The Green Rust, Edgar Wallace [top fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

summer holiday, and I have had no difficulty in tracing him. I sent one of my men to Vigo to interview Doctor Romanos, who remembers the circumstances perfectly. He himself had thought it wisest to destroy the germ after carefully noting their characteristics, and he expressed the anxious hope that his whilom friend, van Heerden, had done the same. Van Heerden, of course, did nothing of the sort. He has been assiduously cultivating the germs in his laboratory. So far as I can ascertain from Professor Heyler, an old German who was in van Heerden's service and who seems a fairly honest man, the doctor nearly lost the culture, and it was only by sending out small quantities to various seedy scientists and getting them to experiment in the cultivation of the germ under various conditions that he found the medium in which they best flourish. It is, I believe, fermented rye-flour, but I am not quite sure."

"To what purpose do you suggest van Heerden will put his cultivations?" asked the commissioner.

"I am coming to that. In the course of my inquiries and searchings I found that he was collecting very accurate data concerning the great wheatfields of the world. From the particulars he was preparing I formed the idea that he intended, and intends, sending an army of agents all over the world who, at a given signal, will release the germs in the growing wheat."

"But surely a few germs sprinkled on a great wheatfield such as you find in America would do no more than local damage?"

Beale shook his head.

"Mr. O'Donnel," he said soberly, "if I broke a tube of that stuff in the corner of a ten-thousand-acre field the whole field would be rotten in twenty-four hours! It spreads from stalk to stalk with a rapidity that is amazing. One germ multiplies itself in a living cornfield a billion times in twelve hours. It would not only be possible, but certain that twenty of van Heerden's agents in America could destroy the harvests of the United States in a week."

"But why should he do this--he is a German, you say--and Germans do not engage in frightfulness unless they see a dividend at the end of it."

"There is a dividend--a dividend of millions at the end of it," said Beale, graver, "that much I know. I cannot tell you any more yet. But I can say this: that up till yesterday van Heerden was carrying on the work without the aid of his Government. That is no longer the case. There is now a big syndicate in existence to finance him, and the principal shareholder is the German Government. He has already spent thousands, money he has borrowed and money he has stolen. As a side-line and sheerly to secure her money he carried off John Millinborn's heiress with the object of forcing her into a marriage."

The commissioner chewed the end of his cigar.

"This is a State matter and one on which I must consult the Home Office. You tell me that the Foreign Office believe your story--of course I do, too," he added quickly, "though it sounds wildly improbable. Wait here."

He took up his hat and went out.

"It is going to be a difficult business to convict van Heerden," said the superintendent when his chief had gone, "you see, in the English courts, motive must be proved to convict before a jury, and there seems no motive except revenge. A jury would take a lot of convincing that a man spent thousands of pounds to avenge a wrong done to his country."

Beale had no answer to this. At the back of his mind he had a dim idea of the sheer money value of the scheme, but he needed other evidence than he possessed. The commissioner returned soon after.

"I have been on the 'phone to the Under-Secretary, and we will take action against van Heerden on the evidence the factory offers. I'll put you in charge of the case, McNorton, you have the search-warrant already? Good!"

He shook hands with Beale.

"You will make a European name over this, Mr. Beale," he said.

"I hope Europe will have nothing more to talk about," said Beale.

They passed back to McNorton's office.

"I'll come right along," said the superintendent. He was taking his hat from a peg when he saw a closed envelope lying on his desk.

"From the local police station," he said. "How long has this been here?"

His clerk shook his head.

"I can't tell you, sir--it has been there since I came in."

"H'm--I must have overlooked it. Perhaps it is news from your factory."

He tore it open, scanned the contents and swore.

"There goes your evidence, Beale," he said.

"What is it?" asked Beale quickly.

"The factory was burned to the ground in the early hours of the morning," he said. "The fire started in the old wine vault and the whole building has collapsed."

The detective stared out of the window.

"Can we arrest van Heerden on the evidence of Professor Heyler?"

For answer McNorton handed him the letter. It ran:


"From Inspector-in-charge, S. Paddington, to Supt. McNorton.
Factory in Playbury St. under P.O. (Police Observation) completely
destroyed by fire, which broke out in basement at 5.20 this
morning. One body found, believed to be a man named Heyler."


CHAPTER XXVII

A SCHEME TO STARVE THE WORLD


There is a menace about Monday morning which few have escaped. It is a menace which in one guise or another clouds hundreds of millions of pillows, gives to the golden sunlight which filters through a billion panes the very hues and character of jaundice. It is the menace of factory and workshop, harsh prisons which shut men and women from the green fields and the pleasant by-ways; the menace of new responsibilities to be faced and new difficulties to be overcome. Into the space of Monday morning drain the dregs of last week's commitments to gather into stagnant pools upon the desks and benches of toiling and scheming humanity. It is the end of the holiday, the foot of the new hill whose crest is Saturday night and whose most pleasant outlook is the Sunday to come.

Men go to their work reluctant and resentful and reach out for the support which the lunch-hour brings. One o'clock in London is about six o'clock in Chicago. Therefore the significance of shoals of cablegrams which lay on the desks of certain brokers was not wholly apparent until late in the evening, and was not thoroughly understood until late on Tuesday morning, when to other and greater shoals of cables came the terse price-lists from the Board of Trade in Chicago, and on top of all the wirelessed Press accounts for the sensational jump in wheat.

"Wheat soaring," said one headline. "Frantic scenes in the Pit," said another. "Wheat reaches famine price," blared a third.

Beale passing through to Whitehall heard the shrill call of the newsboys and caught the word "wheat." He snatched a paper from the hands of a boy and read.

Every corn-market in the Northern Hemisphere was in a condition of chaos. Prices were jumping to a figure beyond any which the most stringent days of the war had produced.

He slipped into a telephone booth, gave a Treasury number and McNorton answered.

"Have you seen the papers?" he asked.

"No, but I've heard. You mean about the wheat boom?"

"Yes--the game has started."

"Where are you--wait for me, I'll join you."

Three minutes later McNorton appeared from the Whitehall end of Scotland Yard. Beale hailed a cab and they drove to the hotel together.

"Warrants have been issued for van Heerden and Milsom and the girl Glaum," he said. "I expect we shall find the nest empty, but I have sent men to all the railway stations--do you think we've moved too late?"

"Everything depends on the system that van Heerden has adopted," replied Beale, "he is the sort of man who would keep everything in his own hands. If he has done that, and we catch him, we may prevent a world catastrophe."

At the hotel they found Kitson waiting in the vestibule.

"Well?" he asked, "I gather that you've lost van Heerden, but if the newspapers mean anything, his hand is down on the table. Everybody is crazy here," he said, as he led the way to the elevator, "I've just been speaking to the Under-Minister for Agriculture--all Europe is scared. Now what is the story?" he asked, when they were in his room.

He listened attentively and did not interrupt until Stanford Beale had finished.

"That's big enough," he said. "I owe you an apology--much as I was interested in Miss Cresswell, I realize that her fate was as nothing beside the greater issue."

"What does it mean?" asked McNorton.

"The Wheat Panic? God knows. It may mean bread at a guinea a pound--it is too early to judge."

The door was opened unceremoniously and a man strode in. McNorton was the first to recognize the intruder and rose to his feet.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," said Lord Sevington--it was the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain himself. "Well, Beale, the fantastic story you told me seems in a fair way to being realized."

"This is Mr. Kitson," introduced Stanford, and the grey-haired statesman bowed.

"I sent for you, but decided I couldn't wait--so I came myself. Ah, McNorton, what are the chances of catching van Heerden?"

"No man has ever escaped from this country once his identity was established," said the police chief hopefully.

"If we had taken Beale's advice we should have the gentleman under lock and key," said the Foreign Minister, shaking his head. "You probably know that Mr. Beale has been in communication with the Foreign Office for some time?" he said, addressing Kitson.

"I did not know," admitted the lawyer.

"We thought it was one of those brilliant stories which the American newspaper reporter loves," smiled the minister.

"I don't quite get the commercial end of it," said Kitson. "How does van Heerden benefit by destroying the crops of the world?"

"He doesn't benefit, because the crops won't be destroyed," said the minister. "The South Russian crops are all right, the German crops are intact--but are practically all mortgaged to the German Government."

"The Government?"

"This morning the German Government have made two announcements. The first is the commandeering of all the standing crops, and at the same time the taking over of all options on the sale of wheat. Great granaries are being established all over Germany. The old Zeppelin sheds----"

"Great heavens!" cried Kitson, and stared at Stanford Beale. "That was the reason they took over the sheds?"

"A pretty good reason, too," said Beale, "storage is everything in a crisis like this. What is the second announcement, sir?"

"They prohibit the export of grain," said Lord Sevington, "the whole of Germany is to be rationed for a year, bread is to be supplied by the Government free of all cost to the people; in this way Germany handles the surpluses for us to buy."

"What will she charge?"

"What she wishes. If van Heerden's scheme goes through, if throughout the world the crops are destroyed and only that which lies under Germany's hand is spared, what must we pay? Every penny we have taken from Germany;