hundreds of women use that same perfume.”
Somewhat to my surprise, Deirdre disagreed with me. “Not that perfume,” she replied. “It’s too heavy for the discriminating woman unless she happens to be a very unusual type, and too expensive for the other kind.”
“Was the woman you saw talking to Mark this evening a very unusual type?” I asked.
She considered a moment before she answered; then, “Not in the way I meant,” she said finally. “If you want my opinion, Paddy, she didn’t buy that perfume for herself, but some man bought it for her.”
“Mark?”
“Hardly. He’s too young and inexperienced to have selected that particular scent. More likely it was an older man—Professor Barto, for instance.”
There are times when Deirdre’s understanding of masculine nature positively amazes me.
“You’re assuming, then, that she was the woman who was in Barto’s office?” I inquired.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” she admitted. “It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. Paddy, what do you suppose it all means?”
“Probably only that she’s someone Mark met through Barto, and became infatuated with,” I replied. “So even if the two women are one and the same, there’s nothing in the least unusual or mysterious about the circumstance.”
But again Deirdre disagreed with me, and this time I was given an example of her understanding of feminine nature.
“I’m afraid there is,” she said soberly. “If this woman were a close enough friend of Professor Barto’s for him to buy her expensive presents like that—and that perfume did smell terribly expensive—she wouldn’t run the risk of endangering that friendship by encouraging Mark. And if she isn’t a close friend of Barto’s . . .”
“And if she isn’t . . .?” I prompted when she didn’t go on.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “Maybe I’m entirely wrong, but I’ve a suspicion Professor Barto gave her that perfume, and probably other expensive presents as well, as a bribe to get her deliberately to encourage Mark. Oh, I’ve no reason for thinking so, I know; and even if I did have, it still wouldn’t make sense. What reason would he have for doing a thing like that in the first place? What could he hope to gain by it?”
“For that matter,” I observed, smiling a little at the lengths to which her active imagination had already carried her, “what reason have we to assume that Barto did give her the perfume? Remember, that part was only a supposition to begin with.”
“Yes, I know,” she admitted. “But somehow I can’t get over the feeling that there’s more behind all this than appears on the surface; that it’s all part of some crazy plot that would make a lot of sense if we only knew how to look at it. Ever since we left the theater building tonight, I’ve had a queer Irish hunch that what happened back there, instead of being the climax of the situation, was really only the beginning; that ever since it happened—perhaps even long before—certain forces have been gathering that will very shortly come to a head.”
They did come to a head even sooner than she had expected, and in a way more horrible than either of us could have foreseen. That night Dr. Fordyce’s laboratory, as well as all that was in it, was completely destroyed by fire.
CHAPTER V
The fire broke out around one o’clock in the morning, and burned with a fury so intense that the place had become a raging inferno almost before it was discovered. Even as far away as our living room, where Deirdre and I had gone upon being awakened by the raucuous clanging of the fire-fighting apparatus and the shouts of the men as they strove to subdue it, we could hear the fierce crackling of the flames and feel the heat of them, like the panting breath of some wild beast.
Whatever hope the firemen might have had of saving the laboratory itself or anything it contained must have been given up practically from the beginning. The best they could do was ply the outside of the building and its immediate surroundings with water in order to keep the fire from spreading.
It was while Deirdre and I sat uneasily in the living room, not sure whether or not we would be obliged to evacuate our own home, that one of the firemen came across the intervening lawn to our side porch and knocked upon the French doors.
“Do you happen to know whether the people are away over there, buddy?” he asked when I had answered. “We’ve pounded on both the front and back doors, but we can’t get any answer.”
“They haven’t gone away so far as I know,” I replied. “Dr. Eric Fordyce and his son live there.” Then, as an unpleasant possibility crossed my mind, I asked, “Is it possible that they could have been overcome by smoke, and aren’t able to answer?”
“It hardly seems likely,” the fireman answered doubtfully. “The house is too far away from the garage where the fire is for that much smoke to have drifted in. Still, you never can tell. Maybe I’d better force an entrance and make sure.”
He started to turn away; then he hesitated. “Would you mind going in there with me, buddy?” he asked. “It’s always best to have somebody along that knows the family on a job like this.”
I called to Deirdre to let her know where I was going; then I accompanied the fireman.
“Did the doc keep much gasoline stored in there, that you know of?” he inquired as I followed him back across the lawn.
I explained that the garage had been converted into a laboratory for chemical experiments.
“Then that explains it!” he exclaimed. “Nothing but gasoline or chemicals could burn like that. Lucky for him he wasn’t working in there when this thing started. He might’ve been burnt to a cinder before he could have got out.”
A crowd, drawn by the weird fascination of the unleashed demon of destruction, had gathered in front of the house, but it was prevented from going any nearer to the source of the fire by a cordon of police. Even at that distance—the garage-laboratory was a good hundred feet to the rear—the air was scorched with the hot breath of the flames and acrid with the smell of smoke.
The fireman forced a way for us through the tightly packed crowd, which parted unwillingly to let us through, and we mounted the porch steps together.
“Seems I’ll not have to force an entrance after all,” he remarked a second or two later. “The front door’s unlocked.”
He pushed it open and stepped into the short hallway beyond. I followed.
“The bedrooms’ll be on the second floor, I suppose,” he muttered. “Where are the stairs?”
“They go up from the living room, on the left,” I told him. Although I had never been in Dr. Fordyce’s house before, I knew that all the houses in the block had been built from the same architectural plan.
He crossed the living room and started up the stairs with me close behind him, guiding myself by the sound of his footsteps.
“Anybody up here?” he shouted as we reached the second floor hall.
There was no answer.
