The Satan Bug Read Online Free PDF Page A

Only a madman or complete illiterate would have attempted to break his way into Mordon. We came on the public ring road that completely surrounded the camp, bore right by the gorse-covered fields and after a quarter of a mile turned into the main entrance. The police driver stopped just short of the lowered boom and wound down his window as a sergeant approached. The sergeant had a machine-pistol slung over his shoulder and it wasn't pointing at the ground either.
    Then he caught sight of Cliveden, lowered his gun, gave a signal to a man we couldn't see. The boom rose, the car moved on, halted before heavy steel crash-gates. We left the car, passed through a steel side door and made our way into a one-storey block marked " Reception."
    Three men waited for us there. Two I knew—Colonel Weybridge, deputy commandant of Mordon, and Dr. Gregori, Dr. Baxter's chief assistant in
    "E"' block. Weybridge, though technically under Cliveden's command, was the real boss of Mordon: a tall, fresh-faced man with black hair and an incongruously iron-grey moustache, he was reputed to be an outstanding doctor. Mordon was his life: he was one of the few with his own living accommodation on the premises and it was said that he never passed outside the gates twice a year. Gregori was a tall, heavy, swarthy, dark-eyed man, an Italian and ex-professor of medicine from Turin, and a brilliant microbiologist greatly respected by his fellow scientists. The third man was a bulky, shapeless character in a bulky shapeless tweed suit who looked so much like a farmer that he had to be what he turned out to be—a policeman in plain clothes. Inspector Wylie, of the Wiltshire Constabulary.
    Cliveden and Weybridge made the introductions, then Hardanger took over. Generals and Colonels or not, Army establishment or not, there was no question from the word " go " as to who was in complete charge.
    Hardanger made it clear from the start.
    He said bluntly, " Inspector Wylie, you shouldn't be here. No member of any county constabulary has any right to be inside those gates. But I doubt if you knew that and I'm sure you're not responsible for your presence here. Who is?"
    " I am." Colonel Weybridge's voice was steady, but he was on the defensive. " The circumstances are unusual, to say the least."
    "Let me tell it," Inspector Wylie put in. "Our headquarters got a call late last night, about eleven-thirty, from the guardhouse here, saying that one of your car crews—I understand jeeps patrol the ring road all night—had given chase to some unidentified man who seemed to have been molesting or attacking a girl just outside your grounds. A civilian matter, outwith Army jurisdiction, so they called us. The duty sergeant and constable were here by shortly after midnight, but found nothing and no one. I came along this morning and when I saw the fences had been cut—well, I assumed there was some connection between the two things."
    " The fences cut!" I interrupted. " The boundary fences? It's not possible."
    " I'm afraid it is, Cavell," Weybridge said gravely.
    " The patrol cars," I protested. " The dogs, the trip wires, the electric fences. How about them?"
    " You'll see yourself. The fences are cut, and that's all there's to it."
    Weybridge wasn't as calm as he seemed on the surface, not by a long way. I would have taken long odds that he and Gregori were badly frightened men.
    "Anyway," Inspector Wylie went on calmly, "I made inquiries at the gate.
    I met Colonel Weybridge there and he asked me to make inquiries—
    discreet inquiries—to try to trace Dr. Baxter."
    "You did that?" Hardanger asked Weybridge. The voice was speculative, the tone neutral. " Don't you know your own standing orders? That all inquiries are to be handled by your own security chief or my office in London?"
    " Clandon was dead and-----"
    "Oh, God!" Hardanger's voice was a lash. "So now Inspector Wylie knows that Clandon is dead. Or did you known before, Inspector?"
    " No, sir."
    " But you