Number 87

by Harrington Hext

  The preliminary elections for the Presidency of the United States had thrown to the surface of politics various great Americans who were as yet only names to the average Englishmen; but among these appeared Judge Greenleaf P. Stubbs, who, by his stern and unsympathetic attitude to any convention of the League of Nations, had made his name familiar and caused some consternation in the Chancelleries of Europe.

  He was a Republican of the more conservative attitude, and the early, eliminating contests revealed so vast a body of opinion in his favor that already the issue to be determined during the following November seemed a matter of time alone. Never had the index to a presidential election appeared more certain, and it was already obvious that the party of Judge Stubbs would obtain handsome majorities in both Houses of Congress. The judge had been the choice of the Republican ‘bosses’ from the first, and Europe doubted not that, if elected, he would run in harness and be true to those behind him. The fact depressed European thought not a little; but never was the practical world faced with a greater certainty. Already the betting stood at eight to one on Judge Stubbs — the greatest long shot on record in the wagering upon the identity of a new President.

  He had undoubtedly proved himself a compelling force in politics, and warned by the downfall of his predecessor from public affection, the judge preserved an attitude purely American, and insisted that his country was faced with ample problems and urgent needs for legislation within her own mighty borders. He had, moreover, the art of stimulating friendship and preserving it. No man ever enjoyed more devoted supporters, for he was eminently sane behind his own native genius, and a sense of humor barred the way to any megalomania, or self-assertion foreign to the great American tradition. His nation already saw in Judge Stubbs a second Lincoln and hope ran high.

  It is certain that Europe did not share this enthusiasm, though such was the quality of this great man that few actually imagined him opposed to the ideals of the League; but whatever the regrets of the Old World, few just persons but felt the shock of the future President’s sudden assassination. Indignation swept in a torrent over the United States and was shared throughout civilization.

  The judge had gone, for a period of rest and holiday, to the neighborhood of Yellowstone Park, in his own State of Wyoming. There he was staying at a private hotel with his wife and family, and there, at sunset of a day near the end of August, he had met his sudden and horrible death. The details monotonously echoed former events of a like tragic nature; but an extraordinary circumstance centered in the united testimony of the judge’s daughter and three other independent observers. All had seen ‘the Bat’ almost immediately after the death of Judge Stubbs.

  The victim, walking in the neighborhood of the Grand Canon of the Yellowstone was alone at the moment of his end. But not a hundred yards behind him followed his daughter, Audrey, and a girl friend. Behind them two others attended the party — a young politician affianced to Miss Audrey Stubbs, and the husband of the friend with whom she was now walking behind her father. All four heard the stricken man’s loud cry for help, and all hastened to reach Judge Stubbs as quickly as they might. The two men caught and passed the women, then turning a rocky corner of the way, they found the victim face downward on the earth beside a little lake. The judge’s daughter and her companion were swiftly beside them, and while all were occupied with the dead, there ascended into the light of clear sunset a huge object on black wings. It leapt upward suddenly from a patch of heavy reed only thirty yards outside the path; and the four who saw it agreed that the flight of the creature was flickering and zigzag after the manner of the bat kind, but inconceivably speedy. It ascended until little more than a somber dot on the sky, then appeared to drift away up the cañon and vanish into the fading splendors of sunset.

  Subsequent investigation for the first time revealed marks of the creature. A vulpine stench was recorded by all four beholders: it seemed an essence almost palpable in the fresh air of evening; but more was discovered, for in the neighboring reed bed appeared a lair, where some heavy thing had evidently reposed and crushed down the water growths upon the mire. It was such a mark as a bullock leaves in a fern patch, where it has reclined and slept; and, what was still more interesting, four deep imprints, two and two, were discovered in the marshy bottom where the thing had hidden. Close study was devoted to these impressions and a dozen famous zoologists journeyed to Yellowstone Park. They discovered the spore of huge, bird-like feet, each of which had three claws in front and a spur behind. Every indentation of the triple claw was two feet long, and from the second pair of impressions, which were deeply stamped into the earth, the being had sprung aloft, for no farther sign of him rewarded search. Neither did the lair reveal a feather or hair, though every crushed reed in the spot was examined with scientific thoroughness.

  Those who saw the monster’s flight described a creature with the wing-spread of a condor but of bat shape. The accuracy of this observation, however, it was impossible to prove.

  The dead man revealed the familiar stigmata of destruction. He had been punctured in his left breast and it was supposed that he must have perished the moment after his cry for help was heard.

  And almost as soon as the news of this tragedy had sped to the ends of the earth, another atrocious event convulsed New York with fear and anger. About two hours after midnight, one after another, in some cases at a distance of three miles, five great temples of the Christian Scientists fell to the ground. In each case no harm was done to the surrounding property; but a terrific and exquisitely adjusted energy reduced the ornate and massive buildings to dust. Not a life had been lost, though many of the night police narrowly escaped entombment.

  Thus to America, which had not unreasonably displayed a large skepticism on the subject of ‘the Bat,’ was brought first-hand evidence of its reality in a direct and appalling fashion. No longer could the United States reserve judgment, for they were now themselves face to face with the unknown and the strange, too human prejudices that it revealed. Until this time no place of worship had been assaulted, indeed no building built by man’s hands and hallowed for its antiquity, or religious significance; but now a creed sprung from new Christian interpretations had been viciously attacked at the headquarters of the movement — an event that gave rise to deep and natural indignation and much searching of heart, not only in America, North and South, but at those centers of activity where Christian Science was gaining ground in England and upon the Continent.

  The extent of the movement was displayed by the volume of protest awakened at these intolerant manifestations of power. The world, it seemed, uttered a shout of anger, and the subject, again thrust to the forefront of human affairs, absorbed the attention of all civilized countries. Public men spoke to large audiences, while publicists devoted daily and weekly columns of analysis to the things done and examination of the motives behind them. Some writers professed to see a logical sequence of ideas and a sustained policy inspired by steadfast and consistent opinions. They exhausted their ingenuity in showing how all these events were but the outcome of a rooted, reactionary attitude, and in what manner the unknown’s intellect actually operated. They held it to be of very modest dimensions and in every respect ‘behind the times.’ Such writers went further, prophesied the future and presumed to foretell the operations to be anticipated from the unknown. Again the wit of man was concentrated on the initial problem of what this creature might in reality be and a thousand suggestions, both idiotic and reasonable, saw print. Among these I was interested to observe, in a letter to The Morning Post, the identical theory that had so staggered me upon the lips of Sir Bruce a night or two before the outrages reported from America. The communication was signed ‘Veritas,’ and I could not directly associate it with my host, though I suspected by certain implicit evidence that it came from his pen.

  Eminent writers for the press augmented this wave of prognostication, and openly warned certain famous and advanced thinkers to be upon their guard and give the
ir unsleeping enemy no opportunity to destroy them. Such journalists outlined the possible direction of coming attack and urged that the future movements and engagements of public men should be kept secret as far as it was possible to do so. Thus Fear crept into the community — the familiar, prehistoric dread of the Unknown — and a vague admonition of panic terror began to be felt, like a black thread running through the fabric of human affairs.

  But other publicists and thinkers scoffed at these arguments, and a contrary theory, that won wide acceptance from its initiation in the pages of The New York Times, began to be accepted in many superstitious quarters. The man who formulated this opinion declared that earth was, more or less, at the mercy of an evil but potent spirit, and the ranks of spiritualism, now furnishing a formidable body of belief, agreed with him and loudly voiced their concurrence. The New York Times pointed to those senseless manifestations familiar at séances of the Spiritualists, and suggested that, as these idle demonstrations were believed to be the work of beings on a low plane of the life beyond death — beings who often intruded among followers of the cult and, by horseplay and crazy antics, shocked the serious people assembled to get into touch with their dead — so now the world at large was faced with powerful but minor spirits, permitted thus to reenter the sphere of their ancient earth-life in a carnal though unfamiliar form. As some from their unseen environment played pranks, rang bells, lifted furniture, sounded musical instruments and even tweaked living noses, so, it was argued, others, greater and far mightier, were now being allowed to return from the underworld and display this terrible power — for divine reasons as yet uncomprehended. Many, however, declared that the reason was apparent enough, and that only through recourse to world-wide prayer and a universal acceptance of another life, which these events were destined to prove for all mankind, would relief come. It was, in fact, widely declared that the demonstrations were supernatural, and that by the means of supernatural religion alone, might the world hope for any way of escape from them.

  The Spiritualists and many from the Churches also agreed with this opinion; but men of science for the most part declined to entertain any idea so irrational. They believed that human research had discovered the secret of the coming energy; but that those who held the power declined to make it public, preferring to exploit it, that their own narrow and fruitless opinions might be imposed upon all. They also pointed out, correctly enough, that the operations of the unknown by no means shocked humanity as a whole. The results achieved were greeted with unconcealed satisfaction by thousands, whose personal likes and dislikes chimed with them; but at the same time, the majority was dismayed, and it may fairly be said that the mystery shrouding these murders created even a larger element of tribulation than the events themselves. This helplessness before the unknown force began slowly to paralyze rational thought and drive great masses to supplication of a Divine Controller; and while Science and Law strove without fear to solve the riddle, nations as a whole tended steadily to take superstitious views and attribute the terror to forces beyond human control.

  Sir Bruce I found to be established in the same strange opinions to which I had listened. He held that the most recent incidents supported him; and while, to my mind, as unreasonable as any of those who now confessed a belief in the supernatural, he argued logically from his own standpoint.

  “Men’s hearts may quail,” he said to me as we discussed the matter on a night previous to my return home; “but their heads should remain cool. We are faced with unfamiliar beings employed in the exploitation of an unfamiliar power. We cannot define the worlds of conscious and unconscious, or say where instinct ends and reason begins. These things may belong to the borderland between. I say ‘these things,’ because the more I hear, the more am I convinced that two at least of these winged bloodhounds are at work for man and employing the new energy under his direction, aided by their own highly developed, reasoning power. For, in these cases from America, the distance between Yellowstone Park and New York could not have been traversed by any known flying animal, or bird, in the time that elapsed between the death of Judge Stubbs and the destruction of the Christian Science Churches.”

  “A creature of sufficient size and power might perhaps have achieved it,” I suggested, and the remark led him into an interesting statement bearing indirectly upon the subject.

  “Size is nothing,” he answered, “but there are limits to the size of terrestrial life, and the power of locomotion, whether on land, or in air, is determined also. Much unscientific nonsense is talked about ‘size,’ and few people seem to remember that there still exist vaster mammals on this planet than any recorded by the fossils of the huge, extinct saurians. Sir Ray Lankester has written with his usual illumination on the subject and shown that the existing African elephant is actually larger than the mastodon and mammoth of the past; and though an elephant is a smaller creature than the giant reptiles of old — the Diplodocus, the Atlantosaurus or the largest of all, the enormous Gigantosaurus, whose arm bone measured seven feet to the fifteen inches of a man’s — yet consider our still living monsters. Gigantosaurus probably reached the limit of a land creature — perhaps he weighed twenty tons. But Sir Ray, in his supremely lucid exposition, shows how such a creature is small to the largest living whales — those beings whose immense bulk is supported by the sea. Balænoptera sibbaldii — a rorqual, known as the ‘blue whale’ — is probably the largest and heaviest animal that has ever lived on this planet. When the great skeleton of an extinct monster was found in Alabama eighty years ago, the native folk who found it supposed they stood before the bones of one of the fallen angels! Some of these fragments were sent to Owen in this country and he discovered that they belonged to a whale. The ancient naturalists — Pliny and others — wrote nonsense about whales and much later men were no wiser. In 1825, Lacépède talked of a right whale as one hundred and ten yards long! But it is enough to declare that there are living whales which exceed any known fossil in size. A great whalebone whale weighs two hundred tons, my dear Granger, and he can attain this enormous bulk by virtue of the medium in which he dwells. It is the difference between a land vehicle and a ship. But probably two hundred tons is about the limit for a creature of flesh and blood and bone. The materials are hardly strong enough to compose and sustain anything larger.”

  “And what of air animals?” I asked.

  “Flying things must of necessity be smaller than swimming creatures. Air cannot be trusted to carry anything as large as an elephant. This brute we call ‘the Bat’ was thought to be as large as an ox; and while it would be physically possible to admit far larger bats or birds than we know, yet the limit must be quickly reached for animals driven through air by their own physical strength. I imagine the unknown creatures with which we are faced must be in reality considerably smaller than they are thought to be. The impress of ‘the Bat’s’ feet, as reported from America, support this opinion. They are not as large as we might have expected and, incidentally, they prove the being in no sense a true bat, since bats have not got feet.”

  “It may not in reality be of the bat species?”

  “It may not, or it may be a development of the known animal. It may, of course, be an insect enormously developed. We have no certain proof yet of the natural order to which it belongs. The American scientists suspect a bird. The footmarks certainly suggest a bird, though the descriptions of the wings, ‘like huge umbrellas,’ point to a mammal akin to the bat. But I do not yet discard the possibility of an enormous insect. The wound that it inflicts suggests a sting, or stab. It may, so far as the death it inflicts is concerned, employ natural weapons. And, to support the theory of an insect, we must remember that far the most numerous species of living things are all six-legged. If one order of creation may attain to size beyond human experience, so may another; if one order may develop intelligence to the verge of intellect, so may another. There are half a million recognized species of six-legged creatures, or insects, against about ten thousand onl
y of the mammalia and fourteen thousand species of birds. Thus we find quite a fair argument, that this hyperbolic being might spring from the insect race.”

  “A super-beetle?” I asked.

  “Why not?”

  “And do you still believe that it works for itself, or others, Sir Bruce?”

  “For others,” he answered, “because, no matter how high its mental power, it could not know what it was doing without human guidance. By direct action it strikes at the fountainheads of danger and cripples those great and threatening movements to which those who control it are opposed. In my own case, frankly, I do not find much to quarrel with, and thousands and thousands of other men of good will, who share my convictions, must view these terrible events with equanimity if not actual satisfaction.”

  Then he asked me my own opinion.

  “What do you feel, Granger? Do you not see that, if persisted in, these manifestations will not only reorganize thought, but also command conduct? The effects are calculable, if the power continues consistent. We perceive what it disapproves; and how is man to develop any policy, or proceed on any new principles of socialistic government, or false religious theory, if those who wield this weapon choose to intervene and stop him?”

  “Of course he cannot,” I admitted. “The energy that has obliterated these gigantic buildings in New York might as easily be directed upon Westminster Abbey, or the Houses of Parliament. It is so far considerate for human life and only kills those who must be supposed its unconscious enemies; but no doubt it could as easily attack a nation as an institution, an army as an individual.”

  “Or a navy,” said Sir Bruce. “Earth and sea are alike within its dominion; this unknown energy, which disintegrates a man’s blood and bone, or masses of solid stone and steel, could doubtless fling our mountains into our oceans, or lift our oceans to overwhelm the solid earth.”

  “It could certainly sweep all life before it,” I admitted, “as a kettle of boiling water destroys a nest of ants. One prays, indeed, that you are right, Sir Bruce, and that human heads and human hearts control this awful power. That is the world’s only hope.”