He watched the progress of ‘the Bat,’ though with diminished attention, and never hesitated to declare himself in agreement with the operations of the unknown energy. For a time, however, these appeared to be in abeyance. Nothing happened to disturb the composure of the world, and the death in Moscow proved the monster of Soviet government no hydra, for with the loss of its head, Bolshevism began swiftly to decline, thus affording an illustration of an opinion Bishop Blore had always entertained and expounded.
He held that while any formula of conduct containing the seeds of truth could not be destroyed, a rule founded on error was destructible; and he showed how the end of the Russian ‘Anti-Christ’ as he called the vanished tyrant, instead of inspiring his creed with new life, was destined to shorten its destructive career.
We developed at this time a very active interest in home politics, as indeed everybody was called to do for very sufficient reasons, and from being an admirer and supporter of the Hon. Erskine Owen, our Prime Minister, Sir Bruce and, I fancy, many others now veered to an opposite opinion. Presently my old friend declared that this great man was ruining the country’s future by his placatory attitude before Labor’s ravenous demands. The opportunities to abandon this servile system were not taken; the necessary combination for united opposition was not planned, and a middle class, groaning between the upper and nether millstones of Labor and Taxation, began to perceive that, while it congratulated itself upon no revolution, revolution was in reality taking place. But, as Strossmayer said, “The British middle class is a coward and concerned before all things for its own precious skin.” Sir Bruce now held Owen a traitor to his class — indeed to all classes save those associated with Labor — and he marvelled how the Prime Minister could still hold the devotion and support of his great majority. I think most of us agreed with Sir Bruce upon this subject, and Jack Smith and Medland went farther. Smith frankly wished that it might please the unknown to return to England and terminate the Premier’s activities; while Merrivale Medland desired a second victim.
“May the blessed ‘Bat’ cast an eye on the Chancellor also, while he is about it,” said he. “For my part, speaking as a wine merchant, I find him far the more unendurable of the two, and so does France. Excess Profit Duties are sounding the death knell of enterprise throughout the United Kingdom, for who will sow while this obstinate Minister does not permit him to reap? Who will work himself to the bone in order that his grandchildren shall be saved from the privilege of helping to pay for our victory in the Great War?”
“He muzzles the ox that treads the nation’s corn,” declared General Fordyce, “and puts upon us a cruel burden, that posterity, with its rich promise of progress and happiness, would be proud to share.”
“And the Chancellor dreams of Fame’s trumpet sounding his praises in the ears of generations unborn,” snapped Sir Bruce. “Far from it! Time will merely display him as a very obstinate and pig-headed person, without sufficient vision to correct his personal vanity. I wonder that his colleagues permit him so to misuse his powers.”
“He is worse than ‘the Bat,’ gentlemen,” said Paul Strossmayer.
CHAPTER XI
THE UNKNOWN IN OUR MIDST
MY visit to the laboratory of Ian Noble became an accomplished fact at last, and the circumstances attending the event, as well as the occasion itself, will always be very vividly remembered by me and my friend, Leon Jacobs.
For we were called to a small hamlet on the river Thames, not far distant from Taplow, and since the country was now gripped by a universal railway strike, the expedition had to be made by motor car. Deep in the rut of this disaster lay England now, and though a scheme for the employment of voluntary labor was working efficiently, so the newspapers declared, attempts to travel speedily convinced the passenger that this was not the case. The best was being done within the powers of an army of enthusiastic amateurs; but something akin to stagnation marked trade traffic, and the true story stared starkly from all the great central depôts and at the docks of every port in England.
Paul Strossmayer met Jacobs and myself at the Marble Arch in a motor car, which belonged to his Embassy. We therefore journeyed with speed and comfort to our destination — a raw, yellow brick building nestling not far from the Thames and partially concealed by a little plantation of growing larches, now naked. Here labored Ian Noble, and dwelt in lodgings half a mile distant from the theater of his work. He employed no assistants at this critical stage of his researches and we found him alone.
He offered a friendly greeting and declared himself very glad to see us; but we noticed a change in him. He was obviously a brain-weary man and his assiduous toil had rendered him worn and rather haggard.
Jacobs marked his appearance and expostulated.
“You’re overdoing it, Mr. Noble. You are indeed,” he said. “I can see at a glance that you burn the candle at both ends. You’re looking ten years older than when we met in the summer.”
“And feeling so,” admitted the chemist. “But one forgets time and toil on this trail. The hunt is too thrilling, the game too tremendous. I go to Jugo-Slavia after Christmas and can now venture to say that I shall take with me something very much more important than myself.”
“You men undervalue your own significance,” I declared; and he laughed, for I reminded him of a book which he had recently read.
“We must stop in our place,” he answered, “and the average Englishman is very willing to keep us there. His scornful attitude does not change. A night or two ago I came across Dr. Johnson’s opinion of men who devote their lives to scientific research, and I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.”
“Dr. Johnson didn’t write much to laugh at,” said Jacobs.
“But his point of view — listen. I committed the passage to memory, that I might recall it when I was inclined to fancy myself.”
He then quoted from the great lexicographer, who appears to have regarded all men of science as innocent idlers.
Thus he speaks of them.
“Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do again today. Some register the changes of the wind and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable. There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colourless liquids may produce a colour by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled; they mingle them and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again.”
Noble shouted with laughter at this passage of massive irony, but Strossmayer was not amused.
“Surely only an Englishman could have written that drivel,” he said.
“Never mind,” answered the chemist. “He had not read the Report of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research which has just reached me.”
Noble described with enthusiasm the work upon which he labored, and for a time forgot his own mental and physical weariness; but he bewildered us not a little by talking in the terms of his craft and using words which we had never even heard before. Then, doubtless before our blank faces, he remembered that he had to do with laymen and simplified his exposition for our ears.
“The subject is so new and so difficult, and the processes so delicate and complicated, that they have given rise in a sense to their own language,” he told us. “To describe them in popular terms is not easy at all. Energy, you understand, depends upon the mass displayed, the work done. The sea, or a waterfall, or a railway train reveal mechanical work. The energy of invisible molecules, translated into work, is heat energy; the energy of still smaller particles — the electrons — is electric energy. All energy means motion, and all springs from one source: the sun.”
“Show us a little of what you are doing, and why you are doing it,” suggested Jacobs.
“I will,” answered Noble. “And bombard me with questions. Paul has accustomed me to questions. He will have chapter and verse for everything.”
“Only fair, as I, in the great name o
f Jugo-Slavia, pay the piper,” said Strossmayer.
“The sinews of war are vital and you are generous,” admitted the other. “Until our material comes within practical politics, these things that I am doing lie only in the region of millionaire’s experiments. That must be confessed; but what am I doing? I am seeking substitutes for our present great storehouses of power. Dr. Johnson and his friends would say that I want better bread than is made of wheat; and that is what every idealist and searcher for truth should want. I am frankly seeking powers that will turn those grubby giants, coal and oil, into dwarfs by comparison. They, and our chemical explosives, do nearly all the world’s work at this moment, and we have discovered and applied the energies of fire and water to some purpose already. But what are their energies? We count them in terms of ‘man’ power and ‘horse’ power still; yet compared with what is to come, we might number them in units of ‘ant’ power and ‘mouse’ power! Yes, from air, or earth, or both, we have yet to summon a radio-energy that shall be to these as the volume of Niagara to a child’s squirt.”
He showed us retorts and unfamiliar chemical appliances, all small and delicate; and by experiment he indicated extraordinary forces developed from grains of matter that we could only see under strong magnifying power; but, as Jacobs frankly confessed, we did not know enough to appreciate in the least the results that he had attained.
“We are like duffers looking at a professional billiard player,” I said. “We are so ignorant of the tremendous difficulties he is conquering, that we cannot realize his extraordinary ability.”
Ian Noble was patient with us and helped us to measure something of his performance by the help of words.
“Consider the radio-products,” he said, “and the emanations, gases and actual matter that these products give off. This is our field, and it explains how I am dealing in quantities of material almost too small for you to appreciate. Radium, polonium, actinium and other elements were found in pitchblende, and their discovery went far to complete the Periodic Table of the elements. Remember that these elements themselves have only been recognized by man for about twenty years, and their isolation is of such inconceivable difficulty, their mass so utterly insignificant, that they still lie in the region of transcendental chemistry — to all save those we call by the general term of ‘the unknown.’”
“Is the Chemists’ Periodic Table now complete?” asked Jacobs.
“No — and that is the whole point,” answered Noble. “Between No. 79, which is Gold, and No. 92, which is Uranium, we have, thanks to radio-activity, filled every intermediate space but two. After No. 83, which is Bismuth, we get Polonium; No. 86 includes Rutherford’s emanations; No. 88 is Radium; No. 89, Actinium, followed by Thorium and Barium. This we still find vacant the numbers 85 and 87 only. And I believe, gentlemen, that I have discovered, in No. 85, the secret of the unknown!”
We congratulated him heartily enough, and he explained the significance of his achievement.
“When one considers how long it took man to learn the secret of fire and water and employ steam, we may well be patient with you radio-chemists,” said Jacobs.
“Here lies a force far more tremendous than any displayed by the other elements — more tremendous than all of them put together,” continued Noble; “and what is most important and must, of course, remain my secret for the moment, the raw material from which this element is extracted in no way resembles pitchblende. How generous earth may be of it — for it comes from earth, not air — we have as yet to learn; but this we know: the quantity exceeds by ten thousand to one that of any other radio-active element as yet within our reach, including helium.”
“Thus you see how close we are on the tracks of the unknown,” said Strossmayer jubilantly.
But the chemist calmed his enthusiasm.
“He is still a very long way ahead, however,” explained Noble; “for he has not only discovered No. 85 in the Periodic Table, which we, too, have done; but he has accomplished a much greater thing and learned to harness it. There remains a still mightier task — the supreme achievement of all — and that he has not yet learned — and never will.”
“Shall you?” asked Leon Jacobs.
“With the help of my fellow men — yes,” answered Noble almost reverently. “The chemist and spectroscopist,” he continued, “would have regarded my new element as isotopic, or identical, with Radium and nothing more; but the radio-activist must have instantly perceived, as I have done, that it is in reality something exceedingly different. I am now occupied with the problem of its power, and in that respect have convinced myself that such power exceeds anything of which we have the remotest experience; but there remain to unravel its duration, its rate of change and various other properties upon which will depend its ultimate value and usefulness. Of course the operations of ‘the Bat’ helped me there. I do not much fear a breakdown as to the usefulness of my element; but I may yet be disappointed, and, after all is done, I have yet to control the unique energy, break it in and set it to work — first for me — then — ”
“For Jugo-Slavia,” said Strossmayer.
“Then most emphatically for Jugo-Slavia,” answered Noble. “For Jugo-Slavia and, afterwards, for all the nations and kindred of mankind. To wrest from matter something that shall help not only man’s body but his soul — that is our ambition, Paul — yours as well as my own. And incidentally we shall reveal Science not as destroyer of old myths and miracles only, but as creator of purer faith and grander ideals — not an executioner of vanished creeds, that have helped man upon his way, but the arch-priest of a loftier revelation, whose altar is lifted in the name of everlasting truth alone. These prodigious energies, now within the reach of man’s hand, must find him worthy of them, as I most steadfastly believe him to be. And they must observe no base and unsocial purpose, but be employed for highest uses — sacred uses if you like. Then we shall indeed see Science come into her own, as the recognized leader and dispenser of good for all. She will not persecute; she will ask no man to believe in her until he has verified her credentials; her creed will have no validity beyond that given to it by the evidence. But this I know: she will offer us a greater thing than philosophy has yet attained to, or theology brought within our reach — a formula destined to awake that enthusiasm for humanity which still we lack, and which the wit of man until now has proved powerless to create.”
He spoke like a young Prometheus, with the beautiful faith and hope and fire of youth. He displayed before us a mind of distinguished quality but small experience — a mind too prone to judge others by itself and credit mankind with its own pure purpose.
But Strossmayer was before all things practical. He displayed no particular interest before this vision of a world reconciled with itself, and asked a question.
“What about ‘the Bat,’ Ian? Have you thought any more on that subject?”
“A very great deal, Paul,” answered Noble, coming back to reality and losing the radiant aura that for a moment had lightened and warmed his lank features. “Despite some evidence to the contrary, I believe, as I always believed, that we are not dealing for a moment with forces directed against us from outside earth. It would flatter my vanity to do so, for if that were the case, I should be first and not second to make the discovery of the new element. But this I certainly think: we are not up against a nation; we are not up against a secret society, or league. If even a dozen men ran what we call ‘the Bat,’ we should be faced with very different results from those we find. Indeed if a dozen men, or even half a dozen, had this secret, it would soon be a secret no longer. Federations keep no secrets. Doubt would creep into their councils: they would differ on points of policy — perhaps divide, perhaps fall out. Thus their secret might, through the channel of one or another impatient individual, emerge into the world. And in any case, no community of intelligent minds would work after this fashion, or thus apply their tremendous power. For what results accrue to the world at large? Who is a penny the better? All
that has so far been done is to create confusion and anger, and indicate, by the commission of extraordinary crimes, nothing more than that certain human ideals and movements are opposed to those of the unknown.”
“Perhaps true in every respect but one,” granted Jacobs. “At Moscow it did humanity a service — though even that might be denied by a large body of mistaken men; but for the rest, it has altered nothing, helped no cause, hindered no great movement. You cannot kill an ideal by slaughtering its commanding officers. The protagonists of an ideal at any one moment in time are nothing. Truth laughs at time, since only truth is immortal and can afford to be patient.”
Noble agreed with these sentiments.
“It follows,” added Strossmayer, “that we, who are not immortal, cannot afford to be patient. Patience is no virtue for us short-lived folk.”
“What, then, do you think?” I asked, with a strange sensation, almost akin to fear, that I already knew the young man’s answer. It was an emotion of precognition most strange to me, for I am a man without imagination; yet it is certain that, for once in my life, I did anticipate the opinion of a fellow man. What appeared singular, however, was not in reality so, when we remember that I already knew facts that were hidden from the others. For, concerning my painful and horrible experience at Grimwood, I had never spoken, even to Jacobs. The event, reviewed from the standpoint of a fortnight later, had appeared so fantastic that, for more reasons than one, it never passed my lips.
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