The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction)

by Eden Phillpotts

  “He could have a piece of the old paper. Rolls are stored somewhere here,” said Greta.

  “Be sure he looked to that.”

  She stared at him, but thought of herself.

  “If this is true, you have married the sister of a devil,” she said.

  “Never look at this story, or think of yourself or of him in that way,” he begged, “otherwise I shall bitterly regret ever having whispered a word of it to you. Tremendous responsibilities go with this horrible business, but you have not heard all yet. For out of my investigation there arises another most startling series of circumstances involving Faraday. Think of him calmly for a moment. Bar your natural passion and indignation, for they lead us nowhere. Remember that he is a human being and not a supernatural fiend. He has extraordinary gifts and, as they developed, he found that with his father’s aid he would be in a position probably to employ those gifts in a unique way and even rank in time to come with the world’s mightiest benefactors. He was born to wealth and aware that only great wealth could advance his purpose. Such wealth lay in reach and only his father and brother stood between him and it. Dedicated to one solitary cause our usual human interests and affections found no room in his nature. Absolutely indifferent to normal relations, he felt no more for his father than a steam-engine for those who created it. Every energy he possessed was poured into his science and Sir Hector’s opposition finally tempted him to overcome it. No natural instinct existed to show him the horror of the thought. A life stood between him and what he needed and, having made up his mind that something of vast importance could be only attained by the awful way of patricide, he took it. For him this was the logical response to the position in which he found himself, being convinced that his own interests far exceeded in importance the existence of any human being whatever.”

  “His own father!”

  “That meant less than nothing to him. Once felt to be needful, all he thought of was his own freedom from a shadow of suspicion afterwards. Be sure he did not underrate the danger of murder; but, to a man with a mind like his, the details of a perfect crime doubtless appeared not difficult. What has actually happened was little likely even to occur to him.”

  Greta fell silent for some moments after he had finished. Then she spoke quietly.

  “There is only one question now, Ernest: whether to tell the authorities and have this fiend arrested in America, or wait until he comes home. Better wait perhaps, though, if you have got to face an awful thing, it may be wiser to do it instantly.”

  “Be at peace,” he answered. “Keep calm and keep patient. There are other facts in this terrible indictment you must know. Abnormality of an extraordinary kind confronts us; but, being what he is and having his discoveries so near completion, we have a tremendous responsibility to shoulder.”

  Greta showed astonishment.

  “Don’t you hate this monster as much as I do and the world soon will?” she asked.

  “I only hate the need to answer a question which any mortal man might pray to shirk. But let me finish the story before decision and get the remaining facts in their right perspective.”

  Ernest had long ago maintained how the sequel of human events is usually found to depend upon character; but as yet he did not guess that his own was already moulding their united destiny.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE Trenshams sat far into night together and their conclusions remained as yet beyond reach. Ernest unfolded that further instalment of the tragic past his investigations had laid bare. To an unbelievable crime they appeared to lead but, accepting what she had already learned and convinced that the story of her father’s death was true, Greta found herself prone to believe the rest. It broke new ground and sent her to bed feeling that she would never sleep again.

  “Following up the story of his daily life, which I was able to do, accident linked it up with no less than two widely known events,” the man continued. “One a mystery that awakened passing interest when it occurred, the other a death, which was in truth a mystery too, but not of public importance, though regretted bitterly enough.”

  “What nightmare am I suffering?” cried his wife.

  “Let me go on and get this damned story over in my own way,” he begged. “First — through a man and his wife who kept house for Faraday in London — I learned certain facts about him in the past. I found this couple with some trouble, declared that I wanted some details about him as he was a famous man now and I had undertaken to write his life and would pay well for any particulars in their memory. They were full of irrelevant talk and from it one item — apparently irrelevant too — emerged. It was a question of dates and his comings and goings. These were generally in connection with meetings and learned gatherings; but once, at a date which his old servant was able to remember, because he and his wife got a holiday at the same time, Faraday told them he was going to Devonshire for a complete rest himself as he designed to stop work and enjoy the fine air and plenty of physical exercise of which he stood in need. He made no secret of his destination and when he returned in a week’s time mentioned it to them, knowing doubtless they would not connect it with incidents reported from that region. He had been to an ancient farm on Dartmoor and enjoyed his brief vacation exceedingly. The place was called ‘Powder Mills’ and its name arose from the fact that the farm stood where, in Napoleonic times, a big gunpowder factory had stood. Faraday told his servants, how he had explored these ancient ruins. I showed no interest in this narrative beyond making sure of the date and, on a later day, looked up the time of those unexplained explosions on Dartmoor and discovered that they happened when he was at Powder Mills farm. I then consulted large-scale maps of the region, located the farm, midway between Two Bridges and Postbridge, and found that the site of the explosions lay some seven miles or so due north of it. I remembered then how your brother, discussing his one subject, had told me that he himself within the limits of his powers had actually created and could control a form of atomic energy concerning which science as yet knew nothing. He said that only the cost of making the needful machinery limited his research and as yet prevented certain necessary experiments. He admitted that an element of great personal danger accompanied these operations without precautions entailing heavy expense. Thus we see that at this time he was deeply concerned and actually found himself in possession of some results from nuclear fissure that he was keeping to himself.

  “Next,” continued Ernest, “I went down myself to Powder Mills for a couple of nights and on the old pretext: that I was writing a life of his famous lodger in the past, endeavoured to stimulate the farmer’s memories concerning him. He recognized the photograph I showed him from a magazine but could furnish only meagre details and expressed surprise that such a quiet and humble gentleman has attained to greatness. The farmer was a widower, with an unmarried daughter to look after him, and he confessed to me that he made better money from his summer and autumn lodgers than from his farm. ‘The professor was all for plants,’ he said, ‘and spent most of his time from early morn till dimpsey rummaging after ‘em. He would go out with his lunch and his boxes and gadgets and come back with all manner of plants, full of excitement if he’d grubbed up anything out of the common.’ I inquired whether any friends had visited Faraday but they declared that none had. ‘Not a single letter come for him while he was here,’ the woman told me. ‘He came in his own motorcar and drove himself away in it at the end of his week.’ I mentioned the strange explosions and the old farmer remembered them and doubted not they had something to do with the war. That was all I got at Powder Mills, and the little to be deduced you can see for yourself. He took pains to suggest he was a botanist and evidently kept his visit a secret. But knowing him and his activities, it is not difficult to connect him with the explosions on the Okehampton side of the Moor. We can imagine him as in possession of atomic bombs small enough to carry single-handed for many miles. As yet no such thing can be credited to science. These he desired to explode that he might co
mpare and study their effects and no doubt by electricity could do so with safety to himself. He makes his experiments which, whatever else they did, created a tremendous volume of sound, but he studied the results and then buried himself in the wastes of the moor far from the scene of action before inquirers arrived to investigate. No doubt he learned much from his explosions as to the power he had liberated; but whether it exceeded his expectations, or fell below them, only he knows.”

  “And only he knows whether he had anything to do with the matter.”

  Transham shook his head.

  “I fear little doubt can be pretended as to that. What would have taken him masquerading as a botanist to Dartmoor without some definite object to be pursued unknown? He would have had fellow-scientists with him and not shirked publicity without good private reasons. The mystery was never explained and now, at long last, a definite explanation appears.”

  “Even so, you cannot find another death to connect with this unless you know more about it than anybody else knows,” she said.

  “Another death is far to seek,” he answered, “and though it takes us upon uncertain ground, to my mind at least, when details are considered, there appears abominably probable evidence that Faraday Heron was responsible for it. First, ample motive existed for another death: it was actually demanded if his destruction of his father was going to bear fruit, and the crime not only may be proved possible to him, but impossible to anybody else.”

  “You cannot be meaning Alfred?”

  “Who else? First the motive, then the means, Greta. The motive is clear enough. To destroy his father would have been a futile act while his elder brother remained to succeed him. Alfred was built on Sir Hector’s pattern and could no more be expected to find an enormous sum of money for science than his father. Moreover, if he survived to inherit, that would involve a double call on the estate sufficient to cripple it for a generation, or more, and deprive Faraday of money essential to his plans. It was clear that Alfred must be put out of the way before the death of his father; and that is what happened. Looking forward, as he had great art to do, Faraday found a possibility and availed himself of it. We know that he now possessed some source of secret power within his own control and we see how it was possible that he used it. A gamble it must have been, but a successful one.”

  “I grant the motive and now I can believe him capable of killing Alfred,” she answered, “yet how?”

  “By sending his death along with him to Africa. You remember writing that Faraday was at Cliff, just before his brother started on the hunting trip, and had been interested in all the weapons he was taking. You mentioned a great elephant gun and the cartridges, and since then I have thought how easy it would have been for Faraday by night, when everybody was gone to bed, to doctor one of those cartridges and insert a charge in one of them — minute enough to be planted without leaving any trace, yet so far stronger than cordite that its explosion must inevitably destroy the gun and the man who fired it. Fantastic to your ear, but remember not a shadow of explanation was ever forthcoming and the gun had been fired on several occasions without mishap. It was something in that particular cartridge, and it is impossible to imagine anybody on earth with the knowledge or the power but your brother, who could have put it there. That he had the material in some shape we can safely assume.”

  “A theory which could only have sprung out of your knowledge of previous events,” said Greta. “But it may be the truth. No abomination would be impossible for him and no hate for him impossible for me. I could watch him hang; I could kill him myself.”

  “That is not the line you must let your mind follow now,” he warned her. “This awful thing is not done with because we have laid it bare. Tremendous alternatives lie before us. Greta, and the fate of a very exceptional life is thrust into our hands.”

  “Why then did you burden me with such a hideous story?” she asked. “And can you believe that I recognize any fate for him but one?”

  “I burdened you because you are my second self and your attitude was vital to the decision I might come to. I knew what you would feel and suffer, and how you must react to evil so vast and so near and so destructive to those you loved and your own peace and happiness. I had to inflict all this upon you for the reason that your terrible brother is many-sided and must be thought upon, not only as a monster and a murderer, but as a being who may become a greater benefactor to this world than any man who has trodden on it since the Saviour of humanity. Yes, Greta, in his search after truth, Faraday may have found something of infinite magnitude for mankind — not for love of mankind, God knows, but as a result of his own amazing gifts.

  “He may be, as he claims to be, within reach of supreme achievements, and for us is the terrible duty to determine whether he shall be allowed to pursue and perfect them, or face swift destruction, together with all his brain is still capable of accomplishing. We must try to approach him subjectively if we can and separate in our minds what he has done beyond any ordinary conception of evil, from what he may yet have power to do above common understanding of good.”

  “It is, I suppose, reasonable that you should feel so,” she admitted. “Step by step you have discovered his horror, and lived with it and grown up with it, and done a marvellous feat of detection. This is a personal triumph for your own strange gifts, Ernest, that few can claim. To you an atrocious criminal awakens no more hatred than any other atrocious work of nature. He is only an interesting specimen. I understand that you may not feel what I feel about Faraday Heron because his blood flows in my veins; but you can surely understand that my love for you is the only thing that makes me want to go on living after what I have heard to-night. I won’t talk or think about it any more. Come to bed and help me to sleep if you can.”

  “We have three weeks or more in which to decide what we shall do and we must employ them to the best purpose in our power,” he said. “We have the advantage and we shall need it, because to approach such a man on equal terms would be defeat. Providence, which has led me so far, must be my shield and buckler to the end and if you feel you would rather remain in ignorance of what I determine to do, I shall well understand it and never mention my plans again.”

  “It is too late to rule me out now,” she told him. “We may arrive at the same conclusion, or differ, but we have never differed yet and are unlikely to do so now. He is the most evil thing on this earth and no good that he can ever do will outbalance the horrible things he has done. But there is nobody to feel this as I feel it, because until you came into my life my father and Alfred were my life.”

  • • •

  Time passed and Trensham swiftly found that he had taken a step to increase the problems awaiting him when he confided in his wife. He had done so on the assumption that it was vital she must know; but without weighing the consequences upon her. Until now he had never heard her express any opinions counter to his own. A most perfect understanding and devotion existed between them and on no subject did they see alike more completely than their immediate future and swift departure from Cliff; but now the man found that he had assumed too much and that his own intentions respecting Greta’s brother by no means coincided with what was in her mind. What she had learned awakened all the hatred and created the deepest passion of which she was capable. That he had anticipated; but as an explosion will tear open the buried bowels of earth and reveal secrets unguessed, so this dreadful revelation lay bare emotions more obdurate than her husband was capable of feeling, and the fact that she took it for granted he must share them, shut his mouth for some days. It had been his life’s business to unearth evil and win personal respect from so doing but, in this case, his triumph over an eminent and unsuspected malefactor could not be shared by Greta, or the world, if it took the shape he had already planned. The coming encounter was already worked out in detail, the reward estimated, the moral justification obvious; but to find his wife too certainly opposed, made him think again. The days shortened and they knew that within a we
ek Faraday would return, yet still the detective perceived that it was vain to approach Greta with his own purpose. Talk they did interminably and she felt puzzled to find that, while he voiced no alternative to her opinions, it was clear that his own tended to differ from them. She realized that he was viewing the awful business from a far different angle than her own. The only possible decision looked clear to her; but he, while speaking no word in extenuation of a dreadful crime, hesitated before what she pressed upon him.

  “What else can we do except take the law into our own hands?” she asked. “Either destroy him ourselves, or tell the Law everything, and then leave justice to arrest him the moment he is in England. I see no other course and, as you have been a servant of the Law all your life, how can you? Peace for you may not depend upon his death, as it does for me: I can understand that, though it’s hard to believe; but if you could go on with your life and be content to let him go on with his, then — ”