“I want to be of use, Sir Hugh. No, there is nothing more to be said.”
The ambassador took her with him. She was the only woman in the conference-room, and she sat and listened. Particularly did she listen to the young man from Manchester, Professor Cragg. His name, his appearance, his insurgent hair and strabismic eye might be somewhat uncouth and provincial, but he impressed her. These very eminent gentlemen, politicians, diplomats, savants sat round a table and conferred; they were dignified, formal, and a little helpless. Professor Cragg was combative, and logically so. He had no oratorical gifts. He was a doer, not a talker.
He argued that the hypothetical enemy in Surrey had been dosed with a week’s potent silence. He might be mad or dead, or lulled into a sense of false security. Or he might be preparing further horrors. The psychological moment had arrived for a raid upon Surrey.
“Just one plane, and an attempt to land on the downs and explore them. Yes, a night landing—if possible.”
Professor Cragg’s was a rational suggestion, but who would undertake this forlorn hope?
“I’d rather like to go myself,” said he, “if anybody will fly the plane.”
Mrs. Hector Hyde stood up.
“Gentlemen, I ask to be given the duty. There is a full moon to-night. I know that part of the country very well. I was born in Surrey. If Professor Cragg will accept me and my plane——”
Professor Cragg jumped up and gave her an awkward, boyish bow.
“Delighted. Now—we can do something.”
Professor Cragg and Mrs. Hyde were driven to Le Bourget. The weather reports were favourable, an anti-cyclone covered England and the north of France; there was little wind or cloud, but a danger of ground fog at night. Mrs. Hyde inspected her machine in person, and superintended the refuelling. The Professor was fitted out with a bag of bombs and a flying suit. Le Bourget gave them a meal, and Professor Cragg borrowed from the French an automatic pistol and a pair of glasses. They waited for the moon to rise before taking off. The aerodrome gave them a cheer.
Mrs. Hyde had laid her course. She proposed to fly straight across the Channel, strike the South Downs, and crossing the Weald, land on the North Downs. She knew the country from the air. She was sure that she could pick up St. Martha’s and the high ground beyond round Newlands Corner. She had danced at that most comfortable and pleasant of hotels at Newlands Corner. As a girl she had explored the Pilgrims’ Way, and ridden along the Drove Road. Her plan was to bring her plane down on that broad sweet stretch of rabbit-nibbled turf. It would be outlined for her by the wooded Roughs and the scrub and yews on the hill-side. Her face was as calm as the face of the full moon.
XVII
Seven days of silence and of sleeplessness had reduced Professor Pye to a state akin to senile dementia. He chattered to himself; his saliva ran into his beard; hands and head shook with a senile tremor. He was suffering from hallucinations. Imaginary voices threatened him; he was startled by apparitions.
Yet his intelligence retained an edge of sanity. A kind of coldly impersonal Professor Pye could consider and comment upon the figure of a dishevelled and tremulous old gentleman with a dewdrop hanging to his nose. Pye the physicist admonished Pye the man.
“What you need, my friend, is sleep, ten hours’ sleep.”
Obviously so. The human mechanism that was Pye cried out for sleep. Had it not sat on that tower hour by hour, sweeping the horizon with that gun? Sleep suborned him; it was more than a temptation; it was like the sea coming in. It was irresistible.
Sleep became a tyrant. It said: “No—I shall be satisfied with nothing but completeness. You will take that mattress and pillow and bolster and those bed-clothes and place them on my proper kingly bedstead. No—I refuse to be fobbed off with a shakedown on the floor. See to it that my commands are obeyed.”
Professor Pye procrastinated. He climbed to the top of the tower. He saw the face of the full moon staring at him like a vast countenance that had just appeared above the edge of the world. He gibbered at the moon.
“How dare you stare at me like that!”
He turned the atomic gun on the moon.
“Take that, you insolent satellite.”
But the moon frightened him. It was like the cold and accusing face of humanity. Yes, he would sleep. He blundered down the stairs, and dragged mattress and bed-clothes from the laboratory into his bedroom. He made his bed. He had left all the lights blazing in the laboratory and the blinds up. He was conscious of nothing but the crave for sleep. He closed the door of his bedroom, turned off the lights, and got into bed. He slept like one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
XVIII
Mrs. Hector Hyde turned her plane to the left about a mile from the wooded crest of the North Downs. They were somewhere over Farley Heath when she spoke to Professor Cragg.
“Do you see those lights?”
Professor Cragg saw them, and realized their significance.
“The only lights in Southern England. If someone is alive there, it means——”
“The enemy.”
“That’s the inference. And we are still alive. Those lights are windows on the downs.”
“I think so. I am going to land near Newlands Corner.”
She brought the plane down perfectly on the broad and moonlit stretch of turf. They climbed out and stood side by side in that world of the dead. There was the most profound silence. Even here the faint odour of death and decay permeated the air. Almost, they spoke in whispers.
“We had better not waste any time.”
She shivered slightly.
“No, no—psychoanalysis. Those lights.”
Professor Cragg laid a hand on his bag of bombs.
“Yes—that’s our—objective. We are humanity’s forlorn hope. One can assume that life and electric light advertise—the enemy. If my theory holds—the devil has fallen asleep and left the lights burning.”
They followed the downland track under the full moon, nor had they gone thirty yards before they came upon the first dead, a man and a girl with a picnic basket between them. Professor Cragg turned his electric torch on the motionless figures. He said nothing, but quickly switched off the beam of light.
Mrs. Hyde’s voice sounded stifled. She had seen the faces of those dead.
“Let’s get on.”
He understood her. She was compelling herself to control instinctive terror. They passed on, having to step aside or diverge to avoid those dark objects on the grass. The moonlight made the scene more ghastly and macabre, those derelict cars, the tea-tables in the tea-gardens, the odour of death.
Mrs. Hyde spoke.
“And to think I have danced over there.”
“Where?”
“The Newlands Corner Hotel. Such a pleasant place.”
His voice came like a little cold wind.
“Do you know how to use those bombs?”
“Yes. The French showed me.”
“You won’t hesitate?”
“Is it likely?”
They crossed the main road to Shere, and followed the downs.
There was silence between them. The tension was so acute that time became relative. They might have been walking for an hour or for ten seconds when they emerged from the shadow of a grove of beech trees and on a bluff of the chalk lulls saw those lights shining. Mrs. Hyde paused, her hand on her companion’s arm.
“Windows.”
Professor Cragg looked at the lights.
“I’ll go on—alone.”
But she would not hear of it.
“No. I don’t think I could bear to be left alone here.”
“I—understand. We had better not speak.”
She nodded.
The track forked in a hollow space below the beech wood, one path ascending, the other descending. Professor Cragg chose the upper path, but on the edge of the plateau a stout fence of netting and barbed wire closed the path. It was Professor Pye’s boundary fence erected to keep out hikers and p
icnic parties, and since Professor Cragg had no wire-cutters and the five-foot fence was unclimbable, they had to retrace their steps and explore the lower path. It brought them out into Professor Pye’s private lane, whose rough and flinty surface had been loosened by a spell of dry weather. In fact, Professor Cragg trod on a loose flint, and the stone went rattling down the slope. He stood very still for a moment, inwardly cursing. If the house with the lights could be assumed to be the house of the ogre, then it was more than probable that its ingenious owner had installed some apparatus for the registration and amplifying of sound.
He spoke in a whisper.
“That damned flint may have betrayed us.”
But his companion was in no mood for loitering. Hesitation and delay might rupture an overstrained self-control. Professor Cragg saw her face in the moonlight. She pointed upwards, like some pale figure of Fate urging him on. The lane had a narrow grass verge on either side of it, and taking to the grass they pressed up and on. The lane ended in a cindered space outside the gates of the courtyard, and the white gates were closed.
Mrs. Hyde and Professor Cragg stood and looked at each other for a moment. He made a gesture with his right hand. He was telling her to sit down. She shook her head and remained standing, and Professor Cragg, realizing that her courage had to be humoured, sat down on the grass and removed his boots. He left the pistol and the field-glasses at her feet. He advanced on his socked feet to the white gates. Very cautiously he tried the latch. The gates were not locked, and Mrs. Hyde saw him swing one leaf back and disappear.
There was not a sound. In less than a minute she saw him reappear carrying what appeared to be an empty deal box. He moved round the house and along a terrace of grass and weeds under the front windows. She changed her position so as to be able to watch his movements. She saw him place the box under one of the laboratory windows. He unhitched his bag of bombs and lowered it to the ground, and climbing on to the box raised his head with infinite and deliberate caution.
He was looking in at one of the laboratory windows. They were casements, opening outwards, and Professor Cragg raised the casement stay from its iron leg, swung the window back, and put his hands on the sill. She held her breath. She saw the long, gawky figure raise itself and slip through the window. He disappeared.
Silence.
Professor Cragg was prowling like a cat round the laboratory, examining its contents. He came to the laboratory door; it stood ajar. Inch by inch he pulled it open until he could slip through into the corridor. He had pushed up the button of his torch before entering the laboratory, and with the electric torch in his left hand he crept along the corridor. He came to another door which stood ajar. He listened.
A sound of life, a most unmistakable sound, the heavy breathing of someone asleep! Professor Cragg put his hand to that door; so gradual was his pressure that the door hardly seemed to move. Very cautiously he shone his light into the room. The ray rested for a moment on a figure lying on a bed.
Professor Cragg drew back. He stood in the corridor for a moment listening to the sleeper’s heavy breathing. There was no break in the rhythm, and Professor Cragg crept step by step back into the laboratory. The bedroom was next to the laboratory, and he had noticed that the window was open and the blind down. He slipped out through the laboratory window, and shifted his box and his bag of bombs along the house. His movements were swift and easy.
He took a bomb from the bag, stood on the box, pushed the blind back with his lighted torch, and gave one glance into the room to make sure. He dropped the torch on the grass, pulled the bomb pin, and lobbing the bomb into the room, crouched down behind the wall. There was a moment’s silence, and then—the crash of the explosion. Fragments of broken window glass flew out and fell upon Professor Cragg’s head and shoulders.
He bent down and picked up two more bombs, and hurled them one after the other into the room.
A profound silence seemed to surge back like water that had been troubled by an explosion. Mrs. Hyde saw Professor Cragg standing on the box and shining his torch into that room. He gave a leap from the box to clear the broken glass, and came across the grass towards her. His face was very pale, and a stream of blood showed on his forehead.
He spoke.
“There was life—in there. I’ve effaced it. One had to be ruthless.”
She nodded.
He went for his shoes, sat down, put them on, and rejoined her.
“We’ll wait five minutes. He may have an understudy. Then—I’ll explore.”
They waited, motionless, voiceless. Not a sound came from the white house, and with a glance at his companion, Professor Cragg went forward to explore.
“Better stay there. One has to remember—that there may be other devilments—live wires, traps.”
She watched him climb in through the same window. The minutes went by in silence, and then she saw a flash of light up above, and heard his voice.
“Eureka!”
She saw him head and shoulders on the tower silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
“There’s a damned contraption up here—rather the sort of thing I expected to find. I daren’t touch it. It is better that nobody should touch it. I’m coming down.”
He rejoined her on the moonlit hill-side, and his face was grim.
“Genius gone mad. In one’s imaginative moments one has postulated the case of some anti-social intelligence making war on humanity. My God, but what a war! We little fellows who dabble in mysteries—will have to be watched—in the future.”
She looked up at the tower.
“So—your theory was sound.”
“Yes, even a super-scientist is human. He had to sleep. Sleep saved us. Well, let’s spread the news and prepare the funeral.”
“Funeral?”
“Yes, of Professor Pye and his infernal creation.”
They made their way along the moonlit hill-side to Newlands Corner. The silence was still profound, but it had lost its ghastly menace. They talked, and the sound of their voices seemed to fill the silence with a vibration of life reborn. The dead were there, but their destroyer was dead with them. The moonlight seemed to play more mysterious in the branches of the old yews and beeches.
Standing beside the motionless plane, Professor Cragg pulled out his watch.
“Another hour—and the dawn will be here. I should like to fly over that place.”
She nodded.
And then he glanced at the spread wings of her machine.
“I rather think that this plane of yours ought to be preserved—say—in St. Paul’s Cathedral, or a bronze model of it set up on these downs.”
She smiled faintly.
“I think I’d rather have some sandwiches and hot coffee. They are in the cockpit. Of course—I never knew—whether—we should need them. I’ll fetch the Thermos.”
XIX
Mrs. Hector Hyde’s plane took off as the sun cleared the horizon, and with the level rays making the machine glow like some golden dragon-fly, it climbed and, gaining height, it made a left-hand turn over the downs. Professor Cragg was leaning over the side and observing the white house below. He could see the white parapet of the tower like a marble plinth surrounding a grave.
He thought: “Yes, better to take no chances. I shall suggest that they drop bombs on that hill-side until nothing is left of Professor Pye and his machine and his discovery. The world is not yet ripe for so much knowledge.”
Mrs. Hyde headed south. They saw the shimmer of the sea and then the outline of the French coast. She laid her course for Paris, and at Le Bourget men were watching the sky, and when they saw that aeroplane coming out of the north, an indescribable excitement infected the aerodrome. Those two adventurous souls had dared the death zone and had survived.
When the plane bumped along the landing ground and came to rest a crowd rushed towards it—politicians, diplomats, savants, pilots, aerodrome staff. What had happened? What news did they bring?
Professor Cragg,
one leg hanging over the side of the plane’s body, waved his airman’s helmet.
“We found one live man in Surrey, and he’s dead. Satan was sleeping, and we bombed him.”
The crowd went mad. Almost, it seemed ready to carry the plane and its crew in triumph round the aerodrome. It shouted and cheered and behaved quite foolishly, only to realize that Mrs. Hyde was still sitting in the pilot’s seat, and Professor Cragg standing up as though to address them.
Professor Cragg held up a hand, and there was gradual silence.
“Gentlemen, we are going back. A little breakfast and then—the final ceremony. I want a dozen bombing machines. We will show them their target.”
Telephones and wireless stations became busy. Signor Mussolini, who had just arrived from Rome, was one of the elect few who were permitted to go as passengers. The squadron of huge machines roared northwards led by Mrs. Hyde’s plane. It was Professor Cragg who dropped the pilot bomb on the white building above the Shere valley. Mrs. Hyde swung her plane clear for the big fellows to come into action. Plane after plane flew low over the house of Professor Pye. The hill-top seemed to spout flame and smoke and debris. In a little while the work was finished. That which had been a building was a crater-field over which little tattered flames flickered. Even the grass and the trees were alight. Professor Pye and his atomic gun—and his notebooks full of cypher—were ashes and particles of shattered metal.
LUCKY SHIP
Glenluce stood in the doorway of the dug-out. The officers of B Company had finished lunch, and the mess-orderly was clearing the table. Captain Sherring had lit his pipe, and it was a very foul old pipe, but it was his prerogative to smoke it where he pleased. A batch of letters waiting to be censored lay on a shelf behind Second Lieut. Jackson. He reached for them and tossed half the batch across the table to young Fothergill.
“Your bunch, Archie. Got a pencil?”
“I have.”
“Well—that’s news. Archie’s got a pencil, Skipper. He’s beginning to grow up. Got any matches, Archie?”
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