Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/94

Rh Inspector Renshaw gave a non-committal shrug. "I don't set much store on theories when I can get hold of solid facts. You seem to have got hold of a few," he made a gesture toward the sheets of manuscript on the table. "I suppose you have been going through the dead man's papers?"

"As he had a perfect right to do," Ronnie interposed briskly, "seeing that the whole of Silas Marie's property devolves on him——"

"Of course, of course," Inspector Renshaw hastened to say. "My remark was not intended as a criticism of your action, Doctor Trenchard. I was merely anxious to know if you have found anything that will shed light on the mysterious happenings here."

"Well, not directly," Hugh answered, after a pause during which he did some hard thinking. "The only salient facts contained in the papers I have already read are that Marie was a chemist who had made a special study of the chemical warfare which the late War brought into being, and had invented a novel and—at any rate theoretically—effective method of wholesale slaughter. You are quite welcome to hear the remainder of his narrative, but I warn you I shall skip any passage which appears to be of a private or personal nature."

"That's fair enough," assented Renshaw. To his subordinates he added: "You two keep watch outside and see that we are not disturbed."

they had the room to themselves, Hugh took up the thread of Silas Marie's story:

"My conditions were accepted without the slightest demur. I was to be given an absolutely free hand in making my re- searches, but, merely as a matter of form, I was entered on the pay-roll of the laboratory staff of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. But it was very seldom that I entered the gates of that establishment, for I quickly realized that my work was too hazardous to be carried on in the same vicinity where large quantities of explosives were being manufactured and stored. I looked out for a spot, lonely and remote from human habitations, and at last I decided to buy a dilapidated and reputedly ghost-haunted house known as Moor Lodge, situated on the most desolate part of Exmoor.

"Needless to say, I did not go out of my way to refute the grisly legends respecting the old house, for I counted on them ensuring me the seclusion I so much desired. One of the rooms I fitted up as a laboratory, and there I labored to convert my dream into a tangible, practicable reality.

"No galley-slave ever toiled harder at his oar than I toiled at my bench during the first three months. We lived here alone, my dear wife and I, and sometimes whole weeks would go by without either of us seeing a strange face. She knew that I was engaged in confidential work for the government, but little did she guess the nature of that work!

"But gradually the strain began to tell on me. I was far from being a young man, and in addition to my experiments I was obliged to perform the rough work of the house; for my wife was not strong physically, though nothing could have exceeded her love and devotion to me. It was almost impossible to hire a domestic servant at that time, when the prospect of earning high wages was tempting every able-bodied girl to the munition factories; even in normal times I doubt whether any local girl would have consented to spend a single night in a house with such a ghostly reputation as Moor Lodge. I even journeyed to Plymouth and