or linen material—probably a handkerchief. So the possibility of an outsider having been at work couldn't be entirely excluded.
    Inspector Martin came in towards the end of the meal. He'd spent all his time until then taking statements from the temporarily jobless scientists and technicians barred from " E " block and he wasn't finished yet by a long way. Every statement made by those interviewed about their activities the previous evening would have to be rigorously checked.
    He didn't say how he was getting on and Hardanger, predictably, didn't ask him.
    After lunch I accompanied Hardanger to the main gate. From the sergeant on duty there we learnt who had been in charge of the checking-out clock the previous evening. After a few minutes a tall blond fresh-faced corporal appeared and saluted crisply.
    " Corporal Norris, sir. You sent for me."
    " Yes," Hardanger said. " Take a seat, please. I've sent for you, Norris, to ask you some questions about the murder of Dr. Harold Baxter."
    The shock tactics worked better than any amount of carefully delicate probing could have done. Norris, already in the purpose of lowering himself gingerly into his chair, sat down heavily, as if suddenly grateful to take the weight off his feet, and stared at Hardanger. The eyes widening in a gaze of shocked incredulity, the opened mouth would have been within the compass of any moderately competent actor. But the perceptible draining of colour from the cheeks was something else again,
    " The murder of Dr. Baxter," he repeated stupidly. " Dr. Baxter—he's dead!"
    " Murdered," Hardanger said harshly. " He was murdered in his laboratory last night. We know for a fact, never mind how, that Dr.
    Baxter never left Mordon last night. But you checked him out. You say you checked him out. But you didn't. You couldn't have done. Who gave you his security tag and told you to forge his signature? Or maybe that someone did it himself. How much did they pay you, Norris?"
    The corporal had been staring at Hardanger in numbed bewilderment Then the numbness passed and his native Yorkshire toughness reasserted itself. He rose slowly to his feet, his face darkening.
    "Look, sir," he said softly. "I don't know who you are.