“The judge was as good as elected,” he declared, “and it is idle to say that his death did anything visible to depress his party. It made them stronger and more determined than ever to keep their fingers out of the stew pot of Europe; it drew many doubtful ones to the Republican side, from indignation that secret enemies had chosen this dastardly way of fighting. No: it did not weaken the Republicans; but I none the less feel satisfaction, because Judge Stubbs was a very powerful man — a personality — and they will not easily find another so great to fill his shoes. Their theory of government is, to my mind, opposed to any generous international understanding. It was selfish and somewhat self-centered, as Stubbs expounded it, and I hope the new leader may prove more ready to value the spirit of the League of Nations and make it easier for America to enter in, when she finds Europe ready and willing to welcome her wisdom. A vast American majority, as I believe, feels no aversion from the idea, and all, of course, know, as Europe knows, that the League without the United States is Hamlet without the prince — a fatuity. Only an unfortunate accident of presentation has delayed our future accord; and for that, not Europe, but a past President of their own is responsible.”
“They will come in at their own time and in their own way,” prophesied Jacobs. “And royally welcome they will be.”
Strossmayer returned to the unknown energy and spoke strongly.
“We think so much alike — these secret people and Jugo-Slavia,” he said, “that we would gladly pay a million of money to get into touch with them. They doubtless need what we could furnish — wisdom — and Noble, who is really most interesting on this subject, believes that our unknown friends are at a loose end, as you say, and lack certain, guiding, philosophical principles without which no great movement can be advanced. It is summed up in that. But how to let them know? How to offer the hand of friendship?”
The question offended some who heard it.
“I would not willingly touch a hand red with the blood of my fellow creatures,” declared Bishop Blore. “Your perspective is faulty, Strossmayer; you do not estimate these enormities in their true relation to righteousness, justice and civilization. To do confessed evil, that good may come, has no excuse and admits of no palliation on any ethical grounds.”
A week later the Jugo-Slav invited Jacobs and myself to see Ian Noble in his laboratory, and though no date for the visit was fixed at that time, we gladly consented.
“Only you two,” he said, “because you comprehend me and are men of honor and to be trusted. The others do not understand. They think I am ‘the Bat,’ and that, when night comes, I grow wings and claws and set out to rob men of life. You cannot convince an Englishman that he is mistaken. Once an idea has entered into his brain, there is no escape for it. He will never set it free. It becomes fixed, and grows, and thrusts out all else, as a cuckoo thrusts other fledgelings out of his foster-mother’s nest. But Jacobs is different. He is not English by blood and retains the breadth and balance of the East. He comprehends that opinions are stagnation, death and decay; that only ideas move and keep sweet. You shall come, and of course you promise that nothing you may see or hear shall be divulged. Indeed I will ask you to keep the visit itself a secret from everybody in the Club of Friends.”
The thought of seeing young Noble again gave us both pleasure; for we admired not only the genius, but the humanity of the man. For my part I felt that he was high-minded and single-hearted, and I was sure that if any supreme discovery rewarded his researches, he would not permit it to be employed in a reactionary or antisocial manner. I reminded Paul Strossmayer of the past and the little altercation between him and Noble on this point; but he declared that differences hardly existed between them, and that in no sensible manner did he, or those he represented, suffer in their ideals by comparison with Noble himself.
“We are not soulless materialists in Jugo-Slavia,” he asserted on the occasion of a full club-room, when November had come and we were all returned. “No, no; and if anything I have ever said induces that suspicion, as I know too well it has, then rest assured you wrong us. We seek the promise of the new chemistry, because along that line the world’s future must lie; but for no selfish purpose do we pursue these objects. We cannot do worse than what the world has already done; we shall, as a matter of fact, do far better.”
“Why do you say you cannot do worse than has been done?” asked General Fordyce, who was among those who did not love Strossmayer. But his brother, not the foreigner, replied.
“So far he is right enough. The world has made of Science a slave to war, has it not? She was drawn in by the tentacles of that dreadful devil-fish, as every other human activity and energy; and fools have pointed to the fact and found in it a malign interpretation adverse to Science. Well may the new nations promise to do better than the old! They ought to do better. Did Science make the war? Did Reason, whose high-priestess Science is, plunge Germany into her appalling adventure? No, Hugh.”
Jack Smith supported Sir Bruce.
“As Art is prostituted, so may Science, or Religion, be,” he said. “You can no more blame the chemists for helping to win the war, since we had to win, or perish, than you can blame the painters who drew recruiting posters, or the poets who fired the nation’s heart with hope and trust in the righteousness of victory. All means had to be pressed in. It was not the fault of Science that she was summoned to assist in an issue of life and death.”
I remember that conversation somewhat vividly, for on the following day there came the announcement of half a hundred murders, and there fell one who had towered more vastly in the imagination of men than any since Napoleon. The Dictator of Soviet Russia perished on the occasion of a great torchlight procession in Moscow, to celebrate Bolshevist victories in the Crimea; while half an hour earlier on the same night, at a distance of a thousand miles, fell Baron Ozama, a Japanese, long a thorn in the hand of China and the powerful leader of a growing party. He perished from the stroke of the unknown at Wei-hai-wei on the Shantung Promontory.
In the latter case, which occurred at nightfall in the garden of the Japanese Legation, ‘the Bat’ had again been seen and fired upon at close range as it ascended from behind a thicket near the fallen statesman. The baron cried out loudly when struck, and a guard at the entrance of the gardens was in time to see the destroyer rise. But his bullet had made no impression, if indeed the creature received it, for, darting upwards, it instantly vanished.
In the case of the great German Jew, whose theory of human progress was already exploded, the attack had been deliberately made from the air, and his destruction threw some light upon ‘the Bat.’ But it was of a nature to increase man’s fear. The creature had rained death and evidently been concerned to make no mistake.
Not only the obvious object of its attention, but half a hundred men who surrounded the Dictator and protected him against any assassin’s bullet, knife or bomb, were slain with him.
He had moved isolated in the great procession, with a guard of Red troops about his person on every side, and a space around them, into which no spectator was permitted to enter. But death fell from the unguarded sky; the traitor to humanity fell riddled by a dozen wounds, and with him not less than twelve of his companions and forty of the armed guard that marched beside them. None was wounded only, for a touch of the energy meant immediate death.
For once the world welcomed this new demonstration of power, and many wondered why Russia had not sooner been freed of her supreme enemy. The destruction of this monstrous portent was greeted with the thanksgivings of civilization, and went far to restore a feeling of confidence in all bodies of public opinion not vitiated by the new doctrine. But for those who were more concerned with the secret of ‘the Bat’ than its achievements, fresh interest was thrown upon that theme and new theories of its operations elaborated.
These things had occurred a week or ten days before we visited Ian Noble in his workshop, and I recollect that when discussing them on an evening at the club, Bishop
Blore particularly interested me by advancing an argument already familiar from other lips.
“There are most certainly two of these flying avengers, if not more,” he said, echoing an opinion that had startled me when I first heard it from Sir Bruce at Grimwood. “I have suspected it for a long time and this proves the fact. The same thing happened in America, where examination of the distances traveled and comparative times will show that one agency could not embrace operations so widely separated.”
“If there are two ‘Bats,’ there may be ten,” argued General Fordyce, who, with the rest of us, was now back at Chislehurst for the winter.
But Strossmayer doubted and, once again, showed an understanding of the situation that made many of his hearers the stronger in their suspicion of him.
“It may be as you say, General,” he admitted, “yet I see no great force in the theory you advance. The new energy is very likely to be possessed of powers which practically annihilate both space and time. These, remember, are only concepts, not realities. My friend, Ian Noble, of course, follows every move with the closest interest, and the theory of two ‘Bats’ is not new.
“He has considered it and discarded it. He believes there need be no more than one, because these varied and widely separated attacks in no case actually synchronize. There has always been a respectable interval of time between them — three hours elapsed in America, after the death of Judge Greenleaf Stubbs, before the destruction of the Christian Science Churches; and half an hour separated the death of Baron Ozama in China from that of the Russian Dictator. From Wei-hai-wei to Moscow is, roughly, a thousand miles; but Noble sees no reason whatever why the unknown’s energy, adequately harnessed and employed for transit, should not go a thousand miles in half an hour, or, for that matter, a thousand miles in half a minute. He is rather interesting on this subject and points to the freedom from atmospheric friction in the lofty regions where ‘the Bat,’ if setting out on a long journey, would prefer to travel.”
New possibilities were thus opened and a new theory of the thing men agreed to call ‘the Bat.’ It was clear in what direction Noble’s opinion inclined him — an opinion directly opposed to that of Sir Bruce and to my own, since I had seen what I had seen.
Indeed Jacobs now concentrated upon the point.
“If your friend is right,” he said, “the theory of a conscious and living creature comes to grief and is left without support. For I suppose nobody — scientific or otherwise — is going to pretend that a living organism could travel through the air on its own impulsion at a thousand miles in thirty minutes.”
“No,” answered Strossmayer. “If there be only one, then ‘the Bat,’ as a bat, or anything with life in it, is done for. Life it may indeed contain, but human life.”
“Exactly!” cried our Spiritualist, Medland, “haven’t I always said a human life has chosen to conceal itself in this horrid shape — a disembodied being?”
“You always have,” confessed Strossmayer; “but, as a sane man, I have always protested against that notion. The human life which I speak of as controlling ‘the Bat’ is still in a human body, Mr. Medland. In other words Ian Noble has come to the conclusion that ‘the Bat’ is a machine, and that it is not only employed to liberate the new energy as its masters direct, but is itself driven and controlled by the same tremendous forces. He argues from this that our secret and successful rivals have a very wide understanding of their discovery, and the nearer he himself approaches to the discovery, the more impressed he becomes with the genius of those who not only found out the energy, but also developed a means to exploit it at will and with exquisite control.”
I ventured to concentrate my attention upon Sir Bruce during this interesting conversation and, unobserved, took the most careful note of his attitude while Paul Strossmayer spoke. For it seemed to me that these opinions must strike directly at his own. If Noble were on the right track, then Sir Bruce must be absolutely mistaken. And yet my personal knowledge and experience led me to believe him on sounder ground than the radio-chemist. For had I not seen ‘the Bat’ with my own eyes and observed a thing which gave a hundred evidences of life? And had I not actually seen a living man in communion with the creature? It is true the experience had lost its clear-cut outline now that months were passed; but, though I rebelled against my own recollection and would gladly have convinced myself the incident belonged to dreams and not reality, that I could not do. The very accident that led Strossmayer to relate the opinions of Noble, revived the past incident with great wealth of detail. I remembered that night of moonlight and storm, and I waited with very keen interest to hear if Sir Bruce would repeat any of the things he had told me at Grimwood and take up the cudgels against Strossmayer. But his present attitude made the past in a sense more unreal than ever; for it seemed that, even if Sir Bruce recollected the remarkable statement made to me, he was not now disposed to return to his old standpoint. He certainly made no effort to support Bishop Blore’s theory of two ‘Bats,’ or deny his brother’s suggestion of ten; but neither did he oppose the Jugo-Slav, who came armed with the latest opinion of Science.
Sir Bruce sat in his usual place — an armchair near the hearth — and his position was such that I could not watch his face, or mark whether he resented Noble’s view. Indeed, when he did speak, he appeared by no means obstinate against it. He had obviously retreated from his old position and declared himself now as an agnostic with judgment completely suspended. Nor did he manifest his former interest. Upon that particular night it appeared that the whole subject rather wearied him.
Invited to pass an opinion on the rival theories of Strossmayer and Bishop Blore, he spoke in his usual voice, with neither the conviction nor interest that marked our conversations at Grimwood. But he remembered them and reminded me of them.
“Granger will tell you that I anticipated your guess of more ‘Bats’ than one, Bishop. When he was with me in the country, I developed an argument along that line and rather surprised him by an opinion that, after all, we might be dealing with a living organism possessed of high intelligence and possibly trained by men to its peculiar task, as we train the cheetah in India to hunt and bring down the deer. But I have since found the notion impracticable, and I think my brother may be said to have given it a deathblow when he talks of ten ‘Bats.’ One is awful and mysterious; ten become a joke. Mr. Strossmayer’s friend probably presents us with a view more in keeping with the twentieth century. He is doubtless a materialist, hungry to bend the ways of the world to his own measure. We may at least hope those who wield the secret, whatever their apparatus, possess a keener vision than Mr. Noble.”
Thus, unjustly and out of ignorance, he spoke, and when Jacobs strove to assure him that the Scot was by no means a materialist, but proclaimed a view of humanity as generous as his own, the older man would not listen. From indifference he awoke to some bitterness, and when Strossmayer, who was incensed at his attitude, left the room, Sir Bruce explained his emotions — an explanation which only added to the unreasonable attitude he now thought proper to adopt.
“I speak as I feel,” he said, when the foreigner was gone. “My mistrust of Paul Strossmayer has not abated one iota, and I am convinced that were he, or any of the younger men he mentions who work for him, to come into possession of the secret they seek, it would be a bad day’s work for Europe. Strossmayer, under his urbanity and polite mannerisms, is a savage. He does not deceive me, for I am too familiar with the operations of the Oriental mind. I trust neither him nor his subordinates.”
Many agreed with the speaker to my regret. Indeed one or two egged him on to define his doubts, and asked whether Strossmayer’s confident interpretation did not argue a far closer knowledge of the truth than he pretended.
Thus far, however, Sir Bruce would not go, and he gave his reason.
“He knows nothing,” he said. “Of that I am assured; for if he did — if his friends had found the power and the means to employ it, be very sure that Jugo-Slavia would
swiftly occupy a potent and sinister position in the commonwealth of nations. As yet I do not fear him; but I certainly do not trust him; and I have never trusted him. His opinions are unsound and his words are used as a cloak to conceal his thoughts. He speaks with two tongues, and if he were powerful, I should fear him, but seeing that he is not, I despise him.”
General Fordyce and many others applauded this harsh estimate; while, for my part, I felt melancholy and mystified, and Leon Jacobs, who caught my eye, clearly shared my confusion. Indeed I dated subsequent gradual changes in Sir Bruce from that conversation and proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that this intemperate and biased attitude was but a symptom of a wider indisposition, which slowly but surely settled upon his intelligence. He began to grow old, as General Fordyce regretfully declared, before subsequent evidences of an uneven mind; but it was Sir Bruce’s mental, not his physical, health which appeared to suffer. Indeed in body he was as energetic and unsparing of himself as usual.
To me, and to all of us individually, he preserved his customary courteous bearing and consideration for intellectual attainments not equal to his own; but in argument he now began to lapse from his old, reasonable attention to the views of those who might differ from him. He suffered opposition less peacefully, often made a personal question of differences in reality only a matter of opinion, and, what was curious, talked far more than he was wont to do and emerged from being our most silent member into one of the most garrulous. In the past he seldom contradicted a speaker, even though he might entertain opposite opinions; now he was prone to do so. His pessimism increased, and other marks of weakness also appeared, for I do not think that the gloomy views he took were the result of any theory of a Supreme Being, whose ways were not as ours, so much as a constitutional attitude of mind, which, by its natural bent, reacted against any hopeful outlook upon man’s future. He certainly suffered opposition less willingly and, as a very distant mark of weakness foreign to his former self, displayed an eagerness to be confirmed by other men in what he asserted. I do not, however, wish to convey the impression that Sir Bruce had lost all his former perspicacity and acumen. He was shrewd enough still and, upon his own subjects, as clear and magistral as ever. He manifested at this time a deep interest in the gravitational theory of Einstein, highly approved of it and endeavored, without much success, to state relativity in terms that should bring the implications of the new knowledge into the domain of philosophy.
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