The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

  “Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose,” said the Colonel. “I thought we had got clear of them.”

  “The horses behind us! No,” said the Professor, “it is not horses, and it is not behind us.”

  Almost as he spoke, across the end of the street before them two shining and rattling shapes shot past. They were gone almost in a flash, but everyone could see that they were motor-cars, and the Professor stood up with a pale face and swore that they were the other two motor-cars from Dr. Renard’s garage.

  “I tell you they were his,” he repeated, with wild eyes, “and they were full of men in masks!”

  “Absurd!” said the Colonel angrily. “Dr. Renard would never give them his cars.”

  “He may have been forced,” said Ratcliffe quietly. “The whole town is on their side.”

  “You still believe that,” asked the Colonel incredulously.

  “You will all believe it soon,” said the other with a hopeless calm.

  There was a puzzled pause for some little time, and then the Colonel began again abruptly—

  “No, I can’t believe it. The thing is nonsense. The plain people of a peaceable French town—”

  He was cut short by a bang and a blaze of light, which seemed close to his eyes. As the car sped on it left a floating patch of white smoke behind it, and Syme had heard a shot shriek past his ear.

  “My God!” said the Colonel, “someone has shot at us.”

  “It need not interrupt conversation,” said the gloomy Ratcliffe. “Pray resume your remarks, Colonel. You were talking, I think, about the plain people of a peaceable French town.”

  The staring Colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes all round the street.

  “It is extraordinary,” he said, “most extraordinary.”

  “A fastidious person,” said Syme, “might even call it unpleasant. However, I suppose those lights out in the field beyond this street are the Gendarmerie. We shall soon get there.”

  “No,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “we shall never get there.”

  He had been standing up and looking keenly ahead of him. Now he sat down and smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture.

  “What do you mean?” asked Bull sharply.

  “I mean that we shall never get there,” said the pessimist placidly. “They have two rows of armed men across the road already; I can see them from here. The town is in arms, as I said it was. I can only wallow in the exquisite comfort of my own exactitude.”

  And Ratcliffe sat down comfortably in the car and lit a cigarette, but the others rose excitedly and stared down the road. Syme had slowed down the car as their plans became doubtful, and he brought it finally to a standstill just at the corner of a side street that ran down very steeply to the sea.

  The town was mostly in shadow, but the sun had not sunk; wherever its level light could break through, it painted everything a burning gold. Up this side street the last sunset light shone as sharp and narrow as the shaft of artificial light at the theatre. It struck the car of the five friends, and lit it like a burning chariot. But the rest of the street, especially the two ends of it, was in the deepest twilight, and for some seconds they could see nothing. Then Syme, whose eyes were the keenest, broke into a little bitter whistle, and said,

  “It is quite true. There is a crowd or an army or some such thing across the end of that street.”

  “Well, if there is,” said Bull impatiently, “it must be something else—a sham fight or the mayor’s birthday or something. I cannot and will not believe that plain, jolly people in a place like this walk about with dynamite in their pockets. Get on a bit, Syme, and let us look at them.”

  The car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were all startled by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter.

  “Why, you silly mugs!” he cried, “what did I tell you. That crowd’s as law-abiding as a cow, and if it weren’t, it’s on our side.”

  “How do you know?” asked the professor, staring.

  “You blind bat,” cried Bull, “don’t you see who is leading them?”

  They peered again, and then the Colonel, with a catch in his voice, cried out—

  “Why, it’s Renard!”

  There was, indeed, a rank of dim figures running across the road, and they could not be clearly seen; but far enough in front to catch the accident of the evening light was stalking up and down the unmistakable Dr. Renard, in a white hat, stroking his long brown beard, and holding a revolver in his left hand.

  “What a fool I’ve been!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Of course, the dear old boy has turned out to help us.”

  Dr. Bull was bubbling over with laughter, swinging the sword in his hand as carelessly as a cane. He jumped out of the car and ran across the intervening space, calling out—

  “Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!”

  An instant after Syme thought his own eyes had gone mad in his head. For the philanthropic Dr. Renard had deliberately raised his revolver and fired twice at Bull, so that the shots rang down the road.

  Almost at the same second as the puff of white cloud went up from this atrocious explosion a long puff of white cloud went up also from the cigarette of the cynical Ratcliffe. Like all the rest he turned a little pale, but he smiled. Dr. Bull, at whom the bullets had been fired, just missing his scalp, stood quite still in the middle of the road without a sign of fear, and then turned very slowly and crawled back to the car, and climbed in with two holes through his hat.

  “Well,” said the cigarette smoker slowly, “what do you think now?”

  “I think,” said Dr. Bull with precision, “that I am lying in bed at No. 217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon wake up with a jump; or, if that’s not it, I think that I am sitting in a small cushioned cell in Hanwell, and that the doctor can’t make much of my case. But if you want to know what I don’t think, I’ll tell you. I don’t think what you think. I don’t think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir, I’m a democrat, and I still don’t believe that Sunday could convert one average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I may be mad, but humanity isn’t.”

  Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he did not commonly make clear.

  “You are a very fine fellow,” he said. “You can believe in a sanity which is not merely your sanity. And you’re right enough about humanity, about peasants and people like that jolly old innkeeper. But you’re not right about Renard. I suspected him from the first. He’s rationalistic, and, what’s worse, he’s rich. When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich.”

  “They are really destroyed now,” said the man with a cigarette, and rose with his hands in his pockets. “The devils are coming on!”

  The men in the motor-car looked anxiously in the direction of his dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the road was advancing upon them, Dr. Renard marching furiously in front, his beard flying in the breeze.

  The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.

  “Gentlemen,” he cried, “the thing is incredible. It must be a practical joke. If you knew Renard as I do—it’s like calling Queen Victoria a dynamiter. If you had got the man’s character into your head—”

  “Dr. Bull,” said Syme sardonically, “has at least got it into his hat.”

  “I tell you it can’t be!” cried the Colonel, stamping.

  “Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me,” and he strode forward.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” drawled the smoker. “He will very soon explain it to all of us.”

  But the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards the advancing enemy. The excited Dr. Renard lifted his pistol again, but perceiving his opponent, hesitated, and the Colonel came face to face with him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.

  “It is no good,” said Syme. “He will never get anything out of that old he
athen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets went through Bull’s hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill a tidy number of them.”

  “I won’t ’ave it,” said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity of his virtue. “The poor chaps may be making a mistake. Give the Colonel a chance.”

  “Shall we go back, then?” asked the Professor.

  “No,” said Ratcliffe in a cold voice, “the street behind us is held too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme.”

  Syme spun round smartly, and stared backwards at the track which they had travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and galloping towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle the silver gleam of a sword, and then as it grew nearer the silver gleam of an old man’s hair. The next moment, with shattering violence, he had swung the motor round and sent it dashing down the steep side street to the sea, like a man that desired only to die.

  “What the devil is up?” cried the Professor, seizing his arm.

  “The morning star has fallen!” said Syme, as his own car went down the darkness like a falling star.

  The others did not understand his words, but when they looked back at the street above they saw the hostile cavalry coming round the corner and down the slopes after them; and foremost of all rode the good innkeeper, flushed with the fiery innocence of the evening light.

  “The world is insane!” said the Professor, and buried his face in his hands.

  “No,” said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, “it is I.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked the Professor.

  “At this moment,” said Syme, with a scientific detachment, “I think we are going to smash into a lamppost.”

  The next instant the automobile had come with a catastrophic jar against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out from under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood up straight on the edge of the marine parade stood out, bent and twisted, like the branch of a broken tree.

  “Well, we smashed something,” said the Professor, with a faint smile. “That’s some comfort.”

  “You’re becoming an anarchist,” said Syme, dusting his clothes with his instinct of daintiness.

  “Everyone is,” said Ratcliffe.

  As they spoke, the white-haired horseman and his followers came thundering from above, and almost at the same moment a dark string of men ran shouting along the sea-front. Syme snatched a sword, and took it in his teeth; he stuck two others under his arm-pits, took a fourth in his left hand and the lantern in his right, and leapt off the high parade on to the beach below.

  The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive action, leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them.

  “We have one more chance,” said Syme, taking the steel out of his mouth. “Whatever all this pandemonium means, I suppose the police station will help us. We can’t get there, for they hold the way. But there’s a pier or breakwater runs out into the sea just here, which we could defend longer than anything else, like Horatius and his bridge. We must defend it till the Gendarmerie turn out. Keep after me.”

  They followed him as he went crunching down the beach, and in a second or two their boots broke not on the sea gravel, but on broad, flat stones. They marched down a long, low jetty, running out in one arm into the dim, boiling sea, and when they came to the end of it they felt that they had come to the end of their story. They turned and faced the town.

  That town was transfigured with uproar. All along the high parade from which they had just descended was a dark and roaring stream of humanity, with tossing arms and fiery faces, groping and glaring towards them. The long dark line was dotted with torches and lanterns; but even where no flame lit up a furious face, they could see in the farthest figure, in the most shadowy gesture, an organised hate. It was clear that they were the accursed of all men, and they knew not why.

  Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing down the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea at random. The example was followed, and the whole black mass of men began to run and drip over the edge like black treacle.

  Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven their cart. He splashed into the surf on a huge cart-horse, and shook his axe at them.

  “The peasant!” cried Syme. “They have not risen since the Middle Ages.”

  “Even if the police do come now,” said the Professor mournfully, “they can do nothing with this mob.”

  “Nonsense!” said Bull desperately; “there must be some people left in the town who are human.”

  “No,” said the hopeless Inspector, “the human being will soon be extinct. We are the last of mankind.”

  “It may be,” said the Professor absently. Then he added in his dreamy voice, “What is all that at the end of the ‘Dunciad’?

  ‘Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;

  Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!

  Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;

  Light dies before thine uncreating word:

  Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;

  And universal darkness buries all.’”

  “Stop!” cried Bull suddenly, “the gendarmes are out.”

  The low lights of the police station were indeed blotted and broken with hurrying figures, and they heard through the darkness the clash and jingle of a disciplined cavalry.

  “They are charging the mob!” cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.

  “No,” said Syme, “they are formed along the parade.”

  “They have unslung their carbines,” cried Bull dancing with excitement.

  “Yes,” said Ratcliffe, “and they are going to fire on us.”

  As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.

  “The gendarmes have joined them!” cried the Professor, and struck his forehead.

  “I am in the padded cell,” said Bull solidly.

  There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple—

  “What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead soon.”

  Syme turned to him and said—

  “You are quite hopeless, then?”

  Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly—

  “No; oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet is against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little hope is hopeless yet.”

  “In what or whom is your hope?” asked Syme with curiosity.

  “In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea.

  “I know what you mean,” said Syme in a low voice, “the man in the dark room. But Sunday must have killed him by now.”

  “Perhaps,” said the other steadily; “but if so, he was the only man whom Sunday found it hard to kill.”

  “I heard what you said,” said the Professor, with his back turned. “I also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw.”

  All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep—

  “Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!”

  “The Colonel! Yes,” cried Bull, “where on earth is the Colonel?”

  “He went to speak to Renard,” said the Professor.

  “We cannot leave him among all those beasts,” cried Syme. “Let us die like gentlemen if—”

  “Do not pity the Colonel,” said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. “He is extremely comfortable. He is—”

  “No! no! no!” cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, “not the Colonel too! I will never believe it!”

  “
Will you believe your eyes?” asked the other, and pointed to the beach.

  Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists, but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and seemed to be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance lantern lit up the faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask, and under it the mouth was twisting about in such a madness of nerves that the black tuft of beard wriggled round and round like a restless, living thing. The other was the red face and white moustache of Colonel Ducroix. They were in earnest consultation.

  “Yes, he is gone too,” said the Professor, and sat down on a stone. “Everything’s gone. I’m gone! I can’t trust my own bodily machinery. I feel as if my own hand might fly up and strike me.”

  “When my hand flies up,” said Syme, “it will strike somebody else,” and he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and the lantern in the other.

  As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme, but struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and swung the iron lantern above his head.

  “Judas before Herod!” he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture, that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.

  “Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.”

  He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.