Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds

by Manly Wade Wellman

  "I see," said Holmes, quiet in his deep interest. "Were you able to observe much about them?"

  "I had climbed a tall church steeple to watch. Three of them came into view, in their machines a hundred feet high. They went wading out to sea, to head off those refugee ships; but then a naval ironclad, one of those old torpedo-rams—the Thunder Child, I think it was—came steaming up to fight them. That was a glorious fight, Mr. Holmes."

  "Undoubtedly, but how successful a fight?"

  "The poor ship was blown up with all on board. The Martians set fire to it somehow. But first it smashed two of their machines, and that gained time so that the refugee craft had all gone too far out for the third one to follow. That third one shot Black Smoke at them, and then came a flying machine and put down more, all along the beach where people had been left. You may find that hard to believe, what I say about a flying machine."

  "Not I," Holmes assured him. "I have seen it myself. Tell me about the Black Smoke, so far, I have heard only rumors."

  "For one thing, it is heavier by far than any smoke I have ever seen. It is so heavy that it pours down along the ground, almost like liquid. Fortunately, that steeple from which I watched was so high that it could not rise to me, or I would not be here. At last it settled. It made the ground all sooty. When I came down, I saw only dead in all directions about me. Hundreds of dead, I should think."

  Hopkins's face looked drawn. Holmes poured him more strong tea.

  "Then it was dusk," Hopkins continued. "Two or three more Martians came to join the one that was left, and they tinkered with the two wrecked ones. I headed for London once again, taking advantage of any cover I could find, sometimes hiding and resting, all of Wednesday night. I scrounged for food and found a little—not much."

  "I had much the same experience, coming down from Norfolk."

  "On Thursday morning, between Tillingham and Chelmsford, I found a horse," said Hopkins. "A spotted horse, all ready saddled and bridled. He was a good horse." At last Hopkins smiled. "Nobody was with him. So I rode him back to town; rode him into a lather, as you saw. By dawn today we were at Great Ilford, on the eastern town limit. Then I took off his bridle and saddle and left him grazing on a lawn. And I made the rest of the way here on foot."

  He set down his teacup with a sigh. "And now, Mr. Holmes, tell me what we are to do."

  "We are to keep our heads, to begin with," was Holmes's prompt rejoinder. "For my own part, as I just said, I have been in the north, up at Donnithorpe in Norfolk."

  "A problem, no doubt?"

  "A problem of a sort. I got back here yesterday, walking part of the way. What I have been able to see and surmise of the Martians is dismaying, I must confess. Yet you yourself have seen that they are not omnipotent, that it is possible to fight and destroy them. And I have been trying to establish some facts about their weapons—their offensive weapons, I mean."

  "And very offensive they are," Hopkins said, and Holmes smiled because his friend could make a small joke.

  "As for their defenses," he elaborated, "they may well prove to have some interesting chinks."

  "Surely you don't mean to stay in London, Mr. Holmes."

  "But that is precisely what I mean to do. Why not? They seem to have ceased their wholesale destruction here in town, and in any case it was not as terrible as what they wreaked upon Surrey. You and I can be circumspect, Hopkins. We can stay tactfully out of sight and make a profitable investigation of their motives and behavior."

  "Investigation?" The word made Hopkins sit up straight. "You speak as though you were studying a crime, Mr. Holmes."

  "And so I am, Hopkins, the most infamous crime ever perpetrated upon earth and against earth. But just now, why not freshen yourself in the bathroom yonder? You will find soap, towels, and a razor, and I believe some water runs as yet in the taps. Then come down and have a rest on the sofa here."

  Holmes's calm confidence had had a good effect upon the young inspector. He shaved and washed thoroughly, then came back to the sitting room to take off his boots and fall into a deep sleep on the sofa. Holmes sat alone at his desk, thinking and now and then jotting down a note. After a while, he dressed and ventured down the stairs.

  There was no sound or motion in empty Baker Street. Holmes went across to Camden House that stood next to Dolamore's wine and spirits establish­ment, directly opposite 221-B. Camden House had remained untenanted since the arrest there of Colonel Sebastian Moran in 1895, but the door sagged open. Holmes entered and mounted four flights of dusty stairs, then climbed a ladder to a trapdoor in the roof. He crept cautiously into the open and peered over the para­pet.

  The smudgy vapor that so long had poured from London's countless chimneys had vanished, and the air was as clear and bright as that of Donnithorpe. To the northward Holmes saw the green trees of Regent's Park, strangely peaceful in that captured city. There was no sound in the streets between, those streets once so thronged and busy. He looked past the trees of the park toward Primrose Hill, rising two miles distant. Metal glinted in the morning sun there, and something moved, probably one of the invaders' machines that Hopkins had likened to tramping constables on their beats. Holmes looked this way and that. There was nothing nearer at hand to hint of the enemy abroad. At last he went down the ladder again, and down the stairs and back across the street, meditating.

  11

  Seven cylinders had landed in the London area before he had come down from Donnithorpe, and un­doubtedly an eighth had arrived at midnight of Thurs­day, very probably not any great distance from its fellows. That meant that two more were still on the way, making ten in all, with a total of fifty of the in­vaders and their machines and weapons. The heat-ray and the Black Smoke were as terrible as the destruc­tions in the Book of Revelations; but to produce them must take method and materials, and these might be in limited supply on Earth, so far from the base on Mars. What if the invaders were to run out of ammunition? But in the meantime, it remained to define the exact purposes of the deadly assault, to rationalize and op­pose those purposes.

  Hopkins stirred at noon and then woke up, much re­freshed. He was able to describe, more calmly and fully, the things he had seen at the seacoast.

  "Those Martians could have wiped out everyone on the shore had they so chosen," he said. "But there was no wholesale killing, except at the last when they put down their Black Smoke. Before that, I saw them scoop up some people into cages that they carried at their backs."

  "They captured people alive?" exclaimed Holmes. "If they did, it proves that they have a special interest in us. I deduced as much when I saw they had more or less spared London after taking it." He frowned. "Disregarding several possibilities, I would suggest that they might consider men as edible."

  "As if we were animals!" cried Hudson, shocked.

  "Well, we are neither vegetable nor mineral. But reflect, lower animals have outwitted, even outfought, men ere this. Baboons may not understand the hunter's rifle, but sometimes they trick a hunter into an ambush and kill him. The same is true, as I have heard, of the Cape buffalo. And in the United States, the timber wolf has been almost exterminated, but the cunning coyote is more numerous in these days than ever be­fore. It refuses to be stalked or trapped or poisoned. And our common rats, for all our efforts to wipe them out, still swarm in the basements and cellars of our cities. Some of them are so wise that they might be called animal geniuses."

  "Like yourself, Mr. Holmes."

  "Like me, if you care to say so. Observing and de­ducing, in their animal fashion, comprehending ab­stracts and infinities, solving problems and escaping dangers."

  "Marvelous," said Hopkins, almost raptly, "and please don't say 'elementary.' "

  "But the elementary is the foundation upon which all structures, concrete or abstract, must be founded," Holmes said with a smile. "Yes, our task is hard and dangerous, but by no means hopeless. Come now, we can have lunch and then go calling on a friend of mine —Professor Challenger, an excellent
rationality."

  They made themselves sandwiches and drank wine. Hopkins washed their dishes. Then after carefully studying the street from the windows, they went downstairs and moved along empty, silent streets westward, into Hyde Park and beyond into Kensington Gardens. Once Hopkins climbed a tall tree and descended to report that three machines were in sight, miles away above Primrose Hill. He and Holmes walked on, at the side of a brook that was choked with a great mass of murky-red weed. "What is that, Mr. Holmes?" asked Hopkins. "I have never seen its like before."

  "Nor have I," confessed Holmes. "To me it proves that more than one sort of life has crossed space to take a foothold here on earth."

  He plucked a fleshy sprout and examined it with a magnifying glass.

  "It has grown and spread quickly in these few days, but see this brown wilt upon it," he said. "Very in­teresting, Hopkins, and I venture to say, encouraging."

  "Encouraging, Mr. Holmes?"

  "Quite manifestly it spreads with bewildering swift­ness, but then it dies with equal rapidity. I give myself to doubt if it grows and perishes so fast on its home planet. Indeed, I surmise—no, I cease to surmise and begin to deduce again. Our terrestrial climate seems strangely unhealthy to confident, invading organisms such as this red weed."

  Emerging from the Gardens, they stole along Ken­sington Road below. "The invaders have been here," pointed out Holmes. "The provision shop yonder has been broken into."

  They stopped to look. The exposed interior was violently disordered. Entering, Holmes looked here and there. "The shelves have been almost stripped," he remarked. "Here, however, are still a few tins of meat and some biscuits. Put them into your pockets, Hopkins. And here, two bottles of ale. They carried off the rest of the stock."

  "Do you mean the Martians?" asked Hopkins, tak­ing the tins from the shelf. "Might they not have been taken by hungry men?"

  "No, the whole front was smashed in by a blow more powerful than any man could achieve."

  "But why would the Martians take food? To eat and and drink, I suppose."

  "More probably they will supply their captives with these provisions. I wonder increasingly if they them­selves do not eat and drink something vastly different."

  This time he did not elaborate upon his suggestion.

  Reaching Challenger's home, they mounted the broad steps. A front window had been shattered, but the door was locked, and repeated pushes on the bell brought no answer.

  "I begin to fear that Challenger died with those others at Woking," said Holmes. "Someone said that he suspected that the invaders might not be Martians at all, that Mars was but an advance base to which they came from a more distant world. That might be related in some way to their primitive means of crossing space to earth."

  "Would you call those cylinders primitive, Mr. Holmes?"

  "Decidedly. I would compare their use to a human crossing of a ford or river in rowboats or on makeshift rafts."

  He fished a notebook and pencil from his pocket, sat down on the top step, and began to write swiftly. He filled one page, another, and a third. Then he tore them out, folded them, and gave them to Hopkins.

  "Off you go," he said. "Find your way to Birming­ham. Report to Sir Percy Phelps of the Foreign Office."

  "Birmingham's a walk of a hundred miles and more," protested Hopkins.

  "Approximately, yes. But once you're out of London, you will find people and transportation. As a police official you can requisition a horse and carriage, and if you travel cautiously you probably will avoid any em­barrassing attention by the Martians. No, Hopkins, I must insist that you go. What I have given you for Sir Percy is a written summary of our views and findings to date, matters of the utmost value to the defense effort which soon will be mounted."

  "And you, Mr. Holmes, why do you not come, too?"

  "My clear duty is to continue my observations here. Good-bye Hopkins, and good luck."

  They parted. Hopkins headed westward along the street, then turned north at the corner. Holmes re­turned the way they had come, ever alert for any sound or motion anywhere.

  As he retraced his steps, Holmes told himself that never had his mind worked more powerfully or profit­ably upon a case. He might well know more about these invaders, whether they came from Mars or not, than anyone else now trying to study them. Again he took cover among the trees on his way through Kensington Gardens—Peter Pan lurked there, he remembered—and then through Hyde Park. He came out at the Cumberland Gate and was doubly furtive when crossing the broad open stretches of Uxbridge Road and Edgware Road. He kept to the narrower streets beyond. In the distance he heard the howling of an invader's siren, but could see nothing of the machine.

  It was evening when he entered his rooms again. His first action was to explore his larder. After giving food to the famished Hopkins, he had little left for supper except jam and sweet biscuits. He would do well to go out and forage before darkness came.

  He put on a shooting coat with capacious pockets and his deerstalker cap. Outside again, he went silently along Baker Street. At Portman Square he turned upon another street with many shops.

  At once he saw the door of a public house that had been kicked in. A man had done that, and Holmes meditated that here was proof that London had not been wholly deserted. As at the shop he and Hopkins had entered, there seemed very little worth his taking. He pocketed three oranges and returned to the broken door. There he paused and peered out in his usual prudent manner.

  At about a block's distance toward Baker Street, a human figure was approaching.

  His impulse was to step into plain view and wave in welcome, but he paused and peered again. It was a stout, dark-clad man who carried some sort of long blade that gleamed in the evening sun.

  Holmes drew back, well inside the broken door. The man walked toward him with swift, heavy purpose. Holmes took several steps more, to the center of the barroom floor. When the man came in, Holmes recog­nized him at once.

  "As I live, it is Morse Hudson," he said. "Years since, I was at your shop in Kennington Road, tracing the Six Napoleons. At that time, I told you aside that you had best shut up business and vanish, like your unhappy father. And again, last December, we met and I gave you another friendly warning. Where may you be lodging now?"

  "Never you mind where I lodge," sniffed Hudson. His short, broad body was dressed in filthy clothes. His gray hair bristled untidily and his face flamed red. In one hand he poised his weapon, an old basket-hilted saber. He sneezed violently.

  "Yes," he muttered rheumily, "I've been following you about, ever since I saw you come back to London. Earlier today someone was with you and I stayed out of sight. Now we are alone, face to face, and you're going to tell me where Martha is—Martha, my wife."

  " 'Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes,' " quoted Holmes mockingly. "You have a very bad cold, Hudson. If Dr. Watson were here, he could prescribe for you. But as for Martha, I can tell you roundly that she wants never to see you or hear your name again. She is where you cannot follow or find her."

  Hudson trembled all over, as with pent rage. "I'll make you tell me," he said, and took a shambling step forward. The saber rose threateningly. "No, Holmes, don't reach for a pocket."

  "Oh, I am not armed. Reflect, Hudson; if you should kill me, you'd never find Martha."

  "I'll find her." Hudson's breath rattled as he spoke. "She is my lawful wife, I say, and I love her—"

  He broke off, his voice dying away. He took a deep breath.

  "If you loved her, you demonstrated your love most strangely."

  "I did love her, and I love her still. She loved me, too. She married me."

  "Martha was only a trusting girl at Donnithorpe. And you left her, without one word of farewell." Holmes watched the saber in Hudson's hand, ready for any move to attack.

  "My father begged me to come with him, to help him escape," Hudson burst out. "I didn't have any other choice."

  "Yes." Holmes saw the
saber make a quivering mo­tion. "You fled with your father when he was unmasked as an extortionist and a former pirate. If the law should be consulted, those things would weigh against him and against you. You sacrificed Martha's love for you. You abrogated it, and she has nothing but contempt for you now."

  "Words, words," mouthed Hudson. "Why do you speak of the law? There is no law any more. You and I shall settle this business alone!"

  "Not quite alone, I suspect," said Holmes evenly. "Someone else is coming this way to join us—or some­thing. Hark!"

  Something clanked outside, clanked again. The noise grew louder as Holmes spoke.

  "I daresay it is a Martian fighting-machine," said Holmes. "I was careful as I came along this street, but you were too intent on following me and making your threats. What if an invader has spied you and is coming after you?"

  Clank, clank, just outside the building.

  "That's nothing," cried Hudson wildly. "An awning, creaking in the wind. Your tricks can't make me afraid. Tell me where Martha is!"

  He took another heavy step, the saber whipped up high. Holmes seized a bar stool. Hudson cut savagely at him, and the saber's edge bit deeply into the wooden seat of the stool as Holmes warded off the blow. At that moment, there was a sudden heavy crash outside.

  The windows and the door drove violently inward in a clatter of fragments.

  Dropping the stool, Holmes slid quickly backward toward a rear door that stood partially open. Hudson wheeled, just as a loud jangling crack and hum sounded through the barroom and the domed superstructure of a fighting-machine lowered itself into view among the wreckage of glass and broken wood.

  Like a shadow, Holmes moved through that open rear door. He went down four or five dark stairs inside and turned again to look into the barroom.

  Hudson shrieked a curse. A tentacle, gleaming darkly, came writhing toward him. He ran half a dozen paces across the floor and made a desperate slash with the saber. Its edge glanced from the tentacle with a metallic clang, and it fell from his hand to rattle upon the floor.