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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1695-0.txt b/1695-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a802bb3 --- /dev/null +++ b/1695-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6977 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. +Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The Man Who Was Thursday + A Nightmare + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: April, 1999 [eBook #1695] +[Most recently updated: February 5, 2023] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Harry Plantinga and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY *** + + + + +The Man Who Was Thursday + +A Nightmare + +by G. K. Chesterton + + +Contents + + A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + + CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + CHAPTER II. THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + CHAPTER III. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + CHAPTER IV. THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR + CHAPTER VI. THE EXPOSURE + CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + CHAPTER X. THE DUEL + CHAPTER XI. THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + CHAPTER XII. THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + CHAPTER XIII. THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + CHAPTER XIV. THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + CHAPTER XV. THE ACCUSER + + + + +A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + + +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is +possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous +criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that the +author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective story like +no-one else. On this level, therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY +succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent tour-de-force +of suspense-writing. + +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than that. +Carried along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by Chesterton’s +wonderful high-spirited style, he will soon see that he is being +carried into much deeper waters than he had planned on; and the totally +unforeseeable denouement will prove for the modern reader, as it has +for thousands of others since 1908 when the book was first published, +an inevitable and moving experience, as the investigators finally +discover who Sunday is. + + + + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY +A NIGHTMARE + + +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley + +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us +Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we, +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, +When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard. + +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world. +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass, +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain— +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain. +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day. +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms. +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms: +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved— +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed. + +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells— +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand— +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, +And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain. +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. + +G. K. C. + + + + +CHAPTER I. +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + + +The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and +ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; +its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had +been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, +who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen +Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were +identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, +though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its +pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its +pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The +stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could +only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to +them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. +The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard +it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were +not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with +the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not +really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the +wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not +really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in +others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the +bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he +assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what +biological creature could he have discovered more singular than +himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be +regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for +artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped +into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written +comedy. + +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, +when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the +whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again +was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the +little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns +glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And +this was strongest of all on one particular evening, still vaguely +remembered in the locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the +hero. It was not by any means the only evening of which he was the +hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden might hear +his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly to +women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the +paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely +called emancipated, and professed some protest against male supremacy. +Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant +compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening +while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the red-haired poet, was +really (in some sense) a man worth listening to, even if one only +laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant of the lawlessness of art +and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness which gave +at least a momentary pleasure. He was helped in some degree by the +arresting oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase +goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was +literally like a woman’s, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in +a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval, +however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried +forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at once +tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed +like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. + +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be +remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end +of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and +palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, +and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of +the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve +and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole +grew past description, transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot +plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The +whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent +secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that +splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky +seemed small. + +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if +only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it +because it marked the first appearance in the place of the second poet +of Saffron Park. For a long time the red-haired revolutionary had +reigned without a rival; it was upon the night of the sunset that his +solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who introduced himself by the +name of Gabriel Syme was a very mild-looking mortal, with a fair, +pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But an impression grew that he +was less meek than he looked. He signalised his entrance by differing +with the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He +said that he (Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he +was a poet of respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him +as if he had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky. + +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two +events. + +“It may well be,” he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, “it may well +be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is brought +forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you +are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only +wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared +in this garden.” + +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured +these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of +the group, Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s braids of +red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such +mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the +family oracle. + +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. + +“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You might +transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who +throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to +everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing +light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a +few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, +abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it +were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the +Underground Railway.” + +“So it is,” said Mr. Syme. + +“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway +trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. +It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because +they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place +they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square +they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but +Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their +souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker +Street!” + +“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say +of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The +rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to +miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a +distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine +strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train +might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a +magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, +and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; +let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who +commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his +victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!” + +“Must you go?” inquired Gregory sarcastically. + +“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a train comes +in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man +has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one +has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might +do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I +have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout +out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the +cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it +is the victory of Adam.” + +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. + +“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the question, ‘And what +is Victoria now that you have got there?’ You think Victoria is like +the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like +Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of +heaven. The poet is always in revolt.” + +“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being +in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. +Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the +wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I can +see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It’s +mere vomiting.” + +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too +hot to heed her. + +“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is +the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more +poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most +poetical thing in the world is not being sick.” + +“Really,” said Gregory superciliously, “the examples you choose—” + +“I beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot we had abolished all +conventions.” + +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead. + +“You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionise society on this +lawn?” + +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. + +“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I suppose that if you were serious about +your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.” + +Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry lion, +and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. + +“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dangerous voice, “that I am +serious about my anarchism?” + +“I beg your pardon?” said Syme. + +“Am I not serious about my anarchism?” cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. + +“My dear fellow!” said Syme, and strolled away. + +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond Gregory +still in his company. + +“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my brother +often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?” + +Syme smiled. + +“Do you?” he asked. + +“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with grave eyes. + +“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many kinds of +sincerity and insincerity. When you say ‘thank you’ for the salt, do +you mean what you say? No. When you say ‘the world is round,’ do you +mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don’t mean it. Now, +sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It +may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says +more than he means—from sheer force of meaning it.” + +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and +open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning +responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the +maternal watch which is as old as the world. + +“Is he really an anarchist, then?” she asked. + +“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you prefer it, in +that nonsense.” + +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly— + +“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?” + +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and +somewhat dandified figure. + +“Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done anonymously.” + +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she +thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory’s absurdity and of his +safety. + +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and +continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in +spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it +is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches +himself too closely. He defended respectability with violence and +exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of tidiness and +propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him. Once +he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to +play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving to a tiny +tune from under or beyond the world. + +He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what +seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a +place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered +the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself +with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his +head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which +were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again +until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she +kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures +afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread +through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what +followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream. + +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment +empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a +living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a +street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out +over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a +figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall +hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was +almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also +something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet +Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword +in hand for his foe. + +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more formally +returned. + +“I was waiting for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a moment’s +conversation?” + +“Certainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. + +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the +tree. + +“About _this_ and _this_,” he cried; “about order and anarchy. There is +your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there +is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself—there is anarchy, splendid +in green and gold.” + +“All the same,” replied Syme patiently, “just at present you only see +the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the +lamp by the light of the tree.” Then after a pause he said, “But may I +ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only to resume our +little argument?” + +“No,” cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, “I did +not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for ever.” + +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, +listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a smooth +voice and with a rather bewildering smile. + +“Mr. Syme,” he said, “this evening you succeeded in doing something +rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of woman +has ever succeeded in doing before.” + +“Indeed!” + +“Now I remember,” resumed Gregory reflectively, “one other person +succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I remember +correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me.” + +“I am very sorry,” replied Syme with gravity. + +“I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out +even with an apology,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could wipe it +out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one +way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am +going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to _prove_ to +you that you were wrong in what you said.” + +“In what I said?” + +“You said I was not serious about being an anarchist.” + +“There are degrees of seriousness,” replied Syme. “I have never doubted +that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what +you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men +up to a neglected truth.” + +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. + +“And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me serious? You think me +a _flâneur_ who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that in a +deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious.” + +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. + +“Serious!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these +damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One +comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, +but I should think very little of a man who didn’t keep something in +the background of his life that was more serious than all this +talking—something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink.” + +“Very well,” said Gregory, his face darkening, “you shall see something +more serious than either drink or religion.” + +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again +opened his lips. + +“You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you +have one?” + +“Oh,” said Syme with a beaming smile, “we are all Catholics now.” + +“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion +involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to +any son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! +If you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will +consent to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a +knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return—” + +“You will promise me in return?” inquired Syme, as the other paused. + +“I will promise you a very entertaining evening.” Syme suddenly took +off his hat. + +“Your offer,” he said, “is far too idiotic to be declined. You say that +a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least that he +is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a +Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I +will not report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And +now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?” + +“I think,” said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, “that we will call a +cab.” + +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the road. +The two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap the +address of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. +The cab whisked itself away again, and in it these two fantastics +quitted their fantastic town. + + + + +CHAPTER II. +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + + +The cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, +into which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated +themselves in a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden +table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, that very +little could be seen of the attendant who was summoned, beyond a vague +and dark impression of something bulky and bearded. + +“Will you take a little supper?” asked Gregory politely. “The _pâté de +foie gras_ is not good here, but I can recommend the game.” + +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. +Accepting the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred indifference— + +“Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise.” + +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said “Certainly, sir!” +and went away apparently to get it. + +“What will you drink?” resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. “I shall only have a _crême de menthe_ myself; I have +dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you +with a half-bottle of Pommery at least?” + +“Thank you!” said the motionless Syme. “You are very good.” + +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in +themselves, were cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the actual +appearance of the lobster. Syme tasted it, and found it particularly +good. Then he suddenly began to eat with great rapidity and appetite. + +“Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!” he said to Gregory, +smiling. “I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is +new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly the +other way.” + +“You are not asleep, I assure you,” said Gregory. “You are, on the +contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your +existence. Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be a +slight disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements of +this excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. But +that is all our modesty. We are the most modest men that ever lived on +earth.” + +“And who are _we?_” asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. + +“It is quite simple,” replied Gregory. “_We_ are the serious +anarchists, in whom you do not believe.” + +“Oh!” said Syme shortly. “You do yourselves well in drinks.” + +“Yes, we are serious about everything,” answered Gregory. + +Then after a pause he added— + +“If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, don’t +put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don’t wish you to do +yourself an injustice.” + +“Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,” replied Syme with perfect calm; +“but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. May I +smoke?” + +“Certainly!” said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. “Try one of mine.” + +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his +waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a +long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed +these rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them +the table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then +rapidly, as if at an insane seance. + +“You must not mind it,” said Gregory; “it’s a kind of screw.” + +“Quite so,” said Syme placidly, “a kind of screw. How simple that is!” + +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering across +the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory +chimney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot down through +the floor as if the earth had swallowed them. They went rattling down a +kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift cut loose, and they came +with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But when Gregory threw open a pair +of doors and let in a red subterranean light, Syme was still smoking +with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair. + +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was +the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a +fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there +was a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory struck five +times. A heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him who he was. To +this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, “Mr. Joseph +Chamberlain.” The heavy hinges began to move; it was obviously some +kind of password. + +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a +network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering +pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers, +closely packed or interlocked. + +“I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities,” said Gregory; “we +have to be very strict here.” + +“Oh, don’t apologise,” said Syme. “I know your passion for law and +order,” and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel weapons. +With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a +singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining +avenue of death. + +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a +queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but +presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a +scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this +apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more dubious and +dreadful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of iron plants, or +the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the very room itself +seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar ash off +against the wall, and went in. + +“And now, my dear Mr. Syme,” said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, “now we are quite +cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give you any +notion of why I brought you here. It was one of those quite arbitrary +emotions, like jumping off a cliff or falling in love. Suffice it to +say that you were an inexpressibly irritating fellow, and, to do you +justice, you are still. I would break twenty oaths of secrecy for the +pleasure of taking you down a peg. That way you have of lighting a +cigar would make a priest break the seal of confession. Well, you said +that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this +place strike you as being serious?” + +“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety,” assented Syme; +“but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me +information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me +a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So +it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is +it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish +Government?” + +“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. “We do +not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that +sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny +all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and +treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly +sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! +We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.” + +“And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eagerness, “I hope you +will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.” + +“You spoke of a second question,” snapped Gregory. + +“With pleasure,” resumed Syme. “In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt +who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people +living from preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron +door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of +calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel +instruments which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than +homelike. May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade +yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole +secret by talking about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron +Park?” + +Gregory smiled. + +“The answer is simple,” he said. “I told you I was a serious anarchist, +and you did not believe me. Nor do _they_ believe me. Unless I took +them into this infernal room they would not believe me.” + +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went +on. + +“The history of the thing might amuse you,” he said. “When first I +became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our +anarchist pamphlets, in _Superstition the Vampire_ and _Priests of +Prey_. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and +terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was +misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a +drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! +presumptuous human reason!’ they found out in some way that I was not a +bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; +but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see +that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a +humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to +understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire +violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw +myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I +called out ‘Blood!’ abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often +said, ‘Let the weak perish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems majors +don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the +President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in +Europe.” + +“What is his name?” asked Syme. + +“You would not know it,” answered Gregory. “That is his greatness. +Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and they +_were_ heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and he +is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with +him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been children +in his hands.” + +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed— + +“But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an +epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said to him, +‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more +respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large +but indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a +dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would +ever look for a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. +‘Why, then, dress up as an _anarchist_, you fool!’ he roared so that +the room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous +then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took +his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to +those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their +perambulators.” + +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. + +“You took me in,” he said. “It is really a smart dodge.” + +Then after a pause he added— + +“What do you call this tremendous President of yours?” + +“We generally call him Sunday,” replied Gregory with simplicity. “You +see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist Council, and they +are named after days of the week. He is called Sunday, by some of his +admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you should mention the matter, +because the very night you have dropped in (if I may so express it) is +the night on which our London branch, which assembles in this room, has +to elect its own deputy to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman +who has for some time past played, with propriety and general applause, +the difficult part of Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, +we have called a meeting this very evening to elect a successor.” + +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of smiling +embarrassment. + +“I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme,” he continued casually. +“I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have promised to +tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something that I would not +say in so many words to the anarchists who will be coming to the room +in about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go through a form of +election; but I don’t mind telling you that it is practically certain +what the result will be.” He looked down for a moment modestly. “It is +almost a settled thing that I am to be Thursday.” + +“My dear fellow.” said Syme heartily, “I congratulate you. A great +career!” + +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking +rapidly. + +“As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table,” he +said, “and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible.” + +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, a +large Colt’s revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of +brandy. Over the chair, beside the table, was thrown a heavy-looking +cape or cloak. + +“I have only to get the form of election finished,” continued Gregory +with animation, “then I snatch up this cloak and stick, stuff these +other things into my pocket, step out of a door in this cavern, which +opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug already waiting for me, +and then—then—oh, the wild joy of being Thursday!” And he clasped his +hands. + +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got +to his feet with an unusual air of hesitation. + +“Why is it,” he asked vaguely, “that I think you are quite a decent +fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?” He paused a moment, and +then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, “Is it because you are such +an ass?” + +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out— + +“Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been in +in my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave you a +promise before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under +red-hot pincers. Would you give me, for my own safety, a little promise +of the same kind?” + +“A promise?” asked Gregory, wondering. + +“Yes,” said Syme very seriously, “a promise. I swore before God that I +would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by Humanity, +or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my +secret to the anarchists?” + +“Your secret?” asked the staring Gregory. “Have you got a secret?” + +“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a pause, “Will you +swear?” + +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said +abruptly— + +“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about you. +Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell me. But +look sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes.” + +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his +long, grey trousers’ pockets. Almost as he did so there came five +knocks on the outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the first of +the conspirators. + +“Well,” said Syme slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you the truth more +shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as an aimless +poet is not confined to you or your President. We have known the dodge +for some time at Scotland Yard.” + +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. + +“What do you say?” he asked in an inhuman voice. + +“Yes,” said Syme simply, “I am a police detective. But I think I hear +your friends coming.” + +From the doorway there came a murmur of “Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” It +was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the crowd of +Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard trampling down +the corridor. + + + + +CHAPTER III. +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + + +Before one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, Gregory’s +stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the table with a +bound, and a noise in his throat like a wild beast. He caught up the +Colt’s revolver and took aim at Syme. Syme did not flinch, but he put +up a pale and polite hand. + +“Don’t be such a silly man,” he said, with the effeminate dignity of a +curate. “Don’t you see it’s not necessary? Don’t you see that we’re +both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea-sick.” + +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he looked +his question. + +“Don’t you see we’ve checkmated each other?” cried Syme. “I can’t tell +the police you are an anarchist. You can’t tell the anarchists I’m a +policeman. I can only watch you, knowing what you are; you can only +watch me, knowing what I am. In short, it’s a lonely, intellectual +duel, my head against yours. I’m a policeman deprived of the help of +the police. You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help +of that law and organisation which is so essential to anarchy. The one +solitary difference is in your favour. You are not surrounded by +inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. I +cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see +me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.” + +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he were +a sea-monster. + +“I don’t believe in immortality,” he said at last, “but if, after all +this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only for you, +to howl in for ever.” + +“I shall not break my word,” said Syme sternly, “nor will you break +yours. Here are your friends.” + +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a slouching +and somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a black beard and +glasses—a man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim Healy—detached himself, +and bustled forward with some papers in his hand. + +“Comrade Gregory,” he said, “I suppose this man is a delegate?” + +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of Syme; +but Syme replied almost pertly— + +“I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it hard +for anyone to be here who was not a delegate.” + +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still +contracted with something like suspicion. + +“What branch do you represent?” he asked sharply. + +“I should hardly call it a branch,” said Syme, laughing; “I should call +it at the very least a root.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“The fact is,” said Syme serenely, “the truth is I am a Sabbatarian. I +have been specially sent here to see that you show a due observance of +Sunday.” + +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear went +over all the faces of the group. Evidently the awful President, whose +name was Sunday, did sometimes send down such irregular ambassadors to +such branch meetings. + +“Well, comrade,” said the man with the papers after a pause, “I suppose +we’d better give you a seat in the meeting?” + +“If you ask my advice as a friend,” said Syme with severe benevolence, +“I think you’d better.” + +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety for +his rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful thought. He +was, indeed, in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear that Syme’s +inspired impudence was likely to bring him out of all merely accidental +dilemmas. Little was to be hoped from them. He could not himself betray +Syme, partly from honour, but partly also because, if he betrayed him +and for some reason failed to destroy him, the Syme who escaped would +be a Syme freed from all obligation of secrecy, a Syme who would simply +walk to the nearest police station. After all, it was only one night’s +discussion, and only one detective who would know of it. He would let +out as little as possible of their plans that night, and then let Syme +go, and chance it. + +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already +distributing itself along the benches. + +“I think it is time we began,” he said; “the steam-tug is waiting on +the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the chair.” + +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the papers +slipped into the presidential seat. + +“Comrades,” he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, “our meeting tonight +is important, though it need not be long. This branch has always had +the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We +have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease +of the heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you +know, his services to the cause were considerable. He organised the +great dynamite coup of Brighton which, under happier circumstances, +ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you also know, his death +was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a +hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which +beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. +Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. But +it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a harder +task. It is difficult properly to praise his qualities, but it is more +difficult to replace them. Upon you, comrades, it devolves this evening +to choose out of the company present the man who shall be Thursday. If +any comrade suggests a name I will put it to the vote. If no comrade +suggests a name, I can only tell myself that that dear dynamiter, who +is gone from us, has carried into the unknowable abysses the last +secret of his virtue and his innocence.” + +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes +heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable white +beard, perhaps the only real working-man present, rose lumberingly and +said— + +“I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday,” and sat lumberingly +down again. + +“Does anyone second?” asked the chairman. + +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. + +“Before I put the matter to the vote,” said the chairman, “I will call +on Comrade Gregory to make a statement.” + +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly pale, +so that by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. But he +was smiling and altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, and he saw +his best policy quite plain in front of him like a white road. His best +chance was to make a softened and ambiguous speech, such as would leave +on the detective’s mind the impression that the anarchist brotherhood +was a very mild affair after all. He believed in his own literary +power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades and picking perfect +words. He thought that with care he could succeed, in spite of all the +people around him, in conveying an impression of the institution, +subtly and delicately false. Syme had once thought that anarchists, +under all their bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now, +in the hour of peril, make Syme think so again? + +“Comrades,” began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, “it is not +necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy +also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has +been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. +Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and +anywhere to get their information, except to us, except to the fountain +head. They learn about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn +about anarchists from tradesmen’s newspapers; they learn about +anarchists from _Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday_ and the _Sporting Times_. +They never learn about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of +denying the mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from +one end of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are +walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not hear +it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is deep, +deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to assemble, as +the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by some incredible +accident, there were here tonight a man who all his life had thus +immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question to him: ‘When +those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of moral reputation +had they in the streets above? What tales were told of their atrocities +by one educated Roman to another? Suppose’ (I would say to him), +‘suppose that we are only repeating that still mysterious paradox of +history. Suppose we seem as shocking as the Christians because we are +really as harmless as the Christians. Suppose we seem as mad as the +Christians because we are really as meek.”’ + +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually +growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the +abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky +voice— + +“I’m not meek!” + +“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. +Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; +his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) +unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as +mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at +the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the +true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as +they revere simple—look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they +were modest—look at me. We are merciful—” + +“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. + +“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early +Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused +of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—” + +“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?” + +“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is +anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any +rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—” + +“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.” + +“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +“there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a +body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of +that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as +assassins and enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral +courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of +brotherhood and simplicity.” + +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The +silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an +automaton, and said in a colourless voice— + +“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?” + +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and Comrade +Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick +beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have +been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put +it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small and quiet voice— + +“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.” + +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the +voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these +first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he +made his next word ring and volley in the vault as if one of the guns +had gone off. + +“Comrades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of his +boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live underground like rats in +order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to +while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with +weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone should come and hear +Comrade Gregory saying to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’ +‘Honesty is the best policy,’ and ‘Virtue is its own reward’? There was +not a word in Comrade Gregory’s address to which a curate could not +have listened with pleasure (hear, hear). But I am not a curate (loud +cheers), and I did not listen to it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The +man who is fitted to make a good curate is not fitted to make a +resolute, forcible, and efficient Thursday (hear, hear). + +“Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we +are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of +society, and so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of +society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most +pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory has told us +(apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There I agree. We are +not murderers, we are executioners (cheers).” + +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face +idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay parted, +and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness— + +“You damnable hypocrite!” + +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale blue +ones, and said with dignity— + +“Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do that +I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do not +mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit +to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be +Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme +Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is +no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is it a time for ceremonial +modesty. I set myself against Comrade Gregory as I would set myself +against all the Governments of Europe, because the anarchist who has +given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as he has +forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed +cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as +calmly as I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that +rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his +milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself for +election—” + +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The +faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his tirade +grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with grins of +anticipation or cloven with delighted cries. At the moment when he +announced himself as ready to stand for the post of Thursday, a roar of +excitement and assent broke forth, and became uncontrollable, and at +the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam upon his mouth, +and shouted against the shouting. + +“Stop, you blasted madmen!” he cried, at the top of a voice that tore +his throat. “Stop, you—” + +But louder than Gregory’s shouting and louder than the roar of the room +came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless thunder— + +“I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the priest +who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says +these men are the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says +these men are the enemies of order and public decency, to all these I +will reply, ‘You are false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come +to destroy you, and to fulfil your prophecies.’” + +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased +Witherspoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and +had said— + +“I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the post.” + +“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. “Stop it, it is all—” + +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. + +“Does anyone second this amendment?” he said. A tall, tired man, with +melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on the back +bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been screaming for +some time past; now there was a change in his accent, more shocking +than any scream. “I end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as +stone. “This man cannot be elected. He is a—” + +“Yes,” said Syme, quite motionless, “what is he?” Gregory’s mouth +worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl back +into his dead face. + +“He is a man quite inexperienced in our work,” he said, and sat down +abruptly. + +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was +again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone— + +“I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme.” + +“The amendment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. + +“The question is that Comrade Syme—” + +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. + +“Comrades,” he cried out, “I am not a madman.” + +“Oh, oh!” said Mr. Witherspoon. + +“I am not a madman,” reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, “but I give you a counsel which +you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I +can give you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad +command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do +not elect this man.” Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a +moment Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you +could not have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began— + +“Comrade Gregory commands—” + +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory— + +“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, “And you are not Thursday.” + +“Comrades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in an +ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, “it is nothing to me whether +you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take +my command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at +your feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man.” + +“Comrade Gregory,” said the chairman after a painful pause, “this is +really not quite dignified.” + +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a +real silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a +man, and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly +started again— + +“The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday +on the General Council.” + +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three +minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was +elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the +Anarchists of Europe. + +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the +sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the +election was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the paper +proving his election, they all sprang to their feet, and the fiery +groups moved and mixed in the room. Syme found himself, somehow or +other, face to face with Gregory, who still regarded him with a stare +of stunned hatred. They were silent for many minutes. + +“You are a devil!” said Gregory at last. + +“And you are a gentleman,” said Syme with gravity. + +“It was you that entrapped me,” began Gregory, shaking from head to +foot, “entrapped me into—” + +“Talk sense,” said Syme shortly. “Into what sort of devils’ parliament +have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made me swear before I +made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we +think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us +in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but +honour and death,” and he pulled the great cloak about his shoulders +and picked up the flask from the table. + +“The boat is quite ready,” said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. “Be good +enough to step this way.” + +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a short, +iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following feverishly at +their heels. At the end of the passage was a door, which Buttons opened +sharply, showing a sudden blue and silver picture of the moonlit river, +that looked like a scene in a theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, +dwarfish steam-launch, like a baby dragon with one red eye. + +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the +gaping Gregory. + +“You have kept your word,” he said gently, with his face in shadow. +“You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even down +to a small particular. There was one special thing you promised me at +the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by +the end of it.” + +“What do you mean?” cried the chaotic Gregory. “What did I promise +you?” + +“A very entertaining evening,” said Syme, and he made a military salute +with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + + +Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he +was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of +anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life +into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most +revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His +respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against +rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest +people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked +about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to +walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and +self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence +the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any +drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he +had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan +abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan +latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing +vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of +defending cannibalism. + +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, +Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only +thing left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of +these fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too +fierce to be sensible. His hatred of modern lawlessness had been +crowned also by an accident. It happened that he was walking in a side +street at the instant of a dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf +for a moment, and then seen, the smoke clearing, the broken windows and +the bleeding faces. After that he went about as usual—quiet, courteous, +rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He +did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid +men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a +huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. + +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets a +torrent of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of this +deluge of barbaric denial. But he seemed to be getting no nearer his +enemy, and, what was worse, no nearer a living. As he paced the Thames +embankment, bitterly biting a cheap cigar and brooding on the advance +of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with a bomb in his pocket so savage +or so solitary as he. Indeed, he always felt that Government stood +alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too quixotic to +have cared for it otherwise. + +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river +reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, +indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, +that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it +mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the +vast caverns of a subterranean country. + +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black +chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, +black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the early +villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair +were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, +cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black +cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between his +tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen +of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was +why a policeman on the Embankment spoke to him, and said “Good +evening.” + +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the +mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the +twilight. + +“A good evening is it?” he said sharply. “You fellows would call the +end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that +bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt +and shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking +out for some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen +are cruel to the poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it +were not for your calm.” + +“If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of organised +resistance.” + +“Eh?” said Syme, staring. + +“The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the +policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.” + +“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this undenominational +education?” + +“No,” said the policeman sadly, “I never had any of those advantages. +The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very +rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid.” + +“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, wondering. + +“Oh, at Harrow,” said the policeman + +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in +so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control them. + +“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a policeman!” + +The policeman sighed and shook his head. + +“I know,” he said solemnly, “I know I am not worthy.” + +“But why did you join the police?” asked Syme with rude curiosity. + +“For much the same reason that you abused the police,” replied the +other. “I found that there was a special opening in the service for +those whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the +aberrations of the scientific intellect than with the normal and +excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of the human will. I trust I +make myself clear.” + +“If you mean that you make your opinion clear,” said Syme, “I suppose +you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. +How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on +the Thames embankment?” + +“You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police +system,” replied the other. “I am not surprised at it. We are keeping +it rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains +most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in the right frame of +mind. I think you might almost join us.” + +“Join you in what?” asked Syme. + +“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the situation: +The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated +detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely +intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of +civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are +silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. He has, +therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also +philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this +conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am +a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary +man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be +undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation which is +also a heresy hunt.” + +Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. + +“What do you do, then?” he said. + +“The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, “is +at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The +ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to +artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective +discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We +discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have +to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at +last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only +just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was +entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) +thoroughly understood a triolet.” + +“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much connection +between crime and the modern intellect as all that?” + +“You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, “but you +were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the +poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes +sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon +the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very +different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the +uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. +We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that +the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most +dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. +Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my +heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they +merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the +property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect +it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy +the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or +they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic +formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. +Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater +fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to +them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own +as much as other people’s.” + +Syme struck his hands together. + +“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my boyhood, but +never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad +man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says +that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is +then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a +reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but +not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter +things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all +those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, +the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given +up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the +State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must +not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish +anybody else.” + +“But this is absurd!” cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an +excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, “but it is +intolerable! I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re wasting your +life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. Their +armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment +more, and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory +of dying with the last heroes of the world.” + +“It is a chance not to be missed, certainly,” assented Syme, “but still +I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern +world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, +beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing +with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling +one bolt. What is this anarchy?” + +“Do not confuse it,” replied the constable, “with those chance dynamite +outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks +of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, +consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer +ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the +outer ring the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty +section. The outer ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely +anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have +destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of +human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. +They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe +that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man +seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the +flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would +naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section.” + +“Oh!” said Syme. + +“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time coming’; +‘the paradise of the future’; ‘mankind freed from the bondage of vice +and the bondage of virtue,’ and so on. And so also the men of the inner +circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding +crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. +But in their mouths”—and the policeman lowered his voice—“in their +mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no +illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth +can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean +death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without +right or wrong, they mean the grave. + +“They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The +innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed +the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed +somebody.” + +“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of passion. + +“I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment,” said the +policeman, “as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of +the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or +rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can +talk to him if you like.” + +“Telephone?” inquired Syme, with interest. + +“No,” said the policeman placidly, “he has a fancy for always sitting +in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come +along.” + +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led +to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost +before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands +of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a +room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. +It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; +it was like going suddenly stone-blind. + +“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice. + +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in +the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of +massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him. + +“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have +heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.” + +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this +irrevocable phrase. + +“I really have no experience,” he began. + +“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of +Armageddon.” + +“But I am really unfit—” + +“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown. + +“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere +willingness is the final test.” + +“I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good +day.” + +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson +light of evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless cloak, he +came out a member of the New Detective Corps for the frustration of the +great conspiracy. Acting under the advice of his friend the policeman +(who was professionally inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and +beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in an exquisite summer suit of +light blue-grey, with a pale yellow flower in the button-hole, and, in +short, became that elegant and rather insupportable person whom Gregory +had first encountered in the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he +finally left the police premises his friend provided him with a small +blue card, on which was written, “The Last Crusade,” and a number, the +sign of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper +waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and fight +the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his adventure +ultimately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a +February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent +Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday +of the Central Council of Anarchists. + +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation +of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the +landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet. +This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of that evening, +though partly also to an entire change in the weather and the sky since +he entered the little tavern some two hours before. Every trace of the +passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a +naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong and full that +(by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It +gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. + +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as +of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in +eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was +actually on some other and emptier planet, which circled round some +sadder star. But the more he felt this glittering desolation in the +moonlit land, the more his own chivalric folly glowed in the night like +a great fire. Even the common things he carried with him—the food and +the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on exactly that concrete and +material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey +or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though +in themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the +expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick became +almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the +stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on +some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the +adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. George would not even +be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was only imaginative by the +presence of a man really human. To Syme’s exaggerative mind the bright, +bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as empty as the +mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because there +is a man in the moon. + +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went comparatively +slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the +time that they passed Battersea, and when they came under the enormous +bulk of Westminster day had already begun to break. It broke like the +splitting of great bars of lead, showing bars of silver; and these had +brightened like white fire when the tug, changing its onward course, +turned inward to a large landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross. + +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic as +Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white +dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal steps of +some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he +was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible +and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and +stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the enormous masonry. The two +men in the tug put her off again and turned up stream. They had never +spoken a word. + + + + +CHAPTER V. +THE FEAST OF FEAR + + +At first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid; +but before he reached the top he had realised that there was a man +leaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the +river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and +frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower in +his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not +even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in +the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and +intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the +very point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair +almost seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type +that is best shaven—clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew +closer and closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. + +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was +meant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concluded +that he was not. And now again he had come back to a certainty that the +man had something to do with his mad adventure. For the man remained +more still than would have been natural if a stranger had come so +close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, and got on the nerves +somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again and again at the pale, +dignified and delicate face, and the face still looked blankly across +the river. Then he took out of his pocket the note from Buttons proving +his election, and put it before that sad and beautiful face. Then the +man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, +going up in the right cheek and down in the left. + +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. +Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it +is even attractive. But in all Syme’s circumstances, with the dark dawn +and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, +there was something unnerving in it. + +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic +face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly +went wrong. + +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man’s face dropped at +once into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further +explanation or inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. + +“If we walk up towards Leicester Square,” he said, “we shall just be in +time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. Have +you had any sleep?” + +“No,” said Syme. + +“Nor have I,” answered the man in an ordinary tone. “I shall try to get +to bed after breakfast.” + +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that +contradicted the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all +friendly words were to him lifeless conveniences, and that his only +life was hate. After a pause the man spoke again. + +“Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that can be +told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last notion of +the President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case +you don’t know, I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion +of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most +extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell +underground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a +private room at an ordinary restaurant. He said that if you didn’t seem +to be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, +I know; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a +little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the +public. We have our breakfast on a balcony—on a balcony, if you +please—overlooking Leicester Square.” + +“And what do the people say?” asked Syme. + +“It’s quite simple what they say,” answered his guide. “They say we are +a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.” + +“It seems to me a very clever idea,” said Syme. + +“Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!” cried out the other in a +sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his +crooked smile. “When you’ve seen Sunday for a split second you’ll leave +off calling him clever.” + +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early +sunlight filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I suppose, +why this square itself should look so alien and in some ways so +continental. It will never be known whether it was the foreign look +that attracted the foreigners or the foreigners who gave it the foreign +look. But on this particular morning the effect seemed singularly +bright and clear. Between the open square and the sunlit leaves and the +statue and the Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it looked the +replica of some French or even Spanish public place. And this effect +increased in Syme the sensation, which in many shapes he had had +through the whole adventure, the eerie sensation of having strayed into +a new world. As a fact, he had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square +ever since he was a boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the +trees and the Moorish cupolas, he could have sworn that he was turning +into an unknown Place de something or other in some foreign town. + +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a +prosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street +behind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably the +window of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost +literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed balcony, +big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did contain a +dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and round the +breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to the street, +were a group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed in the insolence +of fashion, with white waistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of +their jokes could almost be heard across the square. Then the grave +Secretary gave his unnatural smile, and Syme knew that this boisterous +breakfast party was the secret conclave of the European Dynamiters. + +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had +not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large +to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of +the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme +had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break +down the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact +that he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man was +planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved +deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen +from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood +out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to +scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him +all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become +dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers +and frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining +five children to tea. + +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter +came out smiling with every tooth in his head. + +“The gentlemen are up there, sare,” he said. “They do talk and they do +laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king.” + +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleased +with the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. + +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. + +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost +filled and broke the balcony was the great President of whom the others +stood in awe. He knew it was so, with an unaccountable but +instantaneous certainty. Syme, indeed, was one of those men who are +open to all the more nameless psychological influences in a degree a +little dangerous to mental health. Utterly devoid of fear in physical +dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual +evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning things had peeped out +at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of drawing nearer and +nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this sense became overpowering +as he drew nearer to the great President. + +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked +across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday +grew larger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he +was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and that he +would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would not look at +the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face, and so +large. + +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to an +empty seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted him +with good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He sobered +himself a little by looking at their conventional coats and solid, +shining coffee-pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face was very +large, but it was still possible to humanity. + +In the presence of the President the whole company looked sufficiently +commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at first, except that by +the President’s caprice they had been dressed up with a festive +respectability, which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast. +One man indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He at least was +the common or garden Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar +and satin tie that were the uniform of the occasion; but out of this +collar there sprang a head quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a +bewildering bush of brown hair and beard that almost obscured the eyes +like those of a Skye terrier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle, +and they were the sad eyes of some Russian serf. The effect of this +figure was not terrible like that of the President, but it had every +diablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that +stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a +dog, it could not have been a more idiotic contrast. + +The man’s name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle +of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably +tragic; he could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous +part demanded of him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came +in the President, with that daring disregard of public suspicion which +was his policy, was actually chaffing Gogol upon his inability to +assume conventional graces. + +“Our friend Tuesday,” said the President in a deep voice at once of +quietude and volume, “our friend Tuesday doesn’t seem to grasp the +idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a +soul to behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage +conspirator. Now if a gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a +frock-coat, no one need know that he is an anarchist. But if a +gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then goes about on +his hands and knees—well, he may attract attention. That’s what Brother +Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and knees with such +inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he finds it quite difficult +to walk upright.” + +“I am not good at concealment,” said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; “I am not ashamed of the cause.” + +“Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you,” said the President +good-naturedly. “You hide as much as anybody; but you can’t do it, you +see, you’re such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods. +When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause to +note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top +hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely +even to forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin’s bed—” + +“I am not good at deception,” said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. + +“Right, my boy, right,” said the President with a ponderous heartiness, +“you aren’t good at anything.” + +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more +steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his +sense of something spiritually queer return. + +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and +costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he +looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he +had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That +lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his +original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something +about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which +was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor he +could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and +presence would look, with the additional twist given in a false and +curved mirror. + +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed +eccentricity. Syme’s original cicerone bore the title of Monday; he was +the Secretary of the Council, and his twisted smile was regarded with +more terror than anything, except the President’s horrible, happy +laughter. But now that Syme had more space and light to observe him, +there were other touches. His fine face was so emaciated, that Syme +thought it must be wasted with some disease; yet somehow the very +distress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no physical ill that +troubled him. His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if pure +thought was pain. + +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and +differently wrong. Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed Gogol, a +man more obviously mad. Next was Wednesday, a certain Marquis de St. +Eustache, a sufficiently characteristic figure. The first few glances +found nothing unusual about him, except that he was the only man at +table who wore the fashionable clothes as if they were really his own. +He had a black French beard cut square and a black English frock-coat +cut even squarer. But Syme, sensitive to such things, felt somehow that +the man carried a rich atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that +suffocated. It reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying +lamps in the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of +his being clad, not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his +black seemed richer and warmer than the black shades about him, as if +it were compounded of profound colour. His black coat looked as if it +were only black by being too dense a purple. His black beard looked as +if it were only black by being too deep a blue. And in the gloom and +thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed sensual and scornful. +Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he might be a Jew; he might be +something deeper yet in the dark heart of the East. In the bright +coloured Persian tiles and pictures showing tyrants hunting, you may +see just those almond eyes, those blue-black beards, those cruel, +crimson lips. + +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who still +kept the chair of Friday, though every day it was expected that his +death would leave it empty. Save for his intellect, he was in the last +dissolution of senile decay. His face was as grey as his long grey +beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed finally in a furrow of mild +despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, did the bridegroom +brilliancy of the morning dress express a more painful contrast. For +the red flower in his button-hole showed up against a face that was +literally discoloured like lead; the whole hideous effect was as if +some drunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose +or sat down, which was with long labour and peril, something worse was +expressed than mere weakness, something indefinably connected with the +horror of the whole scene. It did not express decrepitude merely, but +corruption. Another hateful fancy crossed Syme’s quivering mind. He +could not help thinking that whenever the man moved a leg or arm might +fall off. + +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most +baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face +clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had +that combination of _savoir-faire_ with a sort of well-groomed +coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine +clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set +smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a +pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a +crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but those black discs +were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, +of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme’s +eye always caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying +Professor worn them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been +appropriate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an +enigma. They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his +smile or his gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had +a vulgar virility wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme that +he might be the wickedest of all those wicked men. Syme even had the +thought that his eyes might be covered up because they were too +frightful to see. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. +THE EXPOSURE + + +Such were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again and +again Syme strove to pull together his common sense in their presence. +Sometimes he saw for an instant that these notions were subjective, +that he was only looking at ordinary men, one of whom was old, another +nervous, another short-sighted. The sense of an unnatural symbolism +always settled back on him again. Each figure seemed to be, somehow, on +the borderland of things, just as their theory was on the borderland of +thought. He knew that each one of these men stood at the extreme end, +so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in +some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the +world he would find something—say a tree—that was more or less than a +tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end +of the world he would find something else that was not wholly itself—a +tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures +seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate +horizon, visions from the verge. The ends of the earth were closing in. + +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not the +least of the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the +contrast between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible +purport. They were deep in the discussion of an actual and immediate +plot. The waiter downstairs had spoken quite correctly when he said +that they were talking about bombs and kings. Only three days +afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the French Republic in +Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their sunny balcony these +beaming gentlemen had decided how both should die. Even the instrument +was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it appeared, was to carry the +bomb. + +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime +would have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mystical +tremors. He would have thought of nothing but the need of saving at +least two human bodies from being ripped in pieces with iron and +roaring gas. But the truth was that by this time he had begun to feel a +third kind of fear, more piercing and practical than either his moral +revulsion or his social responsibility. Very simply, he had no fear to +spare for the French President or the Czar; he had begun to fear for +himself. Most of the talkers took little heed of him, debating now with +their faces closer together, and almost uniformly grave, save when for +an instant the smile of the Secretary ran aslant across his face as the +jagged lightning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one +persistent thing which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. +The President was always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and +baffling interest. The enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes +stood out of his head. And they were always fixed on Syme. + +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President’s eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He +had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary +way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of +the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, +staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. + +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him +for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who +were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and +fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He +even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if they had played +together when children. But he remembered that he was still tied to +Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never to do the very thing +that he now felt himself almost in the act of doing. He had promised +not to jump over that balcony and speak to that policeman. He took his +cold hand off the cold stone balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo +of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made +to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as +the square beneath him. He had, on the other hand, only to keep his +antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this +great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. +Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable +policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he +looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly +studying him with big, unbearable eyes. + +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that never +crossed his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt that the +President and his Council could crush him if he continued to stand +alone. The place might be public, the project might seem impossible. +But Sunday was not the man who would carry himself thus easily without +having, somehow or somewhere, set open his iron trap. Either by +anonymous poison or sudden street accident, by hypnotism or by fire +from hell, Sunday could certainly strike him. If he defied the man he +was probably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long +afterwards as by an innocent ailment. If he called in the police +promptly, arrested everyone, told all, and set against them the whole +energy of England, he would probably escape; certainly not otherwise. +They were a balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy +square; but he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a +boatful of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. + +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to +him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a +weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their +allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. They might +have called Sunday the super-man. If any such creature be conceivable, +he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, with his earth-shaking +abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. He might have been called +something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be +detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood. +But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink +even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to +fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it. + +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were typical. +Dr. Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally of the best +things on the table—cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. But the Secretary +was a vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the projected murder over +half a raw tomato and three quarters of a glass of tepid water. The old +Professor had such slops as suggested a sickening second childhood. And +even in this President Sunday preserved his curious predominance of +mere mass. For he ate like twenty men; he ate incredibly, with a +frightful freshness of appetite, so that it was like watching a sausage +factory. Yet continually, when he had swallowed a dozen crumpets or +drunk a quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on one +side staring at Syme. + +“I have often wondered,” said the Marquis, taking a great bite out of a +slice of bread and jam, “whether it wouldn’t be better for me to do it +with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a +knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French +President and wriggle it round.” + +“You are wrong,” said the Secretary, drawing his black brows together. +“The knife was merely the expression of the old personal quarrel with a +personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our best +symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of +the Christians. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even +so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man’s brain is a +bomb,” he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and +striking his own skull with violence. “My brain feels like a bomb, +night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man’s brain must +expand, if it breaks up the universe.” + +“I don’t want the universe broken up just yet,” drawled the Marquis. “I +want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one +yesterday in bed.” + +“No, if the only end of the thing is nothing,” said Dr. Bull with his +sphinx-like smile, “it hardly seems worth doing.” + +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. + +“Every man knows in his heart,” he said, “that nothing is worth doing.” + +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said— + +“We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is how +Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with the +original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should +suggest that tomorrow morning he should go first of all to—” + +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday +had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. + +“Before we discuss that,” he said in a small, quiet voice, “let us go +into a private room. I have something very particular to say.” + +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come +at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could +hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, +was cold. + +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial +tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle. +He found himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from +nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the +vulgarity, and the irrational valour of the poor, who in all those +unclean streets were all clinging to the decencies and the charities of +Christendom. His youthful prank of being a policeman had faded from his +mind; he did not think of himself as the representative of the corps of +gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of the old eccentric who +lived in the dark room. But he did feel himself as the ambassador of +all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day marched +into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in +being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above +the monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down +upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the +commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary +superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man +over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the intellectual nor +the physical strength of President Sunday; but in that moment he minded +it no more than the fact that he had not the muscles of a tiger or a +horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed up in an ultimate +certainty that the President was wrong and that the barrel-organ was +right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism +in the song of Roland— + + “Païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit,” + +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. +This liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness went with a +quite clear decision to embrace death. If the people of the +barrel-organ could keep their old-world obligations, so could he. This +very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to +miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into +their dark room and die for something that they could not even +understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the +energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear +deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the +drums of the pride of death. + +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and into +the rooms behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all his +brain and body throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President led them +down an irregular side stair, such as might be used by servants, and +into a dim, cold, empty room, with a table and benches, like an +abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, he closed and locked the +door. + +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting +with inarticulate grievance. + +“Zso! Zso!” he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. “You zay you nod ’ide. You zay you +show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk importance you +run yourselves in a dark box!” + +The President seemed to take the foreigner’s incoherent satire with +entire good humour. + +“You can’t get hold of it yet, Gogol,” he said in a fatherly way. “When +once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they will not +care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have +had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don’t seem to know anything +about mankind.” + +“I die for zem,” cried the Pole in thick excitement, “and I slay zare +oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would zmite ze +tyrant in ze open square.” + +“I see, I see,” said the President, nodding kindly as he seated himself +at the top of a long table. “You die for mankind first, and then you +get up and smite their oppressors. So that’s all right. And now may I +ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit down with the +other gentlemen at this table. For the first time this morning +something intelligent is going to be said.” + +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the original +summons, sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling in his brown +beard about gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to have any notion of +the blow that was about to fall. As for him, he had merely the feeling +of a man mounting the scaffold with the intention, at any rate, of +making a good speech. + +“Comrades,” said the President, suddenly rising, “we have spun out this +farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you something so +simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs (long inured to our +levities) might hear some new seriousness in my voice. Comrades, we +were discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before saying +anything else, that those plans and places should not be voted by this +meeting, but should be left wholly in the control of some one reliable +member. I suggest Comrade Saturday, Dr. Bull.” + +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for the +next words, though not loud, had a living and sensational emphasis. +Sunday struck the table. + +“Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be +mentioned in this company.” + +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it seemed +as if he had never really astonished them until now. They all moved +feverishly in their seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his +hand in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded revolver. When the +attack on him came he would sell his life dear. He would find out at +least if the President was mortal. + +Sunday went on smoothly— + +“You will probably understand that there is only one possible motive +for forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. Strangers +overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we are joking. But +what would matter, even unto death, is this, that there should be one +actually among us who is not of us, who knows our grave purpose, but +does not share it, who—” + +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. + +“It can’t be!” he cried, leaping. “There can’t—” + +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of +some huge fish. + +“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor +at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—” + +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. + +“His name is Gogol,” said the President. “He is that hairy humbug over +there who pretends to be a Pole.” + +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same flash +three men sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made an effort to +rise. But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was blinded with a +beneficent darkness; he had sunk down into his seat shuddering, in a +palsy of passionate relief. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + + +“Sit down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in his +life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. + +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person +himself resumed his seat. + +“Well, my man,” said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, “will you oblige me by putting your hand in +your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?” + +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but +he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled +out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke +up again to the world outside him. For although the card lay at the +other extreme of the table, and he could read nothing of the +inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance to the blue card in +his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when he joined the +anti-anarchist constabulary. + +“Pathetic Slav,” said the President, “tragic child of Poland, are you +prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this +company—shall we say _de trop?_” + +“Right oh!” said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear, +commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of +foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken +with a Scotch accent. + +“I gather that you fully understand your position,” said Sunday. + +“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. All I say is, I +don’t believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his.” + +“I concede the point,” said Sunday. “I believe your own accent to be +inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind leaving +your beard with your card?” + +“Not a bit,” answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a +pale, pert face. “It was hot,” he added. + +“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort of +brutal admiration, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. +Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me +for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in +torments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, +I shall have that two and a half minutes of discomfort. On your +discomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the step.” + +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet +without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect +nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease +was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble outside the door, +which showed that the departing detective had not minded the step. + +“Time is flying,” said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger +than it ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair +at a Humanitarian meeting.” + +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. + +“Would it not be better,” he said a little sharply, “to discuss further +the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?” + +“No, I think not,” said the President with a yawn like an unobtrusive +earthquake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off. +Breakfast here next Sunday.” + +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the +Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime. + +“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. “It +is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in +full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in +the actual presence of a traitor—” + +“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d take your head +home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t say. But it +might.” + +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. + +“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense. + +“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a great many times. +“That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, you +dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you didn’t want to be overheard by +a spy, didn’t you? How do you know you aren’t overheard now?” + +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking +with incomprehensible scorn. + +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent +glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such +as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President +meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed +unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like +Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. + +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook +themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past +midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat +long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had +escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose +and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, +cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the +street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried +the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he had +thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, +perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might +be slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up +under the doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser’s shop, the front +window of which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening +dress. + +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found +one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, +stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably +astonished to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staring +into the window, a man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat +of Father Christmas, the white drift was rising round his boots and +ankles; but it seemed as if nothing could tear him away from the +contemplation of the colourless wax doll in dirty evening dress. That +any human being should stand in such weather looking into such a shop +was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned +suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised that the man standing +there was the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the +place for a person of his years and infirmities. + +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this +dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the +Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could +only suppose that the man’s malady (whatever it was) involved some +momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to +feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he +rather congratulated himself that the Professor’s stroke and his +elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him and +leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear +of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could +collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether +he should or should not keep faith with Gregory. + +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three +streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho +restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and quaint +courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black +coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his seat in the +upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the chink of knives and +the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days he had +imagined that all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He +shuddered, remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the +delightful shame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar +place, the faces of natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as +if the Council of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and although he +knew it was nevertheless an objective reality, it was at least a +distant one. Tall houses and populous streets lay between him and his +last sight of the shameful seven; he was free in free London, and +drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took +his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop below. + +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the +spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white +street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, +with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme +stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of +blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing open the door and +slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow. + +“Can that old corpse be following me?” he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even +such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk +walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too +fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a +fool as to send a lame man?” + +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the +direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow +increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to +darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. +Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futility +to his already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a +swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, and +finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He ordered +another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when +Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with +difficulty and ordered a glass of milk. + +Syme’s walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which +confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. +Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a +rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had +heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had +come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme +had walked like the wind. He started up and snatched his stick, half +crazy with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, and swung out of the +swinging doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus going to the +Bank went rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of +a hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the +splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the +top. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind +him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing. + +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the +omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the +shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of +Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic +care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug. + +Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every +uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond +question that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of +the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of +caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time and +space have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quite +unquestionable that he had run after the omnibus. + +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the +wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He +had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side. + +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the +little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a +hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box +was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he +could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those +crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than thoroughfares; and by +the time that he had completed about twenty alternate angles and +described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of +pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been much, +for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere +behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic +citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, +leaving the wet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as +he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when +a few hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his +heart stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones +the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple. + +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in a +darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each +side of Syme the walls of the alley were blind and featureless; there +was no little window or any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break +out of this hive of houses, and to get once more into the open and +lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time before he +struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he struck it much farther +up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the vast and void +of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting in the sky. + +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a +pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some +degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm was even +dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very +word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like some +indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the +whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green +twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunset behind +the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and sinister +colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, that were +just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But +right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the +cathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and +great stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen +accidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its +very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and +the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made +with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. + +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or +slowly behind him, and he did not care. + +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were +darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might +have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a +new impulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and +pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon +the Circus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer. + +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alley +behind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp, +irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in the nursery +rhymes, “the crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as +if he had been twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he had been +threading. He came nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his +lifted spectacles, his lifted, patient face. Syme waited for him as St. +George waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or +for death. And the old Professor came right up to him and passed him +like a total stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids. + +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that left +Syme in a final fury. The man’s colourless face and manner seemed to +assert that the whole following had been an accident. Syme was +galvanised with an energy that was something between bitterness and a +burst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture as if to knock the old +man’s hat off, called out something like “Catch me if you can,” and +went racing away across the white, open Circus. Concealment was +impossible now; and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the +black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging +strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding +body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a +lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. + +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, +round St. Paul’s Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all the +nightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river, +and ended almost down by the docks. He saw the yellow panes of a low, +lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered beer. It was a +foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a place where opium might +be smoked or knives drawn. + +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down +carefully, and asked for a glass of milk. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + + +When Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, and +opposite to him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and leaden +eyelids of the Professor, his fears fully returned. This +incomprehensible man from the fierce council, after all, had certainly +pursued him. If the man had one character as a paralytic and another +character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him more interesting, +but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very small comfort that he +could not find the Professor out, if by some serious accident the +Professor should find him out. He emptied a whole pewter pot of ale +before the professor had touched his milk. + +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was +just possible that this escapade signified something other than even a +slight suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or sign. +Perhaps the foolish scamper was some sort of friendly signal that he +ought to have understood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps the new +Thursday was always chased along Cheapside, as the new Lord Mayor is +always escorted along it. He was just selecting a tentative inquiry, +when the old Professor opposite suddenly and simply cut him short. +Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic question, the old anarchist +had asked suddenly, without any sort of preparation— + +“Are you a policeman?” + +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so +brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only +manage a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity. + +“A policeman?” he said, laughing vaguely. “Whatever made you think of a +policeman in connection with me?” + +“The process was simple enough,” answered the Professor patiently. “I +thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now.” + +“Did I take a policeman’s hat by mistake out of the restaurant?” asked +Syme, smiling wildly. “Have I by any chance got a number stuck on to me +somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be a +policeman? Do, do let me be a postman.” + +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, but +Syme ran on with a feverish irony. + +“But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy. +Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, +the ape fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can never +detect the shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhaps +a maiden lady on Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have +been. I don’t mind being the policeman that might have been. I don’t +mind being anything in German thought.” + +“Are you in the police service?” said the old man, ignoring all Syme’s +improvised and desperate raillery. “Are you a detective?” + +Syme’s heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. + +“Your suggestion is ridiculous,” he began. “Why on earth—” + +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety table, +nearly breaking it. + +“Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?” he shrieked +in a high, crazy voice. “Are you, or are you not, a police detective?” + +“No!” answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman’s drop. + +“You swear it,” said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead face +becoming as it were loathsomely alive. “You swear it! You swear it! If +you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devil +dances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your +grave? Will there really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are a +dynamiter! Above all, you are not in any sense a detective? You are not +in the British police?” + +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his large +loose hand like a flap to his ear. + +“I am not in the British police,” said Syme with insane calm. + +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of kindly +collapse. + +“That’s a pity,” he said, “because I am.” + +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a +crash. + +“Because you are what?” he said thickly. “You are what?” + +“I am a policeman,” said the Professor with his first broad smile, and +beaming through his spectacles. “But as you think policeman only a +relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I am in the +British police force; but as you tell me you are not in the British +police force, I can only say that I met you in a dynamiters’ club. I +suppose I ought to arrest you.” And with these words he laid on the +table before Syme an exact facsimile of the blue card which Syme had in +his own waistcoat pocket, the symbol of his power from the police. + +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly +upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars +were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the +last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but now +the capsized universe had come right side up again. This devil from +whom he had been fleeing all day was only an elder brother of his own +house, who on the other side of the table lay back and laughed at him. +He did not for the moment ask any questions of detail; he only knew the +happy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with an +intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying +to catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free +man. For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain +healthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions +when only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic +pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme’s egotism held hard to +the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the +third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat +pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until +his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted +with a barbaric laughter. + +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, +plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there +was something Homeric in Syme’s mirth which made many half-drunken men +look round. + +“What yer laughing at, guv’nor?” asked one wondering labourer from the +docks. + +“At myself,” answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of his +ecstatic reaction. + +“Pull yourself together,” said the Professor, “or you’ll get +hysterical. Have some more beer. I’ll join you.” + +“You haven’t drunk your milk,” said Syme. + +“My milk!” said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, “my milk! Do you think I’d look at the beastly stuff when I’m +out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We’re all Christians in this +room, though perhaps,” he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd, +“not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I’ll finish it +right enough!” and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making a crash +of glass and a splash of silver fluid. + +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. + +“I understand now,” he cried; “of course, you’re not an old man at +all.” + +“I can’t take my face off here,” replied Professor de Worms. “It’s +rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I’m an old man, that’s not +for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday.” + +“Yes, but I mean,” said Syme impatiently, “there’s nothing the matter +with you.” + +“Yes,” answered the other dispassionately. “I am subject to colds.” + +Syme’s laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. He +laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a young +actor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would +have laughed as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. + +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. + +“Did you know,” he asked, “that that man Gogol was one of us?” + +“I? No, I didn’t know it,” answered Syme in some surprise. “But didn’t +you?” + +“I knew no more than the dead,” replied the man who called himself de +Worms. “I thought the President was talking about me, and I rattled in +my boots.” + +“And I thought he was talking about me,” said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. “I had my hand on my revolver all the time.” + +“So had I,” said the Professor grimly; “so had Gogol evidently.” + +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. + +“Why, there were three of us there!” he cried. “Three out of seven is a +fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!” + +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. + +“We were three,” he said. “If we had been three hundred we could still +have done nothing.” + +“Not if we were three hundred against four?” asked Syme, jeering rather +boisterously. + +“No,” said the Professor with sobriety, “not if we were three hundred +against Sunday.” + +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had died +in his heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the +unforgettable President sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured +photograph, and he remarked this difference between Sunday and all his +satellites, that their faces, however fierce or sinister, became +gradually blurred by memory like other human faces, whereas Sunday’s +seemed almost to grow more actual during absence, as if a man’s painted +portrait should slowly come alive. + +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme’s speech +came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. + +“Professor,” he cried, “it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this man?” + +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, +wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. + +“Yes, I am,” he said mildly. “So are you.” + +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like an +insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him. + +“Yes,” he said in a voice indescribable, “you are right. I am afraid of +him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear +until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his +throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him +down.” + +“How?” asked the staring Professor. “Why?” + +“Because I am afraid of him,” said Syme; “and no man should leave in +the universe anything of which he is afraid.” + +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an effort +to speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an undercurrent of +inhuman exaltation— + +“Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not +fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common +prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless—like a tree? Fight the +thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman +who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his +death-bed the great robber said, ‘I can give you no money, but I can +give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike +upwards.’ So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.” + +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. + +“Sunday is a fixed star,” he said. + +“You shall see him a falling star,” said Syme, and put on his hat. + +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. + +“Have you any idea,” he asked, with a sort of benevolent bewilderment, +“exactly where you are going?” + +“Yes,” replied Syme shortly, “I am going to prevent this bomb being +thrown in Paris.” + +“Have you any conception how?” inquired the other. + +“No,” said Syme with equal decision. + +“You remember, of course,” resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling his +beard and looking out of the window, “that when we broke up rather +hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in the +private hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this time +probably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he will do +it is doubtful whether even the President knows; certainly we don’t +know. The only man who does know is Dr. Bull.” + +“Confound it!” cried Syme. “And we don’t know where he is.” + +“Yes,” said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, “I know where +he is myself.” + +“Will you tell me?” asked Syme with eager eyes. + +“I will take you there,” said the Professor, and took down his own hat +from a peg. + +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. + +“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Will you join me? Will you take +the risk?” + +“Young man,” said the Professor pleasantly, “I am amused to observe +that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, and +that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical +rhetoric. You think that it is possible to pull down the President. I +know that it is impossible, and I am going to try it,” and opening the +tavern door, which let in a blast of bitter air, they went out together +into the dark streets by the docks. + +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there a +clot of it still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The small +streets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the flaming +lamps irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some other and +fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped through this growing +confusion of lights and shadows; but his companion walked on with a +certain briskness, towards where, at the end of the street, an inch or +two of the lamplit river looked like a bar of flame. + +“Where are you going?” Syme inquired. + +“Just now,” answered the Professor, “I am going just round the corner +to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retires +early.” + +“Dr. Bull!” exclaimed Syme. “Does he live round the corner?” + +“No,” answered his friend. “As a matter of fact he lives some way off, +on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here whether he +has gone to bed.” + +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked with +flame, he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the Surrey side +at this point there ran out into the Thames, seeming almost to overhang +it, a bulk and cluster of those tall tenements, dotted with lighted +windows, and rising like factory chimneys to an almost insane height. +Their special poise and position made one block of buildings especially +look like a Tower of Babel with a hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any +of the sky-scraping buildings in America, so he could only think of the +buildings in a dream. + +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turret +abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him with one of +his innumerable eyes. + +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick +against his boot. + +“We are too late,” he said, “the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed.” + +“What do you mean?” asked Syme. “Does he live over there, then?” + +“Yes,” said de Worms, “behind that particular window which you can’t +see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him tomorrow +morning.” + +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways until +they came out into the flare and clamour of the East India Dock Road. +The Professor, who seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood, +proceeded to a place where the line of lighted shops fell back into a +sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in which an old white inn, all out +of repair, stood back some twenty feet from the road. + +“You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils,” explained the Professor. “I once found a decent place in the +West End.” + +“I suppose,” said Syme, smiling, “that this is the corresponding decent +place in the East End?” + +“It is,” said the Professor reverently, and went in. + +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans and +bacon, which these unaccountable people cooked well, the astonishing +emergence of Burgundy from their cellars, crowned Syme’s sense of a new +comradeship and comfort. Through all this ordeal his root horror had +been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between +isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians +that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand +times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world +will always return to monogamy. + +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his +outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little +tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant +monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On his side, also, +the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was not less +communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme’s. + +“That’s a good get-up of yours,” said Syme, draining a glass of Macon; +“a lot better than old Gogol’s. Even at the start I thought he was a +bit too hairy.” + +“A difference of artistic theory,” replied the Professor pensively. +“Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of +an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, +to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a +portrait.” + +“I don’t understand you,” said Syme. + +“I am a portrait,” repeated the Professor. “I am a portrait of the +celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples.” + +“You mean you are made up like him,” said Syme. “But doesn’t he know +that you are taking his nose in vain?” + +“He knows it right enough,” replied his friend cheerfully. + +“Then why doesn’t he denounce you?” + +“I have denounced him,” answered the Professor. + +“Do explain yourself,” said Syme. + +“With pleasure, if you don’t mind hearing my story,” replied the +eminent foreign philosopher. “I am by profession an actor, and my name +is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian +and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, +sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political +refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great +German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much +about him beyond his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I +studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive +principle in the universe was God; hence he insisted on the need for a +furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he +said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. +When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much +that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would +have drawn a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a +caricature. I made myself up into what was meant for a wild +exaggeration of the old Professor’s dirty old self. When I went into +the room full of his supporters I expected to be received with a roar +of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation +at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance +was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect +artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. +They thought I really was the great Nihilist Professor. I was a +healthy-minded young man at the time, and I confess that it was a blow. +Before I could fully recover, however, two or three of these admirers +ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult +had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed +that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous +parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and +in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. +Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted +eyebrows and freezing eyes that the real Professor came into the room. + +“I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round me +looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see which +was really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like +my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young +actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and +working within this definite limitation, he couldn’t be so jolly +paralytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I +countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that +nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could +not even understand myself. ‘I don’t fancy,’ he said, ‘that you could +have worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, since +there inheres in it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential +of differentiation.’ I replied quite scornfully, ‘You read all that up +in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically was +exposed long ago by Glumpe.’ It is unnecessary for me to say that there +never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people all +round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, and +the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him +rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell +back upon a more popular form of wit. ‘I see,’ he sneered, ‘you prevail +like the false pig in Æsop.’ ‘And you fail,’ I answered, smiling, ‘like +the hedgehog in Montaigne.’ Need I say that there is no hedgehog in +Montaigne? ‘Your claptrap comes off,’ he said; ‘so would your beard.’ I +had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather +witty. But I laughed heartily, answered, ‘Like the Pantheist’s boots,’ +at random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. The +real Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though one man +tried very patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I believe, +received everywhere in Europe as a delightful impostor. His apparent +earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more entertaining.” + +“Well,” said Syme, “I can understand your putting on his dirty old +beard for a night’s practical joke, but I don’t understand your never +taking it off again.” + +“That is the rest of the story,” said the impersonator. “When I myself +left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went limping down +the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be +able to walk like a human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning +the corner, I felt a touch on the shoulder, and turning, found myself +under the shadow of an enormous policeman. He told me I was wanted. I +struck a sort of paralytic attitude, and cried in a high German accent, +‘Yes, I am wanted—by the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me +on the charge of being the great anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ The +policeman impassively consulted a paper in his hand, ‘No, sir,’ he said +civilly, ‘at least, not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the charge +of not being the celebrated anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ This +charge, if it was criminal at all, was certainly the lighter of the +two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, but not greatly dismayed. +I was shown into a number of rooms, and eventually into the presence of +a police officer, who explained that a serious campaign had been opened +against the centres of anarchy, and that this, my successful +masquerade, might be of considerable value to the public safety. He +offered me a good salary and this little blue card. Though our +conversation was short, he struck me as a man of very massive common +sense and humour; but I cannot tell you much about him personally, +because—” + +Syme laid down his knife and fork. + +“I know,” he said, “because you talked to him in a dark room.” + +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + + +“Burgundy is a jolly thing,” said the Professor sadly, as he set his +glass down. + +“You don’t look as if it were,” said Syme; “you drink it as if it were +medicine.” + +“You must excuse my manner,” said the Professor dismally, “my position +is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish +merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I +can’t leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at +all to disguise myself, I still can’t help speaking slow and wrinkling +my forehead—just as if it were my forehead. I can be quite happy, you +understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. The most buoyant +exclamations leap up in my heart, but they come out of my mouth quite +different. You should hear me say, ‘Buck up, old cock!’ It would bring +tears to your eyes.” + +“It does,” said Syme; “but I cannot help thinking that apart from all +that you are really a bit worried.” + +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. + +“You are a very clever fellow,” he said, “it is a pleasure to work with +you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a great +problem to face,” and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. + +Then he said in a low voice— + +“Can you play the piano?” + +“Yes,” said Syme in simple wonder, “I’m supposed to have a good touch.” + +Then, as the other did not speak, he added— + +“I trust the great cloud is lifted.” + +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of +his hands— + +“It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter.” + +“Thank you,” said Syme, “you flatter me.” + +“Listen to me,” said the other, “and remember whom we have to see +tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which is +very much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels out of +the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, very +strong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, except the +President, of course, who is so seriously startling and formidable as +that little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not perhaps the +white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for anarchy, which +marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism in the Secretary has +a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little Doctor +has a brutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary’s disease. +Don’t you notice his detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like +an india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if +he ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the +round, black head of Dr. Bull.” + +“And you think,” said Syme, “that this unique monster will be soothed +if I play the piano to him?” + +“Don’t be an ass,” said his mentor. “I mentioned the piano because it +gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go through +this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code of +signals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a rough +alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers—like this, see,” +and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table—“B A D, bad, a word +we may frequently require.” + +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study the +scheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with +his hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he +might convey simple messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a +table or knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of +inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found +himself struggling with the too vast energy of the new language, as it +passed through the heated brain of Syme. + +“We must have several word-signs,” said Syme seriously—“words that we +are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is +‘coeval’. What’s yours?” + +“Do stop playing the goat,” said the Professor plaintively. “You don’t +know how serious this is.” + +“‘Lush’ too,” said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, “we must have +‘lush’—word applied to grass, don’t you know?” + +“Do you imagine,” asked the Professor furiously, “that we are going to +talk to Dr. Bull about grass?” + +“There are several ways in which the subject could be approached,” said +Syme reflectively, “and the word introduced without appearing forced. +We might say, ‘Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a tyrant +once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, looking on the +fresh lush grass of summer...’” + +“Do you understand,” said the other, “that this is a tragedy?” + +“Perfectly,” replied Syme; “always be comic in a tragedy. What the +deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider scope. +I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That +would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, +which however unobtrusively performed—” + +“Syme,” said his friend with a stern simplicity, “go to bed!” + +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the new +code. He was awakened next morning while the east was still sealed with +darkness, and found his grey-bearded ally standing like a ghost beside +his bed. + +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, threw +off the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious way +that all the safety and sociability of the night before fell with the +bedclothes off him, and he stood up in an air of cold danger. He still +felt an entire trust and loyalty towards his companion; but it was the +trust between two men going to the scaffold. + +“Well,” said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, “I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long to +make it up?” + +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes the +colour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. + +“I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I’m considered good at +these things, and it was a good hour’s grind. Did you learn it all on +the spot?” + +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixed +but very small smile. + +“How long did it take you?” + +The Professor did not move. + +“Confound you, can’t you answer?” called out Syme, in a sudden anger +that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the Professor +could answer, he did not. + +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank, +blue eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone mad, but +his second thought was more frightful. After all, what did he know +about this queer creature whom he had heedlessly accepted as a friend? +What did he know, except that the man had been at the anarchist +breakfast and had told him a ridiculous tale? How improbable it was +that there should be another friend there beside Gogol! Was this man’s +silence a sensational way of declaring war? Was this adamantine stare +after all only the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, who had +turned for the last time? He stood and strained his ears in this +heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to +capture him shifting softly in the corridor outside. + +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though the +Professor himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his five dumb +fingers were dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme watched the +twinkling movements of the talking hand, and read clearly the message— + +“I will only talk like this. We must get used to it.” + +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief— + +“All right. Let’s get out to breakfast.” + +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his +sword-stick, he held it hard. + +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse +thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the +river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as +Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which +they had seen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the +naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make +short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At about every other flight +they passed a window; each window showed them a pale and tragic dawn +lifting itself laboriously over London. From each the innumerable roofs +of slate looked like the leaden surges of a grey, troubled sea after +rain. Syme was increasingly conscious that his new adventure had +somehow a quality of cold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the +past. Last night, for instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him +like a tower in a dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual +steps, he was daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. +But it was not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be +exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty +infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to +thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about the +distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a +thing more hideous than unreason itself. + +By the time they reached Dr. Bull’s landing, a last window showed them +a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more like +red clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull’s bare garret +it was full of light. + +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with +these empty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the +garret and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the +memory was—the French Revolution. There should have been the black +outline of a guillotine against that heavy red and white of the +morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and black breeches only; his +cropped, dark head might well have just come out of its wig; he might +have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. + +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins +were idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. His +position gave him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light of +morning coming from one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both +more pale and more angular than he had looked at the breakfast on the +balcony. Thus the two black glasses that encased his eyes might really +have been black cavities in his skull, making him look like a +death’s-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself sat writing at a +wooden table, it might have been he. + +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rose +with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set +chairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceeded +to put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it up +neatly, and came back to sit down at his table. + +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It +was with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence and +began, “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, comrade,” said he, with a +careful resumption of the slow de Worms manner. “You have no doubt made +all the arrangements for the Paris affair?” Then he added with infinite +slowness, “We have information which renders intolerable anything in +the nature of a moment’s delay.” + +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking. +The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word— + +“Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to alter +those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your agent with +all the support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and I have had an +experience which it would take more time to recount than we can afford, +if we are to act on it. I will, however, relate the occurrence in +detail, even at the risk of losing time, if you really feel that it is +essential to the understanding of the problem we have to discuss.” + +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long and +lingering, in the hope of maddening the practical little Doctor into an +explosion of impatience which might show his hand. But the little +Doctor continued only to stare and smile, and the monologue was uphill +work. Syme began to feel a new sickness and despair. The Doctor’s smile +and silence were not at all like the cataleptic stare and horrible +silence which he had confronted in the Professor half an hour before. +About the Professor’s makeup and all his antics there was always +something merely grotesque, like a gollywog. Syme remembered those wild +woes of yesterday as one remembers being afraid of Bogy in childhood. +But here was daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in +tweeds, not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not +glaring or grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. +The whole had a sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing +sunlight the colours of the Doctor’s complexion, the pattern of his +tweeds, grew and expanded outrageously, as such things grow too +important in a realistic novel. But his smile was quite slight, the +pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was his silence. + +“As I say,” resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavy +sand, “the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask for +information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better to +have narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than +me—” + +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but +Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge +of the crazy table. He read the message, “You must go on. This devil +has sucked me dry!” + +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation which +always came to him when he was alarmed. + +“Yes, the thing really happened to me,” he said hastily. “I had the +good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who took me, +thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to clinch my +reputation for respectability, I took him and made him very drunk at +the Savoy. Under this influence he became friendly, and told me in so +many words that within a day or two they hope to arrest the Marquis in +France. + +“So unless you or I can get on his track—” + +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his +protected eyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme +that he would resume his explanation, and he began again with the same +elaborate calm. + +“Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seems +to me unquestionably urgent that—” + +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadily as +the Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. The +nerves of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain of +motionless amiability, when Syme suddenly leant forward and idly tapped +the edge of the table. His message to his ally ran, “I have an +intuition.” + +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back, +“Then sit on it.” + +Syme telegraphed, “It is quite extraordinary.” + +The other answered, “Extraordinary rot!” + +Syme said, “I am a poet.” + +The other retorted, “You are a dead man.” + +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were +burning feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had risen to +a sort of lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps, he +signalled to his friend, “You scarcely realise how poetic my intuition +is. It has that sudden quality we sometimes feel in the coming of +spring.” + +He then studied the answer on his friend’s fingers. The answer was, “Go +to hell!” + +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to the +Doctor. + +“Perhaps I should rather say,” said Syme on his fingers, “that it +resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the heart +of lush woods.” + +His companion disdained to reply. + +“Or yet again,” tapped Syme, “it is positive, as is the passionate red +hair of a beautiful woman.” + +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it Syme +decided to act. He leant across the table, and said in a voice that +could not be neglected— + +“Dr. Bull!” + +The Doctor’s sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could have +sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme. + +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and courteous, +“would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take off +your spectacles?” + +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a sort +of frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his +life and fortune on the table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The +Doctor did not move. + +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a pin +drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. +Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles. + +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a chemical +lecturer from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars, and for +an instant he could only point without speaking. + +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his supposed +paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully at +Dr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes. +And indeed it was almost as great a transformation scene. + +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very +boyish-looking young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an open +expression, cockney clothes like those of a city clerk, and an +unquestionable breath about him of being very good and rather +commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might have been the +first smile of a baby. + +“I knew I was a poet,” cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. “I knew my +intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that did +it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, and all +the rest of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a live devil +among dead ones.” + +“It certainly does make a queer difference,” said the Professor +shakily. “But as regards the project of Dr. Bull—” + +“Project be damned!” roared Syme, beside himself. “Look at him! Look at +his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You don’t +suppose, do you, that that thing’s an anarchist?” + +“Syme!” cried the other in an apprehensive agony. + +“Why, by God,” said Syme, “I’ll take the risk of that myself! Dr. Bull, +I am a police officer. There’s my card,” and he flung down the blue +card upon the table. + +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He +pulled out his own official card and put it beside his friend’s. Then +the third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that morning +they heard his voice. + +“I’m awfully glad you chaps have come so early,” he said, with a sort +of schoolboy flippancy, “for we can all start for France together. Yes, +I’m in the force right enough,” and he flicked a blue card towards them +lightly as a matter of form. + +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin glasses, +the Doctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the others +instinctively followed him. Syme seemed a little distrait, and as he +passed under the doorway he suddenly struck his stick on the stone +passage so that it rang. + +“But Lord God Almighty,” he cried out, “if this is all right, there +were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the +damned Council!” + +“We might have fought easily,” said Bull; “we were four against three.” + +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from +below. + +“No,” said the voice, “we were not four against three—we were not so +lucky. We were four against One.” + +The others went down the stairs in silence. + +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic of +him, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there +his own robust rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he walked +quickly on ahead towards a railway inquiry office, talking to the +others over his shoulder. + +“It is jolly to get some pals,” he said. “I’ve been half dead with the +jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol and +embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won’t despise +me for having been in a blue funk.” + +“All the blue devils in blue hell,” said Syme, “contributed to my blue +funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.” + +The young man laughed delightedly. + +“Wasn’t it a rag?” he said. “Such a simple idea—not my own. I haven’t +got the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective service, +especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that purpose they wanted +someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by blazes that I +could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was +respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British +Constitution. They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and +too reliable and benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at +Scotland Yard. They said that if I had been a criminal, I might have +made my fortune by looking so like an honest man; but as I had the +misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even the remotest chance +of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But at last I was +brought before some old josser who was high up in the force, and who +seemed to have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others +all talked hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my +nice smile; another said that if they blacked my face I might look like +a negro anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most +extraordinary remark. ‘A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,’ he said +positively. ‘Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put +him on a pair of smoked spectacles, and children will scream at the +sight of him.’ And so it was, by George! When once my eyes were +covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and short hair, made me +look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was simple enough when it was +done, like miracles; but that wasn’t the really miraculous part of it. +There was one really staggering thing about the business, and my head +still turns at it.” + +“What was that?” asked Syme. + +“I’ll tell you,” answered the man in spectacles. “This big pot in the +police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go with my +hair and socks—by God, he never saw me at all!” + +Syme’s eyes suddenly flashed on him. + +“How was that?” he asked. “I thought you talked to him.” + +“So I did,” said Bull brightly; “but we talked in a pitch-dark room +like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that.” + +“I could not have conceived it,” said Syme gravely. + +“It is indeed a new idea,” said the Professor. + +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiry +office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover. +Having got his information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put +them and himself inside a railway carriage before they had properly +realised the breathless process. They were already on the Calais boat +before conversation flowed freely. + +“I had already arranged,” he explained, “to go to France for my lunch; +but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had to +send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President +had his eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some +day. It was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw +the President somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or +taking off his hat to me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you +can say what you like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be +in six places at once.” + +“So you sent the Marquis off, I understand,” asked the Professor. “Was +it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?” + +“Yes,” answered the new guide, “I’ve timed it all. He’ll still be at +Calais when we arrive.” + +“But when we do catch him at Calais,” said the Professor, “what are we +going to do?” + +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time. +He reflected a little, and then said— + +“Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.” + +“Not I,” said Syme. “Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. I +promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of +honour not to tell the police. I’m no hand at casuistry, but I can’t +break my word to a modern pessimist. It’s like breaking one’s word to a +child.” + +“I’m in the same boat,” said the Professor. “I tried to tell the police +and I couldn’t, because of some silly oath I took. You see, when I was +an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is the +only crime I haven’t committed. If I did that I shouldn’t know the +difference between right and wrong.” + +“I’ve been through all that,” said Dr. Bull, “and I’ve made up my mind. +I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know him, man who smiles upside +down. My friends, that man is the most utterly unhappy man that was +ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or his nerves, +or his philosophy of the universe, but he’s damned, he’s in hell! Well, +I can’t turn on a man like that, and hunt him down. It’s like whipping +a leper. I may be mad, but that’s how I feel; and there’s jolly well +the end of it.” + +“I don’t think you’re mad,” said Syme. “I knew you would decide like +that when first you—” + +“Eh?” said Dr. Bull. + +“When first you took off your spectacles.” + +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at the +sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, +and a companionable silence fell between the three men. + +“Well,” said Syme, “it seems that we have all the same kind of morality +or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of it.” + +“Yes,” assented the Professor, “you’re quite right; and we must hurry +up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.” + +“The fact that comes of it,” said Syme seriously, “is this, that we +three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are +three men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we +are worse off than that, first because they can appeal to their +organization and we cannot appeal to ours, and second because—” + +“Because one of those other three men,” said the Professor, “is not a +man.” + +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said— + +“My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calais +till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We +cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him +detained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows +us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on +anarchist business; he might swallow much in that way, but not the +notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris. +We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; but he is a +well-known man here. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is very +strong and brave, and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see +to do is actually to take advantage of the very things that are in the +Marquis’s favour. I am going to profit by the fact that he is a highly +respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the fact that he has many +friends and moves in the best society.” + +“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the Professor. + +“The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,” said Syme; +“but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at +Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.” + +“He’s gone off his head,” said the little Doctor, staring. + +“Our bearings,” continued Syme calmly, “are ‘argent a chevron gules +charged with three cross crosslets of the field.’ The motto varies.” + +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. + +“We are just inshore,” he said. “Are you seasick or joking in the wrong +place?” + +“My remarks are almost painfully practical,” answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. “The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. The +Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am a +gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite +beyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hat +off. But here we are in the harbour.” + +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who +had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a +kind of marine parade until he came to some cafés, embowered in a bulk +of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step +was slightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was +making apparently for the extreme end of the line of cafés, but he +stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but +he pointed with one gloved finger to a café table under a bank of +flowering foliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth +shining in his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by +a light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. + + + + +CHAPTER X. +THE DUEL + + +Syme sat down at a café table with his companions, his blue eyes +sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur +with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of +curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose +as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent of +nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the conversation +which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He +jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed +catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an +extraordinary rapidity of utterance. + +“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. +I shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say, +‘The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most exquisite +French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most exquisite Cockney, +‘Oh, just the Syme—’” + +“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself together, and +chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to do?” + +“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do let me +read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of +the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my +enemy.” + +“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in exasperation. + +“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, beaming. “When +the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs—” + +“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a +ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three +things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own +epigrams may appear somewhat more forced.” + +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. + +“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never thought of it. Sir, you +have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.” + +“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor. + +“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to adopt some +other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between +myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue +cannot be predicted by one of its parties alone (as you have pointed +out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose, +is for the one party, as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by +himself. And so I will, by George!” And he stood up suddenly, his +yellow hair blowing in the slight sea breeze. + +A band was playing in a _café chantant_ hidden somewhere among the +trees, and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme’s heated head the +bray of the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that +barrel-organ in Leicester Square, to the tune of which he had once +stood up to die. He looked across to the little table where the Marquis +sat. The man had two companions now, solemn Frenchmen in frock-coats +and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the Legion of +Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. Besides these +black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his loose straw hat and +light spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even barbaric; but he looked +the Marquis. Indeed, one might say that he looked the king, with his +animal elegance, his scornful eyes, and his proud head lifted against +the purple sea. But he was no Christian king, at any rate; he was, +rather, some swarthy despot, half Greek, half Asiatic, who in the days +when slavery seemed natural looked down on the Mediterranean, on his +galley and his groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, would the +brown-gold face of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green +olives and the burning blue. + +“Are you going to address the meeting?” asked the Professor peevishly, +seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. + +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. + +“I am,” he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +“that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting’s great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose.” + +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, seeing +him, arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but smiled +politely. + +“You are Mr. Syme, I think,” he said. + +Syme bowed. + +“And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache,” he said gracefully. +“Permit me to pull your nose.” + +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, upsetting +his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders. + +“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of explanation. + +“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, “when?” + +“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my mother.” + +“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. + +“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my aunt.” + +“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said the +second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting here +all the time.” + +“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly. + +“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something about the +band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.” + +“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt played +Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted +about it.” + +“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was _décoré_, +looking doubtfully at the Marquis. + +“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s +weaknesses.” + +“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one have said +nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl +with black hair.” + +“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My aunt’s was +red.” + +“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply seeking a +pretext to insult the Marquis.” + +“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, “what a clever +chap you are!” + +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger’s. + +“Seeking a quarrel with me!” he cried. “Seeking a fight with me! By +God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen will +perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. Let us +fight this evening.” + +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. + +“Marquis,” he said, “your action is worthy of your fame and blood. +Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose hands I +shall place myself.” + +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who had +seen his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic +explanations, were quite startled at the look of him. For now that he +came back to them he was quite sober, a little pale, and he spoke in a +low voice of passionate practicality. + +“I have done it,” he said hoarsely. “I have fixed a fight on the beast. +But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for talk. You are +my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must insist, and +insist absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven tomorrow, so as +to give me the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for +Paris. If he misses that he misses his crime. He can’t refuse to meet +you on such a small point of time and place. But this is what he will +do. He will choose a field somewhere near a wayside station, where he +can pick up the train. He is a very good swordsman, and he will trust +to killing me in time to catch it. But I can fence well too, and I +think I can keep him in play, at any rate, until the train is lost. +Then perhaps he may kill me to console his feelings. You understand? +Very well then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of mine,” +and leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to the +Marquis’s seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had not +previously heard. + +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a +part of his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about the +spectacles) poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the +exaltation of prophecy. + +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his opponent. +When the Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme could only fight +in the morning, he must fully have realised that an obstacle had +suddenly arisen between him and his bomb-throwing business in the +capital. Naturally he could not explain this objection to his friends, +so he chose the course which Syme had predicted. He induced his seconds +to settle on a small meadow not far from the railway, and he trusted to +the fatality of the first engagement. + +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have +guessed that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands were in his +pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his handsome face +brazen in the sun. But it might have struck a stranger as odd that +there appeared in his train, not only his seconds carrying the +sword-case, but two of his servants carrying a portmanteau and a +luncheon basket. + +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and Syme +was vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning gold and +silver in the tall grass in which the whole company stood almost +knee-deep. + +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and +solemn morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little +Doctor especially, with the addition of his black spectacles, looked +like an undertaker in a farce. Syme could not help feeling a comic +contrast between this funereal church parade of apparel and the rich +and glistening meadow, growing wild flowers everywhere. But, indeed, +this comic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the black hats was +but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the +black business. On his right was a little wood; far away to his left +lay the long curve of the railway line, which he was, so to speak, +guarding from the Marquis, whose goal and escape it was. In front of +him, behind the black group of his opponents, he could see, like a +tinted cloud, a small almond bush in flower against the faint line of +the sea. + +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was Colonel +Ducroix, approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great politeness, +and suggested that the play should terminate with the first +considerable hurt. + +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this +point of policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad French, +that it should continue until one of the combatants was disabled. Syme +had made up his mind that he could avoid disabling the Marquis and +prevent the Marquis from disabling him for at least twenty minutes. In +twenty minutes the Paris train would have gone by. + +“To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache,” said the Professor solemnly, “it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong +reasons for demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy of +which prevent me from being explicit, but for the just and honourable +nature of which I can—” + +“_Peste!_” broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had suddenly +darkened, “let us stop talking and begin,” and he slashed off the head +of a tall flower with his stick. + +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over his +shoulder to see whether the train was coming in sight. But there was no +smoke on the horizon. + +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a pair of +twin swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two streaks of white +fire. He offered one to the Marquis, who snatched it without ceremony, +and another to Syme, who took it, bent it, and poised it with as much +delay as was consistent with dignity. + +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one +himself and giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the men. + +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and stood +sword in hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line of fight with +drawn swords also, but still sombre in their dark frock-coats and hats. +The principals saluted. The Colonel said quietly, “Engage!” and the two +blades touched and tingled. + +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme’s arm, all the fantastic +fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like +dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in +order as mere delusions of the nerves—how the fear of the Professor had +been the fear of the tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear +of the Doctor had been the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The +first was the old fear that any miracle might happen, the second the +more hopeless modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw +that these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of +the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless +common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling +over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be +hanged. For as soon as he had seen the sunlight run down the channel of +his foe’s foreshortened blade, and as soon as he had felt the two +tongues of steel touch, vibrating like two living things, he knew that +his enemy was a terrible fighter, and that probably his last hour had +come. + +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the +grass under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living things. He +could almost fancy that he heard the grass growing; he could almost +fancy that even as he stood fresh flowers were springing up and +breaking into blossom in the meadow—flowers blood red and burning gold +and blue, fulfilling the whole pageant of the spring. And whenever his +eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, staring, hypnotic eyes of the +Marquis, they saw the little tuft of almond tree against the sky-line. +He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped he would be ready +to sit for ever before that almond tree, desiring nothing else in the +world. + +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a thing +lost, the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and he was +parrying his enemy’s point with a kind of clockwork skill of which he +had hardly supposed himself capable. Once his enemy’s point ran along +his wrist, leaving a slight streak of blood, but it either was not +noticed or was tacitly ignored. Every now and then he _riposted_, and +once or twice he could almost fancy that he felt his point go home, but +as there was no blood on blade or shirt he supposed he was mistaken. +Then came an interruption and a change. + +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet stare, +flashed one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway on his +right. Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend, +and began to fight as if with twenty weapons. The attack came so fast +and furious, that the one shining sword seemed a shower of shining +arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the railway; but also he had no +need. He could guess the reason of the Marquis’s sudden madness of +battle—the Paris train was in sight. + +But the Marquis’s morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent’s point far out of the fighting circle; +and the third time his _riposte_ was so rapid, that there was no doubt +about the hit this time. Syme’s sword actually bent under the weight of +the Marquis’s body, which it had pierced. + +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a +gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis +sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring +at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it at all. + +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell +furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis +was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, as he had +surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis seemed +distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even weakly, and +he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost as if he feared +the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the other hand, fought +fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual fury, eager to solve +the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For this purpose, he aimed less +at the Marquis’s body, and more at his throat and head. A minute and a +half afterwards he felt his point enter the man’s neck below the jaw. +It came out clean. Half mad, he thrust again, and made what should have +been a bloody scar on the Marquis’s cheek. But there was no scar. + +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with supernatural +terrors. Surely the man had a charmed life. But this new spiritual +dread was a more awful thing than had been the mere spiritual +topsy-turvydom symbolised by the paralytic who pursued him. The +Professor was only a goblin; this man was a devil—perhaps he was the +Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three times had a human sword +been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had that thought he +drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang high up in the air +as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of all the human things +in his story—of the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of the girl’s red +hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by the +dock, of his loyal companions standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen +as a champion of all these fresh and kindly things to cross swords with +the enemy of all creation. “After all,” he said to himself, “I am more +than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself +cannot do—I can die,” and as the word went through his head, he heard a +faint and far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris +train. + +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a Mohammedan +panting for Paradise. As the train came nearer and nearer he fancied he +could see people putting up the floral arches in Paris; he joined in +the growing noise and the glory of the great Republic whose gate he was +guarding against Hell. His thoughts rose higher and higher with the +rising roar of the train, which ended, as if proudly, in a long and +piercing whistle. The train stopped. + +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back quite +out of sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was wonderful, +and not the less wonderful because Syme had plunged his sword a moment +before into the man’s thigh. + +“Stop!” said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. “I want to say something.” + +“What is the matter?” asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. “Has there been +foul play?” + +“There has been foul play somewhere,” said Dr. Bull, who was a little +pale. “Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times at least, and +he is none the worse.” + +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly patience. + +“Please let me speak,” he said. “It is rather important. Mr. Syme,” he +continued, turning to his opponent, “we are fighting today, if I +remember right, because you expressed a wish (which I thought +irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by pulling my nose now +as quickly as possible? I have to catch a train.” + +“I protest that this is most irregular,” said Dr. Bull indignantly. + +“It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent,” said Colonel Ducroix, +looking wistfully at his principal. “There is, I think, one case on +record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in which the weapons +were changed in the middle of the encounter at the request of one of +the combatants. But one can hardly call one’s nose a weapon.” + +“Will you or will you not pull my nose?” said the Marquis in +exasperation. “Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! You +can have no conception of how important it is to me. Don’t be so +selfish! Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!” and he bent slightly +forward with a fascinating smile. The Paris train, panting and +groaning, had grated into a little station behind the neighbouring +hill. + +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures—the +sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was just +toppling over. Walking in a world he half understood, he took two paces +forward and seized the Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. He +pulled it hard, and it came off in his hand. + +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard +proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and +the clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this imbecile scene. + +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. + +“If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow,” he said, “he can have it. +Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It’s the kind of thing that +might come in useful any day,” and he gravely tore off one of his +swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown forehead with it, +and politely offered it to the Colonel, who stood crimson and +speechless with rage. + +“If I had known,” he spluttered, “that I was acting for a poltroon who +pads himself to fight—” + +“Oh, I know, I know!” said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. “You are making a +mistake; but it can’t be explained just now. I tell you the train has +come into the station!” + +“Yes,” said Dr. Bull fiercely, “and the train shall go out of the +station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil’s work—” + +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. He +was a strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his old +face peeled off, and half another face glaring and grinning from +underneath. + +“Will you drive me mad?” he cried. “The train—” + +“You shall not go by the train,” said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. + +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering itself +for a sublime effort before speaking. + +“You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, +Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!” he said without taking breath. +“You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! You—” + +“You shall not go by this train,” repeated Syme. + +“And why the infernal blazes,” roared the other, “should I want to go +by the train?” + +“We know all,” said the Professor sternly. “You are going to Paris to +throw a bomb!” + +“Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!” cried the other, tearing his +hair, which came off easily. “Have you all got softening of the brain, +that you don’t realise what I am? Did you really think I wanted to +catch that train? Twenty Paris trains might go by for me. Damn Paris +trains!” + +“Then what did you care about?” began the Professor. + +“What did I care about? I didn’t care about catching the train; I cared +about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has caught me.” + +“I regret to inform you,” said Syme with restraint, “that your remarks +convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to remove the +remains of your original forehead and some portion of what was once +your chin, your meaning would become clearer. Mental lucidity fulfils +itself in many ways. What do you mean by saying that the train has +caught you? It may be my literary fancy, but somehow I feel that it +ought to mean something.” + +“It means everything,” said the other, “and the end of everything. +Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand.” + +“Us!” repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. “What do you mean by +‘us’?” + +“The police, of course!” said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp and +half his face. + +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired head +which is common in the English constabulary, but the face was terribly +pale. + +“I am Inspector Ratcliffe,” he said, with a sort of haste that verged +on harshness. “My name is pretty well known to the police, and I can +see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt +about my position, I have a card,” and he began to pull a blue card +from his pocket. + +The Professor gave a tired gesture. + +“Oh, don’t show it us,” he said wearily; “we’ve got enough of them to +equip a paper-chase.” + +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a mere +vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he certainly +saved the situation. In the midst of this staggering transformation +scene he stepped forward with all the gravity and responsibility of a +second, and addressed the two seconds of the Marquis. + +“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all owe you a serious apology; but I assure +you that you have not been made the victims of such a low joke as you +imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of honour. You have +not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not +buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. A +secret society of anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such +unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a bomb through starvation +or German philosophy, but a rich and powerful and fanatical church, a +church of eastern pessimism, which holds it holy to destroy mankind +like vermin. How hard they hunt us you can gather from the fact that we +are driven to such disguises as those for which I apologise, and to +such pranks as this one by which you suffer.” + +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black moustache, +bowed politely, and said— + +“Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive me +if I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and permit +myself to say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and +distinguished fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is +unusual, and, upon the whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel Ducroix, +I would in no way influence your actions, but if you feel with me that +our present society is a little abnormal, I am now going to walk back +to the town.” + +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his +white moustache and broke out— + +“No, by George! I won’t. If these gentlemen are really in a mess with a +lot of low wreckers like that, I’ll see them through it. I have fought +for France, and it is hard if I can’t fight for civilization.” + +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public +meeting. + +“Don’t make too much noise,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “Sunday may hear +you.” + +“Sunday!” cried Bull, and dropped his hat. + +“Yes,” retorted Ratcliffe, “he may be with them.” + +“With whom?” asked Syme. + +“With the people out of that train,” said the other. + +“What you say seems utterly wild,” began Syme. “Why, as a matter of +fact—But, my God,” he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an +explosion a long way off, “by God! if this is true the whole bally lot +of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man was +a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can +it mean?” + +“Mean!” said the new policeman with incredible violence. “It means that +we are struck dead! Don’t you know Sunday? Don’t you know that his +jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of them? +Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should +put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care +that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has +captured every cable, he has control of every railway line—especially +of _that_ railway line!” and he pointed a shaking finger towards the +small wayside station. “The whole movement was controlled by him; half +the world was ready to rise for him. But there were just five people, +perhaps, who would have resisted him... and the old devil put them on +the Supreme Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots +that we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the +Professor would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would fight me +in France. And he was combining great masses of capital, and seizing +great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were running after each +other like a lot of confounded babies playing blind man’s buff.” + +“Well?” asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. + +“Well,” replied the other with sudden serenity, “he has found us +playing blind man’s buff today in a field of great rustic beauty and +extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains +to him to capture this field and all the fools in it. And since you +really want to know what was my objection to the arrival of that train, +I will tell you. My objection was that Sunday or his Secretary has just +this moment got out of it.” + +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes towards +the far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable bulk of +people seemed to be moving in their direction. But they were too +distant to be distinguished in any way. + +“It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache,” said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, “always to carry a pair of opera +glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with +that mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place where we are under +no temptations to break our oaths by calling the police. Dr. Bull, I +have a suspicion that you will see better through these than through +your own highly decorative spectacles.” + +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took off his +spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. + +“It cannot be as bad as you say,” said the Professor, somewhat shaken. +“There are a good number of them certainly, but they may easily be +ordinary tourists.” + +“Do ordinary tourists,” asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his eyes, +“wear black masks half-way down the face?” + +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through them. +Most men in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; but it was +quite true that two or three of the leaders in front wore black +half-masks almost down to their mouths. This disguise is very complete, +especially at such a distance, and Syme found it impossible to conclude +anything from the clean-shaven jaws and chins of the men talking in the +front. But presently as they talked they all smiled and one of them +smiled on one side. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + + +Syme put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly relief. + +“The President is not with them, anyhow,” he said, and wiped his +forehead. + +“But surely they are right away on the horizon,” said the bewildered +Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull’s hasty though +polite explanation. “Could you possibly know your President among all +those people?” + +“Could I know a white elephant among all those people!” answered Syme +somewhat irritably. “As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; +but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe this ground would +shake.” + +After an instant’s pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with gloomy +decision— + +“Of course the President isn’t with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, or +sitting on the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” + +“This is absurd!” said Syme. “Something may have happened in our +absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like that. It +is quite true,” he added, frowning dubiously at the distant fields that +lay towards the little station, “it is certainly true that there seems +to be a crowd coming this way; but they are not all the army that you +make out.” + +“Oh, they,” said the new detective contemptuously; “no, they are not a +very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they are +precisely calculated to our value—we are not much, my boy, in Sunday’s +universe. He has got hold of all the cables and telegraphs himself. But +to kill the Supreme Council he regards as a trivial matter, like a post +card; it may be left to his private secretary,” and he spat on the +grass. + +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely— + +“There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has any +preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him to walk +after me.” + +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent +energy towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their +shoulders, and saw that the dark cloud of men had detached itself from +the station and was moving with a mysterious discipline across the +plain. They saw already, even with the naked eye, black blots on the +foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. They turned and +followed their leader, who had already struck the wood, and disappeared +among the twinkling trees. + +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood they +had a cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a dim pool. +The inside of the wood was full of shattered sunlight and shaken +shadows. They made a sort of shuddering veil, almost recalling the +dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the solid figures walking with him +Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and shade that danced +upon them. Now a man’s head was lit as with a light of Rembrandt, +leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring white +hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw +hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so +squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black +half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming +sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was +anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men’s faces turned +black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into +sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of +chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a +perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, +this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and +their noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence +which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had +strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend. +He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a +friend and what an enemy. Was there anything that was apart from what +it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a +detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to +be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering +woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the +glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had +found in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters +had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call +Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which +can find no floor to the universe. + +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme +strove with a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of his +fancies. With two impatient strides he overtook the man in the +Marquis’s straw hat, the man whom he had come to address as Ratcliffe. +In a voice exaggeratively loud and cheerful, he broke the bottomless +silence and made conversation. + +“May I ask,” he said, “where on earth we are all going to?” + +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad to +hear his companion speak in an easy, human voice. + +“We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea,” he said. “I +think that part of the country is least likely to be with them.” + +“What can you mean by all this?” cried Syme. “They can’t be running the +real world in that way. Surely not many working men are anarchists, and +surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat modern armies and +police.” + +“Mere mobs!” repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. “So you +talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. +You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come +from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have +never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in +there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in +the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a +yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the +rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were +always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars.” + +“As a lecture on English history for the little ones,” said Syme, “this +is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application.” + +“Its application is,” said his informant, “that most of old Sunday’s +right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why +he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last +four champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a +wood like rabbits.” + +“Millionaires I can understand,” said Syme thoughtfully, “they are +nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with +hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is +another. I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that +Sunday would stand perfectly helpless before the task of converting any +ordinary healthy person anywhere.” + +“Well,” said the other, “it rather depends what sort of person you +mean.” + +“Well, for instance,” said Syme, “he could never convert that person,” +and he pointed straight in front of him. + +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to +Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this +forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that common +sense in an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with +perspiration, and grave with the bottomless gravity of small necessary +toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting wood with a hatchet. His cart +stood a few yards off, already half full of timber; and the horse that +cropped the grass was, like his master, valorous but not desperate; +like his master, he was even prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The +man was a Norman, taller than the average of the French and very +angular; and his swarthy figure stood dark against a square of +sunlight, almost like some allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a +ground of gold. + +“Mr. Syme is saying,” called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, “that +this man, at least, will never be an anarchist.” + +“Mr. Syme is right enough there,” answered Colonel Ducroix, laughing, +“if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to defend. But I +forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being +wealthy.” + +“He looks poor,” said Dr. Bull doubtfully. + +“Quite so,” said the Colonel; “that is why he is rich.” + +“I have an idea,” called out Dr. Bull suddenly; “how much would he take +to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we could +soon leave them behind.” + +“Oh, give him anything!” said Syme eagerly. “I have piles of money on +me.” + +“That will never do,” said the Colonel; “he will never have any respect +for you unless you drive a bargain.” + +“Oh, if he haggles!” began Bull impatiently. + +“He haggles because he is a free man,” said the other. “You do not +understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being +tipped.” + +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange +pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French +Colonel talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely +badinage and bickering of market-day. At the end of the four minutes, +however, they saw that the Colonel was right, for the wood-cutter +entered into their plans, not with the vague servility of a tout +too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor who had been +paid the proper fee. He told them that the best thing they could do was +to make their way down to the little inn on the hills above Lancy, +where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had become _dévot_ in his +latter years, would be certain to sympathise with them, and even to +take risks in their support. The whole company, therefore, piled +themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and went rocking in the rude +cart down the other and steeper side of the woodland. Heavy and +ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they +soon had the exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, +whoever they were, who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as +to where the anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. +One man’s presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first +sight of the deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and then +looked back over his shoulder at the army on their track. + +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could +see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was +still moving the square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the +very strong sunlight and with his own very strong eyes, which were +almost telescopic, Syme could see this mass of men quite plainly. He +could see them as separate human figures; but he was increasingly +surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. They seemed to be +dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd out of +the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various +lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved +with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of +automatons. + +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. + +“Yes,” replied the policeman, “that’s discipline. That’s Sunday. He is +perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of them, +like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and you bet +your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking +regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they are +disappearing regularly.” + +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was +growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse. + +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on +the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, +in a way not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only +difference was that in Sussex the road would have been broken and +angular like a little brook, but here the white French road fell sheer +in front of them like a waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart +clattered at a considerable angle, and in a few minutes, the road +growing yet steeper, they saw below them the little harbour of Lancy +and a great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. + +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the +horse’s nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting +on the benches outside the little café of “Le Soleil d’Or.” The peasant +grunted an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also +descended one by one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary +phrases of courtesy, for it was quite evident from his expansive manner +that he was the owner of the little tavern. + +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey +moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may +often be found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. +Everything about him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his +beehive, suggested an ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up +as they entered the inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall. + +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly +into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. +The military decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to +him, and he took the opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of +satisfying his curiosity. + +“May I ask you, Colonel,” he said in a low voice, “why we have come +here?” + +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. + +“For two reasons, sir,” he said; “and I will give first, not the most +important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the +only place within twenty miles in which we can get horses.” + +“Horses!” repeated Syme, looking up quickly. + +“Yes,” replied the other; “if you people are really to distance your +enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you have +bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket.” + +“And where do you advise us to make for?” asked Syme doubtfully. + +“Beyond question,” replied the Colonel, “you had better make all haste +to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded under +somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much +the possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly +maintain, I suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes.” + +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly— + +“And your other reason for coming here?” + +“My other reason for coming here,” said Ducroix soberly, “is that it is +just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to +death.” + +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic +religious picture. Then he said— + +“You are right,” and then almost immediately afterwards, “Has anyone +seen about the horses?” + +“Yes,” answered Ducroix, “you may be quite certain that I gave orders +the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of +hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a +well-trained army. I had no idea that the anarchists had so much +discipline. You have not a moment to waste.” + +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair +came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled +outside. + +By Ducroix’s advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as +the only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white +road. The two servants, who had carried the Marquis’s luggage when he +was a marquis, were left behind to drink at the café by common consent, +and not at all against their own inclination. + +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays +Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller +and smaller, but still standing and looking after them quite silently, +the sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, +left in his mind by the chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was +indeed, perhaps, the last honest stranger whom he should ever see upon +the earth. + +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere +grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of +the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down +behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching +men. They seemed to hang above the good man and his house like a black +cloud of locusts. The horses had been saddled none too soon. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + + +Urging the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged +descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over +the men on the march, and at last the bulk of the first buildings of +Lancy cut off the sight of their pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had +been a long one, and by the time they reached the real town the west +was warming with the colour and quality of sunset. The Colonel +suggested that, before making finally for the police station, they +should make the effort, in passing, to attach to themselves one more +individual who might be useful. + +“Four out of the five rich men in this town,” he said, “are common +swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. +The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even +more important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car.” + +“I am afraid,” said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back +along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at +any moment, “I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls.” + +“Doctor Renard’s house is only three minutes off,” said the Colonel. + +“Our danger,” said Dr. Bull, “is not two minutes off.” + +“Yes,” said Syme, “if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, for +they are on foot.” + +“He has a motor-car,” said the Colonel. + +“But we may not get it,” said Bull. + +“Yes, he is quite on your side.” + +“But he might be out.” + +“Hold your tongue,” said Syme suddenly. “What is that noise?” + +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a +second—for two or three or four seconds—heaven and earth seemed equally +still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the +road that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one +thing—horses! + +The Colonel’s face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had +struck it, and yet left it scatheless. + +“They have done us,” he said, with brief military irony. “Prepare to +receive cavalry!” + +“Where can they have got the horses?” asked Syme, as he mechanically +urged his steed to a canter. + +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice— + +“I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the ‘Soleil d’Or’ +was the only place where one can get horses within twenty miles.” + +“No!” said Syme violently, “I don’t believe he’d do it. Not with all +that white hair.” + +“He may have been forced,” said the Colonel gently. “They must be at +least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my +friend Renard, who has a motor-car.” + +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and +went down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, +though already well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the +flying tail of his horse. + +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep +street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once +more see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the white road across +it, standing up above all the roofs of the town. They breathed again to +see that the road as yet was clear, and they rang the bell. + +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that +silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved even +more perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to him he +pooh-poohed the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the +solid French scepticism, that there was no conceivable probability of a +general anarchist rising. “Anarchy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, +“it is childishness!” + +“_Et ça_,” cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other’s +shoulder, “and that is childishness, isn’t it?” + +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping +over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they +rode, however, the whole rank still kept well together, and they could +see the black vizards of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. +But although the main black square was the same, though travelling +faster, there was now one sensational difference which they could see +clearly upon the slope of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk +of the riders were in one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the +column, and with frantic movements of hand and heel urged his horse +faster and faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the +pursuer but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they knew +it was the Secretary himself. “I am sorry to cut short a cultured +discussion,” said the Colonel, “but can you lend me your motor-car now, +in two minutes?” + +“I have a suspicion that you are all mad,” said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; “but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage.” + +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like +the Musée de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he +seemed to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French +middle class, and when his impatient friends came to examine them, it +took them some time to assure themselves that one of them even could be +made to work. This with some difficulty they brought round into the +street before the Doctor’s house. When they came out of the dim garage +they were startled to find that twilight had already fallen with the +abruptness of night in the tropics. Either they had been longer in the +place than they imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud had gathered +over the town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to see a +slight mist coming up from the sea. + +“It is now or never,” said Dr. Bull. “I hear horses.” + +“No,” corrected the Professor, “a horse.” + +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming +nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade +but that of the one horseman, who had left it far behind—the insane +Secretary. + +Syme’s family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once +owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into +the chauffeur’s seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging +at the disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and +then said quite quietly— + +“I am afraid it’s no go.” + +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing +horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that +thrust out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the +stationary car, into which its company had crowded, and laid his hand +on the front. It was the Secretary, and his mouth went quite straight +in the solemnity of triumph. + +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound +but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there +came quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt +forward. It plucked the Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife +is whipped out of its sheath, trailed him kicking terribly for twenty +yards, and left him flung flat upon the road far in front of his +frightened horse. As the car took the corner of the street with a +splendid curve, they could just see the other anarchists filling the +street and raising their fallen leader. + +“I can’t understand why it has grown so dark,” said the Professor at +last in a low voice. + +“Going to be a storm, I think,” said Dr. Bull. “I say, it’s a pity we +haven’t got a light on this car, if only to see by.” + +“We have,” said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up +a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. It +was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had +been in some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a +cross upon one of its sides. + +“Where on earth did you get that?” asked the Professor. + +“I got it where I got the car,” answered the Colonel, chuckling, “from +my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the steering +wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who +was standing in his own porch, you will remember. ‘I suppose,’ I said, +‘there’s no time to get a lamp.’ He looked up, blinking amiably at the +beautiful arched ceiling of his own front hall. From this was +suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the +hundred treasures of his treasure house. By sheer force he tore the +lamp out of his own ceiling, shattering the painted panels, and +bringing down two blue vases with his violence. Then he handed me the +iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was I not right when I said that +Dr. Renard was worth knowing?” + +“You were,” said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the +front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the +contrast between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical +lamp. Hitherto they had passed through the quietest part of the town, +meeting at most one or two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of +the peace or the hostility of the place. Now, however, the windows in +the houses began one by one to be lit up, giving a greater sense of +habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned to the new detective who had +led their flight, and permitted himself one of his natural and friendly +smiles. + +“These lights make one feel more cheerful.” + +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. + +“There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful,” he said, +“and they are those lights of the police station which I can see beyond +the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes.” + +Then all Bull’s boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of +him. + +“Oh, this is all raving nonsense!” he cried. “If you really think that +ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be madder +than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the +whole town would fight for us.” + +“No,” said the other with an immovable simplicity, “the whole town +would fight for them. We shall see.” + +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden +excitement. + +“What is that noise?” he said. + +“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 +heathen. 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. + +“Swords!” shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three behind +him. “Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die.” + +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme’s sword was +broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging +him down. In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of +the mob and perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever +since Syme’s speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if +dazed; now he suddenly pulled off his black mask. + +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as +astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. + +“There is some mistake,” he said. “Mr. Syme, I hardly think you +understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law.” + +“Of the law?” said Syme, and dropped his stick. + +“Certainly!” said the Secretary. “I am a detective from Scotland Yard,” +and he took a small blue card from his pocket. + +“And what do you suppose we are?” asked the Professor, and threw up his +arms. + +“You,” said the Secretary stiffly, “are, as I know for a fact, members +of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I—” + +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. + +“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We were all +a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice +people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the +dynamiters. I knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming +over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on +both sides. “Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I +know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + + +Next morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for +Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, +having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn’t exist, +and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous +old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither party had anything +to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier with great geniality. + +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each +other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks +originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as +fellow-conspirators. + +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a +civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be +explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not +explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what +was Sunday? If he had not seized the world, what on earth had he been +up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this. + +“I can’t make head or tail of old Sunday’s little game any more than +you can,” he said. “But whatever else Sunday is, he isn’t a blameless +citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?” + +“I grant you,” answered Syme, “that I have never been able to forget +it.” + +“Well,” said the Secretary, “I suppose we can find out soon, for +tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me,” he +said, with a rather ghastly smile, “for being well acquainted with my +secretarial duties.” + +“I suppose you are right,” said the Professor reflectively. “I suppose +we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit +afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.” + +“Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?” + +“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.” + +“Let us have some drinks,” said Dr. Bull, after a silence. + +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly +convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had +always been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the +other four that the whole company could take the same hansom cab from +Victoria; but this was overruled, and they went in a four-wheeler, +with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They finished their journey at an +hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close to the early breakfast +next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even then the adventures of the +day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, discontented with the general +proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the hotel at about eleven to +see and taste some of the beauties of London. Twenty minutes +afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in the hall. +Syme, who tried at first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to +his communication with quite new attention. + +“I tell you I’ve seen him!” said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis. + +“Whom?” asked Syme quickly. “Not the President?” + +“Not so bad as that,” said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, “not so +bad as that. I’ve got him here.” + +“Got whom here?” asked Syme impatiently. + +“Hairy man,” said the other lucidly, “man that used to be hairy +man—Gogol. Here he is,” and he pulled forward by a reluctant elbow the +identical young man who five days before had marched out of the Council +with thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham +anarchists who had been exposed. + +“Why do you worry with me?” he cried. “You have expelled me as a spy.” + +“We are all spies!” whispered Syme. + +“We’re all spies!” shouted Dr. Bull. “Come and have a drink.” + +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards +the hotel in Leicester Square. + +“This is more cheerful,” said Dr. Bull; “we are six men going to ask +one man what he means.” + +“I think it is a bit queerer than that,” said Syme. “I think it is six +men going to ask one man what they mean.” + +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the +opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that +looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over +a newspaper. But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, +crossed that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred +eyes. + +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should +leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether +they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The +influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the +Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly. + +“My reason is quite simple,” said Syme. “I attack him rashly because I +am afraid of him.” + +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out +simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad +sunlight of Sunday’s smile. + +“Delightful!” he said. “So pleased to see you all. What an exquisite +day it is. Is the Czar dead?” + +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a +dignified outburst. + +“No, sir,” he said sternly “there has been no massacre. I bring you +news of no such disgusting spectacles.” + +“Disgusting spectacles?” repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. “You mean Dr. Bull’s spectacles?” + +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a +sort of smooth appeal— + +“Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to +call them disgusting before the man himself—” + +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. + +“My spectacles are blackguardly,” he said, “but I’m not. Look at my +face.” + +“I dare say it’s the sort of face that grows on one,” said the +President, “in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the +wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some +day.” + +“We have no time for tomfoolery,” said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. “We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What +are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? +Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever +man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you.” + +“Candidates,” murmured Sunday, “are only required to answer eight out +of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you +want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table +is, and what this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. +Well, I will go so far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want +to know what you are, you are a set of highly well-intentioned young +jackasses.” + +“And you,” said Syme, leaning forward, “what are you?” + +“I? What am I?” roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and +break. “You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of +science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about +them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell +you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and +the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the +sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, +and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have +hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the +churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, +and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a +good run for their money, and I will now.” + +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like +some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before +he dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and +thrusting his great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly— + +“There’s one thing I’ll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in +the dark room, who made you all policemen.” + +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a +great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of +the Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The +six detectives had been standing thunderstruck and livid in the light +of his last assertion; but when he disappeared into the cab, Syme’s +practical senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so +recklessly as almost to break his legs, he called another cab. + +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the +Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol +scrambled into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who was +pursuing the flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase towards the +north-west, his cabman, evidently under the influence of more than +common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was +in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in his own cab shouting, +“Stop thief!” until crowds ran along beside his cab, and policemen +began to stop and ask questions. All this had its influence upon the +President’s cabman, who began to look dubious, and to slow down to a +trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably to his fare, and in so +doing let the long whip droop over the front of the cab. Sunday leant +forward, seized it, and jerked it violently out of the man’s hand. Then +standing up in front of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared +aloud, so that they went down the streets like a flying storm. Through +street after street and square after square went whirling this +preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and the +driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after +it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. Shops +and streets shot by like rattling arrows. + +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard +where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, +with white hair whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his +pursuers, like some colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand +swiftly, he flung a ball of paper in Syme’s face and vanished. Syme +caught the thing while instinctively warding it off, and discovered +that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself, +and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it is to be feared +partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. Bull’s address +was, at any rate, considerably longer than his communication, for the +communication consisted entirely of the words:— + +“What about Martin Tupper _now?_” + + +“What does the old maniac mean?” asked Bull, staring at the words. +“What does yours say, Syme?” + +Syme’s message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:— + +“No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the +Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the +last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially +after what uncle said.” + + +The President’s cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his +horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the +Edgware Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a +providential stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or +left or stopping, for down the long road was coming the unmistakable +roar announcing the fire-engine, which in a few seconds went by like a +brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went by, Sunday had bounded out of +his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, caught it, slung himself on to it, +and was seen as he disappeared in the noisy distance talking to the +astonished fireman with explanatory gestures. + +“After him!” howled Syme. “He can’t go astray now. There’s no mistaking +a fire-engine.” + +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their +horses and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their +disappearing prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming +to the back of the car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and +finally flinging a neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector +Ratcliffe. When that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he +found it contained the words:— + +“Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known.—A +FRIEND.” + + +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region +that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings +shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat +relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though +whether through another whim or the increasing protest of his +entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, however, could +reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings like a huge grey +cat, tossed himself over, and vanished in a darkness of leaves. + +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang +also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his +friends were following, he turned a face on them which shone quite pale +in the shadow. + +“What place can this be?” he asked. “Can it be the old devil’s house? +I’ve heard he has a house in North London.” + +“All the better,” said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a +foothold, “we shall find him at home.” + +“No, but it isn’t that,” said Syme, knitting his brows. “I hear the +most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and blowing +their devilish noses!” + +“His dogs barking, of course,” said the Secretary. + +“Why not say his black-beetles barking!” said Syme furiously, “snails +barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like that?” + +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling +roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh—a low +thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them. + +“The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs,” said Gogol, and +shuddered. + +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening +impatiently. + +“Well, listen to that,” he said, “is that a dog—anybody’s dog?” + +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting +and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what +sounded like a long nasal trumpet. + +“Well, his house ought to be hell!” said the Secretary; “and if it is +hell, I’m going in!” and he sprang over the tall railings almost with +one swing. + +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs, +and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull +suddenly struck his hands together. + +“Why, you asses,” he cried, “it’s the Zoo!” + +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a +keeper in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain +clothes. + +“Has it come this way?” gasped the keeper. + +“Has what?” asked Syme. + +“The elephant!” cried the keeper. “An elephant has gone mad and run +away!” + +“He has run away with an old gentleman,” said the other stranger +breathlessly, “a poor old gentleman with white hair!” + +“What sort of old gentleman?” asked Syme, with great curiosity. + +“A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes,” said the +keeper eagerly. + +“Well,” said Syme, “if he’s that particular kind of old gentleman, if +you’re quite sure that he’s a large and fat old gentleman in grey +clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has not run away +with him. He has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not made +by God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the +elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!” + +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass, +about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering +vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with +his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship’s bowsprit, and trumpeting like +the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal +sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading +the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object in his hand. + +“Stop him!” screamed the populace. “He’ll be out of the gate!” + +“Stop a landslide!” said the keeper. “He is out of the gate!” + +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that +the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological +Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort +of omnibus. + +“Great Lord!” cried Bull, “I never knew an elephant could go so fast. +Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight.” + +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished, +Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which +they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen +them so clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their +preposterous, pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the +symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity +to admire a pelican. He remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge +yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a +sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was +always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they +would understand him when they had understood the stars. He wondered +whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. + +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the +elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of +the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the +solid stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if +possible, more than his previous mockeries. Just before they came to +Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw something far up into the +air, as a boy does a ball meaning to catch it again. But at their rate +of racing it fell far behind, just by the cab containing Gogol; and in +faint hope of a clue or for some impulse unexplainable, he stopped his +cab so as to pick it up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite a +bulky parcel. On examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of +thirty-three pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. +When the last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip +of paper, on which was written:— + +“The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.” + + +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his +hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed +efforts. + +Through street after street, through district after district, went the +prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and +driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane +publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be +regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a +circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened beyond +belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he thought that +he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even more fast and +free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, and +he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line where the enormous +Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and +larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars. + +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners, +and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition +they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous +crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and +shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the President had +disappeared. + +“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground. + +“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir. +Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.” + +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the +Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.” + +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:— + +“When the herring runs a mile, +Let the Secretary smile; +When the herring tries to _fly_, +Let the Secretary die. + Rustic Proverb.” + + +“Why the eternal crikey,” began the Secretary, “did you let the man in? +Do people commonly come to your Exhibition riding on mad elephants? +Do—” + +“Look!” shouted Syme suddenly. “Look over there!” + +“Look at what?” asked the Secretary savagely. + +“Look at the captive balloon!” said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. + +“Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?” demanded the +Secretary. “What is there queer about a captive balloon?” + +“Nothing,” said Syme, “except that it isn’t captive!” + +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above +the Exhibition on a string, like a child’s balloon. A second afterwards +the string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken +loose, floated away with the freedom of a soap bubble. + +“Ten thousand devils!” shrieked the Secretary. “He’s got into it!” and +he shook his fists at the sky. + +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they +could see the great white head of the President peering over the side +and looking benevolently down on them. + +“God bless my soul!” said the Professor with the elderly manner that he +could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. “God +bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my +hat!” + +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted +paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true +lover’s knot and, the words:— + +“Your beauty has not left me indifferent.—From LITTLE SNOWDROP.” + + +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard— + +“I’m not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. Let’s +follow it!” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + + +Across green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six +draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of +the party had at first proposed that they should follow the balloon +across South England in hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of +the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the +still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon. +Consequently the tireless though exasperated travellers broke through +black thickets and ploughed through ploughed fields till each was +turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. Those +green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the +admirable light grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. +His silk hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his +coat-tails were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of +England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow +beard forward with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes +were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush +of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. + +“After all,” he said, “it is very beautiful!” + +“It is singularly and strangely beautiful!” said the Professor. “I wish +the beastly gas-bag would burst!” + +“No,” said Dr. Bull, “I hope it won’t. It might hurt the old boy.” + +“Hurt him!” said the vindictive Professor, “hurt him! Not as much as +I’d hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!” + +“I don’t want him hurt, somehow,” said Dr. Bull. + +“What!” cried the Secretary bitterly. “Do you believe all that tale +about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody.” + +“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” said Dr. Bull. “But it +isn’t that that I mean. I can’t wish old Sunday’s balloon to burst +because—” + +“Well,” said Syme impatiently, “because?” + +“Well, because he’s so jolly like a balloon himself,” said Dr. Bull +desperately. “I don’t understand a word of all that idea of his being +the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don’t care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a +great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It +didn’t prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I +say that I liked him because he was so fat?” + +“You will not,” said the Secretary. + +“I’ve got it now,” cried Bull, “it was because he was so fat and so +light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but +he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate +strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It +was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could +leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?” + +“Our elephant,” said Syme, looking upwards, “has leapt into the sky +like a grasshopper.” + +“And somehow,” concluded Bull, “that’s why I can’t help liking old +Sunday. No, it’s not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like +that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting +with some good news. Haven’t you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You +know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are +good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they +laugh at is literal truth, ‘Why leap ye, ye high hills?’ The hills do +leap—at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell +you?... because he’s such a Bounder.” + +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, +strained voice— + +“You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better +than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle +morbid from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us +all, chose me because I had all the crazy look of a conspirator—because +my smile went crooked, and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But +there must have been something in me that answered to the nerves in all +these anarchic men. For when I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not +your airy vitality, but something both gross and sad in the Nature of +Things. I found him smoking in a twilight room, a room with brown blind +down, infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in which our +master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark and +out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or even +stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked my most +eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing began to +shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. It shook like +a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of everything I had ever +read about the base bodies that are the origin of life—the deep sea +lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like the final form of matter, the most +shapeless and the most shameful. I could only tell myself, from its +shudderings, that it was something at least that such a monster could +be miserable. And then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was +shaking with a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask +me to forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by +something at once lower and stronger than oneself.” + +“Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly,” cut in the clear voice of +Inspector Ratcliffe. “President Sunday is a terrible fellow for one’s +intellect, but he is not such a Barnum’s freak physically as you make +out. He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in +broad daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I’ll tell you +what is a trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are +neat, everything seems in order; but he’s absent-minded. Sometimes his +great bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are +there. Now absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We +think of a wicked man as vigilant. We can’t think of a wicked man who +is honestly and sincerely dreamy, because we daren’t think of a wicked +man alone with himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. +It means a man who, if he happens to see you, will apologise. But how +will you bear an absentminded man who, if he happens to see you, will +kill you? That is what tries the nerves, abstraction combined with +cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they went through wild +forests, and felt that the animals there were at once innocent and +pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you like to pass ten +mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded tiger?” + +“And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?” asked Syme. + +“I don’t think of Sunday on principle,” said Gogol simply, “any more +than I stare at the sun at noonday.” + +“Well, that is a point of view,” said Syme thoughtfully. “What do you +say, Professor?” + +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did +not answer at all. + +“Wake up, Professor!” said Syme genially. “Tell us what you think of +Sunday.” + +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. + +“I think something,” he said, “that I cannot say clearly. Or, rather, I +think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something +like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose. + +“Well, when I saw Sunday’s face I thought it was too large—everybody +does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was so big, that +one couldn’t focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was so far away +from the nose, that it wasn’t an eye. The mouth was so much by itself, +that one had to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard to +explain.” + +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on— + +“But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp +and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and +unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him +again. Yet when I walked a little farther I found that there was no +face, that the window was ten yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, +the cloud beyond the world. Well, Sunday’s face escaped me; it ran away +to right and left, as such chance pictures run away. And so his face +has made me, somehow, doubt whether there are any faces. I don’t know +whether your face, Bull, is a face or a combination in perspective. +Perhaps one black disc of your beastly glasses is quite close and +another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a materialist are not worth +a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the worst doubts, the doubts +of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a +creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you +really have a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter.” + +Syme’s eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in +the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world. + +“Have you noticed an odd thing,” he said, “about all your descriptions? +Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can +only find one thing to compare him to—the universe itself. Bull finds +him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The +Secretary is reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of +the carelessness of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a +changing landscape. This is queer, but it is queerer still that I also +have had my odd notion about the President, and I also find that I +think of Sunday as I think of the whole world.” + +“Get on a little faster, Syme,” said Bull; “never mind the balloon.” + +“When I first saw Sunday,” said Syme slowly, “I only saw his back; and +when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck +and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a +stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at +once the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast +dressed up in men’s clothes.” + +“Get on,” said Dr. Bull. + +“And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the +street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming +round the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face +frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not +because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was +so beautiful, because it was so good.” + +“Syme,” exclaimed the Secretary, “are you ill?” + +“It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after +heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour +and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad +shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I +was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was +a god.” + +“Pan,” said the Professor dreamily, “was a god and an animal.” + +“Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, “that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also +the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the +noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I +know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think +good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could +be explained. But the whole came to a kind of crest yesterday when I +raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind him all the way.” + +“Had you time for thinking then?” asked Ratcliffe. + +“Time,” replied Syme, “for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly +possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really +was his face—an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that +the figure running in front of me was really a figure running +backwards, and dancing as he ran.” + +“Horrible!” said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. + +“Horrible is not the word,” said Syme. “It was exactly the worst +instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his +head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he +was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.” + +“It is a long game,” said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. + +“Listen to me,” cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. “Shall I tell +you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the +back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. +That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but +the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and +hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—” + +“Look!” cried out Bull clamorously, “the balloon is coming down!” + +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off +it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right +itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun. + +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary +travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. + +“He is dead!” he cried. “And now I know he was my friend—my friend in +the dark!” + +“Dead!” snorted the Secretary. “You will not find him dead easily. If +he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt +rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun.” + +“Clashing his hoofs,” said the Professor. “The colts do, and so did +Pan.” + +“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably. “You seem to think Pan is +everything.” + +“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek. He means everything.” + +“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down, “that he also means +Panic.” + +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. + +“It fell over there,” he said shortly. “Let us follow it!” + +Then he added with an indescribable gesture— + +“Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one +of his larks.” + +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and +ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more +footsore and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all six men +realised that they were not alone in the little field. + +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, +leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine +but old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade +between blue, violet and grey which can be seen in certain shadows of +the woodland. His hair was whitish grey, and at the first glance, taken +along with his knee-breeches, looked as if it was powdered. His advance +was very quiet; but for the silver frost upon his head, he might have +been one to the shadows of the wood. + +“Gentlemen,” he said, “my master has a carriage waiting for you in the +road just by.” + +“Who is your master?” asked Syme, standing quite still. + +“I was told you knew his name,” said the man respectfully. + +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said— + +“Where is this carriage?” + +“It has been waiting only a few moments,” said the stranger. “My master +has only just come home.” + +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he +found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed +ordinary trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. + +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover +nothing except that the man’s coat was the exact colour of the purple +shadows, and that the man’s face was the exact colour of the red and +brown and golden sky. + +“Show us the place,” Syme said briefly, and without a word the man in +the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, +which let in suddenly the light of a white road. + +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the +white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a +row of carriages as might close the approach to some house in Park +Lane. Along the side of these carriages stood a rank of splendid +servants, all dressed in the grey-blue uniform, and all having a +certain quality of stateliness and freedom which would not commonly +belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the officials and +ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than six carriages +waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable band. All the +attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man crawled +into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of +steel. + +“What can it all mean?” asked Bull of Syme as they separated. “Is this +another joke of Sunday’s?” + +“I don’t know,” said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions of +his carriage; “but if it is, it’s one of the jokes you talk about. It’s +a good-natured one.” + +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had +carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of +comfort. They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things +suddenly going smoothly swamped them. They could not even feebly +imagine what the carriages were; it was enough for them to know that +they were carriages, and carriages with cushions. They could not +conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it was quite enough +that he had certainly led them to the carriages. + +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment. +It was typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin +forward fiercely so long as anything could be done, when the whole +business was taken out of his hands he fell back on the cushions in a +frank collapse. + +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the +carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of +what might have been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill +which, while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a +forest. Then there began to grow upon him, as upon a man slowly waking +from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in everything. He felt that the hedges +were what hedges should be, living walls; that a hedge is like a human +army, disciplined, but all the more alive. He saw high elms behind the +hedges, and vaguely thought how happy boys would be climbing there. +Then his carriage took a turn of the path, and he saw suddenly and +quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in +the mild light of sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards +and quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the +place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top or +that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that shape of +a window; but each man of them declared that he could remember this +place before he could remember his mother. + +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous +gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on +the grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive +person said to the bewildered Syme— + +“Refreshments are provided for you in your room.” + +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went +up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a +splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for +him. He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his +class, to pull his tie straight or to smooth his hair; and there he saw +the frightful figure that he was—blood running down his face from where +the bough had struck him, his hair standing out like yellow rags of +rank grass, his clothes torn into long, wavering tatters. At once the +whole enigma sprang up, simply as the question of how he had got there, +and how he was to get out again. Exactly at the same moment a man in +blue, who had been appointed as his valet, said very solemnly— + +“I have put out your clothes, sir.” + +“Clothes!” said Syme sardonically. “I have no clothes except these,” +and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating +festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl. + +“My master asks me to say,” said the attendant, “that there is a fancy +dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the costume that +I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some +cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours +before supper.” + +“Cold pheasant is a good thing,” said Syme reflectively, “and Burgundy +is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so +much as I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of +costume you have got laid out for me. Where is it?” + +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery, +rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned +a large golden sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming +stars and crescents. + +“You’re to be dressed as Thursday, sir,” said the valet somewhat +affably. + +“Dressed as Thursday!” said Syme in meditation. “It doesn’t sound a +warm costume.” + +“Oh, yes, sir,” said the other eagerly, “the Thursday costume is quite +warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin.” + +“Well, I don’t understand anything,” said Syme, sighing. “I have been +used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable adventures +knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be +particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the +sun and moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the +moon on Tuesday, I remember.” + +“Beg pardon, sir,” said the valet, “Bible also provided for you,” and +with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in the +first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which +the fourth day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun +and moon. Here, however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday. + +“This is getting wilder and wilder,” said Syme, as he sat down in a +chair. “Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, +and green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?” + +“Yes, sir, everything,” said the attendant gravely. “Shall I help you +on with your costume?” + +“Oh, hitch the bally thing on!” said Syme impatiently. + +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious +freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment +fell about him; and when he found that he had to wear a sword, it +stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds +across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, +and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises did not +disguise, but reveal. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. +THE ACCUSER + + +As Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the +top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He +was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of which +fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of +light. The whole looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. +There was no need for Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order +to remember that the first day of creation marked the mere creation of +light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggested +the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white +and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with +his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make +war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was +scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of +their new surroundings, this man’s eyes were still stern. No smell of +ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable +question. + +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he, +too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if +the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and +formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make +the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The +philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the +finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the +creation of the sun and moon. + +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe, +who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon +whose garment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third +day on which the earth and green things were made, and his square, +sensible face, with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate +enough to it. + +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large +old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light +of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme +seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. +There was a man dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man +dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a balloon; the two last, +together, seemed to keep the thread of their farcical adventures. Syme +even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an enormous +hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself—the queer bird which had +fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while he was rushing +down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand +other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing +apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable +tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field and +street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was +middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular +objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill—without thinking +that it was a strayed reveller from that revel of masquerade. + +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green bank, +like the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. + +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the +thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their +seats; the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had +his simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of +the waters, a dress that separated upon his forehead and fell to his +feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The Professor, whose day +was that on which the birds and fishes—the ruder forms of life—were +created, had a dress of dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed +fishes and outrageous tropical birds, the union in him of unfathomable +fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the last day of Creation, wore a coat +covered with heraldic animals in red and gold, and on his crest a man +rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an +optimist in his element. + +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange +seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the +carnival, such as that with which crowds receive kings. Cups were +clashed and torches shaken, and feathered hats flung in the air. The +men for whom these thrones were reserved were men crowned with some +extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was empty. + +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The +Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing +his lips— + +“We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field.” + +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in +front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had +opened behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the +front like a shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was draped +plainly, in a pure and terrible white, and his hair was like a silver +flame on his forehead. + +For a long time—it seemed for hours—that huge masquerade of mankind +swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. +Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy +dancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but +in each case it was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as +grave and kind as a love story. At last, however, the thick crowd began +to thin itself. Couples strolled away into the garden-walks, or began +to drift towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge +pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale or +wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the roof of +the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit up +the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the +face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with +warmth even the emptiness of upper night. Yet this also, after a time, +was allowed to grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more +round the great cauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the +inner passages of that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten +loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray +merry-maker ran into the house whooping to his companions. The fire +faded, and the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men +were left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not +one of them had spoken a word. + +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of +insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so +dreamily that he might have been continuing a conversation rather than +beginning one. + +“We will eat and drink later,” he said. “Let us remain together a +little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so long. +I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were +always heroes—epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in +arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the +beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, +where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice +commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the +dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the +earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you +in the daylight I denied it myself.” + +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and +the incomprehensible went on. + +“But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the +whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew +how near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords +with King Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without +hope.” + +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the +black-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday, +and said in a harsh voice— + +“Who and what are you?” + +“I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the peace of +God.” + +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his +hand. + +“I know what you mean,” he cried, “and it is exactly that that I cannot +forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call +the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If +you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense +to the sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, +why were you also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the +iron entered into our souls—and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can +forgive God His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot +forgive Him His peace.” + +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone +upon Syme as if asking a question. + +“No,” said Syme, “I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful to you, +not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine scamper and +free fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happy +and quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I +should like to know.” + +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said— + +“It seems so _silly_ that you should have been on both sides and fought +yourself.” + +Bull said— + +“I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to sleep.” + +“I am not happy,” said the Professor with his head in his hands, +“because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near to +hell.” + +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child— + +“I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.” + +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon his +hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said— + +“I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes +another to complain, and we will hear him also.” + +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a +bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was +outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He +seemed to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such as that which +was worn by the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but +of this absolute sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of sword by +his side. It was only when he had come quite close to the crescent of +the seven and flung up his face to look at them, that Syme saw, with +thunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost ape-like +face of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its +insulting smile. + +“Gregory!” gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. “Why, this is the +real anarchist!” + +“Yes,” said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, “I am the +real anarchist.” + +“‘Now there was a day,’” murmured Bull, who seemed really to have +fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to present themselves before +the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’” + +“You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a destroyer. +I would destroy the world if I could.” + +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he +spoke brokenly and without sequence. + +“Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have red hair +like your sister.” + +“My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,” said Gregory. +“I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate anything; +but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate you!” + +“I never hated you,” said Syme very sadly. + +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. + +“You!” he cried. “You never hated because you never lived. I know what +you are all of you, from first to last—you are the people in power! You +are the police—the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are +the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive +that does not long to break you, only because you have never been +broken? We in revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this +crime or that crime of the Government. It is all folly! The only crime +of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the +supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being +cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you +for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come +down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had no +troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all +mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a +real agony such as I—” + +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. + +“I see everything,” he cried, “everything that there is. Why does each +thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small +thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a +fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to +fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in +the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may +have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man +fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So +that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this +blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say +to this man, ‘You lie!’ No agonies can be too great to buy the right to +say to this accuser, ‘We also have suffered.’ + +“It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken +upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these +thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of +unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered +insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not +been happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whom +he has accused. At least—” + +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, +which wore a strange smile. + +“Have you,” he cried in a dreadful voice, “have you ever suffered?” + +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the +colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew +larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. +Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed +to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard +somewhere, “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” + + +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in +some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a +chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme’s +experience was something much more psychologically strange if there was +indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had +gone through. For while he could always remember afterwards that he had +swooned before the face of Sunday, he could not remember having ever +come to at all. He could only remember that gradually and naturally he +knew that he was and had been walking along a country lane with an easy +and conversational companion. That companion had been a part of his +recent drama; it was the red-haired poet Gregory. They were walking +like old friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about some +triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his body +and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior to +everything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of some +impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an +adorable triviality. + +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; +as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at +rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that +it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme +felt a simple surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides +of the road the red, irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no +idea that he had walked so near London. He walked by instinct along one +white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself +outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl +with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great +unconscious gravity of a girl. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The Man Who Was Thursday + A Nightmare + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: April, 1999 [eBook #1695] +[Most recently updated: February 5, 2023] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Harry Plantinga and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY *** + + + + +The Man Who Was Thursday + +A Nightmare + +by G. K. Chesterton + + +Contents + + A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + + CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + CHAPTER II. THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + CHAPTER III. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + CHAPTER IV. THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR + CHAPTER VI. THE EXPOSURE + CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + CHAPTER X. THE DUEL + CHAPTER XI. THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + CHAPTER XII. THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + CHAPTER XIII. THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + CHAPTER XIV. THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + CHAPTER XV. THE ACCUSER + + + + +A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + + +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is +possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous +criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that the +author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective story like +no-one else. On this level, therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY +succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent tour-de-force +of suspense-writing. + +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than that. +Carried along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by Chesterton’s +wonderful high-spirited style, he will soon see that he is being +carried into much deeper waters than he had planned on; and the totally +unforeseeable denouement will prove for the modern reader, as it has +for thousands of others since 1908 when the book was first published, +an inevitable and moving experience, as the investigators finally +discover who Sunday is. + + + + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY +A NIGHTMARE + + +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley + +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us +Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we, +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, +When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard. + +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world. +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass, +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain— +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain. +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day. +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms. +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms: +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved— +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed. + +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells— +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand— +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, +And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain. +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. + +G. K. C. + + + + +CHAPTER I. +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + + +The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and +ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; +its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had +been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, +who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen +Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were +identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, +though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its +pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its +pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The +stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could +only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to +them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. +The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard +it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were +not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with +the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not +really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the +wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not +really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in +others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the +bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he +assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what +biological creature could he have discovered more singular than +himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be +regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for +artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped +into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written +comedy. + +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, +when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the +whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again +was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the +little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns +glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And +this was strongest of all on one particular evening, still vaguely +remembered in the locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the +hero. It was not by any means the only evening of which he was the +hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden might hear +his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly to +women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the +paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely +called emancipated, and professed some protest against male supremacy. +Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant +compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening +while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the red-haired poet, was +really (in some sense) a man worth listening to, even if one only +laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant of the lawlessness of art +and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness which gave +at least a momentary pleasure. He was helped in some degree by the +arresting oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase +goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was +literally like a woman’s, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in +a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval, +however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried +forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at once +tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed +like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. + +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be +remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end +of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and +palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, +and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of +the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve +and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole +grew past description, transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot +plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The +whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent +secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that +splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky +seemed small. + +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if +only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it +because it marked the first appearance in the place of the second poet +of Saffron Park. For a long time the red-haired revolutionary had +reigned without a rival; it was upon the night of the sunset that his +solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who introduced himself by the +name of Gabriel Syme was a very mild-looking mortal, with a fair, +pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But an impression grew that he +was less meek than he looked. He signalised his entrance by differing +with the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He +said that he (Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he +was a poet of respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him +as if he had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky. + +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two +events. + +“It may well be,” he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, “it may well +be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is brought +forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you +are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only +wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared +in this garden.” + +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured +these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of +the group, Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s braids of +red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such +mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the +family oracle. + +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. + +“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You might +transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who +throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to +everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing +light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a +few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, +abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it +were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the +Underground Railway.” + +“So it is,” said Mr. Syme. + +“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway +trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. +It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because +they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place +they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square +they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but +Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their +souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker +Street!” + +“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say +of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The +rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to +miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a +distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine +strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train +might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a +magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, +and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; +let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who +commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his +victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!” + +“Must you go?” inquired Gregory sarcastically. + +“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a train comes +in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man +has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one +has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might +do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I +have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout +out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the +cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it +is the victory of Adam.” + +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. + +“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the question, ‘And what +is Victoria now that you have got there?’ You think Victoria is like +the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like +Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of +heaven. The poet is always in revolt.” + +“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being +in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. +Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the +wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I can +see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It’s +mere vomiting.” + +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too +hot to heed her. + +“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is +the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more +poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most +poetical thing in the world is not being sick.” + +“Really,” said Gregory superciliously, “the examples you choose—” + +“I beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot we had abolished all +conventions.” + +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead. + +“You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionise society on this +lawn?” + +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. + +“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I suppose that if you were serious about +your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.” + +Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry lion, +and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. + +“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dangerous voice, “that I am +serious about my anarchism?” + +“I beg your pardon?” said Syme. + +“Am I not serious about my anarchism?” cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. + +“My dear fellow!” said Syme, and strolled away. + +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond Gregory +still in his company. + +“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my brother +often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?” + +Syme smiled. + +“Do you?” he asked. + +“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with grave eyes. + +“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many kinds of +sincerity and insincerity. When you say ‘thank you’ for the salt, do +you mean what you say? No. When you say ‘the world is round,’ do you +mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don’t mean it. Now, +sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It +may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says +more than he means—from sheer force of meaning it.” + +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and +open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning +responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the +maternal watch which is as old as the world. + +“Is he really an anarchist, then?” she asked. + +“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you prefer it, in +that nonsense.” + +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly— + +“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?” + +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and +somewhat dandified figure. + +“Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done anonymously.” + +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she +thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory’s absurdity and of his +safety. + +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and +continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in +spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it +is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches +himself too closely. He defended respectability with violence and +exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of tidiness and +propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him. Once +he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to +play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving to a tiny +tune from under or beyond the world. + +He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what +seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a +place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered +the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself +with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his +head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which +were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again +until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she +kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures +afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread +through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what +followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream. + +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment +empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a +living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a +street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out +over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a +figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall +hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was +almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also +something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet +Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword +in hand for his foe. + +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more formally +returned. + +“I was waiting for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a moment’s +conversation?” + +“Certainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. + +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the +tree. + +“About _this_ and _this_,” he cried; “about order and anarchy. There is +your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there +is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself—there is anarchy, splendid +in green and gold.” + +“All the same,” replied Syme patiently, “just at present you only see +the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the +lamp by the light of the tree.” Then after a pause he said, “But may I +ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only to resume our +little argument?” + +“No,” cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, “I did +not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for ever.” + +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, +listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a smooth +voice and with a rather bewildering smile. + +“Mr. Syme,” he said, “this evening you succeeded in doing something +rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of woman +has ever succeeded in doing before.” + +“Indeed!” + +“Now I remember,” resumed Gregory reflectively, “one other person +succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I remember +correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me.” + +“I am very sorry,” replied Syme with gravity. + +“I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out +even with an apology,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could wipe it +out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one +way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am +going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to _prove_ to +you that you were wrong in what you said.” + +“In what I said?” + +“You said I was not serious about being an anarchist.” + +“There are degrees of seriousness,” replied Syme. “I have never doubted +that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what +you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men +up to a neglected truth.” + +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. + +“And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me serious? You think me +a _flâneur_ who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that in a +deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious.” + +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. + +“Serious!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these +damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One +comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, +but I should think very little of a man who didn’t keep something in +the background of his life that was more serious than all this +talking—something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink.” + +“Very well,” said Gregory, his face darkening, “you shall see something +more serious than either drink or religion.” + +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again +opened his lips. + +“You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you +have one?” + +“Oh,” said Syme with a beaming smile, “we are all Catholics now.” + +“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion +involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to +any son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! +If you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will +consent to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a +knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return—” + +“You will promise me in return?” inquired Syme, as the other paused. + +“I will promise you a very entertaining evening.” Syme suddenly took +off his hat. + +“Your offer,” he said, “is far too idiotic to be declined. You say that +a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least that he +is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a +Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I +will not report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And +now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?” + +“I think,” said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, “that we will call a +cab.” + +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the road. +The two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap the +address of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. +The cab whisked itself away again, and in it these two fantastics +quitted their fantastic town. + + + + +CHAPTER II. +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + + +The cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, +into which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated +themselves in a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden +table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, that very +little could be seen of the attendant who was summoned, beyond a vague +and dark impression of something bulky and bearded. + +“Will you take a little supper?” asked Gregory politely. “The _pâté de +foie gras_ is not good here, but I can recommend the game.” + +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. +Accepting the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred indifference— + +“Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise.” + +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said “Certainly, sir!” +and went away apparently to get it. + +“What will you drink?” resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. “I shall only have a _crême de menthe_ myself; I have +dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you +with a half-bottle of Pommery at least?” + +“Thank you!” said the motionless Syme. “You are very good.” + +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in +themselves, were cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the actual +appearance of the lobster. Syme tasted it, and found it particularly +good. Then he suddenly began to eat with great rapidity and appetite. + +“Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!” he said to Gregory, +smiling. “I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is +new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly the +other way.” + +“You are not asleep, I assure you,” said Gregory. “You are, on the +contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your +existence. Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be a +slight disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements of +this excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. But +that is all our modesty. We are the most modest men that ever lived on +earth.” + +“And who are _we?_” asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. + +“It is quite simple,” replied Gregory. “_We_ are the serious +anarchists, in whom you do not believe.” + +“Oh!” said Syme shortly. “You do yourselves well in drinks.” + +“Yes, we are serious about everything,” answered Gregory. + +Then after a pause he added— + +“If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, don’t +put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don’t wish you to do +yourself an injustice.” + +“Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,” replied Syme with perfect calm; +“but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. May I +smoke?” + +“Certainly!” said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. “Try one of mine.” + +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his +waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a +long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed +these rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them +the table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then +rapidly, as if at an insane seance. + +“You must not mind it,” said Gregory; “it’s a kind of screw.” + +“Quite so,” said Syme placidly, “a kind of screw. How simple that is!” + +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering across +the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory +chimney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot down through +the floor as if the earth had swallowed them. They went rattling down a +kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift cut loose, and they came +with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But when Gregory threw open a pair +of doors and let in a red subterranean light, Syme was still smoking +with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair. + +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was +the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a +fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there +was a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory struck five +times. A heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him who he was. To +this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, “Mr. Joseph +Chamberlain.” The heavy hinges began to move; it was obviously some +kind of password. + +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a +network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering +pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers, +closely packed or interlocked. + +“I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities,” said Gregory; “we +have to be very strict here.” + +“Oh, don’t apologise,” said Syme. “I know your passion for law and +order,” and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel weapons. +With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a +singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining +avenue of death. + +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a +queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but +presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a +scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this +apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more dubious and +dreadful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of iron plants, or +the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the very room itself +seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar ash off +against the wall, and went in. + +“And now, my dear Mr. Syme,” said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, “now we are quite +cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give you any +notion of why I brought you here. It was one of those quite arbitrary +emotions, like jumping off a cliff or falling in love. Suffice it to +say that you were an inexpressibly irritating fellow, and, to do you +justice, you are still. I would break twenty oaths of secrecy for the +pleasure of taking you down a peg. That way you have of lighting a +cigar would make a priest break the seal of confession. Well, you said +that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this +place strike you as being serious?” + +“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety,” assented Syme; +“but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me +information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me +a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So +it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is +it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish +Government?” + +“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. “We do +not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that +sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny +all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and +treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly +sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! +We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.” + +“And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eagerness, “I hope you +will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.” + +“You spoke of a second question,” snapped Gregory. + +“With pleasure,” resumed Syme. “In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt +who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people +living from preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron +door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of +calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel +instruments which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than +homelike. May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade +yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole +secret by talking about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron +Park?” + +Gregory smiled. + +“The answer is simple,” he said. “I told you I was a serious anarchist, +and you did not believe me. Nor do _they_ believe me. Unless I took +them into this infernal room they would not believe me.” + +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went +on. + +“The history of the thing might amuse you,” he said. “When first I +became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our +anarchist pamphlets, in _Superstition the Vampire_ and _Priests of +Prey_. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and +terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was +misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a +drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! +presumptuous human reason!’ they found out in some way that I was not a +bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; +but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see +that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a +humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to +understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire +violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw +myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I +called out ‘Blood!’ abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often +said, ‘Let the weak perish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems majors +don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the +President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in +Europe.” + +“What is his name?” asked Syme. + +“You would not know it,” answered Gregory. “That is his greatness. +Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and they +_were_ heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and he +is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with +him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been children +in his hands.” + +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed— + +“But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an +epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said to him, +‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more +respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large +but indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a +dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would +ever look for a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. +‘Why, then, dress up as an _anarchist_, you fool!’ he roared so that +the room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous +then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took +his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to +those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their +perambulators.” + +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. + +“You took me in,” he said. “It is really a smart dodge.” + +Then after a pause he added— + +“What do you call this tremendous President of yours?” + +“We generally call him Sunday,” replied Gregory with simplicity. “You +see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist Council, and they +are named after days of the week. He is called Sunday, by some of his +admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you should mention the matter, +because the very night you have dropped in (if I may so express it) is +the night on which our London branch, which assembles in this room, has +to elect its own deputy to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman +who has for some time past played, with propriety and general applause, +the difficult part of Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, +we have called a meeting this very evening to elect a successor.” + +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of smiling +embarrassment. + +“I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme,” he continued casually. +“I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have promised to +tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something that I would not +say in so many words to the anarchists who will be coming to the room +in about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go through a form of +election; but I don’t mind telling you that it is practically certain +what the result will be.” He looked down for a moment modestly. “It is +almost a settled thing that I am to be Thursday.” + +“My dear fellow.” said Syme heartily, “I congratulate you. A great +career!” + +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking +rapidly. + +“As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table,” he +said, “and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible.” + +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, a +large Colt’s revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of +brandy. Over the chair, beside the table, was thrown a heavy-looking +cape or cloak. + +“I have only to get the form of election finished,” continued Gregory +with animation, “then I snatch up this cloak and stick, stuff these +other things into my pocket, step out of a door in this cavern, which +opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug already waiting for me, +and then—then—oh, the wild joy of being Thursday!” And he clasped his +hands. + +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got +to his feet with an unusual air of hesitation. + +“Why is it,” he asked vaguely, “that I think you are quite a decent +fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?” He paused a moment, and +then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, “Is it because you are such +an ass?” + +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out— + +“Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been in +in my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave you a +promise before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under +red-hot pincers. Would you give me, for my own safety, a little promise +of the same kind?” + +“A promise?” asked Gregory, wondering. + +“Yes,” said Syme very seriously, “a promise. I swore before God that I +would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by Humanity, +or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my +secret to the anarchists?” + +“Your secret?” asked the staring Gregory. “Have you got a secret?” + +“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a pause, “Will you +swear?” + +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said +abruptly— + +“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about you. +Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell me. But +look sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes.” + +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his +long, grey trousers’ pockets. Almost as he did so there came five +knocks on the outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the first of +the conspirators. + +“Well,” said Syme slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you the truth more +shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as an aimless +poet is not confined to you or your President. We have known the dodge +for some time at Scotland Yard.” + +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. + +“What do you say?” he asked in an inhuman voice. + +“Yes,” said Syme simply, “I am a police detective. But I think I hear +your friends coming.” + +From the doorway there came a murmur of “Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” It +was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the crowd of +Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard trampling down +the corridor. + + + + +CHAPTER III. +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + + +Before one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, Gregory’s +stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the table with a +bound, and a noise in his throat like a wild beast. He caught up the +Colt’s revolver and took aim at Syme. Syme did not flinch, but he put +up a pale and polite hand. + +“Don’t be such a silly man,” he said, with the effeminate dignity of a +curate. “Don’t you see it’s not necessary? Don’t you see that we’re +both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea-sick.” + +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he looked +his question. + +“Don’t you see we’ve checkmated each other?” cried Syme. “I can’t tell +the police you are an anarchist. You can’t tell the anarchists I’m a +policeman. I can only watch you, knowing what you are; you can only +watch me, knowing what I am. In short, it’s a lonely, intellectual +duel, my head against yours. I’m a policeman deprived of the help of +the police. You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help +of that law and organisation which is so essential to anarchy. The one +solitary difference is in your favour. You are not surrounded by +inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. I +cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see +me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.” + +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he were +a sea-monster. + +“I don’t believe in immortality,” he said at last, “but if, after all +this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only for you, +to howl in for ever.” + +“I shall not break my word,” said Syme sternly, “nor will you break +yours. Here are your friends.” + +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a slouching +and somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a black beard and +glasses—a man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim Healy—detached himself, +and bustled forward with some papers in his hand. + +“Comrade Gregory,” he said, “I suppose this man is a delegate?” + +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of Syme; +but Syme replied almost pertly— + +“I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it hard +for anyone to be here who was not a delegate.” + +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still +contracted with something like suspicion. + +“What branch do you represent?” he asked sharply. + +“I should hardly call it a branch,” said Syme, laughing; “I should call +it at the very least a root.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“The fact is,” said Syme serenely, “the truth is I am a Sabbatarian. I +have been specially sent here to see that you show a due observance of +Sunday.” + +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear went +over all the faces of the group. Evidently the awful President, whose +name was Sunday, did sometimes send down such irregular ambassadors to +such branch meetings. + +“Well, comrade,” said the man with the papers after a pause, “I suppose +we’d better give you a seat in the meeting?” + +“If you ask my advice as a friend,” said Syme with severe benevolence, +“I think you’d better.” + +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety for +his rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful thought. He +was, indeed, in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear that Syme’s +inspired impudence was likely to bring him out of all merely accidental +dilemmas. Little was to be hoped from them. He could not himself betray +Syme, partly from honour, but partly also because, if he betrayed him +and for some reason failed to destroy him, the Syme who escaped would +be a Syme freed from all obligation of secrecy, a Syme who would simply +walk to the nearest police station. After all, it was only one night’s +discussion, and only one detective who would know of it. He would let +out as little as possible of their plans that night, and then let Syme +go, and chance it. + +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already +distributing itself along the benches. + +“I think it is time we began,” he said; “the steam-tug is waiting on +the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the chair.” + +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the papers +slipped into the presidential seat. + +“Comrades,” he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, “our meeting tonight +is important, though it need not be long. This branch has always had +the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We +have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease +of the heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you +know, his services to the cause were considerable. He organised the +great dynamite coup of Brighton which, under happier circumstances, +ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you also know, his death +was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a +hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which +beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. +Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. But +it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a harder +task. It is difficult properly to praise his qualities, but it is more +difficult to replace them. Upon you, comrades, it devolves this evening +to choose out of the company present the man who shall be Thursday. If +any comrade suggests a name I will put it to the vote. If no comrade +suggests a name, I can only tell myself that that dear dynamiter, who +is gone from us, has carried into the unknowable abysses the last +secret of his virtue and his innocence.” + +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes +heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable white +beard, perhaps the only real working-man present, rose lumberingly and +said— + +“I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday,” and sat lumberingly +down again. + +“Does anyone second?” asked the chairman. + +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. + +“Before I put the matter to the vote,” said the chairman, “I will call +on Comrade Gregory to make a statement.” + +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly pale, +so that by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. But he +was smiling and altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, and he saw +his best policy quite plain in front of him like a white road. His best +chance was to make a softened and ambiguous speech, such as would leave +on the detective’s mind the impression that the anarchist brotherhood +was a very mild affair after all. He believed in his own literary +power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades and picking perfect +words. He thought that with care he could succeed, in spite of all the +people around him, in conveying an impression of the institution, +subtly and delicately false. Syme had once thought that anarchists, +under all their bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now, +in the hour of peril, make Syme think so again? + +“Comrades,” began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, “it is not +necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy +also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has +been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. +Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and +anywhere to get their information, except to us, except to the fountain +head. They learn about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn +about anarchists from tradesmen’s newspapers; they learn about +anarchists from _Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday_ and the _Sporting Times_. +They never learn about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of +denying the mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from +one end of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are +walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not hear +it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is deep, +deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to assemble, as +the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by some incredible +accident, there were here tonight a man who all his life had thus +immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question to him: ‘When +those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of moral reputation +had they in the streets above? What tales were told of their atrocities +by one educated Roman to another? Suppose’ (I would say to him), +‘suppose that we are only repeating that still mysterious paradox of +history. Suppose we seem as shocking as the Christians because we are +really as harmless as the Christians. Suppose we seem as mad as the +Christians because we are really as meek.”’ + +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually +growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the +abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky +voice— + +“I’m not meek!” + +“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. +Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; +his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) +unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as +mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at +the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the +true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as +they revere simple—look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they +were modest—look at me. We are merciful—” + +“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. + +“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early +Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused +of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—” + +“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?” + +“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is +anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any +rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—” + +“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.” + +“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +“there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a +body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of +that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as +assassins and enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral +courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of +brotherhood and simplicity.” + +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The +silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an +automaton, and said in a colourless voice— + +“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?” + +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and Comrade +Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick +beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have +been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put +it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small and quiet voice— + +“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.” + +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the +voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these +first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he +made his next word ring and volley in the vault as if one of the guns +had gone off. + +“Comrades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of his +boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live underground like rats in +order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to +while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with +weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone should come and hear +Comrade Gregory saying to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’ +‘Honesty is the best policy,’ and ‘Virtue is its own reward’? There was +not a word in Comrade Gregory’s address to which a curate could not +have listened with pleasure (hear, hear). But I am not a curate (loud +cheers), and I did not listen to it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The +man who is fitted to make a good curate is not fitted to make a +resolute, forcible, and efficient Thursday (hear, hear). + +“Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we +are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of +society, and so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of +society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most +pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory has told us +(apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There I agree. We are +not murderers, we are executioners (cheers).” + +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face +idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay parted, +and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness— + +“You damnable hypocrite!” + +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale blue +ones, and said with dignity— + +“Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do that +I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do not +mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit +to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be +Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme +Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is +no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is it a time for ceremonial +modesty. I set myself against Comrade Gregory as I would set myself +against all the Governments of Europe, because the anarchist who has +given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as he has +forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed +cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as +calmly as I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that +rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his +milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself for +election—” + +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The +faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his tirade +grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with grins of +anticipation or cloven with delighted cries. At the moment when he +announced himself as ready to stand for the post of Thursday, a roar of +excitement and assent broke forth, and became uncontrollable, and at +the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam upon his mouth, +and shouted against the shouting. + +“Stop, you blasted madmen!” he cried, at the top of a voice that tore +his throat. “Stop, you—” + +But louder than Gregory’s shouting and louder than the roar of the room +came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless thunder— + +“I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the priest +who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says +these men are the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says +these men are the enemies of order and public decency, to all these I +will reply, ‘You are false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come +to destroy you, and to fulfil your prophecies.’” + +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased +Witherspoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and +had said— + +“I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the post.” + +“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. “Stop it, it is all—” + +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. + +“Does anyone second this amendment?” he said. A tall, tired man, with +melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on the back +bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been screaming for +some time past; now there was a change in his accent, more shocking +than any scream. “I end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as +stone. “This man cannot be elected. He is a—” + +“Yes,” said Syme, quite motionless, “what is he?” Gregory’s mouth +worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl back +into his dead face. + +“He is a man quite inexperienced in our work,” he said, and sat down +abruptly. + +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was +again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone— + +“I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme.” + +“The amendment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. + +“The question is that Comrade Syme—” + +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. + +“Comrades,” he cried out, “I am not a madman.” + +“Oh, oh!” said Mr. Witherspoon. + +“I am not a madman,” reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, “but I give you a counsel which +you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I +can give you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad +command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do +not elect this man.” Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a +moment Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you +could not have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began— + +“Comrade Gregory commands—” + +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory— + +“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, “And you are not Thursday.” + +“Comrades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in an +ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, “it is nothing to me whether +you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take +my command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at +your feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man.” + +“Comrade Gregory,” said the chairman after a painful pause, “this is +really not quite dignified.” + +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a +real silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a +man, and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly +started again— + +“The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday +on the General Council.” + +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three +minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was +elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the +Anarchists of Europe. + +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the +sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the +election was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the paper +proving his election, they all sprang to their feet, and the fiery +groups moved and mixed in the room. Syme found himself, somehow or +other, face to face with Gregory, who still regarded him with a stare +of stunned hatred. They were silent for many minutes. + +“You are a devil!” said Gregory at last. + +“And you are a gentleman,” said Syme with gravity. + +“It was you that entrapped me,” began Gregory, shaking from head to +foot, “entrapped me into—” + +“Talk sense,” said Syme shortly. “Into what sort of devils’ parliament +have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made me swear before I +made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we +think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us +in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but +honour and death,” and he pulled the great cloak about his shoulders +and picked up the flask from the table. + +“The boat is quite ready,” said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. “Be good +enough to step this way.” + +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a short, +iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following feverishly at +their heels. At the end of the passage was a door, which Buttons opened +sharply, showing a sudden blue and silver picture of the moonlit river, +that looked like a scene in a theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, +dwarfish steam-launch, like a baby dragon with one red eye. + +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the +gaping Gregory. + +“You have kept your word,” he said gently, with his face in shadow. +“You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even down +to a small particular. There was one special thing you promised me at +the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by +the end of it.” + +“What do you mean?” cried the chaotic Gregory. “What did I promise +you?” + +“A very entertaining evening,” said Syme, and he made a military salute +with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + + +Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he +was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of +anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life +into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most +revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His +respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against +rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest +people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked +about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to +walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and +self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence +the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any +drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he +had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan +abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan +latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing +vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of +defending cannibalism. + +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, +Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only +thing left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of +these fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too +fierce to be sensible. His hatred of modern lawlessness had been +crowned also by an accident. It happened that he was walking in a side +street at the instant of a dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf +for a moment, and then seen, the smoke clearing, the broken windows and +the bleeding faces. After that he went about as usual—quiet, courteous, +rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He +did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid +men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a +huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. + +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets a +torrent of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of this +deluge of barbaric denial. But he seemed to be getting no nearer his +enemy, and, what was worse, no nearer a living. As he paced the Thames +embankment, bitterly biting a cheap cigar and brooding on the advance +of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with a bomb in his pocket so savage +or so solitary as he. Indeed, he always felt that Government stood +alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too quixotic to +have cared for it otherwise. + +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river +reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, +indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, +that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it +mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the +vast caverns of a subterranean country. + +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black +chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, +black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the early +villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair +were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, +cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black +cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between his +tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen +of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was +why a policeman on the Embankment spoke to him, and said “Good +evening.” + +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the +mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the +twilight. + +“A good evening is it?” he said sharply. “You fellows would call the +end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that +bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt +and shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking +out for some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen +are cruel to the poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it +were not for your calm.” + +“If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of organised +resistance.” + +“Eh?” said Syme, staring. + +“The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the +policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.” + +“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this undenominational +education?” + +“No,” said the policeman sadly, “I never had any of those advantages. +The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very +rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid.” + +“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, wondering. + +“Oh, at Harrow,” said the policeman + +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in +so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control them. + +“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a policeman!” + +The policeman sighed and shook his head. + +“I know,” he said solemnly, “I know I am not worthy.” + +“But why did you join the police?” asked Syme with rude curiosity. + +“For much the same reason that you abused the police,” replied the +other. “I found that there was a special opening in the service for +those whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the +aberrations of the scientific intellect than with the normal and +excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of the human will. I trust I +make myself clear.” + +“If you mean that you make your opinion clear,” said Syme, “I suppose +you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. +How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on +the Thames embankment?” + +“You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police +system,” replied the other. “I am not surprised at it. We are keeping +it rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains +most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in the right frame of +mind. I think you might almost join us.” + +“Join you in what?” asked Syme. + +“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the situation: +The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated +detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely +intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of +civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are +silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. He has, +therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also +philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this +conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am +a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary +man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be +undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation which is +also a heresy hunt.” + +Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. + +“What do you do, then?” he said. + +“The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, “is +at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The +ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to +artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective +discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We +discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have +to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at +last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only +just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was +entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) +thoroughly understood a triolet.” + +“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much connection +between crime and the modern intellect as all that?” + +“You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, “but you +were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the +poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes +sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon +the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very +different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the +uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. +We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that +the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most +dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. +Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my +heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they +merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the +property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect +it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy +the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or +they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic +formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. +Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater +fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to +them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own +as much as other people’s.” + +Syme struck his hands together. + +“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my boyhood, but +never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad +man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says +that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is +then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a +reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but +not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter +things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all +those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, +the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given +up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the +State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must +not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish +anybody else.” + +“But this is absurd!” cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an +excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, “but it is +intolerable! I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re wasting your +life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. Their +armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment +more, and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory +of dying with the last heroes of the world.” + +“It is a chance not to be missed, certainly,” assented Syme, “but still +I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern +world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, +beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing +with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling +one bolt. What is this anarchy?” + +“Do not confuse it,” replied the constable, “with those chance dynamite +outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks +of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, +consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer +ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the +outer ring the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty +section. The outer ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely +anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have +destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of +human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. +They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe +that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man +seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the +flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would +naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section.” + +“Oh!” said Syme. + +“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time coming’; +‘the paradise of the future’; ‘mankind freed from the bondage of vice +and the bondage of virtue,’ and so on. And so also the men of the inner +circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding +crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. +But in their mouths”—and the policeman lowered his voice—“in their +mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no +illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth +can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean +death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without +right or wrong, they mean the grave. + +“They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The +innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed +the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed +somebody.” + +“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of passion. + +“I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment,” said the +policeman, “as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of +the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or +rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can +talk to him if you like.” + +“Telephone?” inquired Syme, with interest. + +“No,” said the policeman placidly, “he has a fancy for always sitting +in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come +along.” + +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led +to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost +before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands +of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a +room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. +It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; +it was like going suddenly stone-blind. + +“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice. + +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in +the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of +massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him. + +“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have +heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.” + +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this +irrevocable phrase. + +“I really have no experience,” he began. + +“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of +Armageddon.” + +“But I am really unfit—” + +“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown. + +“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere +willingness is the final test.” + +“I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good +day.” + +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson +light of evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless cloak, he +came out a member of the New Detective Corps for the frustration of the +great conspiracy. Acting under the advice of his friend the policeman +(who was professionally inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and +beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in an exquisite summer suit of +light blue-grey, with a pale yellow flower in the button-hole, and, in +short, became that elegant and rather insupportable person whom Gregory +had first encountered in the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he +finally left the police premises his friend provided him with a small +blue card, on which was written, “The Last Crusade,” and a number, the +sign of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper +waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and fight +the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his adventure +ultimately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a +February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent +Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday +of the Central Council of Anarchists. + +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation +of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the +landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet. +This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of that evening, +though partly also to an entire change in the weather and the sky since +he entered the little tavern some two hours before. Every trace of the +passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a +naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong and full that +(by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It +gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. + +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as +of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in +eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was +actually on some other and emptier planet, which circled round some +sadder star. But the more he felt this glittering desolation in the +moonlit land, the more his own chivalric folly glowed in the night like +a great fire. Even the common things he carried with him—the food and +the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on exactly that concrete and +material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey +or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though +in themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the +expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick became +almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the +stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on +some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the +adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. George would not even +be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was only imaginative by the +presence of a man really human. To Syme’s exaggerative mind the bright, +bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as empty as the +mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because there +is a man in the moon. + +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went comparatively +slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the +time that they passed Battersea, and when they came under the enormous +bulk of Westminster day had already begun to break. It broke like the +splitting of great bars of lead, showing bars of silver; and these had +brightened like white fire when the tug, changing its onward course, +turned inward to a large landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross. + +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic as +Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white +dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal steps of +some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he +was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible +and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and +stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the enormous masonry. The two +men in the tug put her off again and turned up stream. They had never +spoken a word. + + + + +CHAPTER V. +THE FEAST OF FEAR + + +At first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid; +but before he reached the top he had realised that there was a man +leaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the +river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and +frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower in +his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not +even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in +the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and +intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the +very point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair +almost seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type +that is best shaven—clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew +closer and closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. + +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was +meant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concluded +that he was not. And now again he had come back to a certainty that the +man had something to do with his mad adventure. For the man remained +more still than would have been natural if a stranger had come so +close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, and got on the nerves +somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again and again at the pale, +dignified and delicate face, and the face still looked blankly across +the river. Then he took out of his pocket the note from Buttons proving +his election, and put it before that sad and beautiful face. Then the +man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, +going up in the right cheek and down in the left. + +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. +Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it +is even attractive. But in all Syme’s circumstances, with the dark dawn +and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, +there was something unnerving in it. + +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic +face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly +went wrong. + +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man’s face dropped at +once into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further +explanation or inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. + +“If we walk up towards Leicester Square,” he said, “we shall just be in +time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. Have +you had any sleep?” + +“No,” said Syme. + +“Nor have I,” answered the man in an ordinary tone. “I shall try to get +to bed after breakfast.” + +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that +contradicted the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all +friendly words were to him lifeless conveniences, and that his only +life was hate. After a pause the man spoke again. + +“Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that can be +told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last notion of +the President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case +you don’t know, I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion +of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most +extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell +underground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a +private room at an ordinary restaurant. He said that if you didn’t seem +to be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, +I know; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a +little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the +public. We have our breakfast on a balcony—on a balcony, if you +please—overlooking Leicester Square.” + +“And what do the people say?” asked Syme. + +“It’s quite simple what they say,” answered his guide. “They say we are +a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.” + +“It seems to me a very clever idea,” said Syme. + +“Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!” cried out the other in a +sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his +crooked smile. “When you’ve seen Sunday for a split second you’ll leave +off calling him clever.” + +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early +sunlight filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I suppose, +why this square itself should look so alien and in some ways so +continental. It will never be known whether it was the foreign look +that attracted the foreigners or the foreigners who gave it the foreign +look. But on this particular morning the effect seemed singularly +bright and clear. Between the open square and the sunlit leaves and the +statue and the Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it looked the +replica of some French or even Spanish public place. And this effect +increased in Syme the sensation, which in many shapes he had had +through the whole adventure, the eerie sensation of having strayed into +a new world. As a fact, he had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square +ever since he was a boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the +trees and the Moorish cupolas, he could have sworn that he was turning +into an unknown Place de something or other in some foreign town. + +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a +prosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street +behind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably the +window of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost +literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed balcony, +big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did contain a +dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and round the +breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to the street, +were a group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed in the insolence +of fashion, with white waistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of +their jokes could almost be heard across the square. Then the grave +Secretary gave his unnatural smile, and Syme knew that this boisterous +breakfast party was the secret conclave of the European Dynamiters. + +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had +not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large +to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of +the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme +had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break +down the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact +that he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man was +planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved +deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen +from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood +out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to +scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him +all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become +dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers +and frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining +five children to tea. + +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter +came out smiling with every tooth in his head. + +“The gentlemen are up there, sare,” he said. “They do talk and they do +laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king.” + +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleased +with the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. + +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. + +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost +filled and broke the balcony was the great President of whom the others +stood in awe. He knew it was so, with an unaccountable but +instantaneous certainty. Syme, indeed, was one of those men who are +open to all the more nameless psychological influences in a degree a +little dangerous to mental health. Utterly devoid of fear in physical +dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual +evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning things had peeped out +at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of drawing nearer and +nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this sense became overpowering +as he drew nearer to the great President. + +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked +across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday +grew larger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he +was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and that he +would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would not look at +the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face, and so +large. + +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to an +empty seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted him +with good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He sobered +himself a little by looking at their conventional coats and solid, +shining coffee-pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face was very +large, but it was still possible to humanity. + +In the presence of the President the whole company looked sufficiently +commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at first, except that by +the President’s caprice they had been dressed up with a festive +respectability, which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast. +One man indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He at least was +the common or garden Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar +and satin tie that were the uniform of the occasion; but out of this +collar there sprang a head quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a +bewildering bush of brown hair and beard that almost obscured the eyes +like those of a Skye terrier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle, +and they were the sad eyes of some Russian serf. The effect of this +figure was not terrible like that of the President, but it had every +diablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that +stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a +dog, it could not have been a more idiotic contrast. + +The man’s name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle +of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably +tragic; he could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous +part demanded of him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came +in the President, with that daring disregard of public suspicion which +was his policy, was actually chaffing Gogol upon his inability to +assume conventional graces. + +“Our friend Tuesday,” said the President in a deep voice at once of +quietude and volume, “our friend Tuesday doesn’t seem to grasp the +idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a +soul to behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage +conspirator. Now if a gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a +frock-coat, no one need know that he is an anarchist. But if a +gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then goes about on +his hands and knees—well, he may attract attention. That’s what Brother +Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and knees with such +inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he finds it quite difficult +to walk upright.” + +“I am not good at concealment,” said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; “I am not ashamed of the cause.” + +“Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you,” said the President +good-naturedly. “You hide as much as anybody; but you can’t do it, you +see, you’re such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods. +When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause to +note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top +hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely +even to forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin’s bed—” + +“I am not good at deception,” said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. + +“Right, my boy, right,” said the President with a ponderous heartiness, +“you aren’t good at anything.” + +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more +steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his +sense of something spiritually queer return. + +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and +costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he +looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he +had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That +lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his +original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something +about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which +was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor he +could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and +presence would look, with the additional twist given in a false and +curved mirror. + +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed +eccentricity. Syme’s original cicerone bore the title of Monday; he was +the Secretary of the Council, and his twisted smile was regarded with +more terror than anything, except the President’s horrible, happy +laughter. But now that Syme had more space and light to observe him, +there were other touches. His fine face was so emaciated, that Syme +thought it must be wasted with some disease; yet somehow the very +distress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no physical ill that +troubled him. His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if pure +thought was pain. + +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and +differently wrong. Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed Gogol, a +man more obviously mad. Next was Wednesday, a certain Marquis de St. +Eustache, a sufficiently characteristic figure. The first few glances +found nothing unusual about him, except that he was the only man at +table who wore the fashionable clothes as if they were really his own. +He had a black French beard cut square and a black English frock-coat +cut even squarer. But Syme, sensitive to such things, felt somehow that +the man carried a rich atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that +suffocated. It reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying +lamps in the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of +his being clad, not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his +black seemed richer and warmer than the black shades about him, as if +it were compounded of profound colour. His black coat looked as if it +were only black by being too dense a purple. His black beard looked as +if it were only black by being too deep a blue. And in the gloom and +thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed sensual and scornful. +Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he might be a Jew; he might be +something deeper yet in the dark heart of the East. In the bright +coloured Persian tiles and pictures showing tyrants hunting, you may +see just those almond eyes, those blue-black beards, those cruel, +crimson lips. + +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who still +kept the chair of Friday, though every day it was expected that his +death would leave it empty. Save for his intellect, he was in the last +dissolution of senile decay. His face was as grey as his long grey +beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed finally in a furrow of mild +despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, did the bridegroom +brilliancy of the morning dress express a more painful contrast. For +the red flower in his button-hole showed up against a face that was +literally discoloured like lead; the whole hideous effect was as if +some drunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose +or sat down, which was with long labour and peril, something worse was +expressed than mere weakness, something indefinably connected with the +horror of the whole scene. It did not express decrepitude merely, but +corruption. Another hateful fancy crossed Syme’s quivering mind. He +could not help thinking that whenever the man moved a leg or arm might +fall off. + +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most +baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face +clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had +that combination of _savoir-faire_ with a sort of well-groomed +coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine +clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set +smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a +pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a +crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but those black discs +were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, +of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme’s +eye always caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying +Professor worn them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been +appropriate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an +enigma. They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his +smile or his gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had +a vulgar virility wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme that +he might be the wickedest of all those wicked men. Syme even had the +thought that his eyes might be covered up because they were too +frightful to see. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. +THE EXPOSURE + + +Such were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again and +again Syme strove to pull together his common sense in their presence. +Sometimes he saw for an instant that these notions were subjective, +that he was only looking at ordinary men, one of whom was old, another +nervous, another short-sighted. The sense of an unnatural symbolism +always settled back on him again. Each figure seemed to be, somehow, on +the borderland of things, just as their theory was on the borderland of +thought. He knew that each one of these men stood at the extreme end, +so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in +some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the +world he would find something—say a tree—that was more or less than a +tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end +of the world he would find something else that was not wholly itself—a +tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures +seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate +horizon, visions from the verge. The ends of the earth were closing in. + +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not the +least of the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the +contrast between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible +purport. They were deep in the discussion of an actual and immediate +plot. The waiter downstairs had spoken quite correctly when he said +that they were talking about bombs and kings. Only three days +afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the French Republic in +Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their sunny balcony these +beaming gentlemen had decided how both should die. Even the instrument +was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it appeared, was to carry the +bomb. + +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime +would have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mystical +tremors. He would have thought of nothing but the need of saving at +least two human bodies from being ripped in pieces with iron and +roaring gas. But the truth was that by this time he had begun to feel a +third kind of fear, more piercing and practical than either his moral +revulsion or his social responsibility. Very simply, he had no fear to +spare for the French President or the Czar; he had begun to fear for +himself. Most of the talkers took little heed of him, debating now with +their faces closer together, and almost uniformly grave, save when for +an instant the smile of the Secretary ran aslant across his face as the +jagged lightning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one +persistent thing which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. +The President was always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and +baffling interest. The enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes +stood out of his head. And they were always fixed on Syme. + +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President’s eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He +had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary +way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of +the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, +staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. + +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him +for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who +were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and +fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He +even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if they had played +together when children. But he remembered that he was still tied to +Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never to do the very thing +that he now felt himself almost in the act of doing. He had promised +not to jump over that balcony and speak to that policeman. He took his +cold hand off the cold stone balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo +of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made +to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as +the square beneath him. He had, on the other hand, only to keep his +antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this +great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. +Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable +policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he +looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly +studying him with big, unbearable eyes. + +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that never +crossed his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt that the +President and his Council could crush him if he continued to stand +alone. The place might be public, the project might seem impossible. +But Sunday was not the man who would carry himself thus easily without +having, somehow or somewhere, set open his iron trap. Either by +anonymous poison or sudden street accident, by hypnotism or by fire +from hell, Sunday could certainly strike him. If he defied the man he +was probably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long +afterwards as by an innocent ailment. If he called in the police +promptly, arrested everyone, told all, and set against them the whole +energy of England, he would probably escape; certainly not otherwise. +They were a balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy +square; but he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a +boatful of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. + +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to +him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a +weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their +allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. They might +have called Sunday the super-man. If any such creature be conceivable, +he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, with his earth-shaking +abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. He might have been called +something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be +detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood. +But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink +even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to +fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it. + +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were typical. +Dr. Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally of the best +things on the table—cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. But the Secretary +was a vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the projected murder over +half a raw tomato and three quarters of a glass of tepid water. The old +Professor had such slops as suggested a sickening second childhood. And +even in this President Sunday preserved his curious predominance of +mere mass. For he ate like twenty men; he ate incredibly, with a +frightful freshness of appetite, so that it was like watching a sausage +factory. Yet continually, when he had swallowed a dozen crumpets or +drunk a quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on one +side staring at Syme. + +“I have often wondered,” said the Marquis, taking a great bite out of a +slice of bread and jam, “whether it wouldn’t be better for me to do it +with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a +knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French +President and wriggle it round.” + +“You are wrong,” said the Secretary, drawing his black brows together. +“The knife was merely the expression of the old personal quarrel with a +personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our best +symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of +the Christians. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even +so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man’s brain is a +bomb,” he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and +striking his own skull with violence. “My brain feels like a bomb, +night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man’s brain must +expand, if it breaks up the universe.” + +“I don’t want the universe broken up just yet,” drawled the Marquis. “I +want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one +yesterday in bed.” + +“No, if the only end of the thing is nothing,” said Dr. Bull with his +sphinx-like smile, “it hardly seems worth doing.” + +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. + +“Every man knows in his heart,” he said, “that nothing is worth doing.” + +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said— + +“We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is how +Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with the +original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should +suggest that tomorrow morning he should go first of all to—” + +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday +had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. + +“Before we discuss that,” he said in a small, quiet voice, “let us go +into a private room. I have something very particular to say.” + +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come +at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could +hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, +was cold. + +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial +tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle. +He found himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from +nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the +vulgarity, and the irrational valour of the poor, who in all those +unclean streets were all clinging to the decencies and the charities of +Christendom. His youthful prank of being a policeman had faded from his +mind; he did not think of himself as the representative of the corps of +gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of the old eccentric who +lived in the dark room. But he did feel himself as the ambassador of +all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day marched +into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in +being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above +the monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down +upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the +commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary +superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man +over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the intellectual nor +the physical strength of President Sunday; but in that moment he minded +it no more than the fact that he had not the muscles of a tiger or a +horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed up in an ultimate +certainty that the President was wrong and that the barrel-organ was +right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism +in the song of Roland— + + “Païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit,” + +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. +This liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness went with a +quite clear decision to embrace death. If the people of the +barrel-organ could keep their old-world obligations, so could he. This +very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to +miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into +their dark room and die for something that they could not even +understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the +energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear +deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the +drums of the pride of death. + +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and into +the rooms behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all his +brain and body throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President led them +down an irregular side stair, such as might be used by servants, and +into a dim, cold, empty room, with a table and benches, like an +abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, he closed and locked the +door. + +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting +with inarticulate grievance. + +“Zso! Zso!” he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. “You zay you nod ’ide. You zay you +show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk importance you +run yourselves in a dark box!” + +The President seemed to take the foreigner’s incoherent satire with +entire good humour. + +“You can’t get hold of it yet, Gogol,” he said in a fatherly way. “When +once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they will not +care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have +had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don’t seem to know anything +about mankind.” + +“I die for zem,” cried the Pole in thick excitement, “and I slay zare +oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would zmite ze +tyrant in ze open square.” + +“I see, I see,” said the President, nodding kindly as he seated himself +at the top of a long table. “You die for mankind first, and then you +get up and smite their oppressors. So that’s all right. And now may I +ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit down with the +other gentlemen at this table. For the first time this morning +something intelligent is going to be said.” + +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the original +summons, sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling in his brown +beard about gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to have any notion of +the blow that was about to fall. As for him, he had merely the feeling +of a man mounting the scaffold with the intention, at any rate, of +making a good speech. + +“Comrades,” said the President, suddenly rising, “we have spun out this +farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you something so +simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs (long inured to our +levities) might hear some new seriousness in my voice. Comrades, we +were discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before saying +anything else, that those plans and places should not be voted by this +meeting, but should be left wholly in the control of some one reliable +member. I suggest Comrade Saturday, Dr. Bull.” + +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for the +next words, though not loud, had a living and sensational emphasis. +Sunday struck the table. + +“Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be +mentioned in this company.” + +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it seemed +as if he had never really astonished them until now. They all moved +feverishly in their seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his +hand in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded revolver. When the +attack on him came he would sell his life dear. He would find out at +least if the President was mortal. + +Sunday went on smoothly— + +“You will probably understand that there is only one possible motive +for forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. Strangers +overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we are joking. But +what would matter, even unto death, is this, that there should be one +actually among us who is not of us, who knows our grave purpose, but +does not share it, who—” + +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. + +“It can’t be!” he cried, leaping. “There can’t—” + +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of +some huge fish. + +“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor +at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—” + +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. + +“His name is Gogol,” said the President. “He is that hairy humbug over +there who pretends to be a Pole.” + +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same flash +three men sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made an effort to +rise. But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was blinded with a +beneficent darkness; he had sunk down into his seat shuddering, in a +palsy of passionate relief. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + + +“Sit down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in his +life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. + +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person +himself resumed his seat. + +“Well, my man,” said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, “will you oblige me by putting your hand in +your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?” + +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but +he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled +out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke +up again to the world outside him. For although the card lay at the +other extreme of the table, and he could read nothing of the +inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance to the blue card in +his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when he joined the +anti-anarchist constabulary. + +“Pathetic Slav,” said the President, “tragic child of Poland, are you +prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this +company—shall we say _de trop?_” + +“Right oh!” said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear, +commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of +foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken +with a Scotch accent. + +“I gather that you fully understand your position,” said Sunday. + +“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. All I say is, I +don’t believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his.” + +“I concede the point,” said Sunday. “I believe your own accent to be +inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind leaving +your beard with your card?” + +“Not a bit,” answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a +pale, pert face. “It was hot,” he added. + +“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort of +brutal admiration, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. +Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me +for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in +torments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, +I shall have that two and a half minutes of discomfort. On your +discomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the step.” + +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet +without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect +nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease +was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble outside the door, +which showed that the departing detective had not minded the step. + +“Time is flying,” said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger +than it ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair +at a Humanitarian meeting.” + +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. + +“Would it not be better,” he said a little sharply, “to discuss further +the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?” + +“No, I think not,” said the President with a yawn like an unobtrusive +earthquake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off. +Breakfast here next Sunday.” + +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the +Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime. + +“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. “It +is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in +full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in +the actual presence of a traitor—” + +“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d take your head +home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t say. But it +might.” + +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. + +“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense. + +“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a great many times. +“That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, you +dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you didn’t want to be overheard by +a spy, didn’t you? How do you know you aren’t overheard now?” + +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking +with incomprehensible scorn. + +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent +glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such +as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President +meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed +unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like +Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. + +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook +themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past +midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat +long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had +escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose +and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, +cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the +street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried +the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he had +thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, +perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might +be slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up +under the doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser’s shop, the front +window of which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening +dress. + +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found +one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, +stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably +astonished to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staring +into the window, a man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat +of Father Christmas, the white drift was rising round his boots and +ankles; but it seemed as if nothing could tear him away from the +contemplation of the colourless wax doll in dirty evening dress. That +any human being should stand in such weather looking into such a shop +was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned +suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised that the man standing +there was the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the +place for a person of his years and infirmities. + +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this +dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the +Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could +only suppose that the man’s malady (whatever it was) involved some +momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to +feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he +rather congratulated himself that the Professor’s stroke and his +elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him and +leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear +of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could +collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether +he should or should not keep faith with Gregory. + +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three +streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho +restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and quaint +courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black +coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his seat in the +upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the chink of knives and +the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days he had +imagined that all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He +shuddered, remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the +delightful shame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar +place, the faces of natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as +if the Council of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and although he +knew it was nevertheless an objective reality, it was at least a +distant one. Tall houses and populous streets lay between him and his +last sight of the shameful seven; he was free in free London, and +drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took +his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop below. + +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the +spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white +street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, +with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme +stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of +blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing open the door and +slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow. + +“Can that old corpse be following me?” he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even +such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk +walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too +fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a +fool as to send a lame man?” + +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the +direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow +increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to +darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. +Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futility +to his already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a +swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, and +finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He ordered +another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when +Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with +difficulty and ordered a glass of milk. + +Syme’s walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which +confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. +Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a +rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had +heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had +come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme +had walked like the wind. He started up and snatched his stick, half +crazy with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, and swung out of the +swinging doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus going to the +Bank went rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of +a hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the +splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the +top. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind +him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing. + +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the +omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the +shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of +Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic +care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug. + +Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every +uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond +question that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of +the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of +caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time and +space have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quite +unquestionable that he had run after the omnibus. + +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the +wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He +had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side. + +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the +little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a +hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box +was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he +could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those +crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than thoroughfares; and by +the time that he had completed about twenty alternate angles and +described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of +pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been much, +for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere +behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic +citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, +leaving the wet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as +he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when +a few hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his +heart stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones +the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple. + +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in a +darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each +side of Syme the walls of the alley were blind and featureless; there +was no little window or any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break +out of this hive of houses, and to get once more into the open and +lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time before he +struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he struck it much farther +up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the vast and void +of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting in the sky. + +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a +pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some +degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm was even +dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very +word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like some +indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the +whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green +twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunset behind +the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and sinister +colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, that were +just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But +right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the +cathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and +great stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen +accidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its +very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and +the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made +with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. + +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or +slowly behind him, and he did not care. + +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were +darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might +have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a +new impulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and +pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon +the Circus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer. + +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alley +behind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp, +irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in the nursery +rhymes, “the crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as +if he had been twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he had been +threading. He came nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his +lifted spectacles, his lifted, patient face. Syme waited for him as St. +George waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or +for death. And the old Professor came right up to him and passed him +like a total stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids. + +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that left +Syme in a final fury. The man’s colourless face and manner seemed to +assert that the whole following had been an accident. Syme was +galvanised with an energy that was something between bitterness and a +burst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture as if to knock the old +man’s hat off, called out something like “Catch me if you can,” and +went racing away across the white, open Circus. Concealment was +impossible now; and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the +black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging +strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding +body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a +lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. + +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, +round St. Paul’s Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all the +nightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river, +and ended almost down by the docks. He saw the yellow panes of a low, +lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered beer. It was a +foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a place where opium might +be smoked or knives drawn. + +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down +carefully, and asked for a glass of milk. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + + +When Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, and +opposite to him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and leaden +eyelids of the Professor, his fears fully returned. This +incomprehensible man from the fierce council, after all, had certainly +pursued him. If the man had one character as a paralytic and another +character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him more interesting, +but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very small comfort that he +could not find the Professor out, if by some serious accident the +Professor should find him out. He emptied a whole pewter pot of ale +before the professor had touched his milk. + +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was +just possible that this escapade signified something other than even a +slight suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or sign. +Perhaps the foolish scamper was some sort of friendly signal that he +ought to have understood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps the new +Thursday was always chased along Cheapside, as the new Lord Mayor is +always escorted along it. He was just selecting a tentative inquiry, +when the old Professor opposite suddenly and simply cut him short. +Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic question, the old anarchist +had asked suddenly, without any sort of preparation— + +“Are you a policeman?” + +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so +brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only +manage a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity. + +“A policeman?” he said, laughing vaguely. “Whatever made you think of a +policeman in connection with me?” + +“The process was simple enough,” answered the Professor patiently. “I +thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now.” + +“Did I take a policeman’s hat by mistake out of the restaurant?” asked +Syme, smiling wildly. “Have I by any chance got a number stuck on to me +somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be a +policeman? Do, do let me be a postman.” + +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, but +Syme ran on with a feverish irony. + +“But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy. +Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, +the ape fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can never +detect the shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhaps +a maiden lady on Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have +been. I don’t mind being the policeman that might have been. I don’t +mind being anything in German thought.” + +“Are you in the police service?” said the old man, ignoring all Syme’s +improvised and desperate raillery. “Are you a detective?” + +Syme’s heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. + +“Your suggestion is ridiculous,” he began. “Why on earth—” + +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety table, +nearly breaking it. + +“Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?” he shrieked +in a high, crazy voice. “Are you, or are you not, a police detective?” + +“No!” answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman’s drop. + +“You swear it,” said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead face +becoming as it were loathsomely alive. “You swear it! You swear it! If +you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devil +dances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your +grave? Will there really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are a +dynamiter! Above all, you are not in any sense a detective? You are not +in the British police?” + +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his large +loose hand like a flap to his ear. + +“I am not in the British police,” said Syme with insane calm. + +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of kindly +collapse. + +“That’s a pity,” he said, “because I am.” + +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a +crash. + +“Because you are what?” he said thickly. “You are what?” + +“I am a policeman,” said the Professor with his first broad smile, and +beaming through his spectacles. “But as you think policeman only a +relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I am in the +British police force; but as you tell me you are not in the British +police force, I can only say that I met you in a dynamiters’ club. I +suppose I ought to arrest you.” And with these words he laid on the +table before Syme an exact facsimile of the blue card which Syme had in +his own waistcoat pocket, the symbol of his power from the police. + +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly +upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars +were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the +last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but now +the capsized universe had come right side up again. This devil from +whom he had been fleeing all day was only an elder brother of his own +house, who on the other side of the table lay back and laughed at him. +He did not for the moment ask any questions of detail; he only knew the +happy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with an +intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying +to catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free +man. For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain +healthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions +when only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic +pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme’s egotism held hard to +the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the +third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat +pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until +his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted +with a barbaric laughter. + +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, +plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there +was something Homeric in Syme’s mirth which made many half-drunken men +look round. + +“What yer laughing at, guv’nor?” asked one wondering labourer from the +docks. + +“At myself,” answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of his +ecstatic reaction. + +“Pull yourself together,” said the Professor, “or you’ll get +hysterical. Have some more beer. I’ll join you.” + +“You haven’t drunk your milk,” said Syme. + +“My milk!” said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, “my milk! Do you think I’d look at the beastly stuff when I’m +out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We’re all Christians in this +room, though perhaps,” he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd, +“not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I’ll finish it +right enough!” and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making a crash +of glass and a splash of silver fluid. + +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. + +“I understand now,” he cried; “of course, you’re not an old man at +all.” + +“I can’t take my face off here,” replied Professor de Worms. “It’s +rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I’m an old man, that’s not +for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday.” + +“Yes, but I mean,” said Syme impatiently, “there’s nothing the matter +with you.” + +“Yes,” answered the other dispassionately. “I am subject to colds.” + +Syme’s laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. He +laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a young +actor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would +have laughed as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. + +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. + +“Did you know,” he asked, “that that man Gogol was one of us?” + +“I? No, I didn’t know it,” answered Syme in some surprise. “But didn’t +you?” + +“I knew no more than the dead,” replied the man who called himself de +Worms. “I thought the President was talking about me, and I rattled in +my boots.” + +“And I thought he was talking about me,” said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. “I had my hand on my revolver all the time.” + +“So had I,” said the Professor grimly; “so had Gogol evidently.” + +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. + +“Why, there were three of us there!” he cried. “Three out of seven is a +fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!” + +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. + +“We were three,” he said. “If we had been three hundred we could still +have done nothing.” + +“Not if we were three hundred against four?” asked Syme, jeering rather +boisterously. + +“No,” said the Professor with sobriety, “not if we were three hundred +against Sunday.” + +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had died +in his heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the +unforgettable President sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured +photograph, and he remarked this difference between Sunday and all his +satellites, that their faces, however fierce or sinister, became +gradually blurred by memory like other human faces, whereas Sunday’s +seemed almost to grow more actual during absence, as if a man’s painted +portrait should slowly come alive. + +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme’s speech +came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. + +“Professor,” he cried, “it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this man?” + +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, +wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. + +“Yes, I am,” he said mildly. “So are you.” + +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like an +insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him. + +“Yes,” he said in a voice indescribable, “you are right. I am afraid of +him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear +until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his +throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him +down.” + +“How?” asked the staring Professor. “Why?” + +“Because I am afraid of him,” said Syme; “and no man should leave in +the universe anything of which he is afraid.” + +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an effort +to speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an undercurrent of +inhuman exaltation— + +“Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not +fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common +prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless—like a tree? Fight the +thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman +who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his +death-bed the great robber said, ‘I can give you no money, but I can +give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike +upwards.’ So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars.” + +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. + +“Sunday is a fixed star,” he said. + +“You shall see him a falling star,” said Syme, and put on his hat. + +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. + +“Have you any idea,” he asked, with a sort of benevolent bewilderment, +“exactly where you are going?” + +“Yes,” replied Syme shortly, “I am going to prevent this bomb being +thrown in Paris.” + +“Have you any conception how?” inquired the other. + +“No,” said Syme with equal decision. + +“You remember, of course,” resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling his +beard and looking out of the window, “that when we broke up rather +hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in the +private hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this time +probably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he will do +it is doubtful whether even the President knows; certainly we don’t +know. The only man who does know is Dr. Bull.” + +“Confound it!” cried Syme. “And we don’t know where he is.” + +“Yes,” said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, “I know where +he is myself.” + +“Will you tell me?” asked Syme with eager eyes. + +“I will take you there,” said the Professor, and took down his own hat +from a peg. + +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. + +“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Will you join me? Will you take +the risk?” + +“Young man,” said the Professor pleasantly, “I am amused to observe +that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, and +that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical +rhetoric. You think that it is possible to pull down the President. I +know that it is impossible, and I am going to try it,” and opening the +tavern door, which let in a blast of bitter air, they went out together +into the dark streets by the docks. + +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there a +clot of it still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The small +streets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the flaming +lamps irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some other and +fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped through this growing +confusion of lights and shadows; but his companion walked on with a +certain briskness, towards where, at the end of the street, an inch or +two of the lamplit river looked like a bar of flame. + +“Where are you going?” Syme inquired. + +“Just now,” answered the Professor, “I am going just round the corner +to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retires +early.” + +“Dr. Bull!” exclaimed Syme. “Does he live round the corner?” + +“No,” answered his friend. “As a matter of fact he lives some way off, +on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here whether he +has gone to bed.” + +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked with +flame, he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the Surrey side +at this point there ran out into the Thames, seeming almost to overhang +it, a bulk and cluster of those tall tenements, dotted with lighted +windows, and rising like factory chimneys to an almost insane height. +Their special poise and position made one block of buildings especially +look like a Tower of Babel with a hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any +of the sky-scraping buildings in America, so he could only think of the +buildings in a dream. + +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turret +abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him with one of +his innumerable eyes. + +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick +against his boot. + +“We are too late,” he said, “the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed.” + +“What do you mean?” asked Syme. “Does he live over there, then?” + +“Yes,” said de Worms, “behind that particular window which you can’t +see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him tomorrow +morning.” + +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways until +they came out into the flare and clamour of the East India Dock Road. +The Professor, who seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood, +proceeded to a place where the line of lighted shops fell back into a +sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in which an old white inn, all out +of repair, stood back some twenty feet from the road. + +“You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils,” explained the Professor. “I once found a decent place in the +West End.” + +“I suppose,” said Syme, smiling, “that this is the corresponding decent +place in the East End?” + +“It is,” said the Professor reverently, and went in. + +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans and +bacon, which these unaccountable people cooked well, the astonishing +emergence of Burgundy from their cellars, crowned Syme’s sense of a new +comradeship and comfort. Through all this ordeal his root horror had +been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between +isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians +that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand +times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world +will always return to monogamy. + +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his +outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little +tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant +monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On his side, also, +the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was not less +communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme’s. + +“That’s a good get-up of yours,” said Syme, draining a glass of Macon; +“a lot better than old Gogol’s. Even at the start I thought he was a +bit too hairy.” + +“A difference of artistic theory,” replied the Professor pensively. +“Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of +an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, +to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a +portrait.” + +“I don’t understand you,” said Syme. + +“I am a portrait,” repeated the Professor. “I am a portrait of the +celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples.” + +“You mean you are made up like him,” said Syme. “But doesn’t he know +that you are taking his nose in vain?” + +“He knows it right enough,” replied his friend cheerfully. + +“Then why doesn’t he denounce you?” + +“I have denounced him,” answered the Professor. + +“Do explain yourself,” said Syme. + +“With pleasure, if you don’t mind hearing my story,” replied the +eminent foreign philosopher. “I am by profession an actor, and my name +is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian +and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, +sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political +refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great +German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much +about him beyond his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I +studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive +principle in the universe was God; hence he insisted on the need for a +furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he +said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. +When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much +that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would +have drawn a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a +caricature. I made myself up into what was meant for a wild +exaggeration of the old Professor’s dirty old self. When I went into +the room full of his supporters I expected to be received with a roar +of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation +at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance +was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect +artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. +They thought I really was the great Nihilist Professor. I was a +healthy-minded young man at the time, and I confess that it was a blow. +Before I could fully recover, however, two or three of these admirers +ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult +had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed +that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous +parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and +in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. +Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted +eyebrows and freezing eyes that the real Professor came into the room. + +“I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round me +looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see which +was really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like +my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young +actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and +working within this definite limitation, he couldn’t be so jolly +paralytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I +countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that +nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could +not even understand myself. ‘I don’t fancy,’ he said, ‘that you could +have worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, since +there inheres in it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential +of differentiation.’ I replied quite scornfully, ‘You read all that up +in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically was +exposed long ago by Glumpe.’ It is unnecessary for me to say that there +never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people all +round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, and +the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him +rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell +back upon a more popular form of wit. ‘I see,’ he sneered, ‘you prevail +like the false pig in Æsop.’ ‘And you fail,’ I answered, smiling, ‘like +the hedgehog in Montaigne.’ Need I say that there is no hedgehog in +Montaigne? ‘Your claptrap comes off,’ he said; ‘so would your beard.’ I +had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather +witty. But I laughed heartily, answered, ‘Like the Pantheist’s boots,’ +at random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. The +real Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though one man +tried very patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I believe, +received everywhere in Europe as a delightful impostor. His apparent +earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more entertaining.” + +“Well,” said Syme, “I can understand your putting on his dirty old +beard for a night’s practical joke, but I don’t understand your never +taking it off again.” + +“That is the rest of the story,” said the impersonator. “When I myself +left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went limping down +the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be +able to walk like a human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning +the corner, I felt a touch on the shoulder, and turning, found myself +under the shadow of an enormous policeman. He told me I was wanted. I +struck a sort of paralytic attitude, and cried in a high German accent, +‘Yes, I am wanted—by the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me +on the charge of being the great anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ The +policeman impassively consulted a paper in his hand, ‘No, sir,’ he said +civilly, ‘at least, not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the charge +of not being the celebrated anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ This +charge, if it was criminal at all, was certainly the lighter of the +two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, but not greatly dismayed. +I was shown into a number of rooms, and eventually into the presence of +a police officer, who explained that a serious campaign had been opened +against the centres of anarchy, and that this, my successful +masquerade, might be of considerable value to the public safety. He +offered me a good salary and this little blue card. Though our +conversation was short, he struck me as a man of very massive common +sense and humour; but I cannot tell you much about him personally, +because—” + +Syme laid down his knife and fork. + +“I know,” he said, “because you talked to him in a dark room.” + +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + + +“Burgundy is a jolly thing,” said the Professor sadly, as he set his +glass down. + +“You don’t look as if it were,” said Syme; “you drink it as if it were +medicine.” + +“You must excuse my manner,” said the Professor dismally, “my position +is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish +merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I +can’t leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at +all to disguise myself, I still can’t help speaking slow and wrinkling +my forehead—just as if it were my forehead. I can be quite happy, you +understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. The most buoyant +exclamations leap up in my heart, but they come out of my mouth quite +different. You should hear me say, ‘Buck up, old cock!’ It would bring +tears to your eyes.” + +“It does,” said Syme; “but I cannot help thinking that apart from all +that you are really a bit worried.” + +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. + +“You are a very clever fellow,” he said, “it is a pleasure to work with +you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a great +problem to face,” and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. + +Then he said in a low voice— + +“Can you play the piano?” + +“Yes,” said Syme in simple wonder, “I’m supposed to have a good touch.” + +Then, as the other did not speak, he added— + +“I trust the great cloud is lifted.” + +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of +his hands— + +“It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter.” + +“Thank you,” said Syme, “you flatter me.” + +“Listen to me,” said the other, “and remember whom we have to see +tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which is +very much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels out of +the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, very +strong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, except the +President, of course, who is so seriously startling and formidable as +that little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not perhaps the +white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for anarchy, which +marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism in the Secretary has +a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little Doctor +has a brutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary’s disease. +Don’t you notice his detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like +an india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if +he ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the +round, black head of Dr. Bull.” + +“And you think,” said Syme, “that this unique monster will be soothed +if I play the piano to him?” + +“Don’t be an ass,” said his mentor. “I mentioned the piano because it +gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go through +this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code of +signals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a rough +alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers—like this, see,” +and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table—“B A D, bad, a word +we may frequently require.” + +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study the +scheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with +his hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he +might convey simple messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a +table or knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of +inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found +himself struggling with the too vast energy of the new language, as it +passed through the heated brain of Syme. + +“We must have several word-signs,” said Syme seriously—“words that we +are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is +‘coeval’. What’s yours?” + +“Do stop playing the goat,” said the Professor plaintively. “You don’t +know how serious this is.” + +“‘Lush’ too,” said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, “we must have +‘lush’—word applied to grass, don’t you know?” + +“Do you imagine,” asked the Professor furiously, “that we are going to +talk to Dr. Bull about grass?” + +“There are several ways in which the subject could be approached,” said +Syme reflectively, “and the word introduced without appearing forced. +We might say, ‘Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a tyrant +once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, looking on the +fresh lush grass of summer...’” + +“Do you understand,” said the other, “that this is a tragedy?” + +“Perfectly,” replied Syme; “always be comic in a tragedy. What the +deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider scope. +I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That +would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, +which however unobtrusively performed—” + +“Syme,” said his friend with a stern simplicity, “go to bed!” + +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the new +code. He was awakened next morning while the east was still sealed with +darkness, and found his grey-bearded ally standing like a ghost beside +his bed. + +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, threw +off the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious way +that all the safety and sociability of the night before fell with the +bedclothes off him, and he stood up in an air of cold danger. He still +felt an entire trust and loyalty towards his companion; but it was the +trust between two men going to the scaffold. + +“Well,” said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, “I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long to +make it up?” + +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes the +colour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. + +“I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I’m considered good at +these things, and it was a good hour’s grind. Did you learn it all on +the spot?” + +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixed +but very small smile. + +“How long did it take you?” + +The Professor did not move. + +“Confound you, can’t you answer?” called out Syme, in a sudden anger +that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the Professor +could answer, he did not. + +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank, +blue eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone mad, but +his second thought was more frightful. After all, what did he know +about this queer creature whom he had heedlessly accepted as a friend? +What did he know, except that the man had been at the anarchist +breakfast and had told him a ridiculous tale? How improbable it was +that there should be another friend there beside Gogol! Was this man’s +silence a sensational way of declaring war? Was this adamantine stare +after all only the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, who had +turned for the last time? He stood and strained his ears in this +heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to +capture him shifting softly in the corridor outside. + +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though the +Professor himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his five dumb +fingers were dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme watched the +twinkling movements of the talking hand, and read clearly the message— + +“I will only talk like this. We must get used to it.” + +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief— + +“All right. Let’s get out to breakfast.” + +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his +sword-stick, he held it hard. + +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse +thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the +river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as +Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which +they had seen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the +naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make +short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At about every other flight +they passed a window; each window showed them a pale and tragic dawn +lifting itself laboriously over London. From each the innumerable roofs +of slate looked like the leaden surges of a grey, troubled sea after +rain. Syme was increasingly conscious that his new adventure had +somehow a quality of cold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the +past. Last night, for instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him +like a tower in a dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual +steps, he was daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. +But it was not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be +exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty +infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to +thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about the +distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a +thing more hideous than unreason itself. + +By the time they reached Dr. Bull’s landing, a last window showed them +a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more like +red clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull’s bare garret +it was full of light. + +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with +these empty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the +garret and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the +memory was—the French Revolution. There should have been the black +outline of a guillotine against that heavy red and white of the +morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and black breeches only; his +cropped, dark head might well have just come out of its wig; he might +have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. + +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins +were idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. His +position gave him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light of +morning coming from one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both +more pale and more angular than he had looked at the breakfast on the +balcony. Thus the two black glasses that encased his eyes might really +have been black cavities in his skull, making him look like a +death’s-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself sat writing at a +wooden table, it might have been he. + +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rose +with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set +chairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceeded +to put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it up +neatly, and came back to sit down at his table. + +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It +was with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence and +began, “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, comrade,” said he, with a +careful resumption of the slow de Worms manner. “You have no doubt made +all the arrangements for the Paris affair?” Then he added with infinite +slowness, “We have information which renders intolerable anything in +the nature of a moment’s delay.” + +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking. +The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word— + +“Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to alter +those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your agent with +all the support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and I have had an +experience which it would take more time to recount than we can afford, +if we are to act on it. I will, however, relate the occurrence in +detail, even at the risk of losing time, if you really feel that it is +essential to the understanding of the problem we have to discuss.” + +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long and +lingering, in the hope of maddening the practical little Doctor into an +explosion of impatience which might show his hand. But the little +Doctor continued only to stare and smile, and the monologue was uphill +work. Syme began to feel a new sickness and despair. The Doctor’s smile +and silence were not at all like the cataleptic stare and horrible +silence which he had confronted in the Professor half an hour before. +About the Professor’s makeup and all his antics there was always +something merely grotesque, like a gollywog. Syme remembered those wild +woes of yesterday as one remembers being afraid of Bogy in childhood. +But here was daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in +tweeds, not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not +glaring or grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. +The whole had a sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing +sunlight the colours of the Doctor’s complexion, the pattern of his +tweeds, grew and expanded outrageously, as such things grow too +important in a realistic novel. But his smile was quite slight, the +pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was his silence. + +“As I say,” resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavy +sand, “the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask for +information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better to +have narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than +me—” + +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but +Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge +of the crazy table. He read the message, “You must go on. This devil +has sucked me dry!” + +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation which +always came to him when he was alarmed. + +“Yes, the thing really happened to me,” he said hastily. “I had the +good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who took me, +thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to clinch my +reputation for respectability, I took him and made him very drunk at +the Savoy. Under this influence he became friendly, and told me in so +many words that within a day or two they hope to arrest the Marquis in +France. + +“So unless you or I can get on his track—” + +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his +protected eyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme +that he would resume his explanation, and he began again with the same +elaborate calm. + +“Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seems +to me unquestionably urgent that—” + +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadily as +the Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. The +nerves of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain of +motionless amiability, when Syme suddenly leant forward and idly tapped +the edge of the table. His message to his ally ran, “I have an +intuition.” + +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back, +“Then sit on it.” + +Syme telegraphed, “It is quite extraordinary.” + +The other answered, “Extraordinary rot!” + +Syme said, “I am a poet.” + +The other retorted, “You are a dead man.” + +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were +burning feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had risen to +a sort of lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps, he +signalled to his friend, “You scarcely realise how poetic my intuition +is. It has that sudden quality we sometimes feel in the coming of +spring.” + +He then studied the answer on his friend’s fingers. The answer was, “Go +to hell!” + +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to the +Doctor. + +“Perhaps I should rather say,” said Syme on his fingers, “that it +resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the heart +of lush woods.” + +His companion disdained to reply. + +“Or yet again,” tapped Syme, “it is positive, as is the passionate red +hair of a beautiful woman.” + +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it Syme +decided to act. He leant across the table, and said in a voice that +could not be neglected— + +“Dr. Bull!” + +The Doctor’s sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could have +sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme. + +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and courteous, +“would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take off +your spectacles?” + +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a sort +of frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his +life and fortune on the table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The +Doctor did not move. + +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a pin +drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. +Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles. + +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a chemical +lecturer from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars, and for +an instant he could only point without speaking. + +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his supposed +paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully at +Dr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes. +And indeed it was almost as great a transformation scene. + +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very +boyish-looking young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an open +expression, cockney clothes like those of a city clerk, and an +unquestionable breath about him of being very good and rather +commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might have been the +first smile of a baby. + +“I knew I was a poet,” cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. “I knew my +intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that did +it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, and all +the rest of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a live devil +among dead ones.” + +“It certainly does make a queer difference,” said the Professor +shakily. “But as regards the project of Dr. Bull—” + +“Project be damned!” roared Syme, beside himself. “Look at him! Look at +his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You don’t +suppose, do you, that that thing’s an anarchist?” + +“Syme!” cried the other in an apprehensive agony. + +“Why, by God,” said Syme, “I’ll take the risk of that myself! Dr. Bull, +I am a police officer. There’s my card,” and he flung down the blue +card upon the table. + +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He +pulled out his own official card and put it beside his friend’s. Then +the third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that morning +they heard his voice. + +“I’m awfully glad you chaps have come so early,” he said, with a sort +of schoolboy flippancy, “for we can all start for France together. Yes, +I’m in the force right enough,” and he flicked a blue card towards them +lightly as a matter of form. + +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin glasses, +the Doctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the others +instinctively followed him. Syme seemed a little distrait, and as he +passed under the doorway he suddenly struck his stick on the stone +passage so that it rang. + +“But Lord God Almighty,” he cried out, “if this is all right, there +were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the +damned Council!” + +“We might have fought easily,” said Bull; “we were four against three.” + +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from +below. + +“No,” said the voice, “we were not four against three—we were not so +lucky. We were four against One.” + +The others went down the stairs in silence. + +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic of +him, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there +his own robust rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he walked +quickly on ahead towards a railway inquiry office, talking to the +others over his shoulder. + +“It is jolly to get some pals,” he said. “I’ve been half dead with the +jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol and +embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won’t despise +me for having been in a blue funk.” + +“All the blue devils in blue hell,” said Syme, “contributed to my blue +funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.” + +The young man laughed delightedly. + +“Wasn’t it a rag?” he said. “Such a simple idea—not my own. I haven’t +got the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective service, +especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that purpose they wanted +someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by blazes that I +could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was +respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British +Constitution. They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and +too reliable and benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at +Scotland Yard. They said that if I had been a criminal, I might have +made my fortune by looking so like an honest man; but as I had the +misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even the remotest chance +of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But at last I was +brought before some old josser who was high up in the force, and who +seemed to have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others +all talked hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my +nice smile; another said that if they blacked my face I might look like +a negro anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most +extraordinary remark. ‘A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,’ he said +positively. ‘Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put +him on a pair of smoked spectacles, and children will scream at the +sight of him.’ And so it was, by George! When once my eyes were +covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and short hair, made me +look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was simple enough when it was +done, like miracles; but that wasn’t the really miraculous part of it. +There was one really staggering thing about the business, and my head +still turns at it.” + +“What was that?” asked Syme. + +“I’ll tell you,” answered the man in spectacles. “This big pot in the +police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go with my +hair and socks—by God, he never saw me at all!” + +Syme’s eyes suddenly flashed on him. + +“How was that?” he asked. “I thought you talked to him.” + +“So I did,” said Bull brightly; “but we talked in a pitch-dark room +like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that.” + +“I could not have conceived it,” said Syme gravely. + +“It is indeed a new idea,” said the Professor. + +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiry +office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover. +Having got his information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put +them and himself inside a railway carriage before they had properly +realised the breathless process. They were already on the Calais boat +before conversation flowed freely. + +“I had already arranged,” he explained, “to go to France for my lunch; +but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had to +send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President +had his eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some +day. It was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw +the President somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or +taking off his hat to me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you +can say what you like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be +in six places at once.” + +“So you sent the Marquis off, I understand,” asked the Professor. “Was +it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?” + +“Yes,” answered the new guide, “I’ve timed it all. He’ll still be at +Calais when we arrive.” + +“But when we do catch him at Calais,” said the Professor, “what are we +going to do?” + +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time. +He reflected a little, and then said— + +“Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.” + +“Not I,” said Syme. “Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. I +promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of +honour not to tell the police. I’m no hand at casuistry, but I can’t +break my word to a modern pessimist. It’s like breaking one’s word to a +child.” + +“I’m in the same boat,” said the Professor. “I tried to tell the police +and I couldn’t, because of some silly oath I took. You see, when I was +an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is the +only crime I haven’t committed. If I did that I shouldn’t know the +difference between right and wrong.” + +“I’ve been through all that,” said Dr. Bull, “and I’ve made up my mind. +I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know him, man who smiles upside +down. My friends, that man is the most utterly unhappy man that was +ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or his nerves, +or his philosophy of the universe, but he’s damned, he’s in hell! Well, +I can’t turn on a man like that, and hunt him down. It’s like whipping +a leper. I may be mad, but that’s how I feel; and there’s jolly well +the end of it.” + +“I don’t think you’re mad,” said Syme. “I knew you would decide like +that when first you—” + +“Eh?” said Dr. Bull. + +“When first you took off your spectacles.” + +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at the +sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, +and a companionable silence fell between the three men. + +“Well,” said Syme, “it seems that we have all the same kind of morality +or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of it.” + +“Yes,” assented the Professor, “you’re quite right; and we must hurry +up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.” + +“The fact that comes of it,” said Syme seriously, “is this, that we +three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are +three men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we +are worse off than that, first because they can appeal to their +organization and we cannot appeal to ours, and second because—” + +“Because one of those other three men,” said the Professor, “is not a +man.” + +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said— + +“My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calais +till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We +cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him +detained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows +us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on +anarchist business; he might swallow much in that way, but not the +notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris. +We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; but he is a +well-known man here. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is very +strong and brave, and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see +to do is actually to take advantage of the very things that are in the +Marquis’s favour. I am going to profit by the fact that he is a highly +respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the fact that he has many +friends and moves in the best society.” + +“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the Professor. + +“The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,” said Syme; +“but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at +Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.” + +“He’s gone off his head,” said the little Doctor, staring. + +“Our bearings,” continued Syme calmly, “are ‘argent a chevron gules +charged with three cross crosslets of the field.’ The motto varies.” + +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. + +“We are just inshore,” he said. “Are you seasick or joking in the wrong +place?” + +“My remarks are almost painfully practical,” answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. “The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. The +Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am a +gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite +beyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hat +off. But here we are in the harbour.” + +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who +had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a +kind of marine parade until he came to some cafés, embowered in a bulk +of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step +was slightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was +making apparently for the extreme end of the line of cafés, but he +stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but +he pointed with one gloved finger to a café table under a bank of +flowering foliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth +shining in his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by +a light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. + + + + +CHAPTER X. +THE DUEL + + +Syme sat down at a café table with his companions, his blue eyes +sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur +with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of +curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose +as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent of +nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the conversation +which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He +jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed +catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an +extraordinary rapidity of utterance. + +“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. +I shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say, +‘The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most exquisite +French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most exquisite Cockney, +‘Oh, just the Syme—’” + +“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself together, and +chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to do?” + +“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do let me +read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of +the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my +enemy.” + +“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in exasperation. + +“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, beaming. “When +the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs—” + +“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a +ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three +things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own +epigrams may appear somewhat more forced.” + +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. + +“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never thought of it. Sir, you +have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.” + +“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor. + +“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to adopt some +other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between +myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue +cannot be predicted by one of its parties alone (as you have pointed +out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose, +is for the one party, as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by +himself. And so I will, by George!” And he stood up suddenly, his +yellow hair blowing in the slight sea breeze. + +A band was playing in a _café chantant_ hidden somewhere among the +trees, and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme’s heated head the +bray of the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that +barrel-organ in Leicester Square, to the tune of which he had once +stood up to die. He looked across to the little table where the Marquis +sat. The man had two companions now, solemn Frenchmen in frock-coats +and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the Legion of +Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. Besides these +black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his loose straw hat and +light spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even barbaric; but he looked +the Marquis. Indeed, one might say that he looked the king, with his +animal elegance, his scornful eyes, and his proud head lifted against +the purple sea. But he was no Christian king, at any rate; he was, +rather, some swarthy despot, half Greek, half Asiatic, who in the days +when slavery seemed natural looked down on the Mediterranean, on his +galley and his groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, would the +brown-gold face of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green +olives and the burning blue. + +“Are you going to address the meeting?” asked the Professor peevishly, +seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. + +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. + +“I am,” he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +“that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting’s great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose.” + +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, seeing +him, arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but smiled +politely. + +“You are Mr. Syme, I think,” he said. + +Syme bowed. + +“And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache,” he said gracefully. +“Permit me to pull your nose.” + +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, upsetting +his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders. + +“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of explanation. + +“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, “when?” + +“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my mother.” + +“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. + +“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my aunt.” + +“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said the +second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting here +all the time.” + +“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly. + +“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something about the +band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.” + +“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt played +Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted +about it.” + +“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was _décoré_, +looking doubtfully at the Marquis. + +“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s +weaknesses.” + +“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one have said +nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl +with black hair.” + +“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My aunt’s was +red.” + +“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply seeking a +pretext to insult the Marquis.” + +“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, “what a clever +chap you are!” + +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger’s. + +“Seeking a quarrel with me!” he cried. “Seeking a fight with me! By +God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen will +perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. Let us +fight this evening.” + +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. + +“Marquis,” he said, “your action is worthy of your fame and blood. +Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose hands I +shall place myself.” + +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who had +seen his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic +explanations, were quite startled at the look of him. For now that he +came back to them he was quite sober, a little pale, and he spoke in a +low voice of passionate practicality. + +“I have done it,” he said hoarsely. “I have fixed a fight on the beast. +But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for talk. You are +my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must insist, and +insist absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven tomorrow, so as +to give me the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for +Paris. If he misses that he misses his crime. He can’t refuse to meet +you on such a small point of time and place. But this is what he will +do. He will choose a field somewhere near a wayside station, where he +can pick up the train. He is a very good swordsman, and he will trust +to killing me in time to catch it. But I can fence well too, and I +think I can keep him in play, at any rate, until the train is lost. +Then perhaps he may kill me to console his feelings. You understand? +Very well then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of mine,” +and leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to the +Marquis’s seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had not +previously heard. + +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a +part of his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about the +spectacles) poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the +exaltation of prophecy. + +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his opponent. +When the Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme could only fight +in the morning, he must fully have realised that an obstacle had +suddenly arisen between him and his bomb-throwing business in the +capital. Naturally he could not explain this objection to his friends, +so he chose the course which Syme had predicted. He induced his seconds +to settle on a small meadow not far from the railway, and he trusted to +the fatality of the first engagement. + +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have +guessed that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands were in his +pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his handsome face +brazen in the sun. But it might have struck a stranger as odd that +there appeared in his train, not only his seconds carrying the +sword-case, but two of his servants carrying a portmanteau and a +luncheon basket. + +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and Syme +was vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning gold and +silver in the tall grass in which the whole company stood almost +knee-deep. + +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and +solemn morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little +Doctor especially, with the addition of his black spectacles, looked +like an undertaker in a farce. Syme could not help feeling a comic +contrast between this funereal church parade of apparel and the rich +and glistening meadow, growing wild flowers everywhere. But, indeed, +this comic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the black hats was +but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the yellow blossoms and the +black business. On his right was a little wood; far away to his left +lay the long curve of the railway line, which he was, so to speak, +guarding from the Marquis, whose goal and escape it was. In front of +him, behind the black group of his opponents, he could see, like a +tinted cloud, a small almond bush in flower against the faint line of +the sea. + +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was Colonel +Ducroix, approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great politeness, +and suggested that the play should terminate with the first +considerable hurt. + +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this +point of policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad French, +that it should continue until one of the combatants was disabled. Syme +had made up his mind that he could avoid disabling the Marquis and +prevent the Marquis from disabling him for at least twenty minutes. In +twenty minutes the Paris train would have gone by. + +“To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache,” said the Professor solemnly, “it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong +reasons for demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy of +which prevent me from being explicit, but for the just and honourable +nature of which I can—” + +“_Peste!_” broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had suddenly +darkened, “let us stop talking and begin,” and he slashed off the head +of a tall flower with his stick. + +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over his +shoulder to see whether the train was coming in sight. But there was no +smoke on the horizon. + +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a pair of +twin swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two streaks of white +fire. He offered one to the Marquis, who snatched it without ceremony, +and another to Syme, who took it, bent it, and poised it with as much +delay as was consistent with dignity. + +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one +himself and giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the men. + +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and stood +sword in hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line of fight with +drawn swords also, but still sombre in their dark frock-coats and hats. +The principals saluted. The Colonel said quietly, “Engage!” and the two +blades touched and tingled. + +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme’s arm, all the fantastic +fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like +dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in +order as mere delusions of the nerves—how the fear of the Professor had +been the fear of the tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear +of the Doctor had been the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The +first was the old fear that any miracle might happen, the second the +more hopeless modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw +that these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of +the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless +common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling +over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be +hanged. For as soon as he had seen the sunlight run down the channel of +his foe’s foreshortened blade, and as soon as he had felt the two +tongues of steel touch, vibrating like two living things, he knew that +his enemy was a terrible fighter, and that probably his last hour had +come. + +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the +grass under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living things. He +could almost fancy that he heard the grass growing; he could almost +fancy that even as he stood fresh flowers were springing up and +breaking into blossom in the meadow—flowers blood red and burning gold +and blue, fulfilling the whole pageant of the spring. And whenever his +eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, staring, hypnotic eyes of the +Marquis, they saw the little tuft of almond tree against the sky-line. +He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped he would be ready +to sit for ever before that almond tree, desiring nothing else in the +world. + +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a thing +lost, the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and he was +parrying his enemy’s point with a kind of clockwork skill of which he +had hardly supposed himself capable. Once his enemy’s point ran along +his wrist, leaving a slight streak of blood, but it either was not +noticed or was tacitly ignored. Every now and then he _riposted_, and +once or twice he could almost fancy that he felt his point go home, but +as there was no blood on blade or shirt he supposed he was mistaken. +Then came an interruption and a change. + +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet stare, +flashed one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway on his +right. Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend, +and began to fight as if with twenty weapons. The attack came so fast +and furious, that the one shining sword seemed a shower of shining +arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the railway; but also he had no +need. He could guess the reason of the Marquis’s sudden madness of +battle—the Paris train was in sight. + +But the Marquis’s morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent’s point far out of the fighting circle; +and the third time his _riposte_ was so rapid, that there was no doubt +about the hit this time. Syme’s sword actually bent under the weight of +the Marquis’s body, which it had pierced. + +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a +gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis +sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring +at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it at all. + +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell +furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis +was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, as he had +surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis seemed +distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even weakly, and +he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost as if he feared +the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the other hand, fought +fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual fury, eager to solve +the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For this purpose, he aimed less +at the Marquis’s body, and more at his throat and head. A minute and a +half afterwards he felt his point enter the man’s neck below the jaw. +It came out clean. Half mad, he thrust again, and made what should have +been a bloody scar on the Marquis’s cheek. But there was no scar. + +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with supernatural +terrors. Surely the man had a charmed life. But this new spiritual +dread was a more awful thing than had been the mere spiritual +topsy-turvydom symbolised by the paralytic who pursued him. The +Professor was only a goblin; this man was a devil—perhaps he was the +Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three times had a human sword +been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had that thought he +drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang high up in the air +as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of all the human things +in his story—of the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of the girl’s red +hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by the +dock, of his loyal companions standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen +as a champion of all these fresh and kindly things to cross swords with +the enemy of all creation. “After all,” he said to himself, “I am more +than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself +cannot do—I can die,” and as the word went through his head, he heard a +faint and far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris +train. + +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a Mohammedan +panting for Paradise. As the train came nearer and nearer he fancied he +could see people putting up the floral arches in Paris; he joined in +the growing noise and the glory of the great Republic whose gate he was +guarding against Hell. His thoughts rose higher and higher with the +rising roar of the train, which ended, as if proudly, in a long and +piercing whistle. The train stopped. + +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back quite +out of sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was wonderful, +and not the less wonderful because Syme had plunged his sword a moment +before into the man’s thigh. + +“Stop!” said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. “I want to say something.” + +“What is the matter?” asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. “Has there been +foul play?” + +“There has been foul play somewhere,” said Dr. Bull, who was a little +pale. “Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times at least, and +he is none the worse.” + +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly patience. + +“Please let me speak,” he said. “It is rather important. Mr. Syme,” he +continued, turning to his opponent, “we are fighting today, if I +remember right, because you expressed a wish (which I thought +irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by pulling my nose now +as quickly as possible? I have to catch a train.” + +“I protest that this is most irregular,” said Dr. Bull indignantly. + +“It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent,” said Colonel Ducroix, +looking wistfully at his principal. “There is, I think, one case on +record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in which the weapons +were changed in the middle of the encounter at the request of one of +the combatants. But one can hardly call one’s nose a weapon.” + +“Will you or will you not pull my nose?” said the Marquis in +exasperation. “Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! You +can have no conception of how important it is to me. Don’t be so +selfish! Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!” and he bent slightly +forward with a fascinating smile. The Paris train, panting and +groaning, had grated into a little station behind the neighbouring +hill. + +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures—the +sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was just +toppling over. Walking in a world he half understood, he took two paces +forward and seized the Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. He +pulled it hard, and it came off in his hand. + +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard +proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and +the clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this imbecile scene. + +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. + +“If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow,” he said, “he can have it. +Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It’s the kind of thing that +might come in useful any day,” and he gravely tore off one of his +swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown forehead with it, +and politely offered it to the Colonel, who stood crimson and +speechless with rage. + +“If I had known,” he spluttered, “that I was acting for a poltroon who +pads himself to fight—” + +“Oh, I know, I know!” said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. “You are making a +mistake; but it can’t be explained just now. I tell you the train has +come into the station!” + +“Yes,” said Dr. Bull fiercely, “and the train shall go out of the +station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil’s work—” + +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. He +was a strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his old +face peeled off, and half another face glaring and grinning from +underneath. + +“Will you drive me mad?” he cried. “The train—” + +“You shall not go by the train,” said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. + +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering itself +for a sublime effort before speaking. + +“You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, +Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!” he said without taking breath. +“You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! You—” + +“You shall not go by this train,” repeated Syme. + +“And why the infernal blazes,” roared the other, “should I want to go +by the train?” + +“We know all,” said the Professor sternly. “You are going to Paris to +throw a bomb!” + +“Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!” cried the other, tearing his +hair, which came off easily. “Have you all got softening of the brain, +that you don’t realise what I am? Did you really think I wanted to +catch that train? Twenty Paris trains might go by for me. Damn Paris +trains!” + +“Then what did you care about?” began the Professor. + +“What did I care about? I didn’t care about catching the train; I cared +about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has caught me.” + +“I regret to inform you,” said Syme with restraint, “that your remarks +convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to remove the +remains of your original forehead and some portion of what was once +your chin, your meaning would become clearer. Mental lucidity fulfils +itself in many ways. What do you mean by saying that the train has +caught you? It may be my literary fancy, but somehow I feel that it +ought to mean something.” + +“It means everything,” said the other, “and the end of everything. +Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand.” + +“Us!” repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. “What do you mean by +‘us’?” + +“The police, of course!” said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp and +half his face. + +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired head +which is common in the English constabulary, but the face was terribly +pale. + +“I am Inspector Ratcliffe,” he said, with a sort of haste that verged +on harshness. “My name is pretty well known to the police, and I can +see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt +about my position, I have a card,” and he began to pull a blue card +from his pocket. + +The Professor gave a tired gesture. + +“Oh, don’t show it us,” he said wearily; “we’ve got enough of them to +equip a paper-chase.” + +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a mere +vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he certainly +saved the situation. In the midst of this staggering transformation +scene he stepped forward with all the gravity and responsibility of a +second, and addressed the two seconds of the Marquis. + +“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all owe you a serious apology; but I assure +you that you have not been made the victims of such a low joke as you +imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of honour. You have +not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not +buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. A +secret society of anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such +unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a bomb through starvation +or German philosophy, but a rich and powerful and fanatical church, a +church of eastern pessimism, which holds it holy to destroy mankind +like vermin. How hard they hunt us you can gather from the fact that we +are driven to such disguises as those for which I apologise, and to +such pranks as this one by which you suffer.” + +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black moustache, +bowed politely, and said— + +“Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive me +if I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and permit +myself to say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and +distinguished fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is +unusual, and, upon the whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel Ducroix, +I would in no way influence your actions, but if you feel with me that +our present society is a little abnormal, I am now going to walk back +to the town.” + +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his +white moustache and broke out— + +“No, by George! I won’t. If these gentlemen are really in a mess with a +lot of low wreckers like that, I’ll see them through it. I have fought +for France, and it is hard if I can’t fight for civilization.” + +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public +meeting. + +“Don’t make too much noise,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “Sunday may hear +you.” + +“Sunday!” cried Bull, and dropped his hat. + +“Yes,” retorted Ratcliffe, “he may be with them.” + +“With whom?” asked Syme. + +“With the people out of that train,” said the other. + +“What you say seems utterly wild,” began Syme. “Why, as a matter of +fact—But, my God,” he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an +explosion a long way off, “by God! if this is true the whole bally lot +of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man was +a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can +it mean?” + +“Mean!” said the new policeman with incredible violence. “It means that +we are struck dead! Don’t you know Sunday? Don’t you know that his +jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of them? +Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should +put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care +that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has +captured every cable, he has control of every railway line—especially +of _that_ railway line!” and he pointed a shaking finger towards the +small wayside station. “The whole movement was controlled by him; half +the world was ready to rise for him. But there were just five people, +perhaps, who would have resisted him... and the old devil put them on +the Supreme Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots +that we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the +Professor would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would fight me +in France. And he was combining great masses of capital, and seizing +great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were running after each +other like a lot of confounded babies playing blind man’s buff.” + +“Well?” asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. + +“Well,” replied the other with sudden serenity, “he has found us +playing blind man’s buff today in a field of great rustic beauty and +extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains +to him to capture this field and all the fools in it. And since you +really want to know what was my objection to the arrival of that train, +I will tell you. My objection was that Sunday or his Secretary has just +this moment got out of it.” + +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes towards +the far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable bulk of +people seemed to be moving in their direction. But they were too +distant to be distinguished in any way. + +“It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache,” said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, “always to carry a pair of opera +glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with +that mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place where we are under +no temptations to break our oaths by calling the police. Dr. Bull, I +have a suspicion that you will see better through these than through +your own highly decorative spectacles.” + +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took off his +spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. + +“It cannot be as bad as you say,” said the Professor, somewhat shaken. +“There are a good number of them certainly, but they may easily be +ordinary tourists.” + +“Do ordinary tourists,” asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his eyes, +“wear black masks half-way down the face?” + +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through them. +Most men in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; but it was +quite true that two or three of the leaders in front wore black +half-masks almost down to their mouths. This disguise is very complete, +especially at such a distance, and Syme found it impossible to conclude +anything from the clean-shaven jaws and chins of the men talking in the +front. But presently as they talked they all smiled and one of them +smiled on one side. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + + +Syme put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly relief. + +“The President is not with them, anyhow,” he said, and wiped his +forehead. + +“But surely they are right away on the horizon,” said the bewildered +Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull’s hasty though +polite explanation. “Could you possibly know your President among all +those people?” + +“Could I know a white elephant among all those people!” answered Syme +somewhat irritably. “As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; +but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe this ground would +shake.” + +After an instant’s pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with gloomy +decision— + +“Of course the President isn’t with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, or +sitting on the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” + +“This is absurd!” said Syme. “Something may have happened in our +absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like that. It +is quite true,” he added, frowning dubiously at the distant fields that +lay towards the little station, “it is certainly true that there seems +to be a crowd coming this way; but they are not all the army that you +make out.” + +“Oh, they,” said the new detective contemptuously; “no, they are not a +very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they are +precisely calculated to our value—we are not much, my boy, in Sunday’s +universe. He has got hold of all the cables and telegraphs himself. But +to kill the Supreme Council he regards as a trivial matter, like a post +card; it may be left to his private secretary,” and he spat on the +grass. + +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely— + +“There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has any +preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him to walk +after me.” + +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent +energy towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their +shoulders, and saw that the dark cloud of men had detached itself from +the station and was moving with a mysterious discipline across the +plain. They saw already, even with the naked eye, black blots on the +foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. They turned and +followed their leader, who had already struck the wood, and disappeared +among the twinkling trees. + +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood they +had a cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a dim pool. +The inside of the wood was full of shattered sunlight and shaken +shadows. They made a sort of shuddering veil, almost recalling the +dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the solid figures walking with him +Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and shade that danced +upon them. Now a man’s head was lit as with a light of Rembrandt, +leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring white +hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw +hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so +squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black +half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming +sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was +anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men’s faces turned +black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into +sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of +chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a +perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, +this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and +their noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence +which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had +strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend. +He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a +friend and what an enemy. Was there anything that was apart from what +it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a +detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to +be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering +woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the +glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had +found in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters +had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call +Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which +can find no floor to the universe. + +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme +strove with a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of his +fancies. With two impatient strides he overtook the man in the +Marquis’s straw hat, the man whom he had come to address as Ratcliffe. +In a voice exaggeratively loud and cheerful, he broke the bottomless +silence and made conversation. + +“May I ask,” he said, “where on earth we are all going to?” + +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad to +hear his companion speak in an easy, human voice. + +“We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea,” he said. “I +think that part of the country is least likely to be with them.” + +“What can you mean by all this?” cried Syme. “They can’t be running the +real world in that way. Surely not many working men are anarchists, and +surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat modern armies and +police.” + +“Mere mobs!” repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. “So you +talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. +You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come +from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have +never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in +there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in +the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a +yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the +rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were +always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars.” + +“As a lecture on English history for the little ones,” said Syme, “this +is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application.” + +“Its application is,” said his informant, “that most of old Sunday’s +right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why +he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last +four champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a +wood like rabbits.” + +“Millionaires I can understand,” said Syme thoughtfully, “they are +nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with +hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is +another. I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that +Sunday would stand perfectly helpless before the task of converting any +ordinary healthy person anywhere.” + +“Well,” said the other, “it rather depends what sort of person you +mean.” + +“Well, for instance,” said Syme, “he could never convert that person,” +and he pointed straight in front of him. + +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to +Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this +forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that common +sense in an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with +perspiration, and grave with the bottomless gravity of small necessary +toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting wood with a hatchet. His cart +stood a few yards off, already half full of timber; and the horse that +cropped the grass was, like his master, valorous but not desperate; +like his master, he was even prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The +man was a Norman, taller than the average of the French and very +angular; and his swarthy figure stood dark against a square of +sunlight, almost like some allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a +ground of gold. + +“Mr. Syme is saying,” called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, “that +this man, at least, will never be an anarchist.” + +“Mr. Syme is right enough there,” answered Colonel Ducroix, laughing, +“if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to defend. But I +forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being +wealthy.” + +“He looks poor,” said Dr. Bull doubtfully. + +“Quite so,” said the Colonel; “that is why he is rich.” + +“I have an idea,” called out Dr. Bull suddenly; “how much would he take +to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we could +soon leave them behind.” + +“Oh, give him anything!” said Syme eagerly. “I have piles of money on +me.” + +“That will never do,” said the Colonel; “he will never have any respect +for you unless you drive a bargain.” + +“Oh, if he haggles!” began Bull impatiently. + +“He haggles because he is a free man,” said the other. “You do not +understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being +tipped.” + +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange +pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French +Colonel talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely +badinage and bickering of market-day. At the end of the four minutes, +however, they saw that the Colonel was right, for the wood-cutter +entered into their plans, not with the vague servility of a tout +too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor who had been +paid the proper fee. He told them that the best thing they could do was +to make their way down to the little inn on the hills above Lancy, +where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had become _dévot_ in his +latter years, would be certain to sympathise with them, and even to +take risks in their support. The whole company, therefore, piled +themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and went rocking in the rude +cart down the other and steeper side of the woodland. Heavy and +ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they +soon had the exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, +whoever they were, who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as +to where the anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. +One man’s presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first +sight of the deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and then +looked back over his shoulder at the army on their track. + +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could +see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was +still moving the square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the +very strong sunlight and with his own very strong eyes, which were +almost telescopic, Syme could see this mass of men quite plainly. He +could see them as separate human figures; but he was increasingly +surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. They seemed to be +dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd out of +the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various +lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved +with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of +automatons. + +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. + +“Yes,” replied the policeman, “that’s discipline. That’s Sunday. He is +perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of them, +like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and you bet +your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking +regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they are +disappearing regularly.” + +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was +growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse. + +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on +the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, +in a way not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only +difference was that in Sussex the road would have been broken and +angular like a little brook, but here the white French road fell sheer +in front of them like a waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart +clattered at a considerable angle, and in a few minutes, the road +growing yet steeper, they saw below them the little harbour of Lancy +and a great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. + +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the +horse’s nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting +on the benches outside the little café of “Le Soleil d’Or.” The peasant +grunted an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also +descended one by one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary +phrases of courtesy, for it was quite evident from his expansive manner +that he was the owner of the little tavern. + +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey +moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may +often be found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. +Everything about him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his +beehive, suggested an ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up +as they entered the inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall. + +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly +into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. +The military decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to +him, and he took the opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of +satisfying his curiosity. + +“May I ask you, Colonel,” he said in a low voice, “why we have come +here?” + +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. + +“For two reasons, sir,” he said; “and I will give first, not the most +important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the +only place within twenty miles in which we can get horses.” + +“Horses!” repeated Syme, looking up quickly. + +“Yes,” replied the other; “if you people are really to distance your +enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you have +bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket.” + +“And where do you advise us to make for?” asked Syme doubtfully. + +“Beyond question,” replied the Colonel, “you had better make all haste +to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded under +somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much +the possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly +maintain, I suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes.” + +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly— + +“And your other reason for coming here?” + +“My other reason for coming here,” said Ducroix soberly, “is that it is +just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to +death.” + +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic +religious picture. Then he said— + +“You are right,” and then almost immediately afterwards, “Has anyone +seen about the horses?” + +“Yes,” answered Ducroix, “you may be quite certain that I gave orders +the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of +hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a +well-trained army. I had no idea that the anarchists had so much +discipline. You have not a moment to waste.” + +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair +came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled +outside. + +By Ducroix’s advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as +the only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white +road. The two servants, who had carried the Marquis’s luggage when he +was a marquis, were left behind to drink at the café by common consent, +and not at all against their own inclination. + +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays +Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller +and smaller, but still standing and looking after them quite silently, +the sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, +left in his mind by the chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was +indeed, perhaps, the last honest stranger whom he should ever see upon +the earth. + +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere +grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of +the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down +behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching +men. They seemed to hang above the good man and his house like a black +cloud of locusts. The horses had been saddled none too soon. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + + +Urging the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged +descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over +the men on the march, and at last the bulk of the first buildings of +Lancy cut off the sight of their pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had +been a long one, and by the time they reached the real town the west +was warming with the colour and quality of sunset. The Colonel +suggested that, before making finally for the police station, they +should make the effort, in passing, to attach to themselves one more +individual who might be useful. + +“Four out of the five rich men in this town,” he said, “are common +swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. +The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even +more important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car.” + +“I am afraid,” said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back +along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at +any moment, “I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls.” + +“Doctor Renard’s house is only three minutes off,” said the Colonel. + +“Our danger,” said Dr. Bull, “is not two minutes off.” + +“Yes,” said Syme, “if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, for +they are on foot.” + +“He has a motor-car,” said the Colonel. + +“But we may not get it,” said Bull. + +“Yes, he is quite on your side.” + +“But he might be out.” + +“Hold your tongue,” said Syme suddenly. “What is that noise?” + +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a +second—for two or three or four seconds—heaven and earth seemed equally +still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the +road that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one +thing—horses! + +The Colonel’s face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had +struck it, and yet left it scatheless. + +“They have done us,” he said, with brief military irony. “Prepare to +receive cavalry!” + +“Where can they have got the horses?” asked Syme, as he mechanically +urged his steed to a canter. + +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice— + +“I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the ‘Soleil d’Or’ +was the only place where one can get horses within twenty miles.” + +“No!” said Syme violently, “I don’t believe he’d do it. Not with all +that white hair.” + +“He may have been forced,” said the Colonel gently. “They must be at +least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my +friend Renard, who has a motor-car.” + +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and +went down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, +though already well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the +flying tail of his horse. + +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep +street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once +more see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the white road across +it, standing up above all the roofs of the town. They breathed again to +see that the road as yet was clear, and they rang the bell. + +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that +silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved even +more perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to him he +pooh-poohed the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the +solid French scepticism, that there was no conceivable probability of a +general anarchist rising. “Anarchy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, +“it is childishness!” + +“_Et ça_,” cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other’s +shoulder, “and that is childishness, isn’t it?” + +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping +over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they +rode, however, the whole rank still kept well together, and they could +see the black vizards of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. +But although the main black square was the same, though travelling +faster, there was now one sensational difference which they could see +clearly upon the slope of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk +of the riders were in one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the +column, and with frantic movements of hand and heel urged his horse +faster and faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the +pursuer but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they knew +it was the Secretary himself. “I am sorry to cut short a cultured +discussion,” said the Colonel, “but can you lend me your motor-car now, +in two minutes?” + +“I have a suspicion that you are all mad,” said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; “but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage.” + +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like +the Musée de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he +seemed to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French +middle class, and when his impatient friends came to examine them, it +took them some time to assure themselves that one of them even could be +made to work. This with some difficulty they brought round into the +street before the Doctor’s house. When they came out of the dim garage +they were startled to find that twilight had already fallen with the +abruptness of night in the tropics. Either they had been longer in the +place than they imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud had gathered +over the town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to see a +slight mist coming up from the sea. + +“It is now or never,” said Dr. Bull. “I hear horses.” + +“No,” corrected the Professor, “a horse.” + +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming +nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade +but that of the one horseman, who had left it far behind—the insane +Secretary. + +Syme’s family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once +owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into +the chauffeur’s seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging +at the disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and +then said quite quietly— + +“I am afraid it’s no go.” + +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing +horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that +thrust out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the +stationary car, into which its company had crowded, and laid his hand +on the front. It was the Secretary, and his mouth went quite straight +in the solemnity of triumph. + +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound +but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there +came quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt +forward. It plucked the Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife +is whipped out of its sheath, trailed him kicking terribly for twenty +yards, and left him flung flat upon the road far in front of his +frightened horse. As the car took the corner of the street with a +splendid curve, they could just see the other anarchists filling the +street and raising their fallen leader. + +“I can’t understand why it has grown so dark,” said the Professor at +last in a low voice. + +“Going to be a storm, I think,” said Dr. Bull. “I say, it’s a pity we +haven’t got a light on this car, if only to see by.” + +“We have,” said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up +a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. It +was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had +been in some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a +cross upon one of its sides. + +“Where on earth did you get that?” asked the Professor. + +“I got it where I got the car,” answered the Colonel, chuckling, “from +my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the steering +wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who +was standing in his own porch, you will remember. ‘I suppose,’ I said, +‘there’s no time to get a lamp.’ He looked up, blinking amiably at the +beautiful arched ceiling of his own front hall. From this was +suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the +hundred treasures of his treasure house. By sheer force he tore the +lamp out of his own ceiling, shattering the painted panels, and +bringing down two blue vases with his violence. Then he handed me the +iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was I not right when I said that +Dr. Renard was worth knowing?” + +“You were,” said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the +front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the +contrast between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical +lamp. Hitherto they had passed through the quietest part of the town, +meeting at most one or two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of +the peace or the hostility of the place. Now, however, the windows in +the houses began one by one to be lit up, giving a greater sense of +habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned to the new detective who had +led their flight, and permitted himself one of his natural and friendly +smiles. + +“These lights make one feel more cheerful.” + +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. + +“There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful,” he said, +“and they are those lights of the police station which I can see beyond +the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes.” + +Then all Bull’s boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of +him. + +“Oh, this is all raving nonsense!” he cried. “If you really think that +ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be madder +than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the +whole town would fight for us.” + +“No,” said the other with an immovable simplicity, “the whole town +would fight for them. We shall see.” + +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden +excitement. + +“What is that noise?” he said. + +“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 +heathen. 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. + +“Swords!” shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three behind +him. “Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die.” + +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme’s sword was +broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging +him down. In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of +the mob and perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever +since Syme’s speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if +dazed; now he suddenly pulled off his black mask. + +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as +astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. + +“There is some mistake,” he said. “Mr. Syme, I hardly think you +understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law.” + +“Of the law?” said Syme, and dropped his stick. + +“Certainly!” said the Secretary. “I am a detective from Scotland Yard,” +and he took a small blue card from his pocket. + +“And what do you suppose we are?” asked the Professor, and threw up his +arms. + +“You,” said the Secretary stiffly, “are, as I know for a fact, members +of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I—” + +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. + +“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We were all +a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice +people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the +dynamiters. I knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming +over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on +both sides. “Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I +know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.” + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + + +Next morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for +Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, +having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn’t exist, +and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous +old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither party had anything +to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier with great geniality. + +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each +other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks +originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as +fellow-conspirators. + +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a +civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be +explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not +explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what +was Sunday? If he had not seized the world, what on earth had he been +up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this. + +“I can’t make head or tail of old Sunday’s little game any more than +you can,” he said. “But whatever else Sunday is, he isn’t a blameless +citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?” + +“I grant you,” answered Syme, “that I have never been able to forget +it.” + +“Well,” said the Secretary, “I suppose we can find out soon, for +tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me,” he +said, with a rather ghastly smile, “for being well acquainted with my +secretarial duties.” + +“I suppose you are right,” said the Professor reflectively. “I suppose +we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit +afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.” + +“Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?” + +“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.” + +“Let us have some drinks,” said Dr. Bull, after a silence. + +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly +convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had +always been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the +other four that the whole company could take the same hansom cab from +Victoria; but this was overruled, and they went in a four-wheeler, +with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They finished their journey at an +hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close to the early breakfast +next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even then the adventures of the +day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, discontented with the general +proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the hotel at about eleven to +see and taste some of the beauties of London. Twenty minutes +afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in the hall. +Syme, who tried at first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to +his communication with quite new attention. + +“I tell you I’ve seen him!” said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis. + +“Whom?” asked Syme quickly. “Not the President?” + +“Not so bad as that,” said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, “not so +bad as that. I’ve got him here.” + +“Got whom here?” asked Syme impatiently. + +“Hairy man,” said the other lucidly, “man that used to be hairy +man—Gogol. Here he is,” and he pulled forward by a reluctant elbow the +identical young man who five days before had marched out of the Council +with thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham +anarchists who had been exposed. + +“Why do you worry with me?” he cried. “You have expelled me as a spy.” + +“We are all spies!” whispered Syme. + +“We’re all spies!” shouted Dr. Bull. “Come and have a drink.” + +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards +the hotel in Leicester Square. + +“This is more cheerful,” said Dr. Bull; “we are six men going to ask +one man what he means.” + +“I think it is a bit queerer than that,” said Syme. “I think it is six +men going to ask one man what they mean.” + +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the +opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that +looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over +a newspaper. But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, +crossed that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred +eyes. + +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should +leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether +they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The +influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the +Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly. + +“My reason is quite simple,” said Syme. “I attack him rashly because I +am afraid of him.” + +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out +simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad +sunlight of Sunday’s smile. + +“Delightful!” he said. “So pleased to see you all. What an exquisite +day it is. Is the Czar dead?” + +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a +dignified outburst. + +“No, sir,” he said sternly “there has been no massacre. I bring you +news of no such disgusting spectacles.” + +“Disgusting spectacles?” repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. “You mean Dr. Bull’s spectacles?” + +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a +sort of smooth appeal— + +“Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to +call them disgusting before the man himself—” + +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. + +“My spectacles are blackguardly,” he said, “but I’m not. Look at my +face.” + +“I dare say it’s the sort of face that grows on one,” said the +President, “in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the +wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some +day.” + +“We have no time for tomfoolery,” said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. “We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What +are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? +Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever +man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you.” + +“Candidates,” murmured Sunday, “are only required to answer eight out +of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you +want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table +is, and what this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. +Well, I will go so far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want +to know what you are, you are a set of highly well-intentioned young +jackasses.” + +“And you,” said Syme, leaning forward, “what are you?” + +“I? What am I?” roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and +break. “You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of +science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about +them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell +you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and +the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the +sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, +and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have +hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the +churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, +and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a +good run for their money, and I will now.” + +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like +some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before +he dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and +thrusting his great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly— + +“There’s one thing I’ll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in +the dark room, who made you all policemen.” + +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a +great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of +the Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The +six detectives had been standing thunderstruck and livid in the light +of his last assertion; but when he disappeared into the cab, Syme’s +practical senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so +recklessly as almost to break his legs, he called another cab. + +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the +Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol +scrambled into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who was +pursuing the flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase towards the +north-west, his cabman, evidently under the influence of more than +common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was +in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in his own cab shouting, +“Stop thief!” until crowds ran along beside his cab, and policemen +began to stop and ask questions. All this had its influence upon the +President’s cabman, who began to look dubious, and to slow down to a +trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably to his fare, and in so +doing let the long whip droop over the front of the cab. Sunday leant +forward, seized it, and jerked it violently out of the man’s hand. Then +standing up in front of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared +aloud, so that they went down the streets like a flying storm. Through +street after street and square after square went whirling this +preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and the +driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after +it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. Shops +and streets shot by like rattling arrows. + +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard +where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, +with white hair whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his +pursuers, like some colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand +swiftly, he flung a ball of paper in Syme’s face and vanished. Syme +caught the thing while instinctively warding it off, and discovered +that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself, +and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it is to be feared +partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. Bull’s address +was, at any rate, considerably longer than his communication, for the +communication consisted entirely of the words:— + +“What about Martin Tupper _now?_” + + +“What does the old maniac mean?” asked Bull, staring at the words. +“What does yours say, Syme?” + +Syme’s message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:— + +“No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the +Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the +last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially +after what uncle said.” + + +The President’s cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his +horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the +Edgware Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a +providential stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or +left or stopping, for down the long road was coming the unmistakable +roar announcing the fire-engine, which in a few seconds went by like a +brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went by, Sunday had bounded out of +his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, caught it, slung himself on to it, +and was seen as he disappeared in the noisy distance talking to the +astonished fireman with explanatory gestures. + +“After him!” howled Syme. “He can’t go astray now. There’s no mistaking +a fire-engine.” + +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their +horses and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their +disappearing prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming +to the back of the car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and +finally flinging a neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector +Ratcliffe. When that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he +found it contained the words:— + +“Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known.—A +FRIEND.” + + +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region +that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings +shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat +relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though +whether through another whim or the increasing protest of his +entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, however, could +reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings like a huge grey +cat, tossed himself over, and vanished in a darkness of leaves. + +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang +also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his +friends were following, he turned a face on them which shone quite pale +in the shadow. + +“What place can this be?” he asked. “Can it be the old devil’s house? +I’ve heard he has a house in North London.” + +“All the better,” said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a +foothold, “we shall find him at home.” + +“No, but it isn’t that,” said Syme, knitting his brows. “I hear the +most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and blowing +their devilish noses!” + +“His dogs barking, of course,” said the Secretary. + +“Why not say his black-beetles barking!” said Syme furiously, “snails +barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like that?” + +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling +roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh—a low +thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them. + +“The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs,” said Gogol, and +shuddered. + +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening +impatiently. + +“Well, listen to that,” he said, “is that a dog—anybody’s dog?” + +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting +and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what +sounded like a long nasal trumpet. + +“Well, his house ought to be hell!” said the Secretary; “and if it is +hell, I’m going in!” and he sprang over the tall railings almost with +one swing. + +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs, +and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull +suddenly struck his hands together. + +“Why, you asses,” he cried, “it’s the Zoo!” + +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a +keeper in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain +clothes. + +“Has it come this way?” gasped the keeper. + +“Has what?” asked Syme. + +“The elephant!” cried the keeper. “An elephant has gone mad and run +away!” + +“He has run away with an old gentleman,” said the other stranger +breathlessly, “a poor old gentleman with white hair!” + +“What sort of old gentleman?” asked Syme, with great curiosity. + +“A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes,” said the +keeper eagerly. + +“Well,” said Syme, “if he’s that particular kind of old gentleman, if +you’re quite sure that he’s a large and fat old gentleman in grey +clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has not run away +with him. He has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not made +by God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the +elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!” + +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass, +about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering +vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with +his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship’s bowsprit, and trumpeting like +the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal +sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading +the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object in his hand. + +“Stop him!” screamed the populace. “He’ll be out of the gate!” + +“Stop a landslide!” said the keeper. “He is out of the gate!” + +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that +the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological +Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort +of omnibus. + +“Great Lord!” cried Bull, “I never knew an elephant could go so fast. +Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight.” + +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished, +Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which +they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen +them so clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their +preposterous, pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the +symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity +to admire a pelican. He remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge +yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a +sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was +always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they +would understand him when they had understood the stars. He wondered +whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. + +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the +elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of +the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the +solid stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if +possible, more than his previous mockeries. Just before they came to +Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw something far up into the +air, as a boy does a ball meaning to catch it again. But at their rate +of racing it fell far behind, just by the cab containing Gogol; and in +faint hope of a clue or for some impulse unexplainable, he stopped his +cab so as to pick it up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite a +bulky parcel. On examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of +thirty-three pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. +When the last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip +of paper, on which was written:— + +“The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.” + + +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his +hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed +efforts. + +Through street after street, through district after district, went the +prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and +driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane +publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be +regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a +circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened beyond +belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he thought that +he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even more fast and +free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, and +he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line where the enormous +Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and +larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars. + +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners, +and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition +they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous +crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and +shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the President had +disappeared. + +“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground. + +“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir. +Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.” + +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the +Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.” + +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:— + +“When the herring runs a mile, +Let the Secretary smile; +When the herring tries to _fly_, +Let the Secretary die. + Rustic Proverb.” + + +“Why the eternal crikey,” began the Secretary, “did you let the man in? +Do people commonly come to your Exhibition riding on mad elephants? +Do—” + +“Look!” shouted Syme suddenly. “Look over there!” + +“Look at what?” asked the Secretary savagely. + +“Look at the captive balloon!” said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. + +“Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?” demanded the +Secretary. “What is there queer about a captive balloon?” + +“Nothing,” said Syme, “except that it isn’t captive!” + +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above +the Exhibition on a string, like a child’s balloon. A second afterwards +the string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken +loose, floated away with the freedom of a soap bubble. + +“Ten thousand devils!” shrieked the Secretary. “He’s got into it!” and +he shook his fists at the sky. + +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they +could see the great white head of the President peering over the side +and looking benevolently down on them. + +“God bless my soul!” said the Professor with the elderly manner that he +could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. “God +bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my +hat!” + +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted +paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true +lover’s knot and, the words:— + +“Your beauty has not left me indifferent.—From LITTLE SNOWDROP.” + + +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard— + +“I’m not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. Let’s +follow it!” + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + + +Across green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six +draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of +the party had at first proposed that they should follow the balloon +across South England in hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of +the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the +still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon. +Consequently the tireless though exasperated travellers broke through +black thickets and ploughed through ploughed fields till each was +turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. Those +green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the +admirable light grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. +His silk hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his +coat-tails were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of +England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow +beard forward with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes +were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush +of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. + +“After all,” he said, “it is very beautiful!” + +“It is singularly and strangely beautiful!” said the Professor. “I wish +the beastly gas-bag would burst!” + +“No,” said Dr. Bull, “I hope it won’t. It might hurt the old boy.” + +“Hurt him!” said the vindictive Professor, “hurt him! Not as much as +I’d hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!” + +“I don’t want him hurt, somehow,” said Dr. Bull. + +“What!” cried the Secretary bitterly. “Do you believe all that tale +about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody.” + +“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” said Dr. Bull. “But it +isn’t that that I mean. I can’t wish old Sunday’s balloon to burst +because—” + +“Well,” said Syme impatiently, “because?” + +“Well, because he’s so jolly like a balloon himself,” said Dr. Bull +desperately. “I don’t understand a word of all that idea of his being +the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don’t care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a +great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It +didn’t prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I +say that I liked him because he was so fat?” + +“You will not,” said the Secretary. + +“I’ve got it now,” cried Bull, “it was because he was so fat and so +light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but +he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate +strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It +was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could +leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?” + +“Our elephant,” said Syme, looking upwards, “has leapt into the sky +like a grasshopper.” + +“And somehow,” concluded Bull, “that’s why I can’t help liking old +Sunday. No, it’s not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like +that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting +with some good news. Haven’t you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You +know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are +good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they +laugh at is literal truth, ‘Why leap ye, ye high hills?’ The hills do +leap—at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell +you?... because he’s such a Bounder.” + +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, +strained voice— + +“You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better +than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle +morbid from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us +all, chose me because I had all the crazy look of a conspirator—because +my smile went crooked, and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But +there must have been something in me that answered to the nerves in all +these anarchic men. For when I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not +your airy vitality, but something both gross and sad in the Nature of +Things. I found him smoking in a twilight room, a room with brown blind +down, infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in which our +master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark and +out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or even +stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked my most +eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing began to +shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. It shook like +a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of everything I had ever +read about the base bodies that are the origin of life—the deep sea +lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like the final form of matter, the most +shapeless and the most shameful. I could only tell myself, from its +shudderings, that it was something at least that such a monster could +be miserable. And then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was +shaking with a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask +me to forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by +something at once lower and stronger than oneself.” + +“Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly,” cut in the clear voice of +Inspector Ratcliffe. “President Sunday is a terrible fellow for one’s +intellect, but he is not such a Barnum’s freak physically as you make +out. He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in +broad daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I’ll tell you +what is a trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are +neat, everything seems in order; but he’s absent-minded. Sometimes his +great bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are +there. Now absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We +think of a wicked man as vigilant. We can’t think of a wicked man who +is honestly and sincerely dreamy, because we daren’t think of a wicked +man alone with himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. +It means a man who, if he happens to see you, will apologise. But how +will you bear an absentminded man who, if he happens to see you, will +kill you? That is what tries the nerves, abstraction combined with +cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they went through wild +forests, and felt that the animals there were at once innocent and +pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you like to pass ten +mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded tiger?” + +“And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?” asked Syme. + +“I don’t think of Sunday on principle,” said Gogol simply, “any more +than I stare at the sun at noonday.” + +“Well, that is a point of view,” said Syme thoughtfully. “What do you +say, Professor?” + +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did +not answer at all. + +“Wake up, Professor!” said Syme genially. “Tell us what you think of +Sunday.” + +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. + +“I think something,” he said, “that I cannot say clearly. Or, rather, I +think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something +like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose. + +“Well, when I saw Sunday’s face I thought it was too large—everybody +does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was so big, that +one couldn’t focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was so far away +from the nose, that it wasn’t an eye. The mouth was so much by itself, +that one had to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard to +explain.” + +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on— + +“But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp +and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and +unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him +again. Yet when I walked a little farther I found that there was no +face, that the window was ten yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, +the cloud beyond the world. Well, Sunday’s face escaped me; it ran away +to right and left, as such chance pictures run away. And so his face +has made me, somehow, doubt whether there are any faces. I don’t know +whether your face, Bull, is a face or a combination in perspective. +Perhaps one black disc of your beastly glasses is quite close and +another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a materialist are not worth +a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the worst doubts, the doubts +of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a +creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you +really have a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter.” + +Syme’s eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in +the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world. + +“Have you noticed an odd thing,” he said, “about all your descriptions? +Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can +only find one thing to compare him to—the universe itself. Bull finds +him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The +Secretary is reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of +the carelessness of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a +changing landscape. This is queer, but it is queerer still that I also +have had my odd notion about the President, and I also find that I +think of Sunday as I think of the whole world.” + +“Get on a little faster, Syme,” said Bull; “never mind the balloon.” + +“When I first saw Sunday,” said Syme slowly, “I only saw his back; and +when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck +and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a +stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at +once the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast +dressed up in men’s clothes.” + +“Get on,” said Dr. Bull. + +“And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the +street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming +round the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face +frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not +because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was +so beautiful, because it was so good.” + +“Syme,” exclaimed the Secretary, “are you ill?” + +“It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after +heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour +and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad +shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I +was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was +a god.” + +“Pan,” said the Professor dreamily, “was a god and an animal.” + +“Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, “that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also +the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the +noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I +know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think +good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could +be explained. But the whole came to a kind of crest yesterday when I +raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind him all the way.” + +“Had you time for thinking then?” asked Ratcliffe. + +“Time,” replied Syme, “for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly +possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really +was his face—an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that +the figure running in front of me was really a figure running +backwards, and dancing as he ran.” + +“Horrible!” said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. + +“Horrible is not the word,” said Syme. “It was exactly the worst +instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his +head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he +was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.” + +“It is a long game,” said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. + +“Listen to me,” cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. “Shall I tell +you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the +back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. +That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but +the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and +hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—” + +“Look!” cried out Bull clamorously, “the balloon is coming down!” + +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off +it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right +itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun. + +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary +travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. + +“He is dead!” he cried. “And now I know he was my friend—my friend in +the dark!” + +“Dead!” snorted the Secretary. “You will not find him dead easily. If +he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt +rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun.” + +“Clashing his hoofs,” said the Professor. “The colts do, and so did +Pan.” + +“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably. “You seem to think Pan is +everything.” + +“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek. He means everything.” + +“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down, “that he also means +Panic.” + +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. + +“It fell over there,” he said shortly. “Let us follow it!” + +Then he added with an indescribable gesture— + +“Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one +of his larks.” + +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and +ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more +footsore and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all six men +realised that they were not alone in the little field. + +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, +leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine +but old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade +between blue, violet and grey which can be seen in certain shadows of +the woodland. His hair was whitish grey, and at the first glance, taken +along with his knee-breeches, looked as if it was powdered. His advance +was very quiet; but for the silver frost upon his head, he might have +been one to the shadows of the wood. + +“Gentlemen,” he said, “my master has a carriage waiting for you in the +road just by.” + +“Who is your master?” asked Syme, standing quite still. + +“I was told you knew his name,” said the man respectfully. + +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said— + +“Where is this carriage?” + +“It has been waiting only a few moments,” said the stranger. “My master +has only just come home.” + +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he +found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed +ordinary trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. + +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover +nothing except that the man’s coat was the exact colour of the purple +shadows, and that the man’s face was the exact colour of the red and +brown and golden sky. + +“Show us the place,” Syme said briefly, and without a word the man in +the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, +which let in suddenly the light of a white road. + +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the +white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a +row of carriages as might close the approach to some house in Park +Lane. Along the side of these carriages stood a rank of splendid +servants, all dressed in the grey-blue uniform, and all having a +certain quality of stateliness and freedom which would not commonly +belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the officials and +ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than six carriages +waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable band. All the +attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man crawled +into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of +steel. + +“What can it all mean?” asked Bull of Syme as they separated. “Is this +another joke of Sunday’s?” + +“I don’t know,” said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions of +his carriage; “but if it is, it’s one of the jokes you talk about. It’s +a good-natured one.” + +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had +carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of +comfort. They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things +suddenly going smoothly swamped them. They could not even feebly +imagine what the carriages were; it was enough for them to know that +they were carriages, and carriages with cushions. They could not +conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it was quite enough +that he had certainly led them to the carriages. + +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment. +It was typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin +forward fiercely so long as anything could be done, when the whole +business was taken out of his hands he fell back on the cushions in a +frank collapse. + +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the +carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of +what might have been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill +which, while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a +forest. Then there began to grow upon him, as upon a man slowly waking +from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in everything. He felt that the hedges +were what hedges should be, living walls; that a hedge is like a human +army, disciplined, but all the more alive. He saw high elms behind the +hedges, and vaguely thought how happy boys would be climbing there. +Then his carriage took a turn of the path, and he saw suddenly and +quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in +the mild light of sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards +and quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the +place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top or +that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that shape of +a window; but each man of them declared that he could remember this +place before he could remember his mother. + +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous +gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on +the grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive +person said to the bewildered Syme— + +“Refreshments are provided for you in your room.” + +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went +up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a +splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for +him. He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his +class, to pull his tie straight or to smooth his hair; and there he saw +the frightful figure that he was—blood running down his face from where +the bough had struck him, his hair standing out like yellow rags of +rank grass, his clothes torn into long, wavering tatters. At once the +whole enigma sprang up, simply as the question of how he had got there, +and how he was to get out again. Exactly at the same moment a man in +blue, who had been appointed as his valet, said very solemnly— + +“I have put out your clothes, sir.” + +“Clothes!” said Syme sardonically. “I have no clothes except these,” +and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating +festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl. + +“My master asks me to say,” said the attendant, “that there is a fancy +dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the costume that +I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some +cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours +before supper.” + +“Cold pheasant is a good thing,” said Syme reflectively, “and Burgundy +is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so +much as I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of +costume you have got laid out for me. Where is it?” + +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery, +rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned +a large golden sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming +stars and crescents. + +“You’re to be dressed as Thursday, sir,” said the valet somewhat +affably. + +“Dressed as Thursday!” said Syme in meditation. “It doesn’t sound a +warm costume.” + +“Oh, yes, sir,” said the other eagerly, “the Thursday costume is quite +warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin.” + +“Well, I don’t understand anything,” said Syme, sighing. “I have been +used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable adventures +knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be +particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the +sun and moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the +moon on Tuesday, I remember.” + +“Beg pardon, sir,” said the valet, “Bible also provided for you,” and +with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in the +first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which +the fourth day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun +and moon. Here, however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday. + +“This is getting wilder and wilder,” said Syme, as he sat down in a +chair. “Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, +and green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?” + +“Yes, sir, everything,” said the attendant gravely. “Shall I help you +on with your costume?” + +“Oh, hitch the bally thing on!” said Syme impatiently. + +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious +freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment +fell about him; and when he found that he had to wear a sword, it +stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds +across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, +and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises did not +disguise, but reveal. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. +THE ACCUSER + + +As Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the +top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He +was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of which +fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of +light. The whole looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. +There was no need for Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order +to remember that the first day of creation marked the mere creation of +light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggested +the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white +and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with +his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make +war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was +scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of +their new surroundings, this man’s eyes were still stern. No smell of +ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable +question. + +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he, +too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if +the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and +formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make +the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The +philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the +finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the +creation of the sun and moon. + +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe, +who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon +whose garment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third +day on which the earth and green things were made, and his square, +sensible face, with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate +enough to it. + +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large +old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light +of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme +seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. +There was a man dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man +dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a balloon; the two last, +together, seemed to keep the thread of their farcical adventures. Syme +even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an enormous +hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself—the queer bird which had +fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while he was rushing +down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand +other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing +apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable +tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field and +street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was +middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular +objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill—without thinking +that it was a strayed reveller from that revel of masquerade. + +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green bank, +like the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. + +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the +thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their +seats; the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had +his simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of +the waters, a dress that separated upon his forehead and fell to his +feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The Professor, whose day +was that on which the birds and fishes—the ruder forms of life—were +created, had a dress of dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed +fishes and outrageous tropical birds, the union in him of unfathomable +fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the last day of Creation, wore a coat +covered with heraldic animals in red and gold, and on his crest a man +rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an +optimist in his element. + +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange +seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the +carnival, such as that with which crowds receive kings. Cups were +clashed and torches shaken, and feathered hats flung in the air. The +men for whom these thrones were reserved were men crowned with some +extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was empty. + +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The +Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing +his lips— + +“We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field.” + +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in +front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had +opened behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the +front like a shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was draped +plainly, in a pure and terrible white, and his hair was like a silver +flame on his forehead. + +For a long time—it seemed for hours—that huge masquerade of mankind +swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. +Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy +dancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but +in each case it was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as +grave and kind as a love story. At last, however, the thick crowd began +to thin itself. Couples strolled away into the garden-walks, or began +to drift towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge +pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale or +wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the roof of +the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit up +the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the +face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with +warmth even the emptiness of upper night. Yet this also, after a time, +was allowed to grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more +round the great cauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the +inner passages of that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten +loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray +merry-maker ran into the house whooping to his companions. The fire +faded, and the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men +were left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not +one of them had spoken a word. + +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of +insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so +dreamily that he might have been continuing a conversation rather than +beginning one. + +“We will eat and drink later,” he said. “Let us remain together a +little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so long. +I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were +always heroes—epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in +arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the +beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, +where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice +commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the +dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the +earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you +in the daylight I denied it myself.” + +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and +the incomprehensible went on. + +“But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the +whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew +how near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords +with King Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without +hope.” + +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the +black-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday, +and said in a harsh voice— + +“Who and what are you?” + +“I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the peace of +God.” + +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his +hand. + +“I know what you mean,” he cried, “and it is exactly that that I cannot +forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call +the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If +you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense +to the sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, +why were you also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the +iron entered into our souls—and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can +forgive God His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot +forgive Him His peace.” + +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone +upon Syme as if asking a question. + +“No,” said Syme, “I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful to you, +not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine scamper and +free fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happy +and quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I +should like to know.” + +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said— + +“It seems so _silly_ that you should have been on both sides and fought +yourself.” + +Bull said— + +“I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to sleep.” + +“I am not happy,” said the Professor with his head in his hands, +“because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near to +hell.” + +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child— + +“I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.” + +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon his +hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said— + +“I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes +another to complain, and we will hear him also.” + +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a +bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was +outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He +seemed to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such as that which +was worn by the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but +of this absolute sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of sword by +his side. It was only when he had come quite close to the crescent of +the seven and flung up his face to look at them, that Syme saw, with +thunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost ape-like +face of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its +insulting smile. + +“Gregory!” gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. “Why, this is the +real anarchist!” + +“Yes,” said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, “I am the +real anarchist.” + +“‘Now there was a day,’” murmured Bull, who seemed really to have +fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to present themselves before +the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’” + +“You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a destroyer. +I would destroy the world if I could.” + +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he +spoke brokenly and without sequence. + +“Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have red hair +like your sister.” + +“My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,” said Gregory. +“I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate anything; +but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate you!” + +“I never hated you,” said Syme very sadly. + +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. + +“You!” he cried. “You never hated because you never lived. I know what +you are all of you, from first to last—you are the people in power! You +are the police—the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are +the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive +that does not long to break you, only because you have never been +broken? We in revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this +crime or that crime of the Government. It is all folly! The only crime +of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the +supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being +cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you +for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come +down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had no +troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all +mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a +real agony such as I—” + +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. + +“I see everything,” he cried, “everything that there is. Why does each +thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small +thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a +fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to +fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in +the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may +have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man +fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So +that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this +blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say +to this man, ‘You lie!’ No agonies can be too great to buy the right to +say to this accuser, ‘We also have suffered.’ + +“It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken +upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these +thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of +unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered +insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not +been happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whom +he has accused. At least—” + +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, +which wore a strange smile. + +“Have you,” he cried in a dreadful voice, “have you ever suffered?” + +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the +colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew +larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. +Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed +to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard +somewhere, “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” + + +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in +some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a +chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme’s +experience was something much more psychologically strange if there was +indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had +gone through. For while he could always remember afterwards that he had +swooned before the face of Sunday, he could not remember having ever +come to at all. He could only remember that gradually and naturally he +knew that he was and had been walking along a country lane with an easy +and conversational companion. That companion had been a part of his +recent drama; it was the red-haired poet Gregory. They were walking +like old friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about some +triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his body +and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior to +everything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of some +impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an +adorable triviality. + +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; +as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at +rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that +it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme +felt a simple surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides +of the road the red, irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no +idea that he had walked so near London. He walked by instinct along one +white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself +outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl +with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great +unconscious gravity of a girl. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Man Who Was Thursday<br> +A Nightmare</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: G. K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1999 [eBook #1695]<br> +[Most recently updated: February 5, 2024]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Harry Plantinga and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]"> +</div> + +<h1>The Man Who Was Thursday</h1> + +<h3>A Nightmare</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">by G. K. Chesterton</h2> + +<hr> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#pref01">A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap00"><b>THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</b></a><br><br></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. THE EXPOSURE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. THE DUEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. THE EARTH IN ANARCHY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. THE ACCUSER</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="pref01"></a>A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE</h2> + +<p> +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is possible to +say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous criminals and brilliant +policemen; but it was to be expected that the author of the Father Brown +stories should tell a detective story like no-one else. On this level, +therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a +magnificent tour-de-force of suspense-writing. +</p> + +<p> +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than that. Carried +along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by Chesterton’s wonderful +high-spirited style, he will soon see that he is being carried into much deeper +waters than he had planned on; and the totally unforeseeable denouement will +prove for the modern reader, as it has for thousands of others since 1908 when +the book was first published, an inevitable and moving experience, as the +investigators finally discover who Sunday is. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap00"></a>THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY<br> +A NIGHTMARE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,<br> +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.<br> +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;<br> +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;<br> +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—<br> +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.<br> +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,<br> +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.<br> +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;<br> +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.<br> +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:<br> +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.<br> +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;<br> +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us<br> +Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we,<br> +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.<br> +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,<br> +When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.<br> +<br> +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;<br> +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.<br> +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings<br> +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;<br> +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,<br> +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;<br> +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain—<br> +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.<br> +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,<br> +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.<br> +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.<br> +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:<br> +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved—<br> +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.<br> +<br> +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,<br> +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells—<br> +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,<br> +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.<br> +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand—<br> +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?<br> +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,<br> +And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.<br> +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;<br> +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.<br> +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,<br> +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.<br> +</p> + +<p class="right"> +G. K. C. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br> +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK</h2> + +<p> +The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged +as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line +was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a +speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture +sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression +that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as +an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But +although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its +pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who +looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very +oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the +people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, +but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a +dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was +nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the +impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a +poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white +hat—that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he +was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, +egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of +science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but +what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? +Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be +considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished +work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had +stepped into a written comedy. +</p> + +<p> +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when +the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane +village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again was more strongly +true of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often +illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like +some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on one +particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which the +auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only evening of +which he was the hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden +might hear his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly +to women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the paradoxes +of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, +and professed some protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would +always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever +pays to him, that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the +red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listening to, even if +one only laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant of the lawlessness of +art and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness which gave at +least a momentary pleasure. He was helped in some degree by the arresting +oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was +worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a +woman’s, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite +picture. From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected +suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of cockney +contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified the nerves of a +neurotic population. He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel +and the ape. +</p> + +<p> +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be +remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the +world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; +you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that +almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with +the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; +but towards the west the whole grew past description, transparent and +passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something +too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express +nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It +expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The +very sky seemed small. +</p> + +<p> +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if only by +that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it because it marked the +first appearance in the place of the second poet of Saffron Park. For a long +time the red-haired revolutionary had reigned without a rival; it was upon the +night of the sunset that his solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who +introduced himself by the name of Gabriel Syme was a very mild-looking mortal, +with a fair, pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But an impression grew that +he was less meek than he looked. He signalised his entrance by differing with +the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He said that he +(Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he was a poet of +respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him as if he had that +moment fallen out of that impossible sky. +</p> + +<p> +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two events. +</p> + +<p> +“It may well be,” he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, “it +may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is brought +forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you are a +poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were +not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden.” +</p> + +<p> +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured these +thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of the group, +Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s braids of red +hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of +admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. +</p> + +<p> +“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You +might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who +throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He +sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect +thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist +disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in +disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be +the Underground Railway.” +</p> + +<p> +“So it is,” said Mr. Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway +trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is +because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that +whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is +because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station +must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their +eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were +unaccountably Baker Street!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If +what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The +rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. +We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it +not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos +is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street +or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he +does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry +and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who +commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his +victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!” +</p> + +<p> +“Must you go?” inquired Gregory sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a +train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that +man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has +left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a +thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense +of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word +‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a +herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is +the victory of Adam.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. +</p> + +<p> +“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the question, +‘And what is Victoria now that you have got there?’ You think +Victoria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be +like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of +heaven. The poet is always in revolt.” +</p> + +<p> +“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical +about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be +sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be +the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I +can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. +It’s mere vomiting.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too hot to +heed her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the +foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the +flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the +world is not being sick.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Gregory superciliously, “the examples you +choose—” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot we had +abolished all conventions.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionise +society on this lawn?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I suppose that if you were +serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry +lion, and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dangerous voice, +“that I am serious about my anarchism?” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon?” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I not serious about my anarchism?” cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow!” said Syme, and strolled away. +</p> + +<p> +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond Gregory still in +his company. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my +brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with grave eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many +kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say ‘thank you’ for +the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say ‘the world is +round,’ do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don’t +mean it. Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does +mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says +more than he means—from sheer force of meaning it.” +</p> + +<p> +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and open, and +there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning responsibility which is +at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old +as the world. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he really an anarchist, then?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you +prefer it, in that nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and +somewhat dandified figure. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done +anonymously.” +</p> + +<p> +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she thought +with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory’s absurdity and of his safety. +</p> + +<p> +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to +pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his +superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble +man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He defended +respectability with violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise +of tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round +him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to +play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving to a tiny tune +from under or beyond the world. +</p> + +<p> +He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what +seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place +should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole +garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather +hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could +not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had +no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in +some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all +his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red +thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what +followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream. +</p> + +<p> +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty. +Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence +than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam +gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a +foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the +lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an +abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the +light, and also something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was +the poet Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword +in hand for his foe. +</p> + +<p> +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more formally returned. +</p> + +<p> +“I was waiting for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a +moment’s conversation?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. +</p> + +<p> +“About <i>this</i> and <i>this</i>,” he cried; “about order +and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and +barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself—there is +anarchy, splendid in green and gold.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the same,” replied Syme patiently, “just at present you +only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see +the lamp by the light of the tree.” Then after a pause he said, +“But may I ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only to +resume our little argument?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, +“I did not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for +ever.” +</p> + +<p> +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, listened +instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a smooth voice and with a +rather bewildering smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme,” he said, “this evening you succeeded in doing +something rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of woman +has ever succeeded in doing before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +“Now I remember,” resumed Gregory reflectively, “one other +person succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I remember +correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry,” replied Syme with gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out +even with an apology,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could +wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one +way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am going, at +the possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to <i>prove</i> to you that you +were wrong in what you said.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what I said?” +</p> + +<p> +“You said I was not serious about being an anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are degrees of seriousness,” replied Syme. “I have +never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought +what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up +to a neglected truth.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. +</p> + +<p> +“And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me serious? You +think me a <i>flâneur</i> who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think +that in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. +</p> + +<p> +“Serious!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street serious? Are +these damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One comes +here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, but I should +think very little of a man who didn’t keep something in the background of +his life that was more serious than all this talking—something more +serious, whether it was religion or only drink.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Gregory, his face darkening, “you shall see +something more serious than either drink or religion.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again opened +his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you have +one?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Syme with a beaming smile, “we are all Catholics +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion +involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any son of +Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! If you will take +upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent to burden your soul +with a vow that you should never make and a knowledge you should never dream +about, I will promise you in return—” +</p> + +<p> +“You will promise me in return?” inquired Syme, as the other +paused. +</p> + +<p> +“I will promise you a very entertaining evening.” Syme suddenly +took off his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Your offer,” he said, “is far too idiotic to be declined. +You say that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least +that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a +Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I will not +report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And now, in the name of +Colney Hatch, what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, “that we +will call a cab.” +</p> + +<p> +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the road. The two +got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap the address of an obscure +public-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. The cab whisked itself away +again, and in it these two fantastics quitted their fantastic town. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br> +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME</h2> + +<p> +The cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, into which +Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated themselves in a close and +dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden table with one wooden leg. The +room was so small and dark, that very little could be seen of the attendant who +was summoned, beyond a vague and dark impression of something bulky and +bearded. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take a little supper?” asked Gregory politely. “The +<i>pâté de foie gras</i> is not good here, but I can recommend the game.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. Accepting +the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred indifference— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise.” +</p> + +<p> +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said “Certainly, +sir!” and went away apparently to get it. +</p> + +<p> +“What will you drink?” resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. “I shall only have a <i>crême de menthe</i> myself; I +have dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you with a +half-bottle of Pommery at least?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” said the motionless Syme. “You are very +good.” +</p> + +<p> +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in themselves, were +cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the actual appearance of the lobster. +Syme tasted it, and found it particularly good. Then he suddenly began to eat +with great rapidity and appetite. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!” he said to Gregory, +smiling. “I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this. It +is new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly the other +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not asleep, I assure you,” said Gregory. “You are, +on the contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your existence. +Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be a slight +disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements of this excellent +hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. But that is all our modesty. +We are the most modest men that ever lived on earth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who are <i>we?</i>” asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite simple,” replied Gregory. “<i>We</i> are the +serious anarchists, in whom you do not believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Syme shortly. “You do yourselves well in +drinks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we are serious about everything,” answered Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +Then after a pause he added— +</p> + +<p> +“If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, +don’t put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don’t wish +you to do yourself an injustice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,” replied Syme with perfect +calm; “but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. May +I smoke?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly!” said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. “Try one +of mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his +waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long cloud +of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed these rites with +so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the table at which he +sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane +seance. +</p> + +<p> +“You must not mind it,” said Gregory; “it’s a kind of +screw.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said Syme placidly, “a kind of screw. How simple +that is!” +</p> + +<p> +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering across the room +in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory chimney, and the two, +with their chairs and table, shot down through the floor as if the earth had +swallowed them. They went rattling down a kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as +a lift cut loose, and they came with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But when +Gregory threw open a pair of doors and let in a red subterranean light, Syme +was still smoking with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a +yellow hair. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was the red +light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a fireplace, fixed +over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there was a sort of hatchway or +grating, and on this Gregory struck five times. A heavy voice with a foreign +accent asked him who he was. To this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, +“Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” The heavy hinges began to move; it was +obviously some kind of password. +</p> + +<p> +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a network of +steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering pattern was really made +up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers, closely packed or interlocked. +</p> + +<p> +“I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities,” said Gregory; +“we have to be very strict here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t apologise,” said Syme. “I know your passion +for law and order,” and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel +weapons. With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a +singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining avenue of +death. +</p> + +<p> +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a queer +steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but presenting, +with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a scientific +lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this apartment, but round +the walls of it were hung more dubious and dreadful shapes, things that looked +like the bulbs of iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and +the very room itself seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar +ash off against the wall, and went in. +</p> + +<p> +“And now, my dear Mr. Syme,” said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, “now we are quite +cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give you any notion of +why I brought you here. It was one of those quite arbitrary emotions, like +jumping off a cliff or falling in love. Suffice it to say that you were an +inexpressibly irritating fellow, and, to do you justice, you are still. I would +break twenty oaths of secrecy for the pleasure of taking you down a peg. That +way you have of lighting a cigar would make a priest break the seal of +confession. Well, you said that you were quite certain I was not a serious +anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?” +</p> + +<p> +“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety,” assented Syme; +“but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me +information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a +promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in +mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all +about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?” +</p> + +<p> +“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. +“We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; +that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those +arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which +mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution +talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have +abolished Right and Wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eagerness, “I +hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke of a second question,” snapped Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +“With pleasure,” resumed Syme. “In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt who lived +over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people living from +preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it +without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You +surround yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say so, +more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to +barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole +secret by talking about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron Park?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“The answer is simple,” he said. “I told you I was a serious +anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do <i>they</i> believe me. Unless I +took them into this infernal room they would not believe me.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went on. +</p> + +<p> +“The history of the thing might amuse you,” he said. “When +first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our +anarchist pamphlets, in <i>Superstition the Vampire</i> and <i>Priests of +Prey</i>. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and +terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When +on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a +voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! presumptuous human reason!’ they +found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. +Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much +intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a +major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual +breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire +violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw +myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out +‘Blood!’ abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, +‘Let the weak perish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems majors +don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the +President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in +Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is his name?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“You would not know it,” answered Gregory. “That is his +greatness. Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and +they <i>were</i> heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and +he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with him +without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been children in his +hands.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed— +</p> + +<p> +“But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an +epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said to him, +‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more +respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large but +indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a dress +which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would ever look for +a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. ‘Why, +then, dress up as an <i>anarchist</i>, you fool!’ he roared so that the +room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous +then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took +his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those +women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their +perambulators.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You took me in,” he said. “It is really a smart +dodge.” +</p> + +<p> +Then after a pause he added— +</p> + +<p> +“What do you call this tremendous President of yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“We generally call him Sunday,” replied Gregory with simplicity. +“You see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist Council, and +they are named after days of the week. He is called Sunday, by some of his +admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you should mention the matter, because +the very night you have dropped in (if I may so express it) is the night on +which our London branch, which assembles in this room, has to elect its own +deputy to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman who has for some time +past played, with propriety and general applause, the difficult part of +Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, we have called a meeting this +very evening to elect a successor.” +</p> + +<p> +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of smiling +embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme,” he continued +casually. “I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have +promised to tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something that I would +not say in so many words to the anarchists who will be coming to the room in +about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go through a form of election; but I +don’t mind telling you that it is practically certain what the result +will be.” He looked down for a moment modestly. “It is almost a +settled thing that I am to be Thursday.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow.” said Syme heartily, “I congratulate you. A +great career!” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking rapidly. +</p> + +<p> +“As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table,” he +said, “and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, a large +Colt’s revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of brandy. Over +the chair, beside the table, was thrown a heavy-looking cape or cloak. +</p> + +<p> +“I have only to get the form of election finished,” continued +Gregory with animation, “then I snatch up this cloak and stick, stuff +these other things into my pocket, step out of a door in this cavern, which +opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug already waiting for me, and +then—then—oh, the wild joy of being Thursday!” And he clasped +his hands. +</p> + +<p> +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got to his +feet with an unusual air of hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Why is it,” he asked vaguely, “that I think you are quite a +decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?” He paused a +moment, and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, “Is it because you +are such an ass?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out— +</p> + +<p> +“Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been in in +my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave you a promise +before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under red-hot pincers. +Would you give me, for my own safety, a little promise of the same kind?” +</p> + +<p> +“A promise?” asked Gregory, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme very seriously, “a promise. I swore before +God that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by +Humanity, or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my +secret to the anarchists?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your secret?” asked the staring Gregory. “Have you got a +secret?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a +pause, “Will you swear?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about you. +Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell me. But look +sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his long, +grey trousers’ pockets. Almost as he did so there came five knocks on the +outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the first of the conspirators. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you +the truth more shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as an +aimless poet is not confined to you or your President. We have known the dodge +for some time at Scotland Yard.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say?” he asked in an inhuman voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme simply, “I am a police detective. But I +think I hear your friends coming.” +</p> + +<p> +From the doorway there came a murmur of “Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” +It was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the crowd of +Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard trampling down the +corridor. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br> +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</h2> + +<p> +Before one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, Gregory’s +stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the table with a bound, and +a noise in his throat like a wild beast. He caught up the Colt’s revolver +and took aim at Syme. Syme did not flinch, but he put up a pale and polite +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be such a silly man,” he said, with the effeminate +dignity of a curate. “Don’t you see it’s not necessary? +Don’t you see that we’re both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly +sea-sick.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he looked his +question. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you see we’ve checkmated each other?” cried +Syme. “I can’t tell the police you are an anarchist. You +can’t tell the anarchists I’m a policeman. I can only watch you, +knowing what you are; you can only watch me, knowing what I am. In short, +it’s a lonely, intellectual duel, my head against yours. I’m a +policeman deprived of the help of the police. You, my poor fellow, are an +anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organisation which is so +essential to anarchy. The one solitary difference is in your favour. You are +not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive +anarchists. I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait +and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he were a +sea-monster. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe in immortality,” he said at last, “but +if, after all this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only for +you, to howl in for ever.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not break my word,” said Syme sternly, “nor will you +break yours. Here are your friends.” +</p> + +<p> +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a slouching and +somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a black beard and glasses—a +man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim Healy—detached himself, and bustled +forward with some papers in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory,” he said, “I suppose this man is a +delegate?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of Syme; but Syme +replied almost pertly— +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it hard +for anyone to be here who was not a delegate.” +</p> + +<p> +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still contracted +with something like suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +“What branch do you represent?” he asked sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“I should hardly call it a branch,” said Syme, laughing; “I +should call it at the very least a root.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is,” said Syme serenely, “the truth is I am a +Sabbatarian. I have been specially sent here to see that you show a due +observance of Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear went over all +the faces of the group. Evidently the awful President, whose name was Sunday, +did sometimes send down such irregular ambassadors to such branch meetings. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, comrade,” said the man with the papers after a pause, +“I suppose we’d better give you a seat in the meeting?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you ask my advice as a friend,” said Syme with severe +benevolence, “I think you’d better.” +</p> + +<p> +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety for his +rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful thought. He was, indeed, +in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear that Syme’s inspired impudence was +likely to bring him out of all merely accidental dilemmas. Little was to be +hoped from them. He could not himself betray Syme, partly from honour, but +partly also because, if he betrayed him and for some reason failed to destroy +him, the Syme who escaped would be a Syme freed from all obligation of secrecy, +a Syme who would simply walk to the nearest police station. After all, it was +only one night’s discussion, and only one detective who would know of it. +He would let out as little as possible of their plans that night, and then let +Syme go, and chance it. +</p> + +<p> +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already distributing +itself along the benches. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is time we began,” he said; “the steam-tug is +waiting on the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the +chair.” +</p> + +<p> +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the papers slipped +into the presidential seat. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, “our meeting +tonight is important, though it need not be long. This branch has always had +the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We have +elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease of the +heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you know, his services +to the cause were considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of +Brighton which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on +the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he +died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute +for milk, which beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to +the cow. Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. But +it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a harder task. It is +difficult properly to praise his qualities, but it is more difficult to replace +them. Upon you, comrades, it devolves this evening to choose out of the company +present the man who shall be Thursday. If any comrade suggests a name I will +put it to the vote. If no comrade suggests a name, I can only tell myself that +that dear dynamiter, who is gone from us, has carried into the unknowable +abysses the last secret of his virtue and his innocence.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes heard in +church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable white beard, perhaps +the only real working-man present, rose lumberingly and said— +</p> + +<p> +“I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday,” and sat +lumberingly down again. +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone second?” asked the chairman. +</p> + +<p> +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. +</p> + +<p> +“Before I put the matter to the vote,” said the chairman, “I +will call on Comrade Gregory to make a statement.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly pale, so that +by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. But he was smiling and +altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, and he saw his best policy quite +plain in front of him like a white road. His best chance was to make a softened +and ambiguous speech, such as would leave on the detective’s mind the +impression that the anarchist brotherhood was a very mild affair after all. He +believed in his own literary power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades and +picking perfect words. He thought that with care he could succeed, in spite of +all the people around him, in conveying an impression of the institution, +subtly and delicately false. Syme had once thought that anarchists, under all +their bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of +peril, make Syme think so again? +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, +“it is not necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your +policy also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has been +utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. Those who talk +about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and anywhere to get their +information, except to us, except to the fountain head. They learn about +anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from +tradesmen’s newspapers; they learn about anarchists from <i>Ally +Sloper’s Half-Holiday</i> and the <i>Sporting Times</i>. They never learn +about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the mountainous +slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end of Europe to another. The +man who has always heard that we are walking plagues has never heard our reply. +I know that he will not hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the +roof. For it is deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to +assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by some +incredible accident, there were here tonight a man who all his life had thus +immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question to him: ‘When those +Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of moral reputation had they in +the streets above? What tales were told of their atrocities by one educated +Roman to another? Suppose’ (I would say to him), ‘suppose that we +are only repeating that still mysterious paradox of history. Suppose we seem as +shocking as the Christians because we are really as harmless as the Christians. +Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as +meek.”’ +</p> + +<p> +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually growing +fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the +man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice— +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not meek!” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is +not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; +his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But +only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep +foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for +himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come +too late. We are simple, as they revere simple—look at Comrade +Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest—look at me. We are +merciful—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. +</p> + +<p> +“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the +early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused of +eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—” +</p> + +<p> +“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, +“is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at +any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +“there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a +body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of that +body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as assassins and +enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral courage and quiet +intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of brotherhood and +simplicity.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The silence +was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an automaton, and said in a +colourless voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?” +</p> + +<p> +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and Comrade +Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick beard. By +the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have been put and carried. +But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet +and said in a small and quiet voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.” +</p> + +<p> +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the voice. Mr. +Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these first formal words +in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he made his next word ring and +volley in the vault as if one of the guns had gone off. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of +his boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live underground like rats +in order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to while +eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with weapons and +bar that door with death lest anyone should come and hear Comrade Gregory +saying to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’ ‘Honesty is +the best policy,’ and ‘Virtue is its own reward’? There was +not a word in Comrade Gregory’s address to which a curate could not have +listened with pleasure (hear, hear). But I am not a curate (loud cheers), and I +did not listen to it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The man who is fitted to +make a good curate is not fitted to make a resolute, forcible, and efficient +Thursday (hear, hear). +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we are +not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of society, and +so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of society, for society is +the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear). +Comrade Gregory has told us (apologetically again) that we are not murderers. +There I agree. We are not murderers, we are executioners (cheers).” +</p> + +<p> +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face idiotic with +astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay parted, and he said, with an +automatic and lifeless distinctness— +</p> + +<p> +“You damnable hypocrite!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale blue ones, and +said with dignity— +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do that I +am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do not mince +words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit to be Thursday +for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be Thursday because of his +amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with +a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, +neither is it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade +Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of Europe, because +the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as +he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed +cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as +I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the wall; +and I say that rather than have Gregory and his milk-and-water methods on the +Supreme Council, I would offer myself for election—” +</p> + +<p> +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The faces, that +had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his tirade grew more and more +uncompromising, were now distorted with grins of anticipation or cloven with +delighted cries. At the moment when he announced himself as ready to stand for +the post of Thursday, a roar of excitement and assent broke forth, and became +uncontrollable, and at the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam +upon his mouth, and shouted against the shouting. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop, you blasted madmen!” he cried, at the top of a voice that +tore his throat. “Stop, you—” +</p> + +<p> +But louder than Gregory’s shouting and louder than the roar of the room +came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless thunder— +</p> + +<p> +“I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the priest who +says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says these men are +the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says these men are the +enemies of order and public decency, to all these I will reply, ‘You are +false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come to destroy you, and to fulfil +your prophecies.’” +</p> + +<p> +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased Witherspoon had +jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and had said— +</p> + +<p> +“I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the +post.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. “Stop it, it is all—” +</p> + +<p> +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone second this amendment?” he said. A tall, tired man, +with melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on the back bench +to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been screaming for some time past; +now there was a change in his accent, more shocking than any scream. “I +end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as stone. +“This man cannot be elected. He is a—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, quite motionless, “what is he?” +Gregory’s mouth worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began +to crawl back into his dead face. </p> +<p>“He is a man quite inexperienced in our +work,” he said, and sat down abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was again +upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone— +</p> + +<p> +“I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme.” +</p> + +<p> +“The amendment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. +</p> + +<p> +“The question is that Comrade Syme—” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” he cried out, “I am not a madman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh!” said Mr. Witherspoon. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not a madman,” reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, “but I give you a counsel which +you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I can give +you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad command, but act +upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do not elect this +man.” Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment +Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you could not +have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began— +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory commands—” +</p> + +<p> +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory— +</p> + +<p> +“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, “And you are not Thursday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in +an ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, “it is nothing to me whether +you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take my +command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at your feet. I +implore you. Do not elect this man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory,” said the chairman after a painful pause, +“this is really not quite dignified.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a real +silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a man, and the +chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly started again— +</p> + +<p> +“The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday on +the General Council.” +</p> + +<p> +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three minutes +afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was elected to the +post of Thursday on the General Council of the Anarchists of Europe. +</p> + +<p> +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the +sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the election +was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the paper proving his +election, they all sprang to their feet, and the fiery groups moved and mixed +in the room. Syme found himself, somehow or other, face to face with Gregory, +who still regarded him with a stare of stunned hatred. They were silent for +many minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a devil!” said Gregory at last. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are a gentleman,” said Syme with gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“It was you that entrapped me,” began Gregory, shaking from head to +foot, “entrapped me into—” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk sense,” said Syme shortly. “Into what sort of +devils’ parliament have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made +me swear before I made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But +what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us +in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and +death,” and he pulled the great cloak about his shoulders and picked up +the flask from the table. +</p> + +<p> +“The boat is quite ready,” said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. “Be +good enough to step this way.” +</p> + +<p> +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a short, +iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following feverishly at their +heels. At the end of the passage was a door, which Buttons opened sharply, +showing a sudden blue and silver picture of the moonlit river, that looked like +a scene in a theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, dwarfish steam-launch, +like a baby dragon with one red eye. +</p> + +<p> +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the gaping +Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +“You have kept your word,” he said gently, with his face in shadow. +“You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even down to +a small particular. There was one special thing you promised me at the +beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” cried the chaotic Gregory. “What did I +promise you?” +</p> + +<p> +“A very entertaining evening,” said Syme, and he made a military +salute with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br> +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE</h2> + +<p> +Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was +really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy +hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too +conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He +had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous +and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in +which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles +always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt +to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and +self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the +child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink +between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy +dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more +did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the +former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached +the point of defending cannibalism. +</p> + +<p> +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel +had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing +left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these +fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too fierce to be +sensible. His hatred of modern lawlessness had been crowned also by an +accident. It happened that he was walking in a side street at the instant of a +dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, the +smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. After that he went +about as usual—quiet, courteous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on +his mind that was not sane. He did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as +a handful of morbid men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded +them as a huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. +</p> + +<p> +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets a torrent +of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of this deluge of barbaric +denial. But he seemed to be getting no nearer his enemy, and, what was worse, +no nearer a living. As he paced the Thames embankment, bitterly biting a cheap +cigar and brooding on the advance of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with a +bomb in his pocket so savage or so solitary as he. Indeed, he always felt that +Government stood alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too +quixotic to have cared for it otherwise. +</p> + +<p> +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river +reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was +so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water +almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a +stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean +country. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black chimney-pot hat; +he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, black and ragged; and the +combination gave him the look of the early villains in Dickens and Bulwer +Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when +they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A +long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between +his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen of +the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was why a +policeman on the Embankment spoke to him, and said “Good evening.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the mere +stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the twilight. +</p> + +<p> +“A good evening is it?” he said sharply. “You fellows would +call the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that +bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt and +shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking out for +some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen are cruel to the +poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your +calm.” +</p> + +<p> +“If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of +organised resistance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said Syme, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the +policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this +undenominational education?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the policeman sadly, “I never had any of those +advantages. The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very +rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, at Harrow,” said the policeman +</p> + +<p> +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in so many +men, broke out of Syme before he could control them. +</p> + +<p> +“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a +policeman!” +</p> + +<p> +The policeman sighed and shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said solemnly, “I know I am not worthy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why did you join the police?” asked Syme with rude curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“For much the same reason that you abused the police,” replied the +other. “I found that there was a special opening in the service for those +whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the aberrations of the +scientific intellect than with the normal and excusable, though excessive, +outbreaks of the human will. I trust I make myself clear.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you mean that you make your opinion clear,” said Syme, “I +suppose you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. +How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on the +Thames embankment?” +</p> + +<p> +“You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police +system,” replied the other. “I am not surprised at it. We are +keeping it rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains +most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in the right frame of mind. I +think you might almost join us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Join you in what?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the +situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated +detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely intellectual +conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation. He is +certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade +against the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of +policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch +the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a +controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value +of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would +obviously be undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation +which is also a heresy hunt.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you do, then?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, +“is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. +The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic +tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a +ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of +sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those +dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and +intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at +Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart +young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much +connection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, +“but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of +the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick +of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant +and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We +deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous +criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning +princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated +criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless +modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially +moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; +they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the +property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But +philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea +of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go +through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But +philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they +merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the +sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life +itself, their own as much as other people’s.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck his hands together. +</p> + +<p> +“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my +boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a +bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that +if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is +then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but +not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But +the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. +Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are +really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon +the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of +powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The +moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a +right to punish anybody else.” +</p> + +<p> +“But this is absurd!” cried the policeman, clasping his hands with +an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, “but it is +intolerable! I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re +wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. +Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment more, +and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with +the last heroes of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a chance not to be missed, certainly,” assented Syme, +“but still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the +modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, +beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing with each +other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is +this anarchy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not confuse it,” replied the constable, “with those +chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the +outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, +consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer ring +the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring +the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer +ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely anarchists; that +is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. +They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the +system that has called it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the +punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They +believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as +blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket +he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent +section.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time +coming’; ‘the paradise of the future’; ‘mankind freed +from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,’ and so on. And so +also the men of the inner circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also +speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed +at last. But in their mouths”—and the policeman lowered his +voice—“in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. +They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon +this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they +mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or +wrong, they mean the grave. +</p> + +<p> +“They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The +innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the +king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of passion. +</p> + +<p> +“I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment,” said the +policeman, “as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of the +chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or rather, I +should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can talk to him if you +like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Telephone?” inquired Syme, with interest. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the policeman placidly, “he has a fancy for always +sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come +along.” +</p> + +<p> +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a +side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew +what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four +intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt +blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary +darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly +stone-blind. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice. +</p> + +<p> +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the +gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; +and second, that the man had his back to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to +have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable +phrase. +</p> + +<p> +“I really have no experience,” he began. +</p> + +<p> +“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle +of Armageddon.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I am really unfit—” +</p> + +<p> +“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession +of which mere willingness is the final test.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to +death. Good day.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson light of +evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless cloak, he came out a +member of the New Detective Corps for the frustration of the great conspiracy. +Acting under the advice of his friend the policeman (who was professionally +inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad +himself in an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow +flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and rather +insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in the little garden of +Saffron Park. Before he finally left the police premises his friend provided +him with a small blue card, on which was written, “The Last +Crusade,” and a number, the sign of his official authority. He put this +carefully in his upper waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to +track and fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his +adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a +February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent Thames, +armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday of the Central +Council of Anarchists. +</p> + +<p> +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation of +stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the landscape of a +new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet. This was mainly due to +the insane yet solid decision of that evening, though partly also to an entire +change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two +hours before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had +been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong +and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. +It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. +</p> + +<p> +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as of that +disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so +that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some +other and emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he +felt this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own chivalric +folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the common things he carried +with him—the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on +exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a +gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the +brandy-flask, though in themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, +became the expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick became +almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the stirrup-cup. For +even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler +figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon +without St. George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was +only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme’s +exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as +empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because +there is a man in the moon. +</p> + +<p> +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went comparatively slowly. +The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the time that they +passed Battersea, and when they came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day +had already begun to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead, +showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire when the tug, +changing its onward course, turned inward to a large landing stage rather +beyond Charing Cross. +</p> + +<p> +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic as Syme +looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white dawn. They +made him feel that he was landing on the colossal steps of some Egyptian +palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he was, in his own mind, +mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt +out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, +amid the enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and turned +up stream. They had never spoken a word. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br> +THE FEAST OF FEAR</h2> + +<p> +At first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid; but +before he reached the top he had realised that there was a man leaning over the +parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the river. As a figure he was +quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type +of fashion; he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him +step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to +notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and +intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the very +point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost +seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best +shaven—clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer and +closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. +</p> + +<p> +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was meant to +meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concluded that he was not. +And now again he had come back to a certainty that the man had something to do +with his mad adventure. For the man remained more still than would have been +natural if a stranger had come so close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, +and got on the nerves somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again and again at +the pale, dignified and delicate face, and the face still looked blankly across +the river. Then he took out of his pocket the note from Buttons proving his +election, and put it before that sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, +and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right +cheek and down in the left. +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people +have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. +But in all Syme’s circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand +and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving +in it. +</p> + +<p> +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic face. And +there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went wrong. +</p> + +<p> +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man’s face dropped at once +into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further explanation or +inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. +</p> + +<p> +“If we walk up towards Leicester Square,” he said, “we shall +just be in time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. +Have you had any sleep?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor have I,” answered the man in an ordinary tone. “I shall +try to get to bed after breakfast.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that contradicted +the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all friendly words were to +him lifeless conveniences, and that his only life was hate. After a pause the +man spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that can be +told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last notion of the +President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case you +don’t know, I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion +of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary +lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell underground, just as +your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary +restaurant. He said that if you didn’t seem to be hiding nobody hunted +you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really +think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For now we +flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on a balcony—on +a balcony, if you please—overlooking Leicester Square.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do the people say?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s quite simple what they say,” answered his guide. +“They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are +anarchists.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me a very clever idea,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!” cried out the other in +a sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his crooked +smile. “When you’ve seen Sunday for a split second you’ll +leave off calling him clever.” +</p> + +<p> +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early sunlight +filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I suppose, why this square +itself should look so alien and in some ways so continental. It will never be +known whether it was the foreign look that attracted the foreigners or the +foreigners who gave it the foreign look. But on this particular morning the +effect seemed singularly bright and clear. Between the open square and the +sunlit leaves and the statue and the Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it +looked the replica of some French or even Spanish public place. And this effect +increased in Syme the sensation, which in many shapes he had had through the +whole adventure, the eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world. As a +fact, he had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square ever since he was a boy. +But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the Moorish cupolas, he +could have sworn that he was turning into an unknown Place de something or +other in some foreign town. +</p> + +<p> +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a prosperous but +quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street behind. In the wall there +was one large French window, probably the window of a large coffee-room; and +outside this window, almost literally overhanging the square, was a formidably +buttressed balcony, big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did +contain a dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and round the +breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to the street, were a +group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with +white waistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of their jokes could almost +be heard across the square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnatural smile, +and Syme knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secret conclave of +the European Dynamiters. +</p> + +<p> +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had not seen +before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large to see. At the +nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective, was +the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme had seen him, his first +thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His +vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite +incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original proportions, +like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white +hair, as seen from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that +stood out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to +scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the +other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were +still sitting there as before with their flowers and frock-coats, but now it +looked as if the big man was entertaining five children to tea. +</p> + +<p> +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter came out +smiling with every tooth in his head. +</p> + +<p> +“The gentlemen are up there, sare,” he said. “They do talk +and they do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze +king.” +</p> + +<p> +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleased with the +singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost filled +and broke the balcony was the great President of whom the others stood in awe. +He knew it was so, with an unaccountable but instantaneous certainty. Syme, +indeed, was one of those men who are open to all the more nameless +psychological influences in a degree a little dangerous to mental health. +Utterly devoid of fear in physical dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive +to the smell of spiritual evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning +things had peeped out at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of +drawing nearer and nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this sense became +overpowering as he drew nearer to the great President. +</p> + +<p> +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked across the +inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday grew larger and +larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he was quite close the face +would be too big to be possible, and that he would scream aloud. He remembered +that as a child he would not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, +because it was a face, and so large. +</p> + +<p> +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to an empty +seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted him with +good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He sobered himself a +little by looking at their conventional coats and solid, shining coffee-pot; +then he looked again at Sunday. His face was very large, but it was still +possible to humanity. +</p> + +<p> +In the presence of the President the whole company looked sufficiently +commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at first, except that by the +President’s caprice they had been dressed up with a festive +respectability, which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast. One man +indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He at least was the common or +garden Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar and satin tie that +were the uniform of the occasion; but out of this collar there sprang a head +quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a bewildering bush of brown hair and +beard that almost obscured the eyes like those of a Skye terrier. But the eyes +did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some Russian serf. +The effect of this figure was not terrible like that of the President, but it +had every diablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that +stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it +could not have been a more idiotic contrast. +</p> + +<p> +The man’s name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle +of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably tragic; he +could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous part demanded of +him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came in the President, with +that daring disregard of public suspicion which was his policy, was actually +chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume conventional graces. +</p> + +<p> +“Our friend Tuesday,” said the President in a deep voice at once of +quietude and volume, “our friend Tuesday doesn’t seem to grasp the +idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul to +behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now if a +gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need know +that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, +and then goes about on his hands and knees—well, he may attract +attention. That’s what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and +knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he finds it quite +difficult to walk upright.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not good at concealment,” said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; “I am not ashamed of the cause.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you,” said the +President good-naturedly. “You hide as much as anybody; but you +can’t do it, you see, you’re such an ass! You try to combine two +inconsistent methods. When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will +probably pause to note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in +a top hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even +to forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin’s +bed—” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not good at deception,” said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. +</p> + +<p> +“Right, my boy, right,” said the President with a ponderous +heartiness, “you aren’t good at anything.” +</p> + +<p> +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more steadily at +the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his sense of something +spiritually queer return. +</p> + +<p> +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and costume, with +the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he +began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, +a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly +disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. +Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth +glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor +he could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and presence +would look, with the additional twist given in a false and curved mirror. +</p> + +<p> +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed eccentricity. +Syme’s original cicerone bore the title of Monday; he was the Secretary +of the Council, and his twisted smile was regarded with more terror than +anything, except the President’s horrible, happy laughter. But now that +Syme had more space and light to observe him, there were other touches. His +fine face was so emaciated, that Syme thought it must be wasted with some +disease; yet somehow the very distress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no +physical ill that troubled him. His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, +as if pure thought was pain. +</p> + +<p> +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and differently wrong. +Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed Gogol, a man more obviously mad. +Next was Wednesday, a certain Marquis de St. Eustache, a sufficiently +characteristic figure. The first few glances found nothing unusual about him, +except that he was the only man at table who wore the fashionable clothes as if +they were really his own. He had a black French beard cut square and a black +English frock-coat cut even squarer. But Syme, sensitive to such things, felt +somehow that the man carried a rich atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that +suffocated. It reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying lamps in +the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his being clad, +not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his black seemed richer and +warmer than the black shades about him, as if it were compounded of profound +colour. His black coat looked as if it were only black by being too dense a +purple. His black beard looked as if it were only black by being too deep a +blue. And in the gloom and thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed +sensual and scornful. Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he might be a +Jew; he might be something deeper yet in the dark heart of the East. In the +bright coloured Persian tiles and pictures showing tyrants hunting, you may see +just those almond eyes, those blue-black beards, those cruel, crimson lips. +</p> + +<p> +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who still kept the +chair of Friday, though every day it was expected that his death would leave it +empty. Save for his intellect, he was in the last dissolution of senile decay. +His face was as grey as his long grey beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed +finally in a furrow of mild despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, +did the bridegroom brilliancy of the morning dress express a more painful +contrast. For the red flower in his button-hole showed up against a face that +was literally discoloured like lead; the whole hideous effect was as if some +drunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose or sat down, +which was with long labour and peril, something worse was expressed than mere +weakness, something indefinably connected with the horror of the whole scene. +It did not express decrepitude merely, but corruption. Another hateful fancy +crossed Syme’s quivering mind. He could not help thinking that whenever +the man moved a leg or arm might fall off. +</p> + +<p> +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most +baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face +clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had that +combination of <i>savoir-faire</i> with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which +is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes with confidence +rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever +odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It +may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but +those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered +ugly tales, of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead. +Syme’s eye always caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the +dying Professor worn them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been +appropriate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. +They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or his +gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had a vulgar virility +wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme that he might be the wickedest +of all those wicked men. Syme even had the thought that his eyes might be +covered up because they were too frightful to see. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br> +THE EXPOSURE</h2> + +<p> +Such were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again and again Syme +strove to pull together his common sense in their presence. Sometimes he saw +for an instant that these notions were subjective, that he was only looking at +ordinary men, one of whom was old, another nervous, another short-sighted. The +sense of an unnatural symbolism always settled back on him again. Each figure +seemed to be, somehow, on the borderland of things, just as their theory was on +the borderland of thought. He knew that each one of these men stood at the +extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning. He could only fancy, +as in some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the world +he would find something—say a tree—that was more or less than a +tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the +world he would find something else that was not wholly itself—a tower, +perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures seemed to stand +up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate horizon, visions from the +verge. The ends of the earth were closing in. +</p> + +<p> +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not the least of +the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the contrast between the +easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible purport. They were deep in +the discussion of an actual and immediate plot. The waiter downstairs had +spoken quite correctly when he said that they were talking about bombs and +kings. Only three days afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the +French Republic in Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their sunny +balcony these beaming gentlemen had decided how both should die. Even the +instrument was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it appeared, was to carry the +bomb. +</p> + +<p> +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime would +have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mystical tremors. He would +have thought of nothing but the need of saving at least two human bodies from +being ripped in pieces with iron and roaring gas. But the truth was that by +this time he had begun to feel a third kind of fear, more piercing and +practical than either his moral revulsion or his social responsibility. Very +simply, he had no fear to spare for the French President or the Czar; he had +begun to fear for himself. Most of the talkers took little heed of him, +debating now with their faces closer together, and almost uniformly grave, save +when for an instant the smile of the Secretary ran aslant across his face as +the jagged lightning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent +thing which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. The President was +always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and baffling interest. The +enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes stood out of his head. And they +were always fixed on Syme. +</p> + +<p> +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President’s eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had +hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday +had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and +saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright +railings and the sunlit trees. +</p> + +<p> +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him for many +days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were the princes +of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and fanciful figure of the poet +Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old +kindness, as if they had played together when children. But he remembered that +he was still tied to Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never to do +the very thing that he now felt himself almost in the act of doing. He had +promised not to jump over that balcony and speak to that policeman. He took his +cold hand off the cold stone balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral +indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous +society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. +He had, on the other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered +inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very +intellect was a torture-chamber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw +the comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever +he looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly +studying him with big, unbearable eyes. +</p> + +<p> +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that never crossed +his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt that the President and his +Council could crush him if he continued to stand alone. The place might be +public, the project might seem impossible. But Sunday was not the man who would +carry himself thus easily without having, somehow or somewhere, set open his +iron trap. Either by anonymous poison or sudden street accident, by hypnotism +or by fire from hell, Sunday could certainly strike him. If he defied the man +he was probably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long afterwards +as by an innocent ailment. If he called in the police promptly, arrested +everyone, told all, and set against them the whole energy of England, he would +probably escape; certainly not otherwise. They were a balconyful of gentlemen +overlooking a bright and busy square; but he felt no more safe with them than +if they had been a boatful of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. +</p> + +<p> +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to him to +be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of +intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this +oppression of a great personality. They might have called Sunday the super-man. +If any such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, with +his earth-shaking abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. He might have been +called something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be +detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood. But this +was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme +morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was +not quite coward enough to admire it. +</p> + +<p> +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were typical. Dr. +Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally of the best things on the +table—cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. But the Secretary was a +vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the projected murder over half a raw +tomato and three quarters of a glass of tepid water. The old Professor had such +slops as suggested a sickening second childhood. And even in this President +Sunday preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate like twenty +men; he ate incredibly, with a frightful freshness of appetite, so that it was +like watching a sausage factory. Yet continually, when he had swallowed a dozen +crumpets or drunk a quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on +one side staring at Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I have often wondered,” said the Marquis, taking a great bite out +of a slice of bread and jam, “whether it wouldn’t be better for me +to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a +knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and +wriggle it round.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are wrong,” said the Secretary, drawing his black brows +together. “The knife was merely the expression of the old personal +quarrel with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our +best symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of +the Christians. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even so, +thought only destroys because it broadens. A man’s brain is a +bomb,” he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking +his own skull with violence. “My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. +It must expand! It must expand! A man’s brain must expand, if it breaks +up the universe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want the universe broken up just yet,” drawled the +Marquis. “I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of +one yesterday in bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, if the only end of the thing is nothing,” said Dr. Bull with +his sphinx-like smile, “it hardly seems worth doing.” +</p> + +<p> +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Every man knows in his heart,” he said, “that nothing is +worth doing.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said— +</p> + +<p> +“We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is how +Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with the +original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should suggest that +tomorrow morning he should go first of all to—” +</p> + +<p> +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday had risen +to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. +</p> + +<p> +“Before we discuss that,” he said in a small, quiet voice, +“let us go into a private room. I have something very particular to +say.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come at last, +the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could hear the policeman +idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, was cold. +</p> + +<p> +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune. +Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle. He found +himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from nowhere. That +jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the vulgarity, and the irrational +valour of the poor, who in all those unclean streets were all clinging to the +decencies and the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of being a +policeman had faded from his mind; he did not think of himself as the +representative of the corps of gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of +the old eccentric who lived in the dark room. But he did feel himself as the +ambassador of all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day +marched into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in +being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the +monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all +their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He +felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave +man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that +he had neither the intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday; +but in that moment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the +muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed +up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong and that the +barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and +terrible truism in the song of Roland— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit,” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. This +liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness went with a quite clear +decision to embrace death. If the people of the barrel-organ could keep their +old-world obligations, so could he. This very pride in keeping his word was +that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these +lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could +not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the +energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and +rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of +death. +</p> + +<p> +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and into the rooms +behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all his brain and body +throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President led them down an irregular side +stair, such as might be used by servants, and into a dim, cold, empty room, +with a table and benches, like an abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, +he closed and locked the door. +</p> + +<p> +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting with +inarticulate grievance. +</p> + +<p> +“Zso! Zso!” he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. “You zay you nod ’ide. You zay +you show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk importance you run +yourselves in a dark box!” +</p> + +<p> +The President seemed to take the foreigner’s incoherent satire with +entire good humour. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t get hold of it yet, Gogol,” he said in a fatherly +way. “When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they +will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have +had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don’t seem to know anything about +mankind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I die for zem,” cried the Pole in thick excitement, “and I +slay zare oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would zmite +ze tyrant in ze open square.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see,” said the President, nodding kindly as he seated +himself at the top of a long table. “You die for mankind first, and then +you get up and smite their oppressors. So that’s all right. And now may I +ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit down with the other +gentlemen at this table. For the first time this morning something intelligent +is going to be said.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the original summons, +sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling in his brown beard about +gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to have any notion of the blow that was +about to fall. As for him, he had merely the feeling of a man mounting the +scaffold with the intention, at any rate, of making a good speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” said the President, suddenly rising, “we have +spun out this farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you +something so simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs (long inured to +our levities) might hear some new seriousness in my voice. Comrades, we were +discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before saying anything else, +that those plans and places should not be voted by this meeting, but should be +left wholly in the control of some one reliable member. I suggest Comrade +Saturday, Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for the next +words, though not loud, had a living and sensational emphasis. Sunday struck +the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be mentioned in +this company.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it seemed as if he +had never really astonished them until now. They all moved feverishly in their +seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his hand in his pocket, and on +the handle of his loaded revolver. When the attack on him came he would sell +his life dear. He would find out at least if the President was mortal. +</p> + +<p> +Sunday went on smoothly— +</p> + +<p> +“You will probably understand that there is only one possible motive for +forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. Strangers overhearing us +matters nothing. They assume that we are joking. But what would matter, even +unto death, is this, that there should be one actually among us who is not of +us, who knows our grave purpose, but does not share it, who—” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. +</p> + +<p> +“It can’t be!” he cried, leaping. “There +can’t—” +</p> + +<p> +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of some +huge fish. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is +a traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. +</p> + +<p> +“His name is Gogol,” said the President. “He is that hairy +humbug over there who pretends to be a Pole.” +</p> + +<p> +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same flash three men +sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made an effort to rise. But Syme saw +little of the scene, for he was blinded with a beneficent darkness; he had sunk +down into his seat shuddering, in a palsy of passionate relief. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br> +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS</h2> + +<p> +“Sit down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in +his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. +</p> + +<p> +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person himself +resumed his seat. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my man,” said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, “will you oblige me by putting your hand in +your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?” +</p> + +<p> +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but he put +two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled out a blue strip +of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke up again to the world +outside him. For although the card lay at the other extreme of the table, and +he could read nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance +to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when +he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary. +</p> + +<p> +“Pathetic Slav,” said the President, “tragic child of Poland, +are you prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this +company—shall we say <i>de trop?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Right oh!” said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a +clear, commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of +foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken with a +Scotch accent. +</p> + +<p> +“I gather that you fully understand your position,” said Sunday. +</p> + +<p> +“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. +All I say is, I don’t believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like +I did his.” +</p> + +<p> +“I concede the point,” said Sunday. “I believe your own +accent to be inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind +leaving your beard with your card?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit,” answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert +face. “It was hot,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort +of brutal admiration, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. +Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me for +just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in torments. +Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, I shall have that +two and a half minutes of discomfort. On your discomfort I will not dwell. Good +day. Mind the step.” +</p> + +<p> +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet without +a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect nonchalance. Yet the +astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease was suddenly assumed; for +there was a slight stumble outside the door, which showed that the departing +detective had not minded the step. +</p> + +<p> +“Time is flying,” said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger than it +ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair at a +Humanitarian meeting.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. +</p> + +<p> +“Would it not be better,” he said a little sharply, “to +discuss further the details of our project, now that the spy has left +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I think not,” said the President with a yawn like an +unobtrusive earthquake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I +must be off. Breakfast here next Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the +Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime. +</p> + +<p> +“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. +“It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated +in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in the +actual presence of a traitor—” +</p> + +<p> +“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d +take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t +say. But it might.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. +</p> + +<p> +“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a +great many times. “That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to +understand. Why, you dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you +didn’t want to be overheard by a spy, didn’t you? How do you know +you aren’t overheard now?” +</p> + +<p> +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking with +incomprehensible scorn. +</p> + +<p> +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent glimmering of +his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it was it froze him +to the bone. If the last words of the President meant anything, they meant that +he had not after all passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not +denounce him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. +</p> + +<p> +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook themselves +elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday. The Professor +went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after the rest had gone, +revolving his strange position. He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still +under a cloud. At last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester +Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came +out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still +carried the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he +had thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, +perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be +slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the +doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser’s shop, the front window of +which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress. +</p> + +<p> +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found one +glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, stared out +instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably astonished to see, +standing quite still outside the shop and staring into the window, a man. His +top hat was loaded with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the white drift +was rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if nothing could tear +him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax doll in dirty evening +dress. That any human being should stand in such weather looking into such a +shop was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned +suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised that the man standing there was +the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for a person +of his years and infirmities. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this dehumanized +brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in +love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man’s +malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He +was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. +On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor’s +stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him +and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear of +the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could collect his +thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether he should or should +not keep faith with Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three streets, down +through two or three others, and entered a small Soho restaurant for lunch. He +partook reflectively of four small and quaint courses, drank half a bottle of +red wine, and ended up over black coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He +had taken his seat in the upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the +chink of knives and the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days +he had imagined that all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He +shuddered, remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the delightful +shame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar place, the faces of +natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven +Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless an +objective reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses and populous +streets lay between him and his last sight of the shameful seven; he was free +in free London, and drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier +action, he took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop +below. +</p> + +<p> +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the spot. At a +small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of snow, sat the +old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted livid face and +pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. +Then with a gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing +open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Can that old corpse be following me?” he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even such +leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk walking I +can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too fanciful? Was he +really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a fool as to send a lame +man?” +</p> + +<p> +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the direction +of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow increased, growing +blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to darken. The snow-flakes +tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. Getting into his eyes and beard, +they added their unremitting futility to his already irritated nerves; and by +the time that he had come at a swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, +he lost patience, and finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. +He ordered another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, +when Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty +and ordered a glass of milk. +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which +confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme, who +was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at a +conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had heard no wheels outside +the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man +could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He started up +and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, +and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus +going to the Bank went rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent +run of a hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the +splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the top. +When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind him a sort of +heavy and asthmatic breathing. +</p> + +<p> +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the omnibus steps +a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the shadow of its brim the +short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of Professor de Worms. He let himself +into a seat with characteristic care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the +mackintosh rug. +</p> + +<p> +Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every +uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question +that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of the body. He moved +by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless +the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even of a +practical existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after the +omnibus. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the wintry +sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He had repressed +an elemental impulse to leap over the side. +</p> + +<p> +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the little +courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a hole. He had a +vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box was really pursuing +him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he could soon throw him off the +scent. He dived in and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks +than thoroughfares; and by the time that he had completed about twenty +alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for +any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been +much, for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere +behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen +had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, +glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only +plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few hundred yards farther +on he stood still again to listen, his heart stood still also, for he heard +from that space of rugged stones the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the +infernal cripple. +</p> + +<p> +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in a darkness +and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each side of Syme the +walls of the alley were blind and featureless; there was no little window or +any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break out of this hive of houses, and +to get once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged +for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he +struck it much farther up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the +vast and void of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting in +the sky. +</p> + +<p> +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a pestilence +had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some degree of emptiness +was natural; first because the snow-storm was even dangerously deep, and +secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the +word was henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of +snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a +very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and +sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and +sinister colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, +that were just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But +right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and +upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, +still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just so +fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out +in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly +straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. +</p> + +<p> +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or slowly +behind him, and he did not care. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were +darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might have +captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a new impulse +to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at +the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in +hand, to face his pursuer. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alley behind +him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp, irresistibly +recalling that very imaginative figure in the nursery rhymes, “the +crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as if he had been +twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he had been threading. He came +nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his lifted, +patient face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the dragon, as a man +waits for a final explanation or for death. And the old Professor came right up +to him and passed him like a total stranger, without even a blink of his +mournful eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that left Syme in a +final fury. The man’s colourless face and manner seemed to assert that +the whole following had been an accident. Syme was galvanised with an energy +that was something between bitterness and a burst of boyish derision. He made a +wild gesture as if to knock the old man’s hat off, called out something +like “Catch me if you can,” and went racing away across the white, +open Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his +shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him +with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon +that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a +lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. +</p> + +<p> +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, round St. +Paul’s Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all the nightmares he +had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river, and ended almost down +by the docks. He saw the yellow panes of a low, lighted public-house, flung +himself into it and ordered beer. It was a foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign +sailors, a place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn. +</p> + +<p> +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down carefully, and +asked for a glass of milk. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br> +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS</h2> + +<p> +When Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, and opposite to +him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and leaden eyelids of the +Professor, his fears fully returned. This incomprehensible man from the fierce +council, after all, had certainly pursued him. If the man had one character as +a paralytic and another character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him +more interesting, but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very small comfort +that he could not find the Professor out, if by some serious accident the +Professor should find him out. He emptied a whole pewter pot of ale before the +professor had touched his milk. +</p> + +<p> +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was just +possible that this escapade signified something other than even a slight +suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or sign. Perhaps the foolish +scamper was some sort of friendly signal that he ought to have understood. +Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps the new Thursday was always chased along +Cheapside, as the new Lord Mayor is always escorted along it. He was just +selecting a tentative inquiry, when the old Professor opposite suddenly and +simply cut him short. Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic question, the +old anarchist had asked suddenly, without any sort of preparation— +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a policeman?” +</p> + +<p> +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so brutal and +actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only manage a reply with +an air of rather blundering jocularity. +</p> + +<p> +“A policeman?” he said, laughing vaguely. “Whatever made you +think of a policeman in connection with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“The process was simple enough,” answered the Professor patiently. +“I thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did I take a policeman’s hat by mistake out of the +restaurant?” asked Syme, smiling wildly. “Have I by any chance got +a number stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why +must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman.” +</p> + +<p> +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, but Syme ran +on with a feverish irony. +</p> + +<p> +“But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy. +Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, the ape +fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can never detect the +shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhaps a maiden lady on +Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have been. I don’t mind +being the policeman that might have been. I don’t mind being anything in +German thought.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you in the police service?” said the old man, ignoring all +Syme’s improvised and desperate raillery. “Are you a +detective?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. +</p> + +<p> +“Your suggestion is ridiculous,” he began. “Why on +earth—” +</p> + +<p> +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety table, nearly +breaking it. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?” he +shrieked in a high, crazy voice. “Are you, or are you not, a police +detective?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman’s +drop. +</p> + +<p> +“You swear it,” said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead +face becoming as it were loathsomely alive. “You swear it! You swear it! +If you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devil +dances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your grave? +Will there really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are a dynamiter! +Above all, you are not in any sense a detective? You are not in the British +police?” +</p> + +<p> +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his large loose +hand like a flap to his ear. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not in the British police,” said Syme with insane calm. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of kindly +collapse. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a pity,” he said, “because I am.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a crash. +</p> + +<p> +“Because you are what?” he said thickly. “You are +what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a policeman,” said the Professor with his first broad smile, +and beaming through his spectacles. “But as you think policeman only a +relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I am in the British +police force; but as you tell me you are not in the British police force, I can +only say that I met you in a dynamiters’ club. I suppose I ought to +arrest you.” And with these words he laid on the table before Syme an +exact facsimile of the blue card which Syme had in his own waistcoat pocket, +the symbol of his power from the police. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside +down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under his +feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours +the cosmos had really been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come +right side up again. This devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only +an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the table lay back +and laughed at him. He did not for the moment ask any questions of detail; he +only knew the happy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with +an intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying to +catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For +with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. +There comes a certain point in such conditions when only three things are +possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third +laughter. Syme’s egotism held hard to the first course for a few seconds, +and then suddenly adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his +own waist coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head +back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted +with a barbaric laughter. +</p> + +<p> +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, plates, +cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there was something +Homeric in Syme’s mirth which made many half-drunken men look round. +</p> + +<p> +“What yer laughing at, guv’nor?” asked one wondering labourer +from the docks. +</p> + +<p> +“At myself,” answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of +his ecstatic reaction. +</p> + +<p> +“Pull yourself together,” said the Professor, “or +you’ll get hysterical. Have some more beer. I’ll join you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t drunk your milk,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“My milk!” said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, “my milk! Do you think I’d look at the beastly stuff when +I’m out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We’re all Christians in +this room, though perhaps,” he added, glancing around at the reeling +crowd, “not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I’ll +finish it right enough!” and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making +a crash of glass and a splash of silver fluid. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand now,” he cried; “of course, you’re not an +old man at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t take my face off here,” replied Professor de Worms. +“It’s rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I’m an old +man, that’s not for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I mean,” said Syme impatiently, “there’s +nothing the matter with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered the other dispassionately. “I am subject to +colds.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. He +laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a young actor +dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would have laughed as +loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. +</p> + +<p> +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know,” he asked, “that that man Gogol was one of +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? No, I didn’t know it,” answered Syme in some surprise. +“But didn’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew no more than the dead,” replied the man who called himself +de Worms. “I thought the President was talking about me, and I rattled in +my boots.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I thought he was talking about me,” said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. “I had my hand on my revolver all the time.” +</p> + +<p> +“So had I,” said the Professor grimly; “so had Gogol +evidently.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, there were three of us there!” he cried. “Three out of +seven is a fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!” +</p> + +<p> +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. +</p> + +<p> +“We were three,” he said. “If we had been three hundred we +could still have done nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if we were three hundred against four?” asked Syme, jeering +rather boisterously. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Professor with sobriety, “not if we were three +hundred against Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had died in his +heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the unforgettable President +sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured photograph, and he remarked +this difference between Sunday and all his satellites, that their faces, +however fierce or sinister, became gradually blurred by memory like other human +faces, whereas Sunday’s seemed almost to grow more actual during absence, +as if a man’s painted portrait should slowly come alive. +</p> + +<p> +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme’s speech +came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. +</p> + +<p> +“Professor,” he cried, “it is intolerable. Are you afraid of +this man?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, wide-open, +blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am,” he said mildly. “So are you.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like an insulted +man, and thrust the chair away from him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said in a voice indescribable, “you are right. I am +afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I +fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne +and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” asked the staring Professor. “Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I am afraid of him,” said Syme; “and no man should +leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an effort to +speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an undercurrent of inhuman +exaltation— +</p> + +<p> +“Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not +fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common +prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless—like a tree? Fight the thing +that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the +last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber +said, ‘I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: +your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.’ So I say to you, strike +upwards, if you strike at the stars.” +</p> + +<p> +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. +</p> + +<p> +“Sunday is a fixed star,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall see him a falling star,” said Syme, and put on his hat. +</p> + +<p> +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any idea,” he asked, with a sort of benevolent +bewilderment, “exactly where you are going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Syme shortly, “I am going to prevent this bomb +being thrown in Paris.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any conception how?” inquired the other. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme with equal decision. +</p> + +<p> +“You remember, of course,” resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling +his beard and looking out of the window, “that when we broke up rather +hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in the private +hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this time probably +crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he will do it is doubtful +whether even the President knows; certainly we don’t know. The only man +who does know is Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound it!” cried Syme. “And we don’t know where he +is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, “I +know where he is myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you tell me?” asked Syme with eager eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I will take you there,” said the Professor, and took down his own +hat from a peg. +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Will you join me? Will +you take the risk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Young man,” said the Professor pleasantly, “I am amused to +observe that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, and +that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical rhetoric. You +think that it is possible to pull down the President. I know that it is +impossible, and I am going to try it,” and opening the tavern door, which +let in a blast of bitter air, they went out together into the dark streets by +the docks. +</p> + +<p> +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there a clot of it +still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The small streets were sloppy +and full of pools, which reflected the flaming lamps irregularly, and by +accident, like fragments of some other and fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed +as he stepped through this growing confusion of lights and shadows; but his +companion walked on with a certain briskness, towards where, at the end of the +street, an inch or two of the lamplit river looked like a bar of flame. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” Syme inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Just now,” answered the Professor, “I am going just round +the corner to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retires +early.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull!” exclaimed Syme. “Does he live round the +corner?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” answered his friend. “As a matter of fact he lives some +way off, on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here whether he +has gone to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked with flame, +he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the Surrey side at this point +there ran out into the Thames, seeming almost to overhang it, a bulk and +cluster of those tall tenements, dotted with lighted windows, and rising like +factory chimneys to an almost insane height. Their special poise and position +made one block of buildings especially look like a Tower of Babel with a +hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any of the sky-scraping buildings in America, +so he could only think of the buildings in a dream. +</p> + +<p> +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turret +abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him with one of his +innumerable eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick against his +boot. +</p> + +<p> +“We are too late,” he said, “the hygienic Doctor has gone to +bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked Syme. “Does he live over there, +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said de Worms, “behind that particular window which +you can’t see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him +tomorrow morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways until they came +out into the flare and clamour of the East India Dock Road. The Professor, who +seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood, proceeded to a place where the +line of lighted shops fell back into a sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in +which an old white inn, all out of repair, stood back some twenty feet from the +road. +</p> + +<p> +“You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils,” explained the Professor. “I once found a decent place in +the West End.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” said Syme, smiling, “that this is the +corresponding decent place in the East End?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is,” said the Professor reverently, and went in. +</p> + +<p> +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans and bacon, +which these unaccountable people cooked well, the astonishing emergence of +Burgundy from their cellars, crowned Syme’s sense of a new comradeship +and comfort. Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and +there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. +It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not +twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred +disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his outrageous tale, +from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little tavern by the river. He +did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old +friends. On his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was +not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme’s. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a good get-up of yours,” said Syme, draining a glass +of Macon; “a lot better than old Gogol’s. Even at the start I +thought he was a bit too hairy.” +</p> + +<p> +“A difference of artistic theory,” replied the Professor pensively. +“Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of +an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, to say +that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a +portrait.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand you,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a portrait,” repeated the Professor. “I am a portrait +of the celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you are made up like him,” said Syme. “But +doesn’t he know that you are taking his nose in vain?” +</p> + +<p> +“He knows it right enough,” replied his friend cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why doesn’t he denounce you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have denounced him,” answered the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“Do explain yourself,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“With pleasure, if you don’t mind hearing my story,” replied +the eminent foreign philosopher. “I am by profession an actor, and my +name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and +blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimes the +riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of +exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, +Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him beyond his appearance, +which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he +had proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; hence he +insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in +pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially +paralytic. When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much +that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn +a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I made myself +up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the old Professor’s +dirty old self. When I went into the room full of his supporters I expected to +be received with a roar of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar +of indignation at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my +entrance was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist +had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. They thought I +really was the great Nihilist Professor. I was a healthy-minded young man at +the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, +however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and +told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired +its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a +preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, +and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it +was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing +eyes that the real Professor came into the room. +</p> + +<p> +“I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round me +looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see which was +really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like my rival, +could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the +prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this +definite limitation, he couldn’t be so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he +tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple +dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I +replied with something which I could not even understand myself. ‘I +don’t fancy,’ he said, ‘that you could have worked out the +principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in it the +introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of differentiation.’ I +replied quite scornfully, ‘You read all that up in Pinckwerts; the notion +that involution functioned eugenically was exposed long ago by Glumpe.’ +It is unnecessary for me to say that there never were such people as Pinckwerts +and Glumpe. But the people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember +them quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious +method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, +fell back upon a more popular form of wit. ‘I see,’ he sneered, +‘you prevail like the false pig in Æsop.’ ‘And you +fail,’ I answered, smiling, ‘like the hedgehog in Montaigne.’ +Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? ‘Your claptrap comes +off,’ he said; ‘so would your beard.’ I had no intelligent +answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. But I laughed heartily, +answered, ‘Like the Pantheist’s boots,’ at random, and turned +on my heel with all the honours of victory. The real Professor was thrown out, +but not with violence, though one man tried very patiently to pull off his +nose. He is now, I believe, received everywhere in Europe as a delightful +impostor. His apparent earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more +entertaining.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “I can understand your putting on his +dirty old beard for a night’s practical joke, but I don’t +understand your never taking it off again.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the rest of the story,” said the impersonator. “When +I myself left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went limping down +the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be able to +walk like a human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning the corner, I +felt a touch on the shoulder, and turning, found myself under the shadow of an +enormous policeman. He told me I was wanted. I struck a sort of paralytic +attitude, and cried in a high German accent, ‘Yes, I am wanted—by +the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me on the charge of being the +great anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ The policeman impassively consulted +a paper in his hand, ‘No, sir,’ he said civilly, ‘at least, +not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the charge of not being the celebrated +anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ This charge, if it was criminal at all, +was certainly the lighter of the two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, +but not greatly dismayed. I was shown into a number of rooms, and eventually +into the presence of a police officer, who explained that a serious campaign +had been opened against the centres of anarchy, and that this, my successful +masquerade, might be of considerable value to the public safety. He offered me +a good salary and this little blue card. Though our conversation was short, he +struck me as a man of very massive common sense and humour; but I cannot tell +you much about him personally, because—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme laid down his knife and fork. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said, “because you talked to him in a dark +room.” +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br> +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES</h2> + +<p> +“Burgundy is a jolly thing,” said the Professor sadly, as he set +his glass down. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t look as if it were,” said Syme; “you drink +it as if it were medicine.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must excuse my manner,” said the Professor dismally, “my +position is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish +merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can’t +leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at all to disguise +myself, I still can’t help speaking slow and wrinkling my +forehead—just as if it were my forehead. I can be quite happy, you +understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. The most buoyant exclamations +leap up in my heart, but they come out of my mouth quite different. You should +hear me say, ‘Buck up, old cock!’ It would bring tears to your +eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +“It does,” said Syme; “but I cannot help thinking that apart +from all that you are really a bit worried.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a very clever fellow,” he said, “it is a pleasure to +work with you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a great +problem to face,” and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. +</p> + +<p> +Then he said in a low voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Can you play the piano?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme in simple wonder, “I’m supposed to +have a good touch.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, as the other did not speak, he added— +</p> + +<p> +“I trust the great cloud is lifted.” +</p> + +<p> +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of his +hands— +</p> + +<p> +“It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said Syme, “you flatter me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Listen to me,” said the other, “and remember whom we have to +see tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which is very +much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels out of the Tower. We +are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, very strong, and very wicked +man. I believe there is no man, except the President, of course, who is so +seriously startling and formidable as that little grinning fellow in goggles. +He has not perhaps the white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for +anarchy, which marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism in the +Secretary has a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little +Doctor has a brutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary’s +disease. Don’t you notice his detestable virility and vitality. He +bounces like an india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I +wonder if he ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in +the round, black head of Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think,” said Syme, “that this unique monster will be +soothed if I play the piano to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be an ass,” said his mentor. “I mentioned the +piano because it gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go +through this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code of +signals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a rough +alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers—like this, +see,” and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table—“B +A D, bad, a word we may frequently require.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study the scheme. +He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with his hands at +conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he might convey simple +messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a table or knee. But wine and +companionship had always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, +and the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast energy of the +new language, as it passed through the heated brain of Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“We must have several word-signs,” said Syme +seriously—“words that we are likely to want, fine shades of +meaning. My favourite word is ‘coeval’. What’s yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do stop playing the goat,” said the Professor plaintively. +“You don’t know how serious this is.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Lush’ too,” said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, +“we must have ‘lush’—word applied to grass, don’t +you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you imagine,” asked the Professor furiously, “that we are +going to talk to Dr. Bull about grass?” +</p> + +<p> +“There are several ways in which the subject could be approached,” +said Syme reflectively, “and the word introduced without appearing +forced. We might say, ‘Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a +tyrant once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, looking on the +fresh lush grass of summer...’” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you understand,” said the other, “that this is a +tragedy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” replied Syme; “always be comic in a tragedy. +What the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider +scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That +would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, which +however unobtrusively performed—” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme,” said his friend with a stern simplicity, “go to +bed!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the new code. He +was awakened next morning while the east was still sealed with darkness, and +found his grey-bearded ally standing like a ghost beside his bed. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, threw off the +bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious way that all the +safety and sociability of the night before fell with the bedclothes off him, +and he stood up in an air of cold danger. He still felt an entire trust and +loyalty towards his companion; but it was the trust between two men going to +the scaffold. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, “I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long to +make it up?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes the colour of +a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I’m considered +good at these things, and it was a good hour’s grind. Did you learn it +all on the spot?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixed but very +small smile. +</p> + +<p> +“How long did it take you?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor did not move. +</p> + +<p> +“Confound you, can’t you answer?” called out Syme, in a +sudden anger that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the +Professor could answer, he did not. +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank, blue +eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone mad, but his second +thought was more frightful. After all, what did he know about this queer +creature whom he had heedlessly accepted as a friend? What did he know, except +that the man had been at the anarchist breakfast and had told him a ridiculous +tale? How improbable it was that there should be another friend there beside +Gogol! Was this man’s silence a sensational way of declaring war? Was +this adamantine stare after all only the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, +who had turned for the last time? He stood and strained his ears in this +heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to capture +him shifting softly in the corridor outside. +</p> + +<p> +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though the Professor +himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his five dumb fingers were +dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme watched the twinkling movements of the +talking hand, and read clearly the message— +</p> + +<p> +“I will only talk like this. We must get used to it.” +</p> + +<p> +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief— +</p> + +<p> +“All right. Let’s get out to breakfast.” +</p> + +<p> +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his sword-stick, +he held it hard. +</p> + +<p> +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thick +sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river, which +under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron. They reached +the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they had seen from across the +river, and began in silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only +pausing now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At +about every other flight they passed a window; each window showed them a pale +and tragic dawn lifting itself laboriously over London. From each the +innumerable roofs of slate looked like the leaden surges of a grey, troubled +sea after rain. Syme was increasingly conscious that his new adventure had +somehow a quality of cold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past. +Last night, for instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in +a dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted and +bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hot horror of a +dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was +more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet +necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about +the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a thing +more hideous than unreason itself. +</p> + +<p> +By the time they reached Dr. Bull’s landing, a last window showed them a +harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more like red clay +than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull’s bare garret it was full +of light. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with these empty +rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the garret and Dr. Bull +sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memory was—the French +Revolution. There should have been the black outline of a guillotine against +that heavy red and white of the morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and +black breeches only; his cropped, dark head might well have just come out of +its wig; he might have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. +</p> + +<p> +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins were +idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. His position gave +him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light of morning coming from +one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both more pale and more angular +than he had looked at the breakfast on the balcony. Thus the two black glasses +that encased his eyes might really have been black cavities in his skull, +making him look like a death’s-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself +sat writing at a wooden table, it might have been he. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rose with the +resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set chairs for both of +them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceeded to put on a coat and +waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it up neatly, and came back to sit +down at his table. +</p> + +<p> +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It was +with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence and began, +“I’m sorry to disturb you so early, comrade,” said he, with a +careful resumption of the slow de Worms manner. “You have no doubt made +all the arrangements for the Paris affair?” Then he added with infinite +slowness, “We have information which renders intolerable anything in the +nature of a moment’s delay.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking. The +Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word— +</p> + +<p> +“Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to alter +those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your agent with all the +support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and I have had an experience which it +would take more time to recount than we can afford, if we are to act on it. I +will, however, relate the occurrence in detail, even at the risk of losing +time, if you really feel that it is essential to the understanding of the +problem we have to discuss.” +</p> + +<p> +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long and lingering, +in the hope of maddening the practical little Doctor into an explosion of +impatience which might show his hand. But the little Doctor continued only to +stare and smile, and the monologue was uphill work. Syme began to feel a new +sickness and despair. The Doctor’s smile and silence were not at all like +the cataleptic stare and horrible silence which he had confronted in the +Professor half an hour before. About the Professor’s makeup and all his +antics there was always something merely grotesque, like a gollywog. Syme +remembered those wild woes of yesterday as one remembers being afraid of Bogy +in childhood. But here was daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man +in tweeds, not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring or +grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. The whole had a +sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing sunlight the colours of the +Doctor’s complexion, the pattern of his tweeds, grew and expanded +outrageously, as such things grow too important in a realistic novel. But his +smile was quite slight, the pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was +his silence. +</p> + +<p> +“As I say,” resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavy +sand, “the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask for +information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better to have +narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than +me—” +</p> + +<p> +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but Syme, who +was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge of the crazy +table. He read the message, “You must go on. This devil has sucked me +dry!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation which always +came to him when he was alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the thing really happened to me,” he said hastily. “I +had the good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who took me, +thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to clinch my reputation for +respectability, I took him and made him very drunk at the Savoy. Under this +influence he became friendly, and told me in so many words that within a day or +two they hope to arrest the Marquis in France. +</p> + +<p> +“So unless you or I can get on his track—” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his protected eyes +were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme that he would resume +his explanation, and he began again with the same elaborate calm. +</p> + +<p> +“Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seems to me +unquestionably urgent that—” +</p> + +<p> +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadily as the +Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. The nerves of both +comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain of motionless amiability, +when Syme suddenly leant forward and idly tapped the edge of the table. His +message to his ally ran, “I have an intuition.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back, +“Then sit on it.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme telegraphed, “It is quite extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +The other answered, “Extraordinary rot!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme said, “I am a poet.” +</p> + +<p> +The other retorted, “You are a dead man.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were burning +feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had risen to a sort of +lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps, he signalled to his friend, +“You scarcely realise how poetic my intuition is. It has that sudden +quality we sometimes feel in the coming of spring.” +</p> + +<p> +He then studied the answer on his friend’s fingers. The answer was, +“Go to hell!” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to the Doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I should rather say,” said Syme on his fingers, +“that it resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the +heart of lush woods.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion disdained to reply. +</p> + +<p> +“Or yet again,” tapped Syme, “it is positive, as is the +passionate red hair of a beautiful woman.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it Syme decided +to act. He leant across the table, and said in a voice that could not be +neglected— +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull!” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor’s sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could have +sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and courteous, +“would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take off your +spectacles?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a sort of frozen +fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his life and fortune on +the table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The Doctor did not move. +</p> + +<p> +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a pin drop, split +once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. Then Dr. Bull rose +slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a chemical lecturer +from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars, and for an instant he +could only point without speaking. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his supposed +paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully at Dr. Bull, +as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes. And indeed it was +almost as great a transformation scene. +</p> + +<p> +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very boyish-looking +young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an open expression, cockney +clothes like those of a city clerk, and an unquestionable breath about him of +being very good and rather commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might +have been the first smile of a baby. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew I was a poet,” cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. “I +knew my intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that did +it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, and all the rest +of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a live devil among dead +ones.” +</p> + +<p> +“It certainly does make a queer difference,” said the Professor +shakily. “But as regards the project of Dr. Bull—” +</p> + +<p> +“Project be damned!” roared Syme, beside himself. “Look at +him! Look at his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You +don’t suppose, do you, that that thing’s an anarchist?” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme!” cried the other in an apprehensive agony. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, by God,” said Syme, “I’ll take the risk of that +myself! Dr. Bull, I am a police officer. There’s my card,” and he +flung down the blue card upon the table. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He pulled out +his own official card and put it beside his friend’s. Then the third man +burst out laughing, and for the first time that morning they heard his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awfully glad you chaps have come so early,” he said, +with a sort of schoolboy flippancy, “for we can all start for France +together. Yes, I’m in the force right enough,” and he flicked a +blue card towards them lightly as a matter of form. +</p> + +<p> +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin glasses, the Doctor +moved so quickly towards the door, that the others instinctively followed him. +Syme seemed a little distrait, and as he passed under the doorway he suddenly +struck his stick on the stone passage so that it rang. +</p> + +<p> +“But Lord God Almighty,” he cried out, “if this is all right, +there were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the +damned Council!” +</p> + +<p> +“We might have fought easily,” said Bull; “we were four +against three.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from below. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the voice, “we were not four against +three—we were not so lucky. We were four against One.” +</p> + +<p> +The others went down the stairs in silence. +</p> + +<p> +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic of him, +insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there his own robust +rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he walked quickly on ahead towards +a railway inquiry office, talking to the others over his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“It is jolly to get some pals,” he said. “I’ve been +half dead with the jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol +and embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won’t +despise me for having been in a blue funk.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the blue devils in blue hell,” said Syme, “contributed +to my blue funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man laughed delightedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t it a rag?” he said. “Such a simple +idea—not my own. I haven’t got the brains. You see, I wanted to go +into the detective service, especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that +purpose they wanted someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by +blazes that I could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was +respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British Constitution. +They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable and +benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They said that +if I had been a criminal, I might have made my fortune by looking so like an +honest man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even +the remotest chance of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But +at last I was brought before some old josser who was high up in the force, and +who seemed to have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others all +talked hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my nice smile; +another said that if they blacked my face I might look like a negro anarchist; +but this old chap chipped in with a most extraordinary remark. ‘A pair of +smoked spectacles will do it,’ he said positively. ‘Look at him +now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put him on a pair of smoked +spectacles, and children will scream at the sight of him.’ And so it was, +by George! When once my eyes were covered, all the rest, smile and big +shoulders and short hair, made me look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was +simple enough when it was done, like miracles; but that wasn’t the really +miraculous part of it. There was one really staggering thing about the +business, and my head still turns at it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was that?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you,” answered the man in spectacles. “This +big pot in the police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go +with my hair and socks—by God, he never saw me at all!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes suddenly flashed on him. +</p> + +<p> +“How was that?” he asked. “I thought you talked to +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I did,” said Bull brightly; “but we talked in a +pitch-dark room like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I could not have conceived it,” said Syme gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“It is indeed a new idea,” said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiry office he +asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover. Having got his +information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put them and himself inside +a railway carriage before they had properly realised the breathless process. +They were already on the Calais boat before conversation flowed freely. +</p> + +<p> +“I had already arranged,” he explained, “to go to France for +my lunch; but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had +to send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President had +his eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some day. It +was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw the President +somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or taking off his hat to me +from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you can say what you like, that fellow +sold himself to the devil; he can be in six places at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you sent the Marquis off, I understand,” asked the Professor. +“Was it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered the new guide, “I’ve timed it all. +He’ll still be at Calais when we arrive.” +</p> + +<p> +“But when we do catch him at Calais,” said the Professor, +“what are we going to do?” +</p> + +<p> +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time. He +reflected a little, and then said— +</p> + +<p> +“Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I,” said Syme. “Theoretically I ought to drown myself +first. I promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of +honour not to tell the police. I’m no hand at casuistry, but I +can’t break my word to a modern pessimist. It’s like breaking +one’s word to a child.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m in the same boat,” said the Professor. “I tried to +tell the police and I couldn’t, because of some silly oath I took. You +see, when I was an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is +the only crime I haven’t committed. If I did that I shouldn’t know +the difference between right and wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been through all that,” said Dr. Bull, “and +I’ve made up my mind. I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know +him, man who smiles upside down. My friends, that man is the most utterly +unhappy man that was ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or +his nerves, or his philosophy of the universe, but he’s damned, +he’s in hell! Well, I can’t turn on a man like that, and hunt him +down. It’s like whipping a leper. I may be mad, but that’s how I +feel; and there’s jolly well the end of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think you’re mad,” said Syme. “I knew +you would decide like that when first you—” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“When first you took off your spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at the sunlit +sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a +companionable silence fell between the three men. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “it seems that we have all the same kind +of morality or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” assented the Professor, “you’re quite right; and +we must hurry up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.” +</p> + +<p> +“The fact that comes of it,” said Syme seriously, “is this, +that we three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are three +men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we are worse off +than that, first because they can appeal to their organization and we cannot +appeal to ours, and second because—” +</p> + +<p> +“Because one of those other three men,” said the Professor, +“is not a man.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said— +</p> + +<p> +“My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calais till +tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We cannot +denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him detained on some +trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows us, and he would smell a +rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on anarchist business; he might swallow much +in that way, but not the notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went +safely through Paris. We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; +but he is a well-known man here. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is +very strong and brave, and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see to +do is actually to take advantage of the very things that are in the +Marquis’s favour. I am going to profit by the fact that he is a highly +respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the fact that he has many friends +and moves in the best society.” +</p> + +<p> +“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,” said +Syme; “but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at +Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s gone off his head,” said the little Doctor, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“Our bearings,” continued Syme calmly, “are ‘argent a +chevron gules charged with three cross crosslets of the field.’ The motto +varies.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. +</p> + +<p> +“We are just inshore,” he said. “Are you seasick or joking in +the wrong place?” +</p> + +<p> +“My remarks are almost painfully practical,” answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. “The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. The +Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am a +gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite beyond a +doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hat off. But here we +are in the harbour.” +</p> + +<p> +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who had now +taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kind of marine +parade until he came to some cafés, embowered in a bulk of greenery and +overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step was slightly swaggering, +and he swung his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme +end of the line of cafés, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he +motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one gloved finger to a café table +under a bank of flowering foliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his +teeth shining in his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by a +light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br> +THE DUEL</h2> + +<p> +Syme sat down at a café table with his companions, his blue eyes sparkling like +the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur with a pleased impatience. +He was for some reason in a condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were +already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his +talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the +conversation which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. +He jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed +catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an extraordinary +rapidity of utterance. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. I +shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say, +‘The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most +exquisite French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most +exquisite Cockney, ‘Oh, just the Syme—’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself +together, and chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do +let me read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of +the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my +enemy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in +exasperation. +</p> + +<p> +“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, +beaming. “When the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which +runs—” +</p> + +<p> +“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a +ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three +things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own epigrams +may appear somewhat more forced.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never thought of it. +Sir, you have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to +adopt some other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between +myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue cannot be +predicted by one of its parties alone (as you have pointed out with such +recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose, is for the one party, +as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by himself. And so I will, by +George!” And he stood up suddenly, his yellow hair blowing in the slight +sea breeze. +</p> + +<p> +A band was playing in a <i>café chantant</i> hidden somewhere among the trees, +and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme’s heated head the bray of +the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that barrel-organ in Leicester +Square, to the tune of which he had once stood up to die. He looked across to +the little table where the Marquis sat. The man had two companions now, solemn +Frenchmen in frock-coats and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the +Legion of Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. Besides these +black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his loose straw hat and light +spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even barbaric; but he looked the Marquis. +Indeed, one might say that he looked the king, with his animal elegance, his +scornful eyes, and his proud head lifted against the purple sea. But he was no +Christian king, at any rate; he was, rather, some swarthy despot, half Greek, +half Asiatic, who in the days when slavery seemed natural looked down on the +Mediterranean, on his galley and his groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, +would the brown-gold face of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green +olives and the burning blue. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to address the meeting?” asked the Professor +peevishly, seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. +</p> + +<p> +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +“that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting’s great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose.” +</p> + +<p> +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, seeing him, +arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but smiled politely. +</p> + +<p> +“You are Mr. Syme, I think,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Syme bowed. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache,” he said gracefully. +“Permit me to pull your nose.” +</p> + +<p> +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, upsetting his chair, +and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of +explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, +“when?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my +aunt.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said +the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting +here all the time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly. +</p> + +<p> +“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something +about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt +played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted +about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was +<i>décoré</i>, looking doubtfully at the Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s +weaknesses.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one +have said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl +with black hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My +aunt’s was red.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply +seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.” +</p> + +<p> +“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, +“what a clever chap you are!” +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Seeking a quarrel with me!” he cried. “Seeking a fight with +me! By God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen will +perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. Let us fight this +evening.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Marquis,” he said, “your action is worthy of your fame and +blood. Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose hands I +shall place myself.” +</p> + +<p> +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who had seen his +champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic explanations, were quite +startled at the look of him. For now that he came back to them he was quite +sober, a little pale, and he spoke in a low voice of passionate practicality. +</p> + +<p> +“I have done it,” he said hoarsely. “I have fixed a fight on +the beast. But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for talk. You +are my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must insist, and +insist absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven tomorrow, so as to give +me the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for Paris. If he misses +that he misses his crime. He can’t refuse to meet you on such a small +point of time and place. But this is what he will do. He will choose a field +somewhere near a wayside station, where he can pick up the train. He is a very +good swordsman, and he will trust to killing me in time to catch it. But I can +fence well too, and I think I can keep him in play, at any rate, until the +train is lost. Then perhaps he may kill me to console his feelings. You +understand? Very well then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of +mine,” and leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to +the Marquis’s seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had +not previously heard. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a part of +his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about the spectacles) +poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the exaltation of prophecy. +</p> + +<p> +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his opponent. When the +Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme could only fight in the morning, +he must fully have realised that an obstacle had suddenly arisen between him +and his bomb-throwing business in the capital. Naturally he could not explain +this objection to his friends, so he chose the course which Syme had predicted. +He induced his seconds to settle on a small meadow not far from the railway, +and he trusted to the fatality of the first engagement. +</p> + +<p> +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have guessed +that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands were in his pockets, his +straw hat on the back of his head, his handsome face brazen in the sun. But it +might have struck a stranger as odd that there appeared in his train, not only +his seconds carrying the sword-case, but two of his servants carrying a +portmanteau and a luncheon basket. +</p> + +<p> +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and Syme was +vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning gold and silver in the +tall grass in which the whole company stood almost knee-deep. +</p> + +<p> +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and solemn +morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little Doctor especially, +with the addition of his black spectacles, looked like an undertaker in a +farce. Syme could not help feeling a comic contrast between this funereal +church parade of apparel and the rich and glistening meadow, growing wild +flowers everywhere. But, indeed, this comic contrast between the yellow +blossoms and the black hats was but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the +yellow blossoms and the black business. On his right was a little wood; far +away to his left lay the long curve of the railway line, which he was, so to +speak, guarding from the Marquis, whose goal and escape it was. In front of +him, behind the black group of his opponents, he could see, like a tinted +cloud, a small almond bush in flower against the faint line of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was Colonel Ducroix, +approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great politeness, and suggested that +the play should terminate with the first considerable hurt. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this point of +policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad French, that it should +continue until one of the combatants was disabled. Syme had made up his mind +that he could avoid disabling the Marquis and prevent the Marquis from +disabling him for at least twenty minutes. In twenty minutes the Paris train +would have gone by. +</p> + +<p> +“To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache,” said the Professor solemnly, “it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong reasons for +demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy of which prevent me from +being explicit, but for the just and honourable nature of which I +can—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Peste!</i>” broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had +suddenly darkened, “let us stop talking and begin,” and he slashed +off the head of a tall flower with his stick. +</p> + +<p> +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over his shoulder +to see whether the train was coming in sight. But there was no smoke on the +horizon. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a pair of twin +swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two streaks of white fire. He +offered one to the Marquis, who snatched it without ceremony, and another to +Syme, who took it, bent it, and poised it with as much delay as was consistent +with dignity. +</p> + +<p> +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one himself and +giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the men. +</p> + +<p> +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and stood sword in +hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line of fight with drawn swords +also, but still sombre in their dark frock-coats and hats. The principals +saluted. The Colonel said quietly, “Engage!” and the two blades +touched and tingled. +</p> + +<p> +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme’s arm, all the fantastic +fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like dreams from a +man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in order as mere delusions +of the nerves—how the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the +tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been the +fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old fear that any +miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless modern fear that no miracle +can ever happen. But he saw that these fears were fancies, for he found himself +in the presence of the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and +pitiless common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling +over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be hanged. For +as soon as he had seen the sunlight run down the channel of his foe’s +foreshortened blade, and as soon as he had felt the two tongues of steel touch, +vibrating like two living things, he knew that his enemy was a terrible +fighter, and that probably his last hour had come. +</p> + +<p> +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the grass +under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living things. He could almost +fancy that he heard the grass growing; he could almost fancy that even as he +stood fresh flowers were springing up and breaking into blossom in the +meadow—flowers blood red and burning gold and blue, fulfilling the whole +pageant of the spring. And whenever his eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, +staring, hypnotic eyes of the Marquis, they saw the little tuft of almond tree +against the sky-line. He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped he +would be ready to sit for ever before that almond tree, desiring nothing else +in the world. +</p> + +<p> +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a thing lost, +the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and he was parrying his +enemy’s point with a kind of clockwork skill of which he had hardly +supposed himself capable. Once his enemy’s point ran along his wrist, +leaving a slight streak of blood, but it either was not noticed or was tacitly +ignored. Every now and then he <i>riposted</i>, and once or twice he could +almost fancy that he felt his point go home, but as there was no blood on blade +or shirt he supposed he was mistaken. Then came an interruption and a change. +</p> + +<p> +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet stare, flashed +one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway on his right. Then he +turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend, and began to fight as if +with twenty weapons. The attack came so fast and furious, that the one shining +sword seemed a shower of shining arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the +railway; but also he had no need. He could guess the reason of the +Marquis’s sudden madness of battle—the Paris train was in sight. +</p> + +<p> +But the Marquis’s morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent’s point far out of the fighting circle; +and the third time his <i>riposte</i> was so rapid, that there was no doubt +about the hit this time. Syme’s sword actually bent under the weight of +the Marquis’s body, which it had pierced. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener +that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from +the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point +like an idiot. There was no blood on it at all. +</p> + +<p> +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell furiously +on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis was probably, in a +general sense, a better fencer than he, as he had surmised at the beginning, +but at the moment the Marquis seemed distraught and at a disadvantage. He +fought wildly and even weakly, and he constantly looked away at the railway +line, almost as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on +the other hand, fought fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual fury, +eager to solve the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For this purpose, he +aimed less at the Marquis’s body, and more at his throat and head. A +minute and a half afterwards he felt his point enter the man’s neck below +the jaw. It came out clean. Half mad, he thrust again, and made what should +have been a bloody scar on the Marquis’s cheek. But there was no scar. +</p> + +<p> +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with supernatural terrors. +Surely the man had a charmed life. But this new spiritual dread was a more +awful thing than had been the mere spiritual topsy-turvydom symbolised by the +paralytic who pursued him. The Professor was only a goblin; this man was a +devil—perhaps he was the Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three +times had a human sword been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had +that thought he drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang high up in +the air as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of all the human things +in his story—of the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of the girl’s +red hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by the dock, +of his loyal companions standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen as a champion +of all these fresh and kindly things to cross swords with the enemy of all +creation. “After all,” he said to himself, “I am more than a +devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do—I +can die,” and as the word went through his head, he heard a faint and +far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris train. +</p> + +<p> +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a Mohammedan panting +for Paradise. As the train came nearer and nearer he fancied he could see +people putting up the floral arches in Paris; he joined in the growing noise +and the glory of the great Republic whose gate he was guarding against Hell. +His thoughts rose higher and higher with the rising roar of the train, which +ended, as if proudly, in a long and piercing whistle. The train stopped. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back quite out of +sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was wonderful, and not the less +wonderful because Syme had plunged his sword a moment before into the +man’s thigh. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop!” said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. “I want to say something.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. “Has +there been foul play?” +</p> + +<p> +“There has been foul play somewhere,” said Dr. Bull, who was a +little pale. “Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times at least, +and he is none the worse.” +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly patience. +</p> + +<p> +“Please let me speak,” he said. “It is rather important. Mr. +Syme,” he continued, turning to his opponent, “we are fighting +today, if I remember right, because you expressed a wish (which I thought +irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by pulling my nose now as +quickly as possible? I have to catch a train.” +</p> + +<p> +“I protest that this is most irregular,” said Dr. Bull indignantly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent,” said Colonel +Ducroix, looking wistfully at his principal. “There is, I think, one case +on record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in which the weapons were +changed in the middle of the encounter at the request of one of the combatants. +But one can hardly call one’s nose a weapon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you or will you not pull my nose?” said the Marquis in +exasperation. “Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! You can +have no conception of how important it is to me. Don’t be so selfish! +Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!” and he bent slightly forward with +a fascinating smile. The Paris train, panting and groaning, had grated into a +little station behind the neighbouring hill. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures—the +sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was just toppling over. +Walking in a world he half understood, he took two paces forward and seized the +Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. He pulled it hard, and it came off in +his hand. +</p> + +<p> +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard +proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and the +clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this imbecile scene. +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. +</p> + +<p> +“If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow,” he said, “he can +have it. Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It’s the kind of +thing that might come in useful any day,” and he gravely tore off one of +his swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown forehead with it, and +politely offered it to the Colonel, who stood crimson and speechless with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“If I had known,” he spluttered, “that I was acting for a +poltroon who pads himself to fight—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know, I know!” said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. “You are making a +mistake; but it can’t be explained just now. I tell you the train has +come into the station!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Dr. Bull fiercely, “and the train shall go out of +the station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil’s work—” +</p> + +<p> +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. He was a +strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his old face peeled off, +and half another face glaring and grinning from underneath. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you drive me mad?” he cried. “The train—” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall not go by the train,” said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. +</p> + +<p> +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering itself for a +sublime effort before speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, +Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!” he said without taking breath. +“You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! You—” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall not go by this train,” repeated Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“And why the infernal blazes,” roared the other, “should I +want to go by the train?” +</p> + +<p> +“We know all,” said the Professor sternly. “You are going to +Paris to throw a bomb!” +</p> + +<p> +“Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!” cried the other, tearing +his hair, which came off easily. +“Have you all got softening of the brain, that you don’t realise +what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? Twenty Paris +trains might go by for me. Damn Paris trains!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what did you care about?” began the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“What did I care about? I didn’t care about catching the train; I +cared about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has caught +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I regret to inform you,” said Syme with restraint, “that +your remarks convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to remove the +remains of your original forehead and some portion of what was once your chin, +your meaning would become clearer. Mental lucidity fulfils itself in many ways. +What do you mean by saying that the train has caught you? It may be my literary +fancy, but somehow I feel that it ought to mean something.” +</p> + +<p> +“It means everything,” said the other, “and the end of +everything. Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Us!” repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. “What do you +mean by ‘us’?” +</p> + +<p> +“The police, of course!” said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp +and half his face. +</p> + +<p> +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired head which +is common in the English constabulary, but the face was terribly pale. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Inspector Ratcliffe,” he said, with a sort of haste that +verged on harshness. “My name is pretty well known to the police, and I +can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt about my +position, I have a card,” and he began to pull a blue card from his +pocket. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor gave a tired gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t show it us,” he said wearily; “we’ve +got enough of them to equip a paper-chase.” +</p> + +<p> +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a mere +vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he certainly saved +the situation. In the midst of this staggering transformation scene he stepped +forward with all the gravity and responsibility of a second, and addressed the +two seconds of the Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all owe you a serious apology; but +I assure you that you have not been made the victims of such a low joke as you +imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of honour. You have not +wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but +very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. A secret society of +anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or +there throw a bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and +powerful and fanatical church, a church of eastern pessimism, which holds it +holy to destroy mankind like vermin. How hard they hunt us you can gather from +the fact that we are driven to such disguises as those for which I apologise, +and to such pranks as this one by which you suffer.” +</p> + +<p> +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black moustache, bowed +politely, and said— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive me if +I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and permit myself to +say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and distinguished +fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is unusual, and, upon the +whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel Ducroix, I would in no way influence +your actions, but if you feel with me that our present society is a little +abnormal, I am now going to walk back to the town.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his white +moustache and broke out— +</p> + +<p> +“No, by George! I won’t. If these gentlemen are really in a mess +with a lot of low wreckers like that, I’ll see them through it. I have +fought for France, and it is hard if I can’t fight for +civilization.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public meeting. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t make too much noise,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, +“Sunday may hear you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sunday!” cried Bull, and dropped his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” retorted Ratcliffe, “he may be with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“With whom?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“With the people out of that train,” said the other. +</p> + +<p> +“What you say seems utterly wild,” began Syme. “Why, as a +matter of fact—But, my God,” he cried out suddenly, like a man who +sees an explosion a long way off, “by God! if this is true the whole +bally lot of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man +was a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can it +mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mean!” said the new policeman with incredible violence. “It +means that we are struck dead! Don’t you know Sunday? Don’t you +know that his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of +them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put +all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care that it was +not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has captured every cable, +he has control of every railway line—especially of <i>that</i> railway +line!” and he pointed a shaking finger towards the small wayside station. +“The whole movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to +rise for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have resisted +him... and the old devil put them on the Supreme Council, to waste their time +in watching each other. Idiots that we are, he planned the whole of our +idiocies! Sunday knew that the Professor would chase Syme through London, and +that Syme would fight me in France. And he was combining great masses of +capital, and seizing great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were +running after each other like a lot of confounded babies playing blind +man’s buff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied the other with sudden serenity, “he has found +us playing blind man’s buff today in a field of great rustic beauty and +extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains to him to +capture this field and all the fools in it. And since you really want to know +what was my objection to the arrival of that train, I will tell you. My +objection was that Sunday or his Secretary has just this moment got out of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes towards the +far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable bulk of people seemed to +be moving in their direction. But they were too distant to be distinguished in +any way. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache,” said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, “always to carry a pair of opera +glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with that +mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place where we are under no +temptations to break our oaths by calling the police. Dr. Bull, I have a +suspicion that you will see better through these than through your own highly +decorative spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took off his +spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It cannot be as bad as you say,” said the Professor, somewhat +shaken. “There are a good number of them certainly, but they may easily +be ordinary tourists.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do ordinary tourists,” asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his +eyes, “wear black masks half-way down the face?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through them. Most men +in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; but it was quite true that +two or three of the leaders in front wore black half-masks almost down to their +mouths. This disguise is very complete, especially at such a distance, and Syme +found it impossible to conclude anything from the clean-shaven jaws and chins +of the men talking in the front. But presently as they talked they all smiled +and one of them smiled on one side. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br> +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE</h2> + +<p> +Syme put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly relief. +</p> + +<p> +“The President is not with them, anyhow,” he said, and wiped his +forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“But surely they are right away on the horizon,” said the +bewildered Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull’s hasty +though polite explanation. “Could you possibly know your President among +all those people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Could I know a white elephant among all those people!” answered +Syme somewhat irritably. “As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; +but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe this ground would +shake.” +</p> + +<p> +After an instant’s pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with gloomy +decision— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course the President isn’t with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, or sitting +on the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is absurd!” said Syme. “Something may have happened in +our absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like that. It is +quite true,” he added, frowning dubiously at the distant fields that lay +towards the little station, “it is certainly true that there seems to be +a crowd coming this way; but they are not all the army that you make +out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they,” said the new detective contemptuously; “no, they +are not a very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they are +precisely calculated to our value—we are not much, my boy, in +Sunday’s universe. He has got hold of all the cables and telegraphs +himself. But to kill the Supreme Council he regards as a trivial matter, like a +post card; it may be left to his private secretary,” and he spat on the +grass. +</p> + +<p> +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely— +</p> + +<p> +“There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has any +preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him to walk after +me.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent energy +towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their shoulders, and saw that +the dark cloud of men had detached itself from the station and was moving with +a mysterious discipline across the plain. They saw already, even with the naked +eye, black blots on the foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. They +turned and followed their leader, who had already struck the wood, and +disappeared among the twinkling trees. +</p> + +<p> +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood they had a +cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a dim pool. The inside of +the wood was full of shattered sunlight and shaken shadows. They made a sort of +shuddering veil, almost recalling the dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the +solid figures walking with him Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun +and shade that danced upon them. Now a man’s head was lit as with a light +of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring +white hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw +hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in +two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. +The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a +mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in +which men’s faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures +first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos +of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect +symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world +where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and +turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he +believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he +knew that the Marquis was a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all +these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there anything +that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and +turned out to be a detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and +turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this +bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, +the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found +in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found +there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which +is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the +universe. +</p> + +<p> +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme strove with +a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of his fancies. With two +impatient strides he overtook the man in the Marquis’s straw hat, the man +whom he had come to address as Ratcliffe. In a voice exaggeratively loud and +cheerful, he broke the bottomless silence and made conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask,” he said, “where on earth we are all going +to?” +</p> + +<p> +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad to hear his +companion speak in an easy, human voice. +</p> + +<p> +“We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea,” he said. +“I think that part of the country is least likely to be with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can you mean by all this?” cried Syme. “They +can’t be running the real world in that way. Surely not many working men +are anarchists, and surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat modern armies +and police.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mere mobs!” repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. +“So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the +question. You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it +would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they +have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there +being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. +The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor +have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected +to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see +from the barons’ wars.” +</p> + +<p> +“As a lecture on English history for the little ones,” said Syme, +“this is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its +application.” +</p> + +<p> +“Its application is,” said his informant, “that most of old +Sunday’s right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That +is why he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last four +champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a wood like +rabbits.” +</p> + +<p> +“Millionaires I can understand,” said Syme thoughtfully, +“they are nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen +with hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is another. +I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that Sunday would stand +perfectly helpless before the task of converting any ordinary healthy person +anywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the other, “it rather depends what sort of +person you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, for instance,” said Syme, “he could never convert that +person,” and he pointed straight in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to Syme the +final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this forest clearing +was a figure that might well stand for that common sense in an almost awful +actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with perspiration, and grave with the +bottomless gravity of small necessary toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting +wood with a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards off, already half full of +timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was, like his master, valorous but +not desperate; like his master, he was even prosperous, but yet was almost sad. +The man was a Norman, taller than the average of the French and very angular; +and his swarthy figure stood dark against a square of sunlight, almost like +some allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a ground of gold. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme is saying,” called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, +“that this man, at least, will never be an anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme is right enough there,” answered Colonel Ducroix, +laughing, “if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to +defend. But I forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being +wealthy.” +</p> + +<p> +“He looks poor,” said Dr. Bull doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said the Colonel; “that is why he is rich.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have an idea,” called out Dr. Bull suddenly; “how much +would he take to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we +could soon leave them behind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, give him anything!” said Syme eagerly. “I have piles of +money on me.” +</p> + +<p> +“That will never do,” said the Colonel; “he will never have +any respect for you unless you drive a bargain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if he haggles!” began Bull impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“He haggles because he is a free man,” said the other. “You +do not understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being +tipped.” +</p> + +<p> +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange pursuers +behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French Colonel talked to the +French wood-cutter with all the leisurely badinage and bickering of market-day. +At the end of the four minutes, however, they saw that the Colonel was right, +for the wood-cutter entered into their plans, not with the vague servility of a +tout too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor who had been paid +the proper fee. He told them that the best thing they could do was to make +their way down to the little inn on the hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, +an old soldier who had become <i>dévot</i> in his latter years, would be +certain to sympathise with them, and even to take risks in their support. The +whole company, therefore, piled themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and +went rocking in the rude cart down the other and steeper side of the woodland. +Heavy and ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they +soon had the exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, whoever +they were, who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the +anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. One man’s +presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first sight of the +deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and then looked back over his +shoulder at the army on their track. +</p> + +<p> +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could see the +sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was still moving the +square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the very strong sunlight and +with his own very strong eyes, which were almost telescopic, Syme could see +this mass of men quite plainly. He could see them as separate human figures; +but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. +They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd +out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various +lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a +sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of automatons. +</p> + +<p> +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the policeman, “that’s discipline. +That’s Sunday. He is perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him +is on all of them, like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and +you bet your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking +regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they are disappearing +regularly.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was growing +smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse. +</p> + +<p> +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on the +farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, in a way +not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only difference was that +in Sussex the road would have been broken and angular like a little brook, but +here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a waterfall. Down +this direct descent the cart clattered at a considerable angle, and in a few +minutes, the road growing yet steeper, they saw below them the little harbour +of Lancy and a great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. +</p> + +<p> +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the +horse’s nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting +on the benches outside the little café of “Le Soleil d’Or.” +The peasant grunted an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also +descended one by one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary phrases +of courtesy, for it was quite evident from his expansive manner that he was the +owner of the little tavern. +</p> + +<p> +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey +moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may often be +found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. Everything about +him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an +ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up as they entered the +inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly into +the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. The military +decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to him, and he took the +opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask you, Colonel,” he said in a low voice, “why we +have come here?” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. +</p> + +<p> +“For two reasons, sir,” he said; “and I will give first, not +the most important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the +only place within twenty miles in which we can get horses.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horses!” repeated Syme, looking up quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the other; “if you people are really to +distance your enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you +have bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where do you advise us to make for?” asked Syme doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Beyond question,” replied the Colonel, “you had better make +all haste to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded +under somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much the +possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly maintain, I +suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“And your other reason for coming here?” +</p> + +<p> +“My other reason for coming here,” said Ducroix soberly, “is +that it is just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to +death.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic religious +picture. Then he said— +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” and then almost immediately afterwards, “Has +anyone seen about the horses?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Ducroix, “you may be quite certain that I +gave orders the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of +hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a well-trained army. +I had no idea that the anarchists had so much discipline. You have not a moment +to waste.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair came +ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled outside. +</p> + +<p> +By Ducroix’s advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as the only +weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white road. The two +servants, who had carried the Marquis’s luggage when he was a marquis, +were left behind to drink at the café by common consent, and not at all against +their own inclination. +</p> + +<p> +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays Syme +could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller and smaller, +but still standing and looking after them quite silently, the sunshine in his +silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, left in his mind by the +chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps, the last honest +stranger whom he should ever see upon the earth. +</p> + +<p> +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere grey blot +touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the steep down +behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the innkeeper, +there appeared an army of black-clad and marching men. They seemed to hang +above the good man and his house like a black cloud of locusts. The horses had +been saddled none too soon. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br> +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY</h2> + +<p> +Urging the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged descent of +the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over the men on the march, +and at last the bulk of the first buildings of Lancy cut off the sight of their +pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and by the time they +reached the real town the west was warming with the colour and quality of +sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making finally for the police +station, they should make the effort, in passing, to attach to themselves one +more individual who might be useful. +</p> + +<p> +“Four out of the five rich men in this town,” he said, “are +common swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. +The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even more +important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid,” said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back +along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at any +moment, “I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor Renard’s house is only three minutes off,” said the +Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Our danger,” said Dr. Bull, “is not two minutes off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, “if we ride on fast we must leave them +behind, for they are on foot.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has a motor-car,” said the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“But we may not get it,” said Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he is quite on your side.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he might be out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hold your tongue,” said Syme suddenly. “What is that +noise?” +</p> + +<p> +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a +second—for two or three or four seconds—heaven and earth seemed +equally still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the +road that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one +thing—horses! +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had +struck it, and yet left it scatheless. +</p> + +<p> +“They have done us,” he said, with brief military irony. +“Prepare to receive cavalry!” +</p> + +<p> +“Where can they have got the horses?” asked Syme, as he +mechanically urged his steed to a canter. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice— +</p> + +<p> +“I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the ‘Soleil +d’Or’ was the only place where one can get horses within twenty +miles.” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” said Syme violently, “I don’t believe he’d +do it. Not with all that white hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may have been forced,” said the Colonel gently. “They +must be at least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my +friend Renard, who has a motor-car.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and went +down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, though already +well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the flying tail of his horse. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep street, +so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once more see the solid +green ridge of the hill, with the white road across it, standing up above all +the roofs of the town. They breathed again to see that the road as yet was +clear, and they rang the bell. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that silent but +very busy professional class which France has preserved even more perfectly +than England. When the matter was explained to him he pooh-poohed the panic of +the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the solid French scepticism, that +there was no conceivable probability of a general anarchist rising. +“Anarchy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it is +childishness!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Et ça</i>,” cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the +other’s shoulder, “and that is childishness, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping over the +top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they rode, however, +the whole rank still kept well together, and they could see the black vizards +of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. But although the main black +square was the same, though travelling faster, there was now one sensational +difference which they could see clearly upon the slope of the hill, as if upon +a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were in one block; but one rider flew far +ahead of the column, and with frantic movements of hand and heel urged his +horse faster and faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the +pursuer but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they knew it was +the Secretary himself. “I am sorry to cut short a cultured +discussion,” said the Colonel, “but can you lend me your motor-car +now, in two minutes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have a suspicion that you are all mad,” said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; “but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like the Musée +de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he seemed to use very +sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French middle class, and when his +impatient friends came to examine them, it took them some time to assure +themselves that one of them even could be made to work. This with some +difficulty they brought round into the street before the Doctor’s house. +When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that twilight +had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the tropics. Either they had +been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud +had gathered over the town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to +see a slight mist coming up from the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“It is now or never,” said Dr. Bull. “I hear horses.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” corrected the Professor, “a horse.” +</p> + +<p> +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming nearer on +the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade but that of the +one horseman, who had left it far behind—the insane Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once +owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into the +chauffeur’s seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging at the +disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and then said quite +quietly— +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid it’s no go.” +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing horse, +with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that thrust out his chin +as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the stationary car, into which +its company had crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It was the Secretary, +and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of triumph. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound but the +rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there came quite +suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt forward. It plucked the +Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife is whipped out of its sheath, +trailed him kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him flung flat upon the +road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car took the corner of the +street with a splendid curve, they could just see the other anarchists filling +the street and raising their fallen leader. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t understand why it has grown so dark,” said the +Professor at last in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Going to be a storm, I think,” said Dr. Bull. “I say, +it’s a pity we haven’t got a light on this car, if only to see +by.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have,” said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he +fished up a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. +It was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had been +in some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a cross upon one +of its sides. +</p> + +<p> +“Where on earth did you get that?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“I got it where I got the car,” answered the Colonel, chuckling, +“from my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the +steering wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who +was standing in his own porch, you will remember. ‘I suppose,’ I +said, ‘there’s no time to get a lamp.’ He looked up, blinking +amiably at the beautiful arched ceiling of his own front hall. From this was +suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the hundred +treasures of his treasure house. By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own +ceiling, shattering the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with +his violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was +I not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth knowing?” +</p> + +<p> +“You were,” said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over +the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast +between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto +they had passed through the quietest part of the town, meeting at most one or +two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of the peace or the hostility of +the place. Now, however, the windows in the houses began one by one to be lit +up, giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned to the +new detective who had led their flight, and permitted himself one of his +natural and friendly smiles. +</p> + +<p> +“These lights make one feel more cheerful.” +</p> + +<p> +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. +</p> + +<p> +“There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful,” he +said, “and they are those lights of the police station which I can see +beyond the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Then all Bull’s boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, this is all raving nonsense!” he cried. “If you really +think that ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be +madder than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the +whole town would fight for us.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the other with an immovable simplicity, “the whole +town would fight for them. We shall see.” +</p> + +<p> +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that noise?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose,” said the Colonel. “I +thought we had got clear of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“The horses behind us! No,” said the Professor, “it is not +horses, and it is not behind us.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you they were his,” he repeated, with wild eyes, “and +they were full of men in masks!” +</p> + +<p> +“Absurd!” said the Colonel angrily. “Dr. Renard would never +give them his cars.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may have been forced,” said Ratcliffe quietly. “The whole +town is on their side.” +</p> + +<p> +“You still believe that,” asked the Colonel incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +“You will all believe it soon,” said the other with a hopeless +calm. +</p> + +<p> +There was a puzzled pause for some little time, and then the Colonel began +again abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“No, I can’t believe it. The thing is nonsense. The plain people of +a peaceable French town—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My God!” said the Colonel, “someone has shot at us.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The staring Colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes all round +the street. +</p> + +<p> +“It is extraordinary,” he said, “most extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “we shall never get +there.” +</p> + +<p> +He had been standing up and looking keenly ahead of him. Now he sat down and +smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked Bull sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite true. There is a crowd or an army or some such thing across +the end of that street.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were all startled +by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” asked the professor, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“You blind bat,” cried Bull, “don’t you see who is +leading them?” +</p> + +<p> +They peered again, and then the Colonel, with a catch in his voice, cried +out— +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s Renard!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What a fool I’ve been!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Of +course, the dear old boy has turned out to help us.” +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the cigarette smoker slowly, “what do you think +now?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he did not +commonly make clear. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are really destroyed now,” said the man with a cigarette, and +rose with his hands in his pockets. “The devils are coming on!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme sardonically, “has at least got it into +his hat.” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it can’t be!” cried the Colonel, stamping. +</p> + +<p> +“Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me,” and he strode +forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be in such a hurry,” drawled the smoker. “He +will very soon explain it to all of us.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is no good,” said Syme. “He will never get anything out +of that old heathen. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go back, then?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What the devil is up?” cried the Professor, seizing his arm. +</p> + +<p> +“The morning star has fallen!” said Syme, as his own car went down +the darkness like a falling star. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The world is insane!” said the Professor, and buried his face in +his hands. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, “it is I.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are we going to do?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“At this moment,” said Syme, with a scientific detachment, “I +think we are going to smash into a lamppost.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we smashed something,” said the Professor, with a faint +smile. “That’s some comfort.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re becoming an anarchist,” said Syme, dusting his +clothes with his instinct of daintiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Everyone is,” said Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive action, +leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The peasant!” cried Syme. “They have not risen since the +Middle Ages.” +</p> + +<p> +“Even if the police do come now,” said the Professor mournfully, +“they can do nothing with this mob.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said Bull desperately; “there must be some people +left in the town who are human.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the hopeless Inspector, “the human being will soon +be extinct. We are the last of mankind.” +</p> + +<p> +“It may be,” said the Professor absently. Then he added in his +dreamy voice, “What is all that at the end of the ‘Dunciad’? +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;<br> +Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!<br> +Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;<br> +Light dies before thine uncreating word:<br> +Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;<br> +And universal darkness buries all.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop!” cried Bull suddenly, “the gendarmes are out.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They are charging the mob!” cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme, “they are formed along the parade.” +</p> + +<p> +“They have unslung their carbines,” cried Bull dancing with +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ratcliffe, “and they are going to fire on +us.” +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to hop +like hailstones on the stones in front of them. +</p> + +<p> +“The gendarmes have joined them!” cried the Professor, and struck +his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“I am in the padded cell,” said Bull solidly. +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the swollen +sea, all a sort of grey purple— +</p> + +<p> +“What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead +soon.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme turned to him and said— +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite hopeless, then?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly— +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what or whom is your hope?” asked Syme with curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” said the other steadily; “but if so, he was the +only man whom Sunday found it hard to kill.” +</p> + +<p> +“I heard what you said,” said the Professor, with his back turned. +“I also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw.” +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!” +</p> + +<p> +“The Colonel! Yes,” cried Bull, “where on earth is the +Colonel?” +</p> + +<p> +“He went to speak to Renard,” said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“We cannot leave him among all those beasts,” cried Syme. +“Let us die like gentlemen if—” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not pity the Colonel,” said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. +“He is extremely comfortable. He is—” +</p> + +<p> +“No! no! no!” cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, “not the +Colonel too! I will never believe it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you believe your eyes?” asked the other, and pointed to the +beach. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Swords!” shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three +behind him. “Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to +die.” +</p> + +<p> +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme’s sword was +broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him down. +In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob and +perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever since Syme’s +speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if dazed; now he +suddenly pulled off his black mask. +</p> + +<p> +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as +astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. +</p> + +<p> +“There is some mistake,” he said. “Mr. Syme, I hardly think +you understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of the law?” said Syme, and dropped his stick. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly!” said the Secretary. “I am a detective from +Scotland Yard,” and he took a small blue card from his pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you suppose we are?” asked the Professor, and threw up +his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“You,” said the Secretary stiffly, “are, as I know for a +fact, members of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, +I—” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We +were all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice +people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I +knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming over the +enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. +“Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I know. I am +now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br> +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT</h2> + +<p> +Next morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for Dover. The +poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having been first +forced to fight for two factions that didn’t exist, and then knocked down +with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman, and being much +relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off +on the pier with great geniality. +</p> + +<p> +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each other. +The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks originally in +order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a civilised +country. But above all these matters of detail which could be explained, rose +the central mountain of the matter that they could not explain. What did it all +mean? If they were all harmless officers, what was Sunday? If he had not seized +the world, what on earth had he been up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still +gloomy about this. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t make head or tail of old Sunday’s little game any +more than you can,” he said. “But whatever else Sunday is, he +isn’t a blameless citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?” +</p> + +<p> +“I grant you,” answered Syme, “that I have never been able to +forget it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the Secretary, “I suppose we can find out soon, +for tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me,” he +said, with a rather ghastly smile, “for being well acquainted with my +secretarial duties.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you are right,” said the Professor reflectively. +“I suppose we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should +feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us have some drinks,” said Dr. Bull, after a silence. +</p> + +<p> +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly convivial, +but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had always been the +optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other four that the whole +company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was overruled, +and they went in a four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They +finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close to +the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even then the +adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, discontented with the +general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the hotel at about eleven to +see and taste some of the beauties of London. Twenty minutes afterwards, +however, he came back and made quite a clamour in the hall. Syme, who tried at +first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to his communication with +quite new attention. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you I’ve seen him!” said Dr. Bull, with thick +emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +“Whom?” asked Syme quickly. “Not the President?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not so bad as that,” said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, +“not so bad as that. I’ve got him here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Got whom here?” asked Syme impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Hairy man,” said the other lucidly, “man that used to be +hairy man—Gogol. Here he is,” and he pulled forward by a reluctant +elbow the identical young man who five days before had marched out of the +Council with thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham +anarchists who had been exposed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you worry with me?” he cried. “You have expelled me +as a spy.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are all spies!” whispered Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re all spies!” shouted Dr. Bull. “Come and have a +drink.” +</p> + +<p> +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards the +hotel in Leicester Square. +</p> + +<p> +“This is more cheerful,” said Dr. Bull; “we are six men going +to ask one man what he means.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is a bit queerer than that,” said Syme. “I think +it is six men going to ask one man what they mean.” +</p> + +<p> +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the +opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that looked +too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over a newspaper. +But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, crossed that Square as +if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes. +</p> + +<p> +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should leave the +unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring +him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull +prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them +why they attacked Sunday so rashly. +</p> + +<p> +“My reason is quite simple,” said Syme. “I attack him rashly +because I am afraid of him.” +</p> + +<p> +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out +simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight of +Sunday’s smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Delightful!” he said. “So pleased to see you all. What an +exquisite day it is. Is the Czar dead?” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a +dignified outburst. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir,” he said sternly “there has been no massacre. I +bring you news of no such disgusting spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Disgusting spectacles?” repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. “You mean Dr. Bull’s spectacles?” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a sort of +smooth appeal— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to +call them disgusting before the man himself—” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“My spectacles are blackguardly,” he said, “but I’m +not. Look at my face.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say it’s the sort of face that grows on one,” said +the President, “in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with +the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some +day.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have no time for tomfoolery,” said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. “We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What +are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you +a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the +fool? Answer me, I tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Candidates,” murmured Sunday, “are only required to answer +eight out of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, +you want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, +and what this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. Well, I will +go so far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want to know what you are, +you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you,” said Syme, leaning forward, “what are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? What am I?” roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and break. +“You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science. Grub +in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme, you are a +poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have +found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth +about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall +know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the +world all men have hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and +lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been +caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given +them a good run for their money, and I will now.” +</p> + +<p> +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like some +huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before he dropped he +pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and thrusting his great chin +over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly— +</p> + +<p> +“There’s one thing I’ll tell you though about who I am. I am +the man in the dark room, who made you all policemen.” +</p> + +<p> +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a great +ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of the Alhambra, +where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The six detectives had been +standing thunderstruck and livid in the light of his last assertion; but when +he disappeared into the cab, Syme’s practical senses returned to him, and +leaping over the balcony so recklessly as almost to break his legs, he called +another cab. +</p> + +<p> +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the Inspector into +another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol scrambled into a third just in +time to pursue the flying Syme, who was pursuing the flying President. Sunday +led them a wild chase towards the north-west, his cabman, evidently under the +influence of more than common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck speed. +But Syme was in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in his own cab +shouting, “Stop thief!” until crowds ran along beside his cab, and +policemen began to stop and ask questions. All this had its influence upon the +President’s cabman, who began to look dubious, and to slow down to a +trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably to his fare, and in so doing let +the long whip droop over the front of the cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, +and jerked it violently out of the man’s hand. Then standing up in front +of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared aloud, so that they went +down the streets like a flying storm. Through street after street and square +after square went whirling this preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was +urging the horse and the driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three +cabs came after it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. +Shops and streets shot by like rattling arrows. +</p> + +<p> +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard where +he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, with white hair +whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his pursuers, like some +colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a ball of paper +in Syme’s face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while instinctively +warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One +was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it +is to be feared partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. +Bull’s address was, at any rate, considerably longer than his +communication, for the communication consisted entirely of the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“What about Martin Tupper <i>now?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“What does the old maniac mean?” asked Bull, staring at the words. +“What does yours say, Syme?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the +Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the last +time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially after what +uncle said.” +</p> + +<p> +The President’s cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his +horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the Edgware +Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a providential +stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or left or stopping, for +down the long road was coming the unmistakable roar announcing the fire-engine, +which in a few seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went +by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, caught it, +slung himself on to it, and was seen as he disappeared in the noisy distance +talking to the astonished fireman with explanatory gestures. +</p> + +<p> +“After him!” howled Syme. “He can’t go astray now. +There’s no mistaking a fire-engine.” +</p> + +<p> +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their horses +and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their disappearing +prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming to the back of the +car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally flinging a neatly-folded +note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When that gentleman opened it, not +without impatience, he found it contained the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is +known.—A F<small>RIEND</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region that they +did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings shadowed with +trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved, to see the +President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through another whim or the +increasing protest of his entertainers they could not see. Before the three +cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings +like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished in a darkness of +leaves. +</p> + +<p> +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang also to the +escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his friends were following, he +turned a face on them which shone quite pale in the shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“What place can this be?” he asked. “Can it be the old +devil’s house? I’ve heard he has a house in North London.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the better,” said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a +foothold, “we shall find him at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but it isn’t that,” said Syme, knitting his brows. +“I hear the most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and +blowing their devilish noses!” +</p> + +<p> +“His dogs barking, of course,” said the Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not say his black-beetles barking!” said Syme furiously, +“snails barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like +that?” +</p> + +<p> +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling roar +that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh—a low thrilling +roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them. +</p> + +<p> +“The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs,” said Gogol, and +shuddered. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening +impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, listen to that,” he said, “is that a +dog—anybody’s dog?” +</p> + +<p> +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting and +clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what sounded like a +long nasal trumpet. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, his house ought to be hell!” said the Secretary; “and +if it is hell, I’m going in!” and he sprang over the tall railings +almost with one swing. +</p> + +<p> +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs, and came +out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull suddenly struck his +hands together. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you asses,” he cried, “it’s the Zoo!” +</p> + +<p> +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a keeper +in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain clothes. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it come this way?” gasped the keeper. +</p> + +<p> +“Has what?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“The elephant!” cried the keeper. “An elephant has gone mad +and run away!” +</p> + +<p> +“He has run away with an old gentleman,” said the other stranger +breathlessly, “a poor old gentleman with white hair!” +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of old gentleman?” asked Syme, with great curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes,” said +the keeper eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “if he’s that particular kind of old +gentleman, if you’re quite sure that he’s a large and fat old +gentleman in grey clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has +not run away with him. He has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not +made by God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the +elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!” +</p> + +<p> +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass, about +two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly at his +heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk thrown out +as rigid as a ship’s bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. +On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all +the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some +sharp object in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop him!” screamed the populace. “He’ll be out of the +gate!” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop a landslide!” said the keeper. “He is out of the +gate!” +</p> + +<p> +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that the great +grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological Gardens, and was +careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort of omnibus. +</p> + +<p> +“Great Lord!” cried Bull, “I never knew an elephant could go +so fast. Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in +sight.” +</p> + +<p> +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished, Syme +felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which they passed. +Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen them so clearly. He +remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their preposterous, pendant +throats. He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was +that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He remembered a +hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind +it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he could not +explain, that Nature was always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told +them that they would understand him when they had understood the stars. He +wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. +</p> + +<p> +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the elephant +sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of the streets. +This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the solid stretch of his +unconscious back, which maddened them, if possible, more than his previous +mockeries. Just before they came to Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw +something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball meaning to catch it again. +But at their rate of racing it fell far behind, just by the cab containing +Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or for some impulse unexplainable, he +stopped his cab so as to pick it up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite +a bulky parcel. On examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of +thirty-three pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. When the +last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip of paper, on +which was written:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.” +</p> + +<p> +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his hands and +feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed efforts. +</p> + +<p> +Through street after street, through district after district, went the prodigy +of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and driving the traffic +left and right. And still through all this insane publicity the three cabs +toiled after it, until they came to be regarded as part of a procession, and +perhaps the advertisement of a circus. They went at such a rate that distances +were shortened beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when +he thought that he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even +more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, +and he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line where the enormous +Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and +larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars. +</p> + +<p> +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners, and when +they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition they found +themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous crowd; in the +midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and shuddering as such shapeless +creatures do. But the President had disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir. +Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.” +</p> + +<p> +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the +Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“When the herring runs a mile,<br> +Let the Secretary smile;<br> +When the herring tries to <i>fly</i>,<br> +Let the Secretary die.<br> + Rustic Proverb.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why the eternal crikey,” began the Secretary, “did you let +the man in? Do people commonly come to your Exhibition riding on mad elephants? +Do—” +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” shouted Syme suddenly. “Look over there!” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at what?” asked the Secretary savagely. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the captive balloon!” said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. +</p> + +<p> +“Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?” demanded the +Secretary. “What is there queer about a captive balloon?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” said Syme, “except that it isn’t +captive!” +</p> + +<p> +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above the +Exhibition on a string, like a child’s balloon. A second afterwards the +string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken loose, floated +away with the freedom of a soap bubble. +</p> + +<p> +“Ten thousand devils!” shrieked the Secretary. “He’s +got into it!” and he shook his fists at the sky. +</p> + +<p> +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they could +see the great white head of the President peering over the side and looking +benevolently down on them. +</p> + +<p> +“God bless my soul!” said the Professor with the elderly manner +that he could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. +“God bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of +my hat!” +</p> + +<p> +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted paper, +which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true lover’s +knot and, the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Your beauty has not left me indifferent.—From +L<small>ITTLE</small> S<small>NOWDROP</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard— +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. +Let’s follow it!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br> +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS</h2> + +<p> +Across green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six draggled +detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of the party had at +first proposed that they should follow the balloon across South England in +hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of the persistent refusal of the +balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the +cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless though exasperated +travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed through ploughed fields +till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. +Those green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the admirable +light grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. His silk hat was +broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his coat-tails were torn to the +shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of England was splashed up to his +collar; but he still carried his yellow beard forward with a silent and furious +determination, and his eyes were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, +which in the full flush of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” he said, “it is very beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is singularly and strangely beautiful!” said the Professor. +“I wish the beastly gas-bag would burst!” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Dr. Bull, “I hope it won’t. It might hurt +the old boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hurt him!” said the vindictive Professor, “hurt him! Not as +much as I’d hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want him hurt, somehow,” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“What!” cried the Secretary bitterly. “Do you believe all +that tale about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” said Dr. Bull. +“But it isn’t that that I mean. I can’t wish old +Sunday’s balloon to burst because—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme impatiently, “because?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, because he’s so jolly like a balloon himself,” said +Dr. Bull desperately. “I don’t understand a word of all that idea +of his being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don’t care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great +bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn’t +prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked +him because he was so fat?” +</p> + +<p> +“You will not,” said the Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got it now,” cried Bull, “it was because he was +so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as +heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. +Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It +was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could leap +up in the sky like a grasshopper?” +</p> + +<p> +“Our elephant,” said Syme, looking upwards, “has leapt into +the sky like a grasshopper.” +</p> + +<p> +“And somehow,” concluded Bull, “that’s why I +can’t help liking old Sunday. No, it’s not an admiration of force, +or any silly thing like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he +were bursting with some good news. Haven’t you sometimes felt it on a +spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are +good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at +is literal truth, ‘Why leap ye, ye high hills?’ The hills do +leap—at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell +you?... because he’s such a Bounder.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, strained +voice— +</p> + +<p> +“You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better than +I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle morbid from the +first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us all, chose me because I +had all the crazy look of a conspirator—because my smile went crooked, +and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have been something +in me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men. For when I first +saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but something both gross +and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him smoking in a twilight room, a room +with brown blind down, infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in +which our master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark and +out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or even stirring. I +poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked my most eloquent questions. +Then, after a long silence, the Thing began to shake, and I thought it was +shaken by some secret malady. It shook like a loathsome and living jelly. It +reminded me of everything I had ever read about the base bodies that are the +origin of life—the deep sea lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like the +final form of matter, the most shapeless and the most shameful. I could only +tell myself, from its shudderings, that it was something at least that such a +monster could be miserable. And then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain +was shaking with a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me +to forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by something at once +lower and stronger than oneself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly,” cut in the clear +voice of Inspector Ratcliffe. “President Sunday is a terrible fellow for +one’s intellect, but he is not such a Barnum’s freak physically as +you make out. He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in +broad daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I’ll tell you +what is a trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat, +everything seems in order; but he’s absent-minded. Sometimes his great +bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now +absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think of a wicked +man as vigilant. We can’t think of a wicked man who is honestly and +sincerely dreamy, because we daren’t think of a wicked man alone with +himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. It means a man who, if +he happens to see you, will apologise. But how will you bear an absentminded +man who, if he happens to see you, will kill you? That is what tries the +nerves, abstraction combined with cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they +went through wild forests, and felt that the animals there were at once +innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you like to pass +ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded tiger?” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think of Sunday on principle,” said Gogol simply, +“any more than I stare at the sun at noonday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that is a point of view,” said Syme thoughtfully. +“What do you say, Professor?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did not +answer at all. +</p> + +<p> +“Wake up, Professor!” said Syme genially. “Tell us what you +think of Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“I think something,” he said, “that I cannot say clearly. Or, +rather, I think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something +like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, when I saw Sunday’s face I thought it was too +large—everybody does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was +so big, that one couldn’t focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was +so far away from the nose, that it wasn’t an eye. The mouth was so much +by itself, that one had to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard +to explain.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on— +</p> + +<p> +“But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp and +a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and unmistakable +face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him again. Yet when I +walked a little farther I found that there was no face, that the window was ten +yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, the cloud beyond the world. Well, +Sunday’s face escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as such chance +pictures run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt whether there +are any faces. I don’t know whether your face, Bull, is a face or a +combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly glasses is +quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a materialist are +not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the worst doubts, the +doubts of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a +creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you really have +a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in the +evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you noticed an odd thing,” he said, “about all your +descriptions? Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you +can only find one thing to compare him to—the universe itself. Bull finds +him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is +reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness of +virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This is +queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd notion about the +President, and I also find that I think of Sunday as I think of the whole +world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get on a little faster, Syme,” said Bull; “never mind the +balloon.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I first saw Sunday,” said Syme slowly, “I only saw his +back; and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His +neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a +stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once +the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in +men’s clothes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get on,” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the street, +as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round the other +side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me, as it did +everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil. On the +contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it was so +good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme,” exclaimed the Secretary, “are you ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after +heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and +sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that +I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he was an +animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pan,” said the Professor dreamily, “was a god and an +animal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, “that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the +mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is +but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a +jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so +good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to +a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind +him all the way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had you time for thinking then?” asked Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +“Time,” replied Syme, “for one outrageous thought. I was +suddenly possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really +was his face—an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the +figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and +dancing as he ran.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible!” said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible is not the word,” said Syme. “It was exactly the +worst instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head +out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like +a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a long game,” said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen to me,” cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. +“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only +known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks +brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but +the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a +face? If we could only get round in front—” +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” cried out Bull clamorously, “the balloon is coming +down!” +</p> + +<p> +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off it. He +saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right itself, and +then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun. +</p> + +<p> +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary travels, +suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“He is dead!” he cried. “And now I know he was my +friend—my friend in the dark!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dead!” snorted the Secretary. “You will not find him dead +easily. If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a +colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clashing his hoofs,” said the Professor. “The colts do, and +so did Pan.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably. “You seem to think Pan +is everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek. He means +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down, “that +he also means Panic.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. +</p> + +<p> +“It fell over there,” he said shortly. “Let us follow +it!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he added with an indescribable gesture— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one of +his larks.” +</p> + +<p> +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and ribbons +fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more footsore and dubious +manner. And almost at the same moment all six men realised that they were not +alone in the little field. +</p> + +<p> +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, leaning on a +strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine but old-fashioned suit +with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade between blue, violet and grey +which can be seen in certain shadows of the woodland. His hair was whitish +grey, and at the first glance, taken along with his knee-breeches, looked as if +it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but for the silver frost upon his +head, he might have been one to the shadows of the wood. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen,” he said, “my master has a carriage waiting for +you in the road just by.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is your master?” asked Syme, standing quite still. +</p> + +<p> +“I was told you knew his name,” said the man respectfully. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said— +</p> + +<p> +“Where is this carriage?” +</p> + +<p> +“It has been waiting only a few moments,” said the stranger. +“My master has only just come home.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he found +himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed ordinary trees; yet +he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. +</p> + +<p> +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover nothing +except that the man’s coat was the exact colour of the purple shadows, +and that the man’s face was the exact colour of the red and brown and +golden sky. +</p> + +<p> +“Show us the place,” Syme said briefly, and without a word the man +in the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, which +let in suddenly the light of a white road. +</p> + +<p> +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the white road +blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a row of carriages as +might close the approach to some house in Park Lane. Along the side of these +carriages stood a rank of splendid servants, all dressed in the grey-blue +uniform, and all having a certain quality of stateliness and freedom which +would not commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the +officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than six +carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable band. All the +attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man crawled into his +carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of steel. +</p> + +<p> +“What can it all mean?” asked Bull of Syme as they separated. +“Is this another joke of Sunday’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Syme as he sank wearily back in the +cushions of his carriage; “but if it is, it’s one of the jokes you +talk about. It’s a good-natured one.” +</p> + +<p> +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had carried +them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of comfort. They had all +become inured to things going roughly; but things suddenly going smoothly +swamped them. They could not even feebly imagine what the carriages were; it +was enough for them to know that they were carriages, and carriages with +cushions. They could not conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it +was quite enough that he had certainly led them to the carriages. +</p> + +<p> +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment. It was +typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin forward fiercely so +long as anything could be done, when the whole business was taken out of his +hands he fell back on the cushions in a frank collapse. +</p> + +<p> +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the carriage +was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of what might have +been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill which, while wooded on +both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a forest. Then there began to grow +upon him, as upon a man slowly waking from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in +everything. He felt that the hedges were what hedges should be, living walls; +that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but all the more alive. He saw +high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought how happy boys would be +climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn of the path, and he saw suddenly +and quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in the +mild light of sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards and +quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the place +reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top or that crooked +path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that shape of a window; but each +man of them declared that he could remember this place before he could remember +his mother. +</p> + +<p> +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous gateway, +another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on the grey breast +of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive person said to the +bewildered Syme— +</p> + +<p> +“Refreshments are provided for you in your room.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went up the +large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a splendid suite +of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for him. He walked up to a +long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his class, to pull his tie straight +or to smooth his hair; and there he saw the frightful figure that he +was—blood running down his face from where the bough had struck him, his +hair standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his clothes torn into long, +wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang up, simply as the question of +how he had got there, and how he was to get out again. Exactly at the same +moment a man in blue, who had been appointed as his valet, said very +solemnly— +</p> + +<p> +“I have put out your clothes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clothes!” said Syme sardonically. “I have no clothes except +these,” and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating +festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl. +</p> + +<p> +“My master asks me to say,” said the attendant, “that there +is a fancy dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the costume +that I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some +cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours before +supper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cold pheasant is a good thing,” said Syme reflectively, “and +Burgundy is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so +much as I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of costume +you have got laid out for me. Where is it?” +</p> + +<p> +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery, rather of +the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned a large golden +sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming stars and crescents. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re to be dressed as Thursday, sir,” said the valet +somewhat affably. +</p> + +<p> +“Dressed as Thursday!” said Syme in meditation. “It +doesn’t sound a warm costume.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, sir,” said the other eagerly, “the Thursday costume +is quite warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I don’t understand anything,” said Syme, sighing. +“I have been used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable +adventures knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be +particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the sun and +moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, +I remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“Beg pardon, sir,” said the valet, “Bible also provided for +you,” and with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in +the first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which the +fourth day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun and moon. +Here, however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday. +</p> + +<p> +“This is getting wilder and wilder,” said Syme, as he sat down in a +chair. “Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, and +green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir, everything,” said the attendant gravely. “Shall I +help you on with your costume?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, hitch the bally thing on!” said Syme impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious freedom and +naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment fell about him; and +when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he +passed out of the room he flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, +his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. +For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br> +THE ACCUSER</h2> + +<p> +As Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the top of a +great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He was draped in a +long robe of starless black, down the centre of which fell a band or broad +stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light. The whole looked like some +very severe ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his +memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of creation marked +the mere creation of light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone +have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of +pure white and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with +his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make war on +the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was scarcely +surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of their new +surroundings, this man’s eyes were still stern. No smell of ale or +orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question. +</p> + +<p> +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he, too, +seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the Secretary +stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless light, Syme was +a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to +split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; +the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation +of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. +</p> + +<p> +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe, who was +clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whose garment was a +green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third day on which the earth and +green things were made, and his square, sensible face, with its not unfriendly +cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it. +</p> + +<p> +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large old +English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light of which a +vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme seemed to see every +shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. There was a man dressed as a +windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a +balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread of their farcical +adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an +enormous hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself—the queer bird +which had fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while he was rushing +down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such +objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a +dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some mad +musician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing an eternal +jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged and at rest, he could never +see one of those particular objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a +windmill—without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from that revel +of masquerade. +</p> + +<p> +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green bank, like +the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. +</p> + +<p> +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the thrones of the +seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their seats; the Professor was +just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had his simplicity well symbolised by +a dress designed upon the division of the waters, a dress that separated upon +his forehead and fell to his feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The +Professor, whose day was that on which the birds and fishes—the ruder +forms of life—were created, had a dress of dim purple, over which +sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical birds, the union in him of +unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the last day of Creation, wore a +coat covered with heraldic animals in red and gold, and on his crest a man +rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an +optimist in his element. +</p> + +<p> +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange seats. As +each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the carnival, such as that +with which crowds receive kings. Cups were clashed and torches shaken, and +feathered hats flung in the air. The men for whom these thrones were reserved +were men crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was +empty. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The Secretary +looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing his lips— +</p> + +<p> +“We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in front of +him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had opened behind his +head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the front like a shadow, and +had sat in the central seat. He was draped plainly, in a pure and terrible +white, and his hair was like a silver flame on his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time—it seemed for hours—that huge masquerade of mankind +swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. Every +couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy dancing with a +pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but in each case it was, +somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love +story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. Couples strolled +away into the garden-walks, or began to drift towards that end of the building +where stood smoking, in huge pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented +mixtures of old ale or wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on +the roof of the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit +up the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the face of +vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with warmth even the +emptiness of upper night. Yet this also, after a time, was allowed to grow +fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more round the great cauldrons, or +passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passages of that ancient house. +Soon there were only some ten loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally +the last stray merry-maker ran into the house whooping to his companions. The +fire faded, and the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were +left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them +had spoken a word. +</p> + +<p> +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of insects and +the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so dreamily that he might +have been continuing a conversation rather than beginning one. +</p> + +<p> +“We will eat and drink later,” he said. “Let us remain +together a little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so +long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always +heroes—epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms. +Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the +world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any +created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural +virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun +in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. +And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and the +incomprehensible went on. +</p> + +<p> +“But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the +whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew how near +you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords with King Satan, and +how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without hope.” +</p> + +<p> +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the black-browed +Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday, and said in a harsh +voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Who and what are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the +peace of God.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I know what you mean,” he cried, “and it is exactly that +that I cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they +call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you +were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the +sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you +also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our +souls—and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, +though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone upon +Syme as if asking a question. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme, “I do not feel fierce like that. I am +grateful to you, not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine +scamper and free fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as +happy and quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I +should like to know.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said— +</p> + +<p> +“It seems so <i>silly</i> that you should have been on both sides and +fought yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Bull said— +</p> + +<p> +“I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to +sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not happy,” said the Professor with his head in his hands, +“because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near to +hell.” +</p> + +<p> +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child— +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.” +</p> + +<p> +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon his hand, and +gazed at the distance. Then at last he said— +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes another +to complain, and we will hear him also.” +</p> + +<p> +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a bar of +burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was outlined in +utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He seemed to have a fine +close suit with knee-breeches such as that which was worn by the servants of +the house, only that it was not blue, but of this absolute sable. He had, like +the servants, a kind of sword by his side. It was only when he had come quite +close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his face to look at them, that +Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost +ape-like face of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its +insulting smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Gregory!” gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. “Why, this +is the real anarchist!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, “I +am the real anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Now there was a day,’” murmured Bull, who seemed +really to have fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to +present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among +them.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a +destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could.” +</p> + +<p> +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he spoke +brokenly and without sequence. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have +red hair like your sister.” +</p> + +<p> +“My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,” said +Gregory. “I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate +anything; but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate +you!” +</p> + +<p> +“I never hated you,” said Syme very sadly. +</p> + +<p> +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. +</p> + +<p> +“You!” he cried. “You never hated because you never lived. I +know what you are all of you, from first to last—you are the people in +power! You are the police—the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! +You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive +that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? We in +revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of +the Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is that it +governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do +not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being +kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have +never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had +no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind, if +I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as +I—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. +</p> + +<p> +“I see everything,” he cried, “everything that there is. Why +does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small +thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have +to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole +universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of +the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of +the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a +man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the +face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to +say to this man, ‘You lie!’ No agonies can be too great to buy the +right to say to this accuser, ‘We also have suffered.’ +</p> + +<p> +“It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon +the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We +have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at +the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I +repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the +great guards of Law whom he has accused. At least—” +</p> + +<p> +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which +wore a strange smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you,” he cried in a dreadful voice, “have you ever +suffered?” +</p> + +<p> +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the +colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger +and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the +blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant +voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, “Can ye +drink of the cup that I drink of?” +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in some +place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or lift +themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme’s experience was +something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything +unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For while +he could always remember afterwards that he had swooned before the face of +Sunday, he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could only +remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had been walking +along a country lane with an easy and conversational companion. That companion +had been a part of his recent drama; it was the red-haired poet Gregory. They +were walking like old friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about +some triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his body and +a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior to everything that +he said or did. He felt he was in possession of some impossible good news, +which made every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality. +</p> + +<p> +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; as if +Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose. A breeze +blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that it blew from the sky; it +blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple surprise when he +saw rising all round him on both sides of the road the red, irregular buildings +of Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so near London. He walked by +instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found +himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl +with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great +unconscious gravity of a girl. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY ***</div> + + +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Man Who Was Thursday<br> +A Nightmare</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: G. K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1999 [eBook #1695]<br> +[Most recently updated: February 5, 2024]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Harry Plantinga and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]"> +</div> + +<h1>The Man Who Was Thursday</h1> + +<h3>A Nightmare</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">by G. K. Chesterton</h2> + +<hr> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#pref01">A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap00"><b>THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</b></a><br><br></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. THE EXPOSURE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. THE DUEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. THE EARTH IN ANARCHY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. THE ACCUSER</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="pref01"></a>A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE</h2> + +<p> +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is possible to +say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous criminals and brilliant +policemen; but it was to be expected that the author of the Father Brown +stories should tell a detective story like no-one else. On this level, +therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a +magnificent tour-de-force of suspense-writing. +</p> + +<p> +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than that. Carried +along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by Chesterton’s wonderful +high-spirited style, he will soon see that he is being carried into much deeper +waters than he had planned on; and the totally unforeseeable denouement will +prove for the modern reader, as it has for thousands of others since 1908 when +the book was first published, an inevitable and moving experience, as the +investigators finally discover who Sunday is. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap00"></a>THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY<br> +A NIGHTMARE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,<br> +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.<br> +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;<br> +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;<br> +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—<br> +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.<br> +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,<br> +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.<br> +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;<br> +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.<br> +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:<br> +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.<br> +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;<br> +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us<br> +Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we,<br> +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.<br> +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,<br> +When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.<br> +<br> +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;<br> +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.<br> +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings<br> +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;<br> +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,<br> +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;<br> +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain—<br> +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.<br> +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,<br> +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.<br> +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.<br> +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:<br> +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved—<br> +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.<br> +<br> +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,<br> +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells—<br> +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,<br> +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.<br> +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand—<br> +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?<br> +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,<br> +And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.<br> +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;<br> +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.<br> +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,<br> +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.<br> +</p> + +<p class="right"> +G. K. C. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br> +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK</h2> + +<p> +The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged +as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line +was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a +speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture +sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression +that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as +an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But +although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its +pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who +looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very +oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the +people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, +but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a +dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was +nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the +impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a +poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white +hat—that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he +was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, +egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of +science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but +what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? +Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be +considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished +work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had +stepped into a written comedy. +</p> + +<p> +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when +the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane +village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again was more strongly +true of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often +illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like +some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on one +particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which the +auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only evening of +which he was the hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden +might hear his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly +to women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the paradoxes +of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, +and professed some protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would +always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever +pays to him, that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the +red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listening to, even if +one only laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant of the lawlessness of +art and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness which gave at +least a momentary pleasure. He was helped in some degree by the arresting +oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was +worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a +woman’s, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite +picture. From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected +suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of cockney +contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified the nerves of a +neurotic population. He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel +and the ape. +</p> + +<p> +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be +remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the +world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; +you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that +almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with +the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; +but towards the west the whole grew past description, transparent and +passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something +too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express +nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It +expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The +very sky seemed small. +</p> + +<p> +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if only by +that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it because it marked the +first appearance in the place of the second poet of Saffron Park. For a long +time the red-haired revolutionary had reigned without a rival; it was upon the +night of the sunset that his solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who +introduced himself by the name of Gabriel Syme was a very mild-looking mortal, +with a fair, pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But an impression grew that +he was less meek than he looked. He signalised his entrance by differing with +the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He said that he +(Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he was a poet of +respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him as if he had that +moment fallen out of that impossible sky. +</p> + +<p> +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two events. +</p> + +<p> +“It may well be,” he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, “it +may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is brought +forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you are a +poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were +not comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden.” +</p> + +<p> +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured these +thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of the group, +Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s braids of red +hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of +admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. +</p> + +<p> +“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You +might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who +throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He +sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect +thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist +disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in +disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be +the Underground Railway.” +</p> + +<p> +“So it is,” said Mr. Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway +trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is +because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that +whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is +because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station +must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their +eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were +unaccountably Baker Street!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If +what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The +rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. +We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it +not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos +is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street +or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he +does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry +and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who +commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his +victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!” +</p> + +<p> +“Must you go?” inquired Gregory sarcastically. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a +train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that +man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has +left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a +thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense +of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word +‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a +herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is +the victory of Adam.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. +</p> + +<p> +“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the question, +‘And what is Victoria now that you have got there?’ You think +Victoria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be +like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of +heaven. The poet is always in revolt.” +</p> + +<p> +“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical +about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be +sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be +the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I +can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. +It’s mere vomiting.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too hot to +heed her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the +foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the +flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the +world is not being sick.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Gregory superciliously, “the examples you +choose—” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot we had +abolished all conventions.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionise +society on this lawn?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I suppose that if you were +serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry +lion, and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dangerous voice, +“that I am serious about my anarchism?” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon?” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I not serious about my anarchism?” cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow!” said Syme, and strolled away. +</p> + +<p> +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond Gregory still in +his company. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my +brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with grave eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many +kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say ‘thank you’ for +the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say ‘the world is +round,’ do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don’t +mean it. Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does +mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says +more than he means—from sheer force of meaning it.” +</p> + +<p> +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and open, and +there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning responsibility which is +at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old +as the world. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he really an anarchist, then?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you +prefer it, in that nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and +somewhat dandified figure. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done +anonymously.” +</p> + +<p> +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she thought +with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory’s absurdity and of his safety. +</p> + +<p> +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to +pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his +superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble +man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He defended +respectability with violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise +of tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round +him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to +play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving to a tiny tune +from under or beyond the world. +</p> + +<p> +He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what +seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place +should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole +garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather +hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could +not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had +no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in +some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all +his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red +thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what +followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream. +</p> + +<p> +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty. +Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence +than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam +gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a +foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the +lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an +abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the +light, and also something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was +the poet Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword +in hand for his foe. +</p> + +<p> +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more formally returned. +</p> + +<p> +“I was waiting for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a +moment’s conversation?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. +</p> + +<p> +“About <i>this</i> and <i>this</i>,” he cried; “about order +and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and +barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself—there is +anarchy, splendid in green and gold.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the same,” replied Syme patiently, “just at present you +only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see +the lamp by the light of the tree.” Then after a pause he said, +“But may I ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only to +resume our little argument?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, +“I did not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for +ever.” +</p> + +<p> +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, listened +instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a smooth voice and with a +rather bewildering smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme,” he said, “this evening you succeeded in doing +something rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of woman +has ever succeeded in doing before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +“Now I remember,” resumed Gregory reflectively, “one other +person succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I remember +correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry,” replied Syme with gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out +even with an apology,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could +wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one +way by which that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am going, at +the possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to <i>prove</i> to you that you +were wrong in what you said.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what I said?” +</p> + +<p> +“You said I was not serious about being an anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are degrees of seriousness,” replied Syme. “I have +never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought +what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up +to a neglected truth.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. +</p> + +<p> +“And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me serious? You +think me a <i>flâneur</i> who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think +that in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. +</p> + +<p> +“Serious!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street serious? Are +these damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One comes +here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, but I should +think very little of a man who didn’t keep something in the background of +his life that was more serious than all this talking—something more +serious, whether it was religion or only drink.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Gregory, his face darkening, “you shall see +something more serious than either drink or religion.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again opened +his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you have +one?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Syme with a beaming smile, “we are all Catholics +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion +involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any son of +Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! If you will take +upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent to burden your soul +with a vow that you should never make and a knowledge you should never dream +about, I will promise you in return—” +</p> + +<p> +“You will promise me in return?” inquired Syme, as the other +paused. +</p> + +<p> +“I will promise you a very entertaining evening.” Syme suddenly +took off his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Your offer,” he said, “is far too idiotic to be declined. +You say that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least +that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a +Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I will not +report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And now, in the name of +Colney Hatch, what is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, “that we +will call a cab.” +</p> + +<p> +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the road. The two +got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap the address of an obscure +public-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. The cab whisked itself away +again, and in it these two fantastics quitted their fantastic town. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br> +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME</h2> + +<p> +The cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, into which +Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated themselves in a close and +dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden table with one wooden leg. The +room was so small and dark, that very little could be seen of the attendant who +was summoned, beyond a vague and dark impression of something bulky and +bearded. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take a little supper?” asked Gregory politely. “The +<i>pâté de foie gras</i> is not good here, but I can recommend the game.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. Accepting +the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred indifference— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise.” +</p> + +<p> +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said “Certainly, +sir!” and went away apparently to get it. +</p> + +<p> +“What will you drink?” resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. “I shall only have a <i>crême de menthe</i> myself; I +have dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you with a +half-bottle of Pommery at least?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” said the motionless Syme. “You are very +good.” +</p> + +<p> +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in themselves, were +cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the actual appearance of the lobster. +Syme tasted it, and found it particularly good. Then he suddenly began to eat +with great rapidity and appetite. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!” he said to Gregory, +smiling. “I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this. It +is new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly the other +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not asleep, I assure you,” said Gregory. “You are, +on the contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your existence. +Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be a slight +disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements of this excellent +hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. But that is all our modesty. +We are the most modest men that ever lived on earth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who are <i>we?</i>” asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite simple,” replied Gregory. “<i>We</i> are the +serious anarchists, in whom you do not believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Syme shortly. “You do yourselves well in +drinks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we are serious about everything,” answered Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +Then after a pause he added— +</p> + +<p> +“If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, +don’t put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don’t wish +you to do yourself an injustice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,” replied Syme with perfect +calm; “but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. May +I smoke?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly!” said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. “Try one +of mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his +waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long cloud +of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed these rites with +so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the table at which he +sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane +seance. +</p> + +<p> +“You must not mind it,” said Gregory; “it’s a kind of +screw.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said Syme placidly, “a kind of screw. How simple +that is!” +</p> + +<p> +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering across the room +in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory chimney, and the two, +with their chairs and table, shot down through the floor as if the earth had +swallowed them. They went rattling down a kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as +a lift cut loose, and they came with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But when +Gregory threw open a pair of doors and let in a red subterranean light, Syme +was still smoking with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a +yellow hair. +</p> + +<p> +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was the red +light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a fireplace, fixed +over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there was a sort of hatchway or +grating, and on this Gregory struck five times. A heavy voice with a foreign +accent asked him who he was. To this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, +“Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” The heavy hinges began to move; it was +obviously some kind of password. +</p> + +<p> +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a network of +steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering pattern was really made +up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers, closely packed or interlocked. +</p> + +<p> +“I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities,” said Gregory; +“we have to be very strict here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t apologise,” said Syme. “I know your passion +for law and order,” and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel +weapons. With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a +singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining avenue of +death. +</p> + +<p> +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a queer +steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but presenting, +with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a scientific +lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this apartment, but round +the walls of it were hung more dubious and dreadful shapes, things that looked +like the bulbs of iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and +the very room itself seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar +ash off against the wall, and went in. +</p> + +<p> +“And now, my dear Mr. Syme,” said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, “now we are quite +cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give you any notion of +why I brought you here. It was one of those quite arbitrary emotions, like +jumping off a cliff or falling in love. Suffice it to say that you were an +inexpressibly irritating fellow, and, to do you justice, you are still. I would +break twenty oaths of secrecy for the pleasure of taking you down a peg. That +way you have of lighting a cigar would make a priest break the seal of +confession. Well, you said that you were quite certain I was not a serious +anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?” +</p> + +<p> +“It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety,” assented Syme; +“but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me +information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a +promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in +mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all +about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?” +</p> + +<p> +“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. +“We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; +that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those +arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which +mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution +talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have +abolished Right and Wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eagerness, “I +hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke of a second question,” snapped Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +“With pleasure,” resumed Syme. “In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt who lived +over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people living from +preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it +without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You +surround yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say so, +more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to +barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole +secret by talking about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron Park?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“The answer is simple,” he said. “I told you I was a serious +anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do <i>they</i> believe me. Unless I +took them into this infernal room they would not believe me.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went on. +</p> + +<p> +“The history of the thing might amuse you,” he said. “When +first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our +anarchist pamphlets, in <i>Superstition the Vampire</i> and <i>Priests of +Prey</i>. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and +terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When +on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a +voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! presumptuous human reason!’ they +found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. +Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much +intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a +major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual +breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire +violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw +myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out +‘Blood!’ abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, +‘Let the weak perish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems majors +don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the +President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in +Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is his name?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“You would not know it,” answered Gregory. “That is his +greatness. Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and +they <i>were</i> heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and +he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with him +without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been children in his +hands.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed— +</p> + +<p> +“But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an +epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said to him, +‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more +respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large but +indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a dress +which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would ever look for +a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. ‘Why, +then, dress up as an <i>anarchist</i>, you fool!’ he roared so that the +room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous +then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took +his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those +women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their +perambulators.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You took me in,” he said. “It is really a smart +dodge.” +</p> + +<p> +Then after a pause he added— +</p> + +<p> +“What do you call this tremendous President of yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“We generally call him Sunday,” replied Gregory with simplicity. +“You see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist Council, and +they are named after days of the week. He is called Sunday, by some of his +admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you should mention the matter, because +the very night you have dropped in (if I may so express it) is the night on +which our London branch, which assembles in this room, has to elect its own +deputy to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman who has for some time +past played, with propriety and general applause, the difficult part of +Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, we have called a meeting this +very evening to elect a successor.” +</p> + +<p> +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of smiling +embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +“I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme,” he continued +casually. “I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have +promised to tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something that I would +not say in so many words to the anarchists who will be coming to the room in +about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go through a form of election; but I +don’t mind telling you that it is practically certain what the result +will be.” He looked down for a moment modestly. “It is almost a +settled thing that I am to be Thursday.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow.” said Syme heartily, “I congratulate you. A +great career!” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking rapidly. +</p> + +<p> +“As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table,” he +said, “and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, a large +Colt’s revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of brandy. Over +the chair, beside the table, was thrown a heavy-looking cape or cloak. +</p> + +<p> +“I have only to get the form of election finished,” continued +Gregory with animation, “then I snatch up this cloak and stick, stuff +these other things into my pocket, step out of a door in this cavern, which +opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug already waiting for me, and +then—then—oh, the wild joy of being Thursday!” And he clasped +his hands. +</p> + +<p> +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, got to his +feet with an unusual air of hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Why is it,” he asked vaguely, “that I think you are quite a +decent fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?” He paused a +moment, and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, “Is it because you +are such an ass?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out— +</p> + +<p> +“Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been in in +my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave you a promise +before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under red-hot pincers. +Would you give me, for my own safety, a little promise of the same kind?” +</p> + +<p> +“A promise?” asked Gregory, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme very seriously, “a promise. I swore before +God that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by +Humanity, or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my +secret to the anarchists?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your secret?” asked the staring Gregory. “Have you got a +secret?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a +pause, “Will you swear?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about you. +Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell me. But look +sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his long, +grey trousers’ pockets. Almost as he did so there came five knocks on the +outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the first of the conspirators. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you +the truth more shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as an +aimless poet is not confined to you or your President. We have known the dodge +for some time at Scotland Yard.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say?” he asked in an inhuman voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme simply, “I am a police detective. But I +think I hear your friends coming.” +</p> + +<p> +From the doorway there came a murmur of “Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.” +It was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the crowd of +Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard trampling down the +corridor. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br> +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY</h2> + +<p> +Before one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, Gregory’s +stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the table with a bound, and +a noise in his throat like a wild beast. He caught up the Colt’s revolver +and took aim at Syme. Syme did not flinch, but he put up a pale and polite +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be such a silly man,” he said, with the effeminate +dignity of a curate. “Don’t you see it’s not necessary? +Don’t you see that we’re both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly +sea-sick.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he looked his +question. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you see we’ve checkmated each other?” cried +Syme. “I can’t tell the police you are an anarchist. You +can’t tell the anarchists I’m a policeman. I can only watch you, +knowing what you are; you can only watch me, knowing what I am. In short, +it’s a lonely, intellectual duel, my head against yours. I’m a +policeman deprived of the help of the police. You, my poor fellow, are an +anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organisation which is so +essential to anarchy. The one solitary difference is in your favour. You are +not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am surrounded by inquisitive +anarchists. I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait +and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he were a +sea-monster. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe in immortality,” he said at last, “but +if, after all this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only for +you, to howl in for ever.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not break my word,” said Syme sternly, “nor will you +break yours. Here are your friends.” +</p> + +<p> +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a slouching and +somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a black beard and glasses—a +man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim Healy—detached himself, and bustled +forward with some papers in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory,” he said, “I suppose this man is a +delegate?” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of Syme; but Syme +replied almost pertly— +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it hard +for anyone to be here who was not a delegate.” +</p> + +<p> +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still contracted +with something like suspicion. +</p> + +<p> +“What branch do you represent?” he asked sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“I should hardly call it a branch,” said Syme, laughing; “I +should call it at the very least a root.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is,” said Syme serenely, “the truth is I am a +Sabbatarian. I have been specially sent here to see that you show a due +observance of Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear went over all +the faces of the group. Evidently the awful President, whose name was Sunday, +did sometimes send down such irregular ambassadors to such branch meetings. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, comrade,” said the man with the papers after a pause, +“I suppose we’d better give you a seat in the meeting?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you ask my advice as a friend,” said Syme with severe +benevolence, “I think you’d better.” +</p> + +<p> +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety for his +rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful thought. He was, indeed, +in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear that Syme’s inspired impudence was +likely to bring him out of all merely accidental dilemmas. Little was to be +hoped from them. He could not himself betray Syme, partly from honour, but +partly also because, if he betrayed him and for some reason failed to destroy +him, the Syme who escaped would be a Syme freed from all obligation of secrecy, +a Syme who would simply walk to the nearest police station. After all, it was +only one night’s discussion, and only one detective who would know of it. +He would let out as little as possible of their plans that night, and then let +Syme go, and chance it. +</p> + +<p> +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already distributing +itself along the benches. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is time we began,” he said; “the steam-tug is +waiting on the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the +chair.” +</p> + +<p> +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the papers slipped +into the presidential seat. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, “our meeting +tonight is important, though it need not be long. This branch has always had +the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We have +elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease of the +heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you know, his services +to the cause were considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of +Brighton which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on +the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he +died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute +for milk, which beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to +the cow. Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. But +it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a harder task. It is +difficult properly to praise his qualities, but it is more difficult to replace +them. Upon you, comrades, it devolves this evening to choose out of the company +present the man who shall be Thursday. If any comrade suggests a name I will +put it to the vote. If no comrade suggests a name, I can only tell myself that +that dear dynamiter, who is gone from us, has carried into the unknowable +abysses the last secret of his virtue and his innocence.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes heard in +church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable white beard, perhaps +the only real working-man present, rose lumberingly and said— +</p> + +<p> +“I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday,” and sat +lumberingly down again. +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone second?” asked the chairman. +</p> + +<p> +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. +</p> + +<p> +“Before I put the matter to the vote,” said the chairman, “I +will call on Comrade Gregory to make a statement.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly pale, so that +by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. But he was smiling and +altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, and he saw his best policy quite +plain in front of him like a white road. His best chance was to make a softened +and ambiguous speech, such as would leave on the detective’s mind the +impression that the anarchist brotherhood was a very mild affair after all. He +believed in his own literary power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades and +picking perfect words. He thought that with care he could succeed, in spite of +all the people around him, in conveying an impression of the institution, +subtly and delicately false. Syme had once thought that anarchists, under all +their bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of +peril, make Syme think so again? +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, +“it is not necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your +policy also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has been +utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. Those who talk +about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and anywhere to get their +information, except to us, except to the fountain head. They learn about +anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from +tradesmen’s newspapers; they learn about anarchists from <i>Ally +Sloper’s Half-Holiday</i> and the <i>Sporting Times</i>. They never learn +about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the mountainous +slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end of Europe to another. The +man who has always heard that we are walking plagues has never heard our reply. +I know that he will not hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the +roof. For it is deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to +assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by some +incredible accident, there were here tonight a man who all his life had thus +immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question to him: ‘When those +Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of moral reputation had they in +the streets above? What tales were told of their atrocities by one educated +Roman to another? Suppose’ (I would say to him), ‘suppose that we +are only repeating that still mysterious paradox of history. Suppose we seem as +shocking as the Christians because we are really as harmless as the Christians. +Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as +meek.”’ +</p> + +<p> +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually growing +fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the +man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice— +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not meek!” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is +not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; +his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But +only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep +foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for +himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come +too late. We are simple, as they revere simple—look at Comrade +Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest—look at me. We are +merciful—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. +</p> + +<p> +“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the +early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused of +eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—” +</p> + +<p> +“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, +“is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at +any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +“there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a +body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of that +body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as assassins and +enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral courage and quiet +intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of brotherhood and +simplicity.” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The silence +was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an automaton, and said in a +colourless voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?” +</p> + +<p> +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and Comrade +Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick beard. By +the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have been put and carried. +But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet +and said in a small and quiet voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.” +</p> + +<p> +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the voice. Mr. +Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these first formal words +in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he made his next word ring and +volley in the vault as if one of the guns had gone off. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of +his boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live underground like rats +in order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to while +eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with weapons and +bar that door with death lest anyone should come and hear Comrade Gregory +saying to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’ ‘Honesty is +the best policy,’ and ‘Virtue is its own reward’? There was +not a word in Comrade Gregory’s address to which a curate could not have +listened with pleasure (hear, hear). But I am not a curate (loud cheers), and I +did not listen to it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The man who is fitted to +make a good curate is not fitted to make a resolute, forcible, and efficient +Thursday (hear, hear). +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we are +not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of society, and +so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of society, for society is +the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear). +Comrade Gregory has told us (apologetically again) that we are not murderers. +There I agree. We are not murderers, we are executioners (cheers).” +</p> + +<p> +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face idiotic with +astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay parted, and he said, with an +automatic and lifeless distinctness— +</p> + +<p> +“You damnable hypocrite!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale blue ones, and +said with dignity— +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do that I +am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. I do not mince +words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit to be Thursday +for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be Thursday because of his +amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with +a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, +neither is it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade +Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of Europe, because +the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has forgotten modesty as much as +he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed +cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as +I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the wall; +and I say that rather than have Gregory and his milk-and-water methods on the +Supreme Council, I would offer myself for election—” +</p> + +<p> +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The faces, that +had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his tirade grew more and more +uncompromising, were now distorted with grins of anticipation or cloven with +delighted cries. At the moment when he announced himself as ready to stand for +the post of Thursday, a roar of excitement and assent broke forth, and became +uncontrollable, and at the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam +upon his mouth, and shouted against the shouting. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop, you blasted madmen!” he cried, at the top of a voice that +tore his throat. “Stop, you—” +</p> + +<p> +But louder than Gregory’s shouting and louder than the roar of the room +came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless thunder— +</p> + +<p> +“I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the priest who +says these men are the enemies of religion, to the judge who says these men are +the enemies of law, to the fat parliamentarian who says these men are the +enemies of order and public decency, to all these I will reply, ‘You are +false kings, but you are true prophets. I am come to destroy you, and to fulfil +your prophecies.’” +</p> + +<p> +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased Witherspoon had +jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and had said— +</p> + +<p> +“I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the +post.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. “Stop it, it is all—” +</p> + +<p> +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. +</p> + +<p> +“Does anyone second this amendment?” he said. A tall, tired man, +with melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on the back bench +to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been screaming for some time past; +now there was a change in his accent, more shocking than any scream. “I +end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as stone. +“This man cannot be elected. He is a—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, quite motionless, “what is he?” +Gregory’s mouth worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began +to crawl back into his dead face. </p> +<p>“He is a man quite inexperienced in our +work,” he said, and sat down abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard was again +upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American monotone— +</p> + +<p> +“I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme.” +</p> + +<p> +“The amendment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. +</p> + +<p> +“The question is that Comrade Syme—” +</p> + +<p> +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” he cried out, “I am not a madman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh!” said Mr. Witherspoon. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not a madman,” reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, “but I give you a counsel which +you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a counsel, for I can give +you no reason for it. I will call it a command. Call it a mad command, but act +upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do not elect this +man.” Truth is so terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment +Syme’s slender and insane victory swayed like a reed. But you could not +have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began— +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory commands—” +</p> + +<p> +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory— +</p> + +<p> +“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, “And you are not Thursday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in +an ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, “it is nothing to me whether +you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you will not take my +command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I throw myself at your feet. I +implore you. Do not elect this man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Comrade Gregory,” said the chairman after a painful pause, +“this is really not quite dignified.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a real +silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a man, and the +chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly started again— +</p> + +<p> +“The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of Thursday on +the General Council.” +</p> + +<p> +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three minutes +afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, was elected to the +post of Thursday on the General Council of the Anarchists of Europe. +</p> + +<p> +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, the +sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant the election +was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the paper proving his +election, they all sprang to their feet, and the fiery groups moved and mixed +in the room. Syme found himself, somehow or other, face to face with Gregory, +who still regarded him with a stare of stunned hatred. They were silent for +many minutes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a devil!” said Gregory at last. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are a gentleman,” said Syme with gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“It was you that entrapped me,” began Gregory, shaking from head to +foot, “entrapped me into—” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk sense,” said Syme shortly. “Into what sort of +devils’ parliament have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made +me swear before I made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But +what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us +in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and +death,” and he pulled the great cloak about his shoulders and picked up +the flask from the table. +</p> + +<p> +“The boat is quite ready,” said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. “Be +good enough to step this way.” +</p> + +<p> +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a short, +iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following feverishly at their +heels. At the end of the passage was a door, which Buttons opened sharply, +showing a sudden blue and silver picture of the moonlit river, that looked like +a scene in a theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, dwarfish steam-launch, +like a baby dragon with one red eye. +</p> + +<p> +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the gaping +Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +“You have kept your word,” he said gently, with his face in shadow. +“You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even down to +a small particular. There was one special thing you promised me at the +beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” cried the chaotic Gregory. “What did I +promise you?” +</p> + +<p> +“A very entertaining evening,” said Syme, and he made a military +salute with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br> +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE</h2> + +<p> +Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was +really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy +hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too +conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He +had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous +and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in +which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles +always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt +to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and +self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the +child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink +between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy +dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more +did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the +former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached +the point of defending cannibalism. +</p> + +<p> +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel +had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing +left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these +fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too fierce to be +sensible. His hatred of modern lawlessness had been crowned also by an +accident. It happened that he was walking in a side street at the instant of a +dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, the +smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. After that he went +about as usual—quiet, courteous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on +his mind that was not sane. He did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as +a handful of morbid men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded +them as a huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. +</p> + +<p> +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets a torrent +of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of this deluge of barbaric +denial. But he seemed to be getting no nearer his enemy, and, what was worse, +no nearer a living. As he paced the Thames embankment, bitterly biting a cheap +cigar and brooding on the advance of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with a +bomb in his pocket so savage or so solitary as he. Indeed, he always felt that +Government stood alone and desperate, with its back to the wall. He was too +quixotic to have cared for it otherwise. +</p> + +<p> +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river +reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was +so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water +almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a +stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean +country. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black chimney-pot hat; +he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, black and ragged; and the +combination gave him the look of the early villains in Dickens and Bulwer +Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when +they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A +long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between +his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen of +the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was why a +policeman on the Embankment spoke to him, and said “Good evening.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the mere +stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the twilight. +</p> + +<p> +“A good evening is it?” he said sharply. “You fellows would +call the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that +bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt and +shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking out for +some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen are cruel to the +poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your +calm.” +</p> + +<p> +“If we are calm,” replied the policeman, “it is the calm of +organised resistance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said Syme, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the +policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this +undenominational education?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the policeman sadly, “I never had any of those +advantages. The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very +rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, at Harrow,” said the policeman +</p> + +<p> +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in so many +men, broke out of Syme before he could control them. +</p> + +<p> +“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a +policeman!” +</p> + +<p> +The policeman sighed and shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said solemnly, “I know I am not worthy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why did you join the police?” asked Syme with rude curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“For much the same reason that you abused the police,” replied the +other. “I found that there was a special opening in the service for those +whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the aberrations of the +scientific intellect than with the normal and excusable, though excessive, +outbreaks of the human will. I trust I make myself clear.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you mean that you make your opinion clear,” said Syme, “I +suppose you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. +How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on the +Thames embankment?” +</p> + +<p> +“You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police +system,” replied the other. “I am not surprised at it. We are +keeping it rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains +most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in the right frame of mind. I +think you might almost join us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Join you in what?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the +situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated +detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely intellectual +conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation. He is +certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade +against the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of +policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch +the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a +controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value +of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would +obviously be undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation +which is also a heresy hunt.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you do, then?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, +“is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. +The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic +tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a +ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of +sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those +dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and +intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at +Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart +young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much +connection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, +“but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of +the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick +of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant +and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We +deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous +criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning +princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated +criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless +modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially +moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; +they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the +property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But +philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea +of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go +through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But +philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they +merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the +sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life +itself, their own as much as other people’s.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck his hands together. +</p> + +<p> +“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my +boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a +bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that +if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is +then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but +not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But +the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. +Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are +really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon +the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of +powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The +moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a +right to punish anybody else.” +</p> + +<p> +“But this is absurd!” cried the policeman, clasping his hands with +an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, “but it is +intolerable! I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re +wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. +Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment more, +and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with +the last heroes of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a chance not to be missed, certainly,” assented Syme, +“but still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the +modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, +beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing with each +other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is +this anarchy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not confuse it,” replied the constable, “with those +chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the +outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement, +consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer ring +the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring +the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer +ring—the main mass of their supporters—are merely anarchists; that +is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. +They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the +system that has called it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the +punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They +believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as +blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket +he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent +section.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Naturally, therefore, these people talk about ‘a happy time +coming’; ‘the paradise of the future’; ‘mankind freed +from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,’ and so on. And so +also the men of the inner circle speak—the sacred priesthood. They also +speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed +at last. But in their mouths”—and the policeman lowered his +voice—“in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. +They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon +this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they +mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or +wrong, they mean the grave. +</p> + +<p> +“They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The +innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the +king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of passion. +</p> + +<p> +“I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment,” said the +policeman, “as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of the +chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or rather, I +should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can talk to him if you +like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Telephone?” inquired Syme, with interest. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the policeman placidly, “he has a fancy for always +sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come +along.” +</p> + +<p> +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a +side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew +what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four +intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt +blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary +darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly +stone-blind. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice. +</p> + +<p> +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the +gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; +and second, that the man had his back to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to +have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable +phrase. +</p> + +<p> +“I really have no experience,” he began. +</p> + +<p> +“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle +of Armageddon.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I am really unfit—” +</p> + +<p> +“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession +of which mere willingness is the final test.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” said the other—“martyrs. I am condemning you to +death. Good day.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson light of +evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless cloak, he came out a +member of the New Detective Corps for the frustration of the great conspiracy. +Acting under the advice of his friend the policeman (who was professionally +inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad +himself in an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow +flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and rather +insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in the little garden of +Saffron Park. Before he finally left the police premises his friend provided +him with a small blue card, on which was written, “The Last +Crusade,” and a number, the sign of his official authority. He put this +carefully in his upper waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to +track and fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his +adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a +February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent Thames, +armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday of the Central +Council of Anarchists. +</p> + +<p> +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation of +stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the landscape of a +new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet. This was mainly due to +the insane yet solid decision of that evening, though partly also to an entire +change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two +hours before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had +been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong +and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. +It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. +</p> + +<p> +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as of that +disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so +that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some +other and emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he +felt this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own chivalric +folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the common things he carried +with him—the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol—took on +exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a +gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the +brandy-flask, though in themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, +became the expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick became +almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the stirrup-cup. For +even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler +figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon +without St. George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was +only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme’s +exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as +empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because +there is a man in the moon. +</p> + +<p> +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went comparatively slowly. +The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the time that they +passed Battersea, and when they came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day +had already begun to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead, +showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire when the tug, +changing its onward course, turned inward to a large landing stage rather +beyond Charing Cross. +</p> + +<p> +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic as Syme +looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white dawn. They +made him feel that he was landing on the colossal steps of some Egyptian +palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his mood, for he was, in his own mind, +mounting to attack the solid thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt +out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, +amid the enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and turned +up stream. They had never spoken a word. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br> +THE FEAST OF FEAR</h2> + +<p> +At first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid; but +before he reached the top he had realised that there was a man leaning over the +parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the river. As a figure he was +quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type +of fashion; he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him +step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to +notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and +intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the very +point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost +seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best +shaven—clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer and +closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. +</p> + +<p> +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was meant to +meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concluded that he was not. +And now again he had come back to a certainty that the man had something to do +with his mad adventure. For the man remained more still than would have been +natural if a stranger had come so close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, +and got on the nerves somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again and again at +the pale, dignified and delicate face, and the face still looked blankly across +the river. Then he took out of his pocket the note from Buttons proving his +election, and put it before that sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, +and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right +cheek and down in the left. +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people +have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. +But in all Syme’s circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand +and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving +in it. +</p> + +<p> +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic face. And +there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went wrong. +</p> + +<p> +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man’s face dropped at once +into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further explanation or +inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. +</p> + +<p> +“If we walk up towards Leicester Square,” he said, “we shall +just be in time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. +Have you had any sleep?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor have I,” answered the man in an ordinary tone. “I shall +try to get to bed after breakfast.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that contradicted +the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all friendly words were to +him lifeless conveniences, and that his only life was hate. After a pause the +man spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that can be +told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last notion of the +President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case you +don’t know, I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion +of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary +lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell underground, just as +your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary +restaurant. He said that if you didn’t seem to be hiding nobody hunted +you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really +think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For now we +flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on a balcony—on +a balcony, if you please—overlooking Leicester Square.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do the people say?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s quite simple what they say,” answered his guide. +“They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are +anarchists.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me a very clever idea,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!” cried out the other in +a sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his crooked +smile. “When you’ve seen Sunday for a split second you’ll +leave off calling him clever.” +</p> + +<p> +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early sunlight +filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I suppose, why this square +itself should look so alien and in some ways so continental. It will never be +known whether it was the foreign look that attracted the foreigners or the +foreigners who gave it the foreign look. But on this particular morning the +effect seemed singularly bright and clear. Between the open square and the +sunlit leaves and the statue and the Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it +looked the replica of some French or even Spanish public place. And this effect +increased in Syme the sensation, which in many shapes he had had through the +whole adventure, the eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world. As a +fact, he had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square ever since he was a boy. +But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the Moorish cupolas, he +could have sworn that he was turning into an unknown Place de something or +other in some foreign town. +</p> + +<p> +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a prosperous but +quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street behind. In the wall there +was one large French window, probably the window of a large coffee-room; and +outside this window, almost literally overhanging the square, was a formidably +buttressed balcony, big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did +contain a dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and round the +breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to the street, were a +group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with +white waistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of their jokes could almost +be heard across the square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnatural smile, +and Syme knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secret conclave of +the European Dynamiters. +</p> + +<p> +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had not seen +before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large to see. At the +nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective, was +the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme had seen him, his first +thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His +vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite +incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original proportions, +like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white +hair, as seen from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that +stood out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to +scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the +other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were +still sitting there as before with their flowers and frock-coats, but now it +looked as if the big man was entertaining five children to tea. +</p> + +<p> +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waiter came out +smiling with every tooth in his head. +</p> + +<p> +“The gentlemen are up there, sare,” he said. “They do talk +and they do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze +king.” +</p> + +<p> +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleased with the +singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost filled +and broke the balcony was the great President of whom the others stood in awe. +He knew it was so, with an unaccountable but instantaneous certainty. Syme, +indeed, was one of those men who are open to all the more nameless +psychological influences in a degree a little dangerous to mental health. +Utterly devoid of fear in physical dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive +to the smell of spiritual evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning +things had peeped out at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of +drawing nearer and nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this sense became +overpowering as he drew nearer to the great President. +</p> + +<p> +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked across the +inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday grew larger and +larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he was quite close the face +would be too big to be possible, and that he would scream aloud. He remembered +that as a child he would not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, +because it was a face, and so large. +</p> + +<p> +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to an empty +seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted him with +good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He sobered himself a +little by looking at their conventional coats and solid, shining coffee-pot; +then he looked again at Sunday. His face was very large, but it was still +possible to humanity. +</p> + +<p> +In the presence of the President the whole company looked sufficiently +commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at first, except that by the +President’s caprice they had been dressed up with a festive +respectability, which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast. One man +indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He at least was the common or +garden Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar and satin tie that +were the uniform of the occasion; but out of this collar there sprang a head +quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a bewildering bush of brown hair and +beard that almost obscured the eyes like those of a Skye terrier. But the eyes +did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some Russian serf. +The effect of this figure was not terrible like that of the President, but it +had every diablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that +stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it +could not have been a more idiotic contrast. +</p> + +<p> +The man’s name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle +of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably tragic; he +could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous part demanded of +him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came in the President, with +that daring disregard of public suspicion which was his policy, was actually +chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume conventional graces. +</p> + +<p> +“Our friend Tuesday,” said the President in a deep voice at once of +quietude and volume, “our friend Tuesday doesn’t seem to grasp the +idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul to +behave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now if a +gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need know +that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, +and then goes about on his hands and knees—well, he may attract +attention. That’s what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and +knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he finds it quite +difficult to walk upright.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not good at concealment,” said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; “I am not ashamed of the cause.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you,” said the +President good-naturedly. “You hide as much as anybody; but you +can’t do it, you see, you’re such an ass! You try to combine two +inconsistent methods. When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will +probably pause to note the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in +a top hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even +to forget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin’s +bed—” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not good at deception,” said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. +</p> + +<p> +“Right, my boy, right,” said the President with a ponderous +heartiness, “you aren’t good at anything.” +</p> + +<p> +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more steadily at +the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his sense of something +spiritually queer return. +</p> + +<p> +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and costume, with +the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he +began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, +a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly +disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. +Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth +glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor +he could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and presence +would look, with the additional twist given in a false and curved mirror. +</p> + +<p> +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed eccentricity. +Syme’s original cicerone bore the title of Monday; he was the Secretary +of the Council, and his twisted smile was regarded with more terror than +anything, except the President’s horrible, happy laughter. But now that +Syme had more space and light to observe him, there were other touches. His +fine face was so emaciated, that Syme thought it must be wasted with some +disease; yet somehow the very distress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no +physical ill that troubled him. His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, +as if pure thought was pain. +</p> + +<p> +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and differently wrong. +Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed Gogol, a man more obviously mad. +Next was Wednesday, a certain Marquis de St. Eustache, a sufficiently +characteristic figure. The first few glances found nothing unusual about him, +except that he was the only man at table who wore the fashionable clothes as if +they were really his own. He had a black French beard cut square and a black +English frock-coat cut even squarer. But Syme, sensitive to such things, felt +somehow that the man carried a rich atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that +suffocated. It reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying lamps in +the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his being clad, +not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his black seemed richer and +warmer than the black shades about him, as if it were compounded of profound +colour. His black coat looked as if it were only black by being too dense a +purple. His black beard looked as if it were only black by being too deep a +blue. And in the gloom and thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed +sensual and scornful. Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he might be a +Jew; he might be something deeper yet in the dark heart of the East. In the +bright coloured Persian tiles and pictures showing tyrants hunting, you may see +just those almond eyes, those blue-black beards, those cruel, crimson lips. +</p> + +<p> +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who still kept the +chair of Friday, though every day it was expected that his death would leave it +empty. Save for his intellect, he was in the last dissolution of senile decay. +His face was as grey as his long grey beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed +finally in a furrow of mild despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, +did the bridegroom brilliancy of the morning dress express a more painful +contrast. For the red flower in his button-hole showed up against a face that +was literally discoloured like lead; the whole hideous effect was as if some +drunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose or sat down, +which was with long labour and peril, something worse was expressed than mere +weakness, something indefinably connected with the horror of the whole scene. +It did not express decrepitude merely, but corruption. Another hateful fancy +crossed Syme’s quivering mind. He could not help thinking that whenever +the man moved a leg or arm might fall off. +</p> + +<p> +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most +baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face +clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had that +combination of <i>savoir-faire</i> with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which +is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes with confidence +rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever +odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It +may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but +those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered +ugly tales, of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead. +Syme’s eye always caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the +dying Professor worn them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been +appropriate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. +They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or his +gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had a vulgar virility +wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme that he might be the wickedest +of all those wicked men. Syme even had the thought that his eyes might be +covered up because they were too frightful to see. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br> +THE EXPOSURE</h2> + +<p> +Such were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again and again Syme +strove to pull together his common sense in their presence. Sometimes he saw +for an instant that these notions were subjective, that he was only looking at +ordinary men, one of whom was old, another nervous, another short-sighted. The +sense of an unnatural symbolism always settled back on him again. Each figure +seemed to be, somehow, on the borderland of things, just as their theory was on +the borderland of thought. He knew that each one of these men stood at the +extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning. He could only fancy, +as in some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the world +he would find something—say a tree—that was more or less than a +tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the +world he would find something else that was not wholly itself—a tower, +perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures seemed to stand +up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate horizon, visions from the +verge. The ends of the earth were closing in. +</p> + +<p> +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not the least of +the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the contrast between the +easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible purport. They were deep in +the discussion of an actual and immediate plot. The waiter downstairs had +spoken quite correctly when he said that they were talking about bombs and +kings. Only three days afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the +French Republic in Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their sunny +balcony these beaming gentlemen had decided how both should die. Even the +instrument was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it appeared, was to carry the +bomb. +</p> + +<p> +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime would +have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mystical tremors. He would +have thought of nothing but the need of saving at least two human bodies from +being ripped in pieces with iron and roaring gas. But the truth was that by +this time he had begun to feel a third kind of fear, more piercing and +practical than either his moral revulsion or his social responsibility. Very +simply, he had no fear to spare for the French President or the Czar; he had +begun to fear for himself. Most of the talkers took little heed of him, +debating now with their faces closer together, and almost uniformly grave, save +when for an instant the smile of the Secretary ran aslant across his face as +the jagged lightning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent +thing which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. The President was +always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and baffling interest. The +enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes stood out of his head. And they +were always fixed on Syme. +</p> + +<p> +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President’s eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had +hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday +had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and +saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright +railings and the sunlit trees. +</p> + +<p> +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him for many +days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were the princes +of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and fanciful figure of the poet +Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old +kindness, as if they had played together when children. But he remembered that +he was still tied to Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never to do +the very thing that he now felt himself almost in the act of doing. He had +promised not to jump over that balcony and speak to that policeman. He took his +cold hand off the cold stone balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral +indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous +society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. +He had, on the other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered +inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very +intellect was a torture-chamber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw +the comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever +he looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly +studying him with big, unbearable eyes. +</p> + +<p> +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that never crossed +his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt that the President and his +Council could crush him if he continued to stand alone. The place might be +public, the project might seem impossible. But Sunday was not the man who would +carry himself thus easily without having, somehow or somewhere, set open his +iron trap. Either by anonymous poison or sudden street accident, by hypnotism +or by fire from hell, Sunday could certainly strike him. If he defied the man +he was probably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long afterwards +as by an innocent ailment. If he called in the police promptly, arrested +everyone, told all, and set against them the whole energy of England, he would +probably escape; certainly not otherwise. They were a balconyful of gentlemen +overlooking a bright and busy square; but he felt no more safe with them than +if they had been a boatful of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. +</p> + +<p> +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to him to +be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of +intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this +oppression of a great personality. They might have called Sunday the super-man. +If any such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, with +his earth-shaking abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. He might have been +called something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be +detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood. But this +was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme +morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was +not quite coward enough to admire it. +</p> + +<p> +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were typical. Dr. +Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally of the best things on the +table—cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. But the Secretary was a +vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the projected murder over half a raw +tomato and three quarters of a glass of tepid water. The old Professor had such +slops as suggested a sickening second childhood. And even in this President +Sunday preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate like twenty +men; he ate incredibly, with a frightful freshness of appetite, so that it was +like watching a sausage factory. Yet continually, when he had swallowed a dozen +crumpets or drunk a quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on +one side staring at Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I have often wondered,” said the Marquis, taking a great bite out +of a slice of bread and jam, “whether it wouldn’t be better for me +to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a +knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and +wriggle it round.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are wrong,” said the Secretary, drawing his black brows +together. “The knife was merely the expression of the old personal +quarrel with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our +best symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of +the Christians. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even so, +thought only destroys because it broadens. A man’s brain is a +bomb,” he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking +his own skull with violence. “My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. +It must expand! It must expand! A man’s brain must expand, if it breaks +up the universe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want the universe broken up just yet,” drawled the +Marquis. “I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of +one yesterday in bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, if the only end of the thing is nothing,” said Dr. Bull with +his sphinx-like smile, “it hardly seems worth doing.” +</p> + +<p> +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Every man knows in his heart,” he said, “that nothing is +worth doing.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said— +</p> + +<p> +“We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is how +Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with the +original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should suggest that +tomorrow morning he should go first of all to—” +</p> + +<p> +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday had risen +to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. +</p> + +<p> +“Before we discuss that,” he said in a small, quiet voice, +“let us go into a private room. I have something very particular to +say.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come at last, +the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could hear the policeman +idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, was cold. +</p> + +<p> +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune. +Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle. He found +himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from nowhere. That +jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the vulgarity, and the irrational +valour of the poor, who in all those unclean streets were all clinging to the +decencies and the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of being a +policeman had faded from his mind; he did not think of himself as the +representative of the corps of gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of +the old eccentric who lived in the dark room. But he did feel himself as the +ambassador of all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day +marched into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in +being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the +monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all +their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He +felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave +man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that +he had neither the intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday; +but in that moment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the +muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed +up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong and that the +barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and +terrible truism in the song of Roland— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit,” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. This +liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness went with a quite clear +decision to embrace death. If the people of the barrel-organ could keep their +old-world obligations, so could he. This very pride in keeping his word was +that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these +lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could +not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the +energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and +rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of +death. +</p> + +<p> +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and into the rooms +behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all his brain and body +throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President led them down an irregular side +stair, such as might be used by servants, and into a dim, cold, empty room, +with a table and benches, like an abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, +he closed and locked the door. +</p> + +<p> +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting with +inarticulate grievance. +</p> + +<p> +“Zso! Zso!” he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. “You zay you nod ’ide. You zay +you show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk importance you run +yourselves in a dark box!” +</p> + +<p> +The President seemed to take the foreigner’s incoherent satire with +entire good humour. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t get hold of it yet, Gogol,” he said in a fatherly +way. “When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they +will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have +had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don’t seem to know anything about +mankind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I die for zem,” cried the Pole in thick excitement, “and I +slay zare oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would zmite +ze tyrant in ze open square.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see,” said the President, nodding kindly as he seated +himself at the top of a long table. “You die for mankind first, and then +you get up and smite their oppressors. So that’s all right. And now may I +ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit down with the other +gentlemen at this table. For the first time this morning something intelligent +is going to be said.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the original summons, +sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling in his brown beard about +gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to have any notion of the blow that was +about to fall. As for him, he had merely the feeling of a man mounting the +scaffold with the intention, at any rate, of making a good speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Comrades,” said the President, suddenly rising, “we have +spun out this farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you +something so simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs (long inured to +our levities) might hear some new seriousness in my voice. Comrades, we were +discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before saying anything else, +that those plans and places should not be voted by this meeting, but should be +left wholly in the control of some one reliable member. I suggest Comrade +Saturday, Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for the next +words, though not loud, had a living and sensational emphasis. Sunday struck +the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be mentioned in +this company.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it seemed as if he +had never really astonished them until now. They all moved feverishly in their +seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his hand in his pocket, and on +the handle of his loaded revolver. When the attack on him came he would sell +his life dear. He would find out at least if the President was mortal. +</p> + +<p> +Sunday went on smoothly— +</p> + +<p> +“You will probably understand that there is only one possible motive for +forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. Strangers overhearing us +matters nothing. They assume that we are joking. But what would matter, even +unto death, is this, that there should be one actually among us who is not of +us, who knows our grave purpose, but does not share it, who—” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. +</p> + +<p> +“It can’t be!” he cried, leaping. “There +can’t—” +</p> + +<p> +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of some +huge fish. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is +a traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. +</p> + +<p> +“His name is Gogol,” said the President. “He is that hairy +humbug over there who pretends to be a Pole.” +</p> + +<p> +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same flash three men +sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made an effort to rise. But Syme saw +little of the scene, for he was blinded with a beneficent darkness; he had sunk +down into his seat shuddering, in a palsy of passionate relief. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br> +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS</h2> + +<p> +“Sit down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in +his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. +</p> + +<p> +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person himself +resumed his seat. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my man,” said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, “will you oblige me by putting your hand in +your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?” +</p> + +<p> +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but he put +two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled out a blue strip +of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke up again to the world +outside him. For although the card lay at the other extreme of the table, and +he could read nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance +to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when +he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary. +</p> + +<p> +“Pathetic Slav,” said the President, “tragic child of Poland, +are you prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this +company—shall we say <i>de trop?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Right oh!” said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a +clear, commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of +foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken with a +Scotch accent. +</p> + +<p> +“I gather that you fully understand your position,” said Sunday. +</p> + +<p> +“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. +All I say is, I don’t believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like +I did his.” +</p> + +<p> +“I concede the point,” said Sunday. “I believe your own +accent to be inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind +leaving your beard with your card?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit,” answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert +face. “It was hot,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort +of brutal admiration, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. +Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me for +just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in torments. +Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, I shall have that +two and a half minutes of discomfort. On your discomfort I will not dwell. Good +day. Mind the step.” +</p> + +<p> +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet without +a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect nonchalance. Yet the +astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease was suddenly assumed; for +there was a slight stumble outside the door, which showed that the departing +detective had not minded the step. +</p> + +<p> +“Time is flying,” said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger than it +ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair at a +Humanitarian meeting.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. +</p> + +<p> +“Would it not be better,” he said a little sharply, “to +discuss further the details of our project, now that the spy has left +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I think not,” said the President with a yawn like an +unobtrusive earthquake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I +must be off. Breakfast here next Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the +Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime. +</p> + +<p> +“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. +“It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated +in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in the +actual presence of a traitor—” +</p> + +<p> +“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d +take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t +say. But it might.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. +</p> + +<p> +“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a +great many times. “That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to +understand. Why, you dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you +didn’t want to be overheard by a spy, didn’t you? How do you know +you aren’t overheard now?” +</p> + +<p> +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking with +incomprehensible scorn. +</p> + +<p> +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent glimmering of +his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it was it froze him +to the bone. If the last words of the President meant anything, they meant that +he had not after all passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not +denounce him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. +</p> + +<p> +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook themselves +elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday. The Professor +went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after the rest had gone, +revolving his strange position. He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still +under a cloud. At last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester +Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came +out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still +carried the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he +had thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, +perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be +slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the +doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser’s shop, the front window of +which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress. +</p> + +<p> +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found one +glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, stared out +instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably astonished to see, +standing quite still outside the shop and staring into the window, a man. His +top hat was loaded with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the white drift +was rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if nothing could tear +him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax doll in dirty evening +dress. That any human being should stand in such weather looking into such a +shop was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned +suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised that the man standing there was +the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for a person +of his years and infirmities. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this dehumanized +brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in +love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man’s +malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He +was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. +On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor’s +stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him +and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear of +the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could collect his +thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether he should or should +not keep faith with Gregory. +</p> + +<p> +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three streets, down +through two or three others, and entered a small Soho restaurant for lunch. He +partook reflectively of four small and quaint courses, drank half a bottle of +red wine, and ended up over black coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He +had taken his seat in the upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the +chink of knives and the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days +he had imagined that all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He +shuddered, remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the delightful +shame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar place, the faces of +natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven +Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless an +objective reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses and populous +streets lay between him and his last sight of the shameful seven; he was free +in free London, and drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier +action, he took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop +below. +</p> + +<p> +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the spot. At a +small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of snow, sat the +old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted livid face and +pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. +Then with a gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing +open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Can that old corpse be following me?” he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even such +leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk walking I +can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too fanciful? Was he +really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a fool as to send a lame +man?” +</p> + +<p> +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the direction +of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow increased, growing +blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to darken. The snow-flakes +tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. Getting into his eyes and beard, +they added their unremitting futility to his already irritated nerves; and by +the time that he had come at a swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, +he lost patience, and finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. +He ordered another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, +when Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty +and ordered a glass of milk. +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which +confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme, who +was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at a +conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had heard no wheels outside +the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man +could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He started up +and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, +and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus +going to the Bank went rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent +run of a hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the +splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the top. +When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind him a sort of +heavy and asthmatic breathing. +</p> + +<p> +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the omnibus steps +a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the shadow of its brim the +short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of Professor de Worms. He let himself +into a seat with characteristic care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the +mackintosh rug. +</p> + +<p> +Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every +uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question +that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of the body. He moved +by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless +the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even of a +practical existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after the +omnibus. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the wintry +sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He had repressed +an elemental impulse to leap over the side. +</p> + +<p> +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the little +courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a hole. He had a +vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box was really pursuing +him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he could soon throw him off the +scent. He dived in and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks +than thoroughfares; and by the time that he had completed about twenty +alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for +any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been +much, for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere +behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen +had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, +glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only +plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few hundred yards farther +on he stood still again to listen, his heart stood still also, for he heard +from that space of rugged stones the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the +infernal cripple. +</p> + +<p> +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in a darkness +and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each side of Syme the +walls of the alley were blind and featureless; there was no little window or +any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break out of this hive of houses, and +to get once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged +for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he +struck it much farther up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the +vast and void of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting in +the sky. +</p> + +<p> +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a pestilence +had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some degree of emptiness +was natural; first because the snow-storm was even dangerously deep, and +secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the +word was henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of +snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a +very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and +sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and +sinister colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, +that were just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But +right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and +upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, +still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just so +fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out +in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly +straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick an involuntary salute. +</p> + +<p> +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or slowly +behind him, and he did not care. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were +darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might have +captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a new impulse +to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at +the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in +hand, to face his pursuer. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alley behind +him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp, irresistibly +recalling that very imaginative figure in the nursery rhymes, “the +crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as if he had been +twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he had been threading. He came +nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his lifted, +patient face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the dragon, as a man +waits for a final explanation or for death. And the old Professor came right up +to him and passed him like a total stranger, without even a blink of his +mournful eyelids. +</p> + +<p> +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that left Syme in a +final fury. The man’s colourless face and manner seemed to assert that +the whole following had been an accident. Syme was galvanised with an energy +that was something between bitterness and a burst of boyish derision. He made a +wild gesture as if to knock the old man’s hat off, called out something +like “Catch me if you can,” and went racing away across the white, +open Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his +shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him +with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon +that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a +lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. +</p> + +<p> +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, round St. +Paul’s Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all the nightmares he +had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river, and ended almost down +by the docks. He saw the yellow panes of a low, lighted public-house, flung +himself into it and ordered beer. It was a foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign +sailors, a place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn. +</p> + +<p> +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down carefully, and +asked for a glass of milk. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br> +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS</h2> + +<p> +When Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, and opposite to +him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and leaden eyelids of the +Professor, his fears fully returned. This incomprehensible man from the fierce +council, after all, had certainly pursued him. If the man had one character as +a paralytic and another character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him +more interesting, but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very small comfort +that he could not find the Professor out, if by some serious accident the +Professor should find him out. He emptied a whole pewter pot of ale before the +professor had touched his milk. +</p> + +<p> +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was just +possible that this escapade signified something other than even a slight +suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or sign. Perhaps the foolish +scamper was some sort of friendly signal that he ought to have understood. +Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps the new Thursday was always chased along +Cheapside, as the new Lord Mayor is always escorted along it. He was just +selecting a tentative inquiry, when the old Professor opposite suddenly and +simply cut him short. Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic question, the +old anarchist had asked suddenly, without any sort of preparation— +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a policeman?” +</p> + +<p> +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so brutal and +actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only manage a reply with +an air of rather blundering jocularity. +</p> + +<p> +“A policeman?” he said, laughing vaguely. “Whatever made you +think of a policeman in connection with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“The process was simple enough,” answered the Professor patiently. +“I thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did I take a policeman’s hat by mistake out of the +restaurant?” asked Syme, smiling wildly. “Have I by any chance got +a number stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why +must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman.” +</p> + +<p> +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, but Syme ran +on with a feverish irony. +</p> + +<p> +“But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy. +Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, the ape +fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can never detect the +shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhaps a maiden lady on +Clapham Common is only the policeman that might have been. I don’t mind +being the policeman that might have been. I don’t mind being anything in +German thought.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you in the police service?” said the old man, ignoring all +Syme’s improvised and desperate raillery. “Are you a +detective?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. +</p> + +<p> +“Your suggestion is ridiculous,” he began. “Why on +earth—” +</p> + +<p> +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety table, nearly +breaking it. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?” he +shrieked in a high, crazy voice. “Are you, or are you not, a police +detective?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman’s +drop. +</p> + +<p> +“You swear it,” said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead +face becoming as it were loathsomely alive. “You swear it! You swear it! +If you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devil +dances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your grave? +Will there really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are a dynamiter! +Above all, you are not in any sense a detective? You are not in the British +police?” +</p> + +<p> +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his large loose +hand like a flap to his ear. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not in the British police,” said Syme with insane calm. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of kindly +collapse. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a pity,” he said, “because I am.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a crash. +</p> + +<p> +“Because you are what?” he said thickly. “You are +what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a policeman,” said the Professor with his first broad smile, +and beaming through his spectacles. “But as you think policeman only a +relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I am in the British +police force; but as you tell me you are not in the British police force, I can +only say that I met you in a dynamiters’ club. I suppose I ought to +arrest you.” And with these words he laid on the table before Syme an +exact facsimile of the blue card which Syme had in his own waistcoat pocket, +the symbol of his power from the police. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside +down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under his +feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours +the cosmos had really been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come +right side up again. This devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only +an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the table lay back +and laughed at him. He did not for the moment ask any questions of detail; he +only knew the happy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with +an intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying to +catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For +with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. +There comes a certain point in such conditions when only three things are +possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third +laughter. Syme’s egotism held hard to the first course for a few seconds, +and then suddenly adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his +own waist coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head +back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted +with a barbaric laughter. +</p> + +<p> +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, plates, +cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there was something +Homeric in Syme’s mirth which made many half-drunken men look round. +</p> + +<p> +“What yer laughing at, guv’nor?” asked one wondering labourer +from the docks. +</p> + +<p> +“At myself,” answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of +his ecstatic reaction. +</p> + +<p> +“Pull yourself together,” said the Professor, “or +you’ll get hysterical. Have some more beer. I’ll join you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t drunk your milk,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“My milk!” said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, “my milk! Do you think I’d look at the beastly stuff when +I’m out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We’re all Christians in +this room, though perhaps,” he added, glancing around at the reeling +crowd, “not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I’ll +finish it right enough!” and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making +a crash of glass and a splash of silver fluid. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand now,” he cried; “of course, you’re not an +old man at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t take my face off here,” replied Professor de Worms. +“It’s rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I’m an old +man, that’s not for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I mean,” said Syme impatiently, “there’s +nothing the matter with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered the other dispassionately. “I am subject to +colds.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. He +laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a young actor +dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would have laughed as +loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. +</p> + +<p> +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know,” he asked, “that that man Gogol was one of +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? No, I didn’t know it,” answered Syme in some surprise. +“But didn’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew no more than the dead,” replied the man who called himself +de Worms. “I thought the President was talking about me, and I rattled in +my boots.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I thought he was talking about me,” said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. “I had my hand on my revolver all the time.” +</p> + +<p> +“So had I,” said the Professor grimly; “so had Gogol +evidently.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, there were three of us there!” he cried. “Three out of +seven is a fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!” +</p> + +<p> +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. +</p> + +<p> +“We were three,” he said. “If we had been three hundred we +could still have done nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if we were three hundred against four?” asked Syme, jeering +rather boisterously. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Professor with sobriety, “not if we were three +hundred against Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had died in his +heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the unforgettable President +sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured photograph, and he remarked +this difference between Sunday and all his satellites, that their faces, +however fierce or sinister, became gradually blurred by memory like other human +faces, whereas Sunday’s seemed almost to grow more actual during absence, +as if a man’s painted portrait should slowly come alive. +</p> + +<p> +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme’s speech +came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. +</p> + +<p> +“Professor,” he cried, “it is intolerable. Are you afraid of +this man?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, wide-open, +blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am,” he said mildly. “So are you.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like an insulted +man, and thrust the chair away from him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said in a voice indescribable, “you are right. I am +afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I +fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne +and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down.” +</p> + +<p> +“How?” asked the staring Professor. “Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I am afraid of him,” said Syme; “and no man should +leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an effort to +speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an undercurrent of inhuman +exaltation— +</p> + +<p> +“Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not +fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common +prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless—like a tree? Fight the thing +that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who gave the +last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great robber +said, ‘I can give you no money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: +your thumb on the blade, and strike upwards.’ So I say to you, strike +upwards, if you strike at the stars.” +</p> + +<p> +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. +</p> + +<p> +“Sunday is a fixed star,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall see him a falling star,” said Syme, and put on his hat. +</p> + +<p> +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any idea,” he asked, with a sort of benevolent +bewilderment, “exactly where you are going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Syme shortly, “I am going to prevent this bomb +being thrown in Paris.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any conception how?” inquired the other. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme with equal decision. +</p> + +<p> +“You remember, of course,” resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling +his beard and looking out of the window, “that when we broke up rather +hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in the private +hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this time probably +crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he will do it is doubtful +whether even the President knows; certainly we don’t know. The only man +who does know is Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound it!” cried Syme. “And we don’t know where he +is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, “I +know where he is myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you tell me?” asked Syme with eager eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I will take you there,” said the Professor, and took down his own +hat from a peg. +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Will you join me? Will +you take the risk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Young man,” said the Professor pleasantly, “I am amused to +observe that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, and +that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical rhetoric. You +think that it is possible to pull down the President. I know that it is +impossible, and I am going to try it,” and opening the tavern door, which +let in a blast of bitter air, they went out together into the dark streets by +the docks. +</p> + +<p> +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there a clot of it +still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The small streets were sloppy +and full of pools, which reflected the flaming lamps irregularly, and by +accident, like fragments of some other and fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed +as he stepped through this growing confusion of lights and shadows; but his +companion walked on with a certain briskness, towards where, at the end of the +street, an inch or two of the lamplit river looked like a bar of flame. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” Syme inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Just now,” answered the Professor, “I am going just round +the corner to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retires +early.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull!” exclaimed Syme. “Does he live round the +corner?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” answered his friend. “As a matter of fact he lives some +way off, on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here whether he +has gone to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked with flame, +he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the Surrey side at this point +there ran out into the Thames, seeming almost to overhang it, a bulk and +cluster of those tall tenements, dotted with lighted windows, and rising like +factory chimneys to an almost insane height. Their special poise and position +made one block of buildings especially look like a Tower of Babel with a +hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any of the sky-scraping buildings in America, +so he could only think of the buildings in a dream. +</p> + +<p> +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turret +abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him with one of his +innumerable eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick against his +boot. +</p> + +<p> +“We are too late,” he said, “the hygienic Doctor has gone to +bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked Syme. “Does he live over there, +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said de Worms, “behind that particular window which +you can’t see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him +tomorrow morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways until they came +out into the flare and clamour of the East India Dock Road. The Professor, who +seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood, proceeded to a place where the +line of lighted shops fell back into a sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in +which an old white inn, all out of repair, stood back some twenty feet from the +road. +</p> + +<p> +“You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils,” explained the Professor. “I once found a decent place in +the West End.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose,” said Syme, smiling, “that this is the +corresponding decent place in the East End?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is,” said the Professor reverently, and went in. +</p> + +<p> +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans and bacon, +which these unaccountable people cooked well, the astonishing emergence of +Burgundy from their cellars, crowned Syme’s sense of a new comradeship +and comfort. Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and +there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. +It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not +twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred +disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his outrageous tale, +from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little tavern by the river. He +did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old +friends. On his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was +not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme’s. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a good get-up of yours,” said Syme, draining a glass +of Macon; “a lot better than old Gogol’s. Even at the start I +thought he was a bit too hairy.” +</p> + +<p> +“A difference of artistic theory,” replied the Professor pensively. +“Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of +an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, to say +that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a +portrait.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand you,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a portrait,” repeated the Professor. “I am a portrait +of the celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you are made up like him,” said Syme. “But +doesn’t he know that you are taking his nose in vain?” +</p> + +<p> +“He knows it right enough,” replied his friend cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why doesn’t he denounce you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have denounced him,” answered the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“Do explain yourself,” said Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“With pleasure, if you don’t mind hearing my story,” replied +the eminent foreign philosopher. “I am by profession an actor, and my +name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and +blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimes the +riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of +exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, +Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him beyond his appearance, +which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he +had proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; hence he +insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in +pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially +paralytic. When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much +that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn +a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I made myself +up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the old Professor’s +dirty old self. When I went into the room full of his supporters I expected to +be received with a roar of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar +of indignation at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my +entrance was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist +had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. They thought I +really was the great Nihilist Professor. I was a healthy-minded young man at +the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, +however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and +told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired +its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a +preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, +and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it +was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing +eyes that the real Professor came into the room. +</p> + +<p> +“I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round me +looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see which was +really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like my rival, +could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the +prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this +definite limitation, he couldn’t be so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he +tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple +dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I +replied with something which I could not even understand myself. ‘I +don’t fancy,’ he said, ‘that you could have worked out the +principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in it the +introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of differentiation.’ I +replied quite scornfully, ‘You read all that up in Pinckwerts; the notion +that involution functioned eugenically was exposed long ago by Glumpe.’ +It is unnecessary for me to say that there never were such people as Pinckwerts +and Glumpe. But the people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember +them quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious +method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, +fell back upon a more popular form of wit. ‘I see,’ he sneered, +‘you prevail like the false pig in Æsop.’ ‘And you +fail,’ I answered, smiling, ‘like the hedgehog in Montaigne.’ +Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? ‘Your claptrap comes +off,’ he said; ‘so would your beard.’ I had no intelligent +answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. But I laughed heartily, +answered, ‘Like the Pantheist’s boots,’ at random, and turned +on my heel with all the honours of victory. The real Professor was thrown out, +but not with violence, though one man tried very patiently to pull off his +nose. He is now, I believe, received everywhere in Europe as a delightful +impostor. His apparent earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more +entertaining.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “I can understand your putting on his +dirty old beard for a night’s practical joke, but I don’t +understand your never taking it off again.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the rest of the story,” said the impersonator. “When +I myself left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went limping down +the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be able to +walk like a human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning the corner, I +felt a touch on the shoulder, and turning, found myself under the shadow of an +enormous policeman. He told me I was wanted. I struck a sort of paralytic +attitude, and cried in a high German accent, ‘Yes, I am wanted—by +the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me on the charge of being the +great anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ The policeman impassively consulted +a paper in his hand, ‘No, sir,’ he said civilly, ‘at least, +not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the charge of not being the celebrated +anarchist, Professor de Worms.’ This charge, if it was criminal at all, +was certainly the lighter of the two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, +but not greatly dismayed. I was shown into a number of rooms, and eventually +into the presence of a police officer, who explained that a serious campaign +had been opened against the centres of anarchy, and that this, my successful +masquerade, might be of considerable value to the public safety. He offered me +a good salary and this little blue card. Though our conversation was short, he +struck me as a man of very massive common sense and humour; but I cannot tell +you much about him personally, because—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme laid down his knife and fork. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” he said, “because you talked to him in a dark +room.” +</p> + +<p> +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br> +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES</h2> + +<p> +“Burgundy is a jolly thing,” said the Professor sadly, as he set +his glass down. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t look as if it were,” said Syme; “you drink +it as if it were medicine.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must excuse my manner,” said the Professor dismally, “my +position is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish +merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can’t +leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at all to disguise +myself, I still can’t help speaking slow and wrinkling my +forehead—just as if it were my forehead. I can be quite happy, you +understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. The most buoyant exclamations +leap up in my heart, but they come out of my mouth quite different. You should +hear me say, ‘Buck up, old cock!’ It would bring tears to your +eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +“It does,” said Syme; “but I cannot help thinking that apart +from all that you are really a bit worried.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a very clever fellow,” he said, “it is a pleasure to +work with you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a great +problem to face,” and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. +</p> + +<p> +Then he said in a low voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Can you play the piano?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme in simple wonder, “I’m supposed to +have a good touch.” +</p> + +<p> +Then, as the other did not speak, he added— +</p> + +<p> +“I trust the great cloud is lifted.” +</p> + +<p> +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of his +hands— +</p> + +<p> +“It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said Syme, “you flatter me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Listen to me,” said the other, “and remember whom we have to +see tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which is very +much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels out of the Tower. We +are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, very strong, and very wicked +man. I believe there is no man, except the President, of course, who is so +seriously startling and formidable as that little grinning fellow in goggles. +He has not perhaps the white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for +anarchy, which marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism in the +Secretary has a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little +Doctor has a brutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary’s +disease. Don’t you notice his detestable virility and vitality. He +bounces like an india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I +wonder if he ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in +the round, black head of Dr. Bull.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think,” said Syme, “that this unique monster will be +soothed if I play the piano to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be an ass,” said his mentor. “I mentioned the +piano because it gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go +through this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code of +signals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a rough +alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers—like this, +see,” and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table—“B +A D, bad, a word we may frequently require.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study the scheme. +He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with his hands at +conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he might convey simple +messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a table or knee. But wine and +companionship had always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, +and the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast energy of the +new language, as it passed through the heated brain of Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“We must have several word-signs,” said Syme +seriously—“words that we are likely to want, fine shades of +meaning. My favourite word is ‘coeval’. What’s yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do stop playing the goat,” said the Professor plaintively. +“You don’t know how serious this is.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Lush’ too,” said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, +“we must have ‘lush’—word applied to grass, don’t +you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you imagine,” asked the Professor furiously, “that we are +going to talk to Dr. Bull about grass?” +</p> + +<p> +“There are several ways in which the subject could be approached,” +said Syme reflectively, “and the word introduced without appearing +forced. We might say, ‘Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a +tyrant once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, looking on the +fresh lush grass of summer...’” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you understand,” said the other, “that this is a +tragedy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” replied Syme; “always be comic in a tragedy. +What the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider +scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That +would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, which +however unobtrusively performed—” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme,” said his friend with a stern simplicity, “go to +bed!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the new code. He +was awakened next morning while the east was still sealed with darkness, and +found his grey-bearded ally standing like a ghost beside his bed. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, threw off the +bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious way that all the +safety and sociability of the night before fell with the bedclothes off him, +and he stood up in an air of cold danger. He still felt an entire trust and +loyalty towards his companion; but it was the trust between two men going to +the scaffold. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, “I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long to +make it up?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes the colour of +a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I’m considered +good at these things, and it was a good hour’s grind. Did you learn it +all on the spot?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixed but very +small smile. +</p> + +<p> +“How long did it take you?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor did not move. +</p> + +<p> +“Confound you, can’t you answer?” called out Syme, in a +sudden anger that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the +Professor could answer, he did not. +</p> + +<p> +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank, blue +eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone mad, but his second +thought was more frightful. After all, what did he know about this queer +creature whom he had heedlessly accepted as a friend? What did he know, except +that the man had been at the anarchist breakfast and had told him a ridiculous +tale? How improbable it was that there should be another friend there beside +Gogol! Was this man’s silence a sensational way of declaring war? Was +this adamantine stare after all only the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, +who had turned for the last time? He stood and strained his ears in this +heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to capture +him shifting softly in the corridor outside. +</p> + +<p> +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though the Professor +himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his five dumb fingers were +dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme watched the twinkling movements of the +talking hand, and read clearly the message— +</p> + +<p> +“I will only talk like this. We must get used to it.” +</p> + +<p> +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief— +</p> + +<p> +“All right. Let’s get out to breakfast.” +</p> + +<p> +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his sword-stick, +he held it hard. +</p> + +<p> +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thick +sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river, which +under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron. They reached +the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they had seen from across the +river, and began in silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only +pausing now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At +about every other flight they passed a window; each window showed them a pale +and tragic dawn lifting itself laboriously over London. From each the +innumerable roofs of slate looked like the leaden surges of a grey, troubled +sea after rain. Syme was increasingly conscious that his new adventure had +somehow a quality of cold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past. +Last night, for instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in +a dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted and +bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hot horror of a +dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was +more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet +necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about +the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a thing +more hideous than unreason itself. +</p> + +<p> +By the time they reached Dr. Bull’s landing, a last window showed them a +harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more like red clay +than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull’s bare garret it was full +of light. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with these empty +rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the garret and Dr. Bull +sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memory was—the French +Revolution. There should have been the black outline of a guillotine against +that heavy red and white of the morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and +black breeches only; his cropped, dark head might well have just come out of +its wig; he might have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. +</p> + +<p> +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins were +idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. His position gave +him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light of morning coming from +one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both more pale and more angular +than he had looked at the breakfast on the balcony. Thus the two black glasses +that encased his eyes might really have been black cavities in his skull, +making him look like a death’s-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself +sat writing at a wooden table, it might have been he. +</p> + +<p> +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rose with the +resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set chairs for both of +them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceeded to put on a coat and +waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it up neatly, and came back to sit +down at his table. +</p> + +<p> +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It was +with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence and began, +“I’m sorry to disturb you so early, comrade,” said he, with a +careful resumption of the slow de Worms manner. “You have no doubt made +all the arrangements for the Paris affair?” Then he added with infinite +slowness, “We have information which renders intolerable anything in the +nature of a moment’s delay.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking. The +Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word— +</p> + +<p> +“Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to alter +those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your agent with all the +support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and I have had an experience which it +would take more time to recount than we can afford, if we are to act on it. I +will, however, relate the occurrence in detail, even at the risk of losing +time, if you really feel that it is essential to the understanding of the +problem we have to discuss.” +</p> + +<p> +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long and lingering, +in the hope of maddening the practical little Doctor into an explosion of +impatience which might show his hand. But the little Doctor continued only to +stare and smile, and the monologue was uphill work. Syme began to feel a new +sickness and despair. The Doctor’s smile and silence were not at all like +the cataleptic stare and horrible silence which he had confronted in the +Professor half an hour before. About the Professor’s makeup and all his +antics there was always something merely grotesque, like a gollywog. Syme +remembered those wild woes of yesterday as one remembers being afraid of Bogy +in childhood. But here was daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man +in tweeds, not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring or +grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. The whole had a +sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing sunlight the colours of the +Doctor’s complexion, the pattern of his tweeds, grew and expanded +outrageously, as such things grow too important in a realistic novel. But his +smile was quite slight, the pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was +his silence. +</p> + +<p> +“As I say,” resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavy +sand, “the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask for +information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better to have +narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than +me—” +</p> + +<p> +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but Syme, who +was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge of the crazy +table. He read the message, “You must go on. This devil has sucked me +dry!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation which always +came to him when he was alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the thing really happened to me,” he said hastily. “I +had the good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who took me, +thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to clinch my reputation for +respectability, I took him and made him very drunk at the Savoy. Under this +influence he became friendly, and told me in so many words that within a day or +two they hope to arrest the Marquis in France. +</p> + +<p> +“So unless you or I can get on his track—” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his protected eyes +were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme that he would resume +his explanation, and he began again with the same elaborate calm. +</p> + +<p> +“Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seems to me +unquestionably urgent that—” +</p> + +<p> +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadily as the +Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. The nerves of both +comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain of motionless amiability, +when Syme suddenly leant forward and idly tapped the edge of the table. His +message to his ally ran, “I have an intuition.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back, +“Then sit on it.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme telegraphed, “It is quite extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +The other answered, “Extraordinary rot!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme said, “I am a poet.” +</p> + +<p> +The other retorted, “You are a dead man.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were burning +feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had risen to a sort of +lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps, he signalled to his friend, +“You scarcely realise how poetic my intuition is. It has that sudden +quality we sometimes feel in the coming of spring.” +</p> + +<p> +He then studied the answer on his friend’s fingers. The answer was, +“Go to hell!” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to the Doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I should rather say,” said Syme on his fingers, +“that it resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the +heart of lush woods.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion disdained to reply. +</p> + +<p> +“Or yet again,” tapped Syme, “it is positive, as is the +passionate red hair of a beautiful woman.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it Syme decided +to act. He leant across the table, and said in a voice that could not be +neglected— +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull!” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor’s sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could have +sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and courteous, +“would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take off your +spectacles?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a sort of frozen +fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his life and fortune on +the table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The Doctor did not move. +</p> + +<p> +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a pin drop, split +once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. Then Dr. Bull rose +slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles. +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a chemical lecturer +from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars, and for an instant he +could only point without speaking. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his supposed +paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully at Dr. Bull, +as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes. And indeed it was +almost as great a transformation scene. +</p> + +<p> +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very boyish-looking +young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an open expression, cockney +clothes like those of a city clerk, and an unquestionable breath about him of +being very good and rather commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might +have been the first smile of a baby. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew I was a poet,” cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. “I +knew my intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that did +it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, and all the rest +of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a live devil among dead +ones.” +</p> + +<p> +“It certainly does make a queer difference,” said the Professor +shakily. “But as regards the project of Dr. Bull—” +</p> + +<p> +“Project be damned!” roared Syme, beside himself. “Look at +him! Look at his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You +don’t suppose, do you, that that thing’s an anarchist?” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme!” cried the other in an apprehensive agony. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, by God,” said Syme, “I’ll take the risk of that +myself! Dr. Bull, I am a police officer. There’s my card,” and he +flung down the blue card upon the table. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He pulled out +his own official card and put it beside his friend’s. Then the third man +burst out laughing, and for the first time that morning they heard his voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awfully glad you chaps have come so early,” he said, +with a sort of schoolboy flippancy, “for we can all start for France +together. Yes, I’m in the force right enough,” and he flicked a +blue card towards them lightly as a matter of form. +</p> + +<p> +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin glasses, the Doctor +moved so quickly towards the door, that the others instinctively followed him. +Syme seemed a little distrait, and as he passed under the doorway he suddenly +struck his stick on the stone passage so that it rang. +</p> + +<p> +“But Lord God Almighty,” he cried out, “if this is all right, +there were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the +damned Council!” +</p> + +<p> +“We might have fought easily,” said Bull; “we were four +against three.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from below. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the voice, “we were not four against +three—we were not so lucky. We were four against One.” +</p> + +<p> +The others went down the stairs in silence. +</p> + +<p> +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic of him, +insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there his own robust +rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he walked quickly on ahead towards +a railway inquiry office, talking to the others over his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“It is jolly to get some pals,” he said. “I’ve been +half dead with the jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol +and embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won’t +despise me for having been in a blue funk.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the blue devils in blue hell,” said Syme, “contributed +to my blue funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man laughed delightedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t it a rag?” he said. “Such a simple +idea—not my own. I haven’t got the brains. You see, I wanted to go +into the detective service, especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that +purpose they wanted someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by +blazes that I could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was +respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British Constitution. +They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable and +benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They said that +if I had been a criminal, I might have made my fortune by looking so like an +honest man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even +the remotest chance of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But +at last I was brought before some old josser who was high up in the force, and +who seemed to have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others all +talked hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my nice smile; +another said that if they blacked my face I might look like a negro anarchist; +but this old chap chipped in with a most extraordinary remark. ‘A pair of +smoked spectacles will do it,’ he said positively. ‘Look at him +now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put him on a pair of smoked +spectacles, and children will scream at the sight of him.’ And so it was, +by George! When once my eyes were covered, all the rest, smile and big +shoulders and short hair, made me look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was +simple enough when it was done, like miracles; but that wasn’t the really +miraculous part of it. There was one really staggering thing about the +business, and my head still turns at it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was that?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you,” answered the man in spectacles. “This +big pot in the police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go +with my hair and socks—by God, he never saw me at all!” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes suddenly flashed on him. +</p> + +<p> +“How was that?” he asked. “I thought you talked to +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I did,” said Bull brightly; “but we talked in a +pitch-dark room like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I could not have conceived it,” said Syme gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“It is indeed a new idea,” said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiry office he +asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover. Having got his +information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put them and himself inside +a railway carriage before they had properly realised the breathless process. +They were already on the Calais boat before conversation flowed freely. +</p> + +<p> +“I had already arranged,” he explained, “to go to France for +my lunch; but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had +to send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President had +his eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some day. It +was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw the President +somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or taking off his hat to me +from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you can say what you like, that fellow +sold himself to the devil; he can be in six places at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you sent the Marquis off, I understand,” asked the Professor. +“Was it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered the new guide, “I’ve timed it all. +He’ll still be at Calais when we arrive.” +</p> + +<p> +“But when we do catch him at Calais,” said the Professor, +“what are we going to do?” +</p> + +<p> +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time. He +reflected a little, and then said— +</p> + +<p> +“Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I,” said Syme. “Theoretically I ought to drown myself +first. I promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of +honour not to tell the police. I’m no hand at casuistry, but I +can’t break my word to a modern pessimist. It’s like breaking +one’s word to a child.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m in the same boat,” said the Professor. “I tried to +tell the police and I couldn’t, because of some silly oath I took. You +see, when I was an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is +the only crime I haven’t committed. If I did that I shouldn’t know +the difference between right and wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been through all that,” said Dr. Bull, “and +I’ve made up my mind. I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know +him, man who smiles upside down. My friends, that man is the most utterly +unhappy man that was ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or +his nerves, or his philosophy of the universe, but he’s damned, +he’s in hell! Well, I can’t turn on a man like that, and hunt him +down. It’s like whipping a leper. I may be mad, but that’s how I +feel; and there’s jolly well the end of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think you’re mad,” said Syme. “I knew +you would decide like that when first you—” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh?” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“When first you took off your spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at the sunlit +sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a +companionable silence fell between the three men. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “it seems that we have all the same kind +of morality or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” assented the Professor, “you’re quite right; and +we must hurry up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.” +</p> + +<p> +“The fact that comes of it,” said Syme seriously, “is this, +that we three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are three +men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we are worse off +than that, first because they can appeal to their organization and we cannot +appeal to ours, and second because—” +</p> + +<p> +“Because one of those other three men,” said the Professor, +“is not a man.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said— +</p> + +<p> +“My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calais till +tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We cannot +denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him detained on some +trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows us, and he would smell a +rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on anarchist business; he might swallow much +in that way, but not the notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went +safely through Paris. We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; +but he is a well-known man here. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is +very strong and brave, and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see to +do is actually to take advantage of the very things that are in the +Marquis’s favour. I am going to profit by the fact that he is a highly +respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the fact that he has many friends +and moves in the best society.” +</p> + +<p> +“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,” said +Syme; “but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at +Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s gone off his head,” said the little Doctor, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“Our bearings,” continued Syme calmly, “are ‘argent a +chevron gules charged with three cross crosslets of the field.’ The motto +varies.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. +</p> + +<p> +“We are just inshore,” he said. “Are you seasick or joking in +the wrong place?” +</p> + +<p> +“My remarks are almost painfully practical,” answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. “The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. The +Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am a +gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite beyond a +doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hat off. But here we +are in the harbour.” +</p> + +<p> +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who had now +taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kind of marine +parade until he came to some cafés, embowered in a bulk of greenery and +overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step was slightly swaggering, +and he swung his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme +end of the line of cafés, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he +motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one gloved finger to a café table +under a bank of flowering foliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his +teeth shining in his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by a +light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br> +THE DUEL</h2> + +<p> +Syme sat down at a café table with his companions, his blue eyes sparkling like +the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur with a pleased impatience. +He was for some reason in a condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were +already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his +talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the +conversation which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. +He jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed +catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an extraordinary +rapidity of utterance. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. I +shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say, +‘The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most +exquisite French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most +exquisite Cockney, ‘Oh, just the Syme—’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself +together, and chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do +let me read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of +the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my +enemy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in +exasperation. +</p> + +<p> +“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, +beaming. “When the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which +runs—” +</p> + +<p> +“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a +ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three +things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own epigrams +may appear somewhat more forced.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never thought of it. +Sir, you have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to +adopt some other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between +myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue cannot be +predicted by one of its parties alone (as you have pointed out with such +recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose, is for the one party, +as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by himself. And so I will, by +George!” And he stood up suddenly, his yellow hair blowing in the slight +sea breeze. +</p> + +<p> +A band was playing in a <i>café chantant</i> hidden somewhere among the trees, +and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme’s heated head the bray of +the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that barrel-organ in Leicester +Square, to the tune of which he had once stood up to die. He looked across to +the little table where the Marquis sat. The man had two companions now, solemn +Frenchmen in frock-coats and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the +Legion of Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. Besides these +black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his loose straw hat and light +spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even barbaric; but he looked the Marquis. +Indeed, one might say that he looked the king, with his animal elegance, his +scornful eyes, and his proud head lifted against the purple sea. But he was no +Christian king, at any rate; he was, rather, some swarthy despot, half Greek, +half Asiatic, who in the days when slavery seemed natural looked down on the +Mediterranean, on his galley and his groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, +would the brown-gold face of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green +olives and the burning blue. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to address the meeting?” asked the Professor +peevishly, seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. +</p> + +<p> +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +“that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting’s great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose.” +</p> + +<p> +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, seeing him, +arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but smiled politely. +</p> + +<p> +“You are Mr. Syme, I think,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Syme bowed. +</p> + +<p> +“And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache,” he said gracefully. +“Permit me to pull your nose.” +</p> + +<p> +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, upsetting his chair, +and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of +explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, +“when?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my +aunt.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said +the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting +here all the time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly. +</p> + +<p> +“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something +about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt +played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted +about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was +<i>décoré</i>, looking doubtfully at the Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s +weaknesses.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one +have said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl +with black hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My +aunt’s was red.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply +seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.” +</p> + +<p> +“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, +“what a clever chap you are!” +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Seeking a quarrel with me!” he cried. “Seeking a fight with +me! By God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen will +perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. Let us fight this +evening.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Marquis,” he said, “your action is worthy of your fame and +blood. Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose hands I +shall place myself.” +</p> + +<p> +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who had seen his +champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic explanations, were quite +startled at the look of him. For now that he came back to them he was quite +sober, a little pale, and he spoke in a low voice of passionate practicality. +</p> + +<p> +“I have done it,” he said hoarsely. “I have fixed a fight on +the beast. But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for talk. You +are my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must insist, and +insist absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven tomorrow, so as to give +me the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for Paris. If he misses +that he misses his crime. He can’t refuse to meet you on such a small +point of time and place. But this is what he will do. He will choose a field +somewhere near a wayside station, where he can pick up the train. He is a very +good swordsman, and he will trust to killing me in time to catch it. But I can +fence well too, and I think I can keep him in play, at any rate, until the +train is lost. Then perhaps he may kill me to console his feelings. You +understand? Very well then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of +mine,” and leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to +the Marquis’s seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had +not previously heard. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a part of +his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about the spectacles) +poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the exaltation of prophecy. +</p> + +<p> +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his opponent. When the +Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme could only fight in the morning, +he must fully have realised that an obstacle had suddenly arisen between him +and his bomb-throwing business in the capital. Naturally he could not explain +this objection to his friends, so he chose the course which Syme had predicted. +He induced his seconds to settle on a small meadow not far from the railway, +and he trusted to the fatality of the first engagement. +</p> + +<p> +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have guessed +that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands were in his pockets, his +straw hat on the back of his head, his handsome face brazen in the sun. But it +might have struck a stranger as odd that there appeared in his train, not only +his seconds carrying the sword-case, but two of his servants carrying a +portmanteau and a luncheon basket. +</p> + +<p> +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and Syme was +vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning gold and silver in the +tall grass in which the whole company stood almost knee-deep. +</p> + +<p> +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and solemn +morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little Doctor especially, +with the addition of his black spectacles, looked like an undertaker in a +farce. Syme could not help feeling a comic contrast between this funereal +church parade of apparel and the rich and glistening meadow, growing wild +flowers everywhere. But, indeed, this comic contrast between the yellow +blossoms and the black hats was but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the +yellow blossoms and the black business. On his right was a little wood; far +away to his left lay the long curve of the railway line, which he was, so to +speak, guarding from the Marquis, whose goal and escape it was. In front of +him, behind the black group of his opponents, he could see, like a tinted +cloud, a small almond bush in flower against the faint line of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was Colonel Ducroix, +approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great politeness, and suggested that +the play should terminate with the first considerable hurt. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this point of +policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad French, that it should +continue until one of the combatants was disabled. Syme had made up his mind +that he could avoid disabling the Marquis and prevent the Marquis from +disabling him for at least twenty minutes. In twenty minutes the Paris train +would have gone by. +</p> + +<p> +“To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache,” said the Professor solemnly, “it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong reasons for +demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy of which prevent me from +being explicit, but for the just and honourable nature of which I +can—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Peste!</i>” broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had +suddenly darkened, “let us stop talking and begin,” and he slashed +off the head of a tall flower with his stick. +</p> + +<p> +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over his shoulder +to see whether the train was coming in sight. But there was no smoke on the +horizon. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a pair of twin +swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two streaks of white fire. He +offered one to the Marquis, who snatched it without ceremony, and another to +Syme, who took it, bent it, and poised it with as much delay as was consistent +with dignity. +</p> + +<p> +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one himself and +giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the men. +</p> + +<p> +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and stood sword in +hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line of fight with drawn swords +also, but still sombre in their dark frock-coats and hats. The principals +saluted. The Colonel said quietly, “Engage!” and the two blades +touched and tingled. +</p> + +<p> +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme’s arm, all the fantastic +fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like dreams from a +man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in order as mere delusions +of the nerves—how the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the +tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been the +fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old fear that any +miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless modern fear that no miracle +can ever happen. But he saw that these fears were fancies, for he found himself +in the presence of the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and +pitiless common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling +over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be hanged. For +as soon as he had seen the sunlight run down the channel of his foe’s +foreshortened blade, and as soon as he had felt the two tongues of steel touch, +vibrating like two living things, he knew that his enemy was a terrible +fighter, and that probably his last hour had come. +</p> + +<p> +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the grass +under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living things. He could almost +fancy that he heard the grass growing; he could almost fancy that even as he +stood fresh flowers were springing up and breaking into blossom in the +meadow—flowers blood red and burning gold and blue, fulfilling the whole +pageant of the spring. And whenever his eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, +staring, hypnotic eyes of the Marquis, they saw the little tuft of almond tree +against the sky-line. He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped he +would be ready to sit for ever before that almond tree, desiring nothing else +in the world. +</p> + +<p> +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a thing lost, +the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and he was parrying his +enemy’s point with a kind of clockwork skill of which he had hardly +supposed himself capable. Once his enemy’s point ran along his wrist, +leaving a slight streak of blood, but it either was not noticed or was tacitly +ignored. Every now and then he <i>riposted</i>, and once or twice he could +almost fancy that he felt his point go home, but as there was no blood on blade +or shirt he supposed he was mistaken. Then came an interruption and a change. +</p> + +<p> +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet stare, flashed +one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway on his right. Then he +turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend, and began to fight as if +with twenty weapons. The attack came so fast and furious, that the one shining +sword seemed a shower of shining arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the +railway; but also he had no need. He could guess the reason of the +Marquis’s sudden madness of battle—the Paris train was in sight. +</p> + +<p> +But the Marquis’s morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent’s point far out of the fighting circle; +and the third time his <i>riposte</i> was so rapid, that there was no doubt +about the hit this time. Syme’s sword actually bent under the weight of +the Marquis’s body, which it had pierced. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener +that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from +the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point +like an idiot. There was no blood on it at all. +</p> + +<p> +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn fell furiously +on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The Marquis was probably, in a +general sense, a better fencer than he, as he had surmised at the beginning, +but at the moment the Marquis seemed distraught and at a disadvantage. He +fought wildly and even weakly, and he constantly looked away at the railway +line, almost as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on +the other hand, fought fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual fury, +eager to solve the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For this purpose, he +aimed less at the Marquis’s body, and more at his throat and head. A +minute and a half afterwards he felt his point enter the man’s neck below +the jaw. It came out clean. Half mad, he thrust again, and made what should +have been a bloody scar on the Marquis’s cheek. But there was no scar. +</p> + +<p> +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with supernatural terrors. +Surely the man had a charmed life. But this new spiritual dread was a more +awful thing than had been the mere spiritual topsy-turvydom symbolised by the +paralytic who pursued him. The Professor was only a goblin; this man was a +devil—perhaps he was the Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three +times had a human sword been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had +that thought he drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang high up in +the air as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of all the human things +in his story—of the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of the girl’s +red hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by the dock, +of his loyal companions standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen as a champion +of all these fresh and kindly things to cross swords with the enemy of all +creation. “After all,” he said to himself, “I am more than a +devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do—I +can die,” and as the word went through his head, he heard a faint and +far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris train. +</p> + +<p> +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a Mohammedan panting +for Paradise. As the train came nearer and nearer he fancied he could see +people putting up the floral arches in Paris; he joined in the growing noise +and the glory of the great Republic whose gate he was guarding against Hell. +His thoughts rose higher and higher with the rising roar of the train, which +ended, as if proudly, in a long and piercing whistle. The train stopped. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back quite out of +sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was wonderful, and not the less +wonderful because Syme had plunged his sword a moment before into the +man’s thigh. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop!” said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. “I want to say something.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. “Has +there been foul play?” +</p> + +<p> +“There has been foul play somewhere,” said Dr. Bull, who was a +little pale. “Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times at least, +and he is none the worse.” +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly patience. +</p> + +<p> +“Please let me speak,” he said. “It is rather important. Mr. +Syme,” he continued, turning to his opponent, “we are fighting +today, if I remember right, because you expressed a wish (which I thought +irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by pulling my nose now as +quickly as possible? I have to catch a train.” +</p> + +<p> +“I protest that this is most irregular,” said Dr. Bull indignantly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent,” said Colonel +Ducroix, looking wistfully at his principal. “There is, I think, one case +on record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in which the weapons were +changed in the middle of the encounter at the request of one of the combatants. +But one can hardly call one’s nose a weapon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you or will you not pull my nose?” said the Marquis in +exasperation. “Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! You can +have no conception of how important it is to me. Don’t be so selfish! +Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!” and he bent slightly forward with +a fascinating smile. The Paris train, panting and groaning, had grated into a +little station behind the neighbouring hill. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures—the +sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was just toppling over. +Walking in a world he half understood, he took two paces forward and seized the +Roman nose of this remarkable nobleman. He pulled it hard, and it came off in +his hand. +</p> + +<p> +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the pasteboard +proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, while the sun and the +clouds and the wooded hills looked down upon this imbecile scene. +</p> + +<p> +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. +</p> + +<p> +“If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow,” he said, “he can +have it. Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It’s the kind of +thing that might come in useful any day,” and he gravely tore off one of +his swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown forehead with it, and +politely offered it to the Colonel, who stood crimson and speechless with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“If I had known,” he spluttered, “that I was acting for a +poltroon who pads himself to fight—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know, I know!” said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. “You are making a +mistake; but it can’t be explained just now. I tell you the train has +come into the station!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Dr. Bull fiercely, “and the train shall go out of +the station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil’s work—” +</p> + +<p> +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. He was a +strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his old face peeled off, +and half another face glaring and grinning from underneath. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you drive me mad?” he cried. “The train—” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall not go by the train,” said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. +</p> + +<p> +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering itself for a +sublime effort before speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, +Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!” he said without taking breath. +“You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! You—” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall not go by this train,” repeated Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“And why the infernal blazes,” roared the other, “should I +want to go by the train?” +</p> + +<p> +“We know all,” said the Professor sternly. “You are going to +Paris to throw a bomb!” +</p> + +<p> +“Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!” cried the other, tearing +his hair, which came off easily. +“Have you all got softening of the brain, that you don’t realise +what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? Twenty Paris +trains might go by for me. Damn Paris trains!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what did you care about?” began the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“What did I care about? I didn’t care about catching the train; I +cared about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has caught +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I regret to inform you,” said Syme with restraint, “that +your remarks convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to remove the +remains of your original forehead and some portion of what was once your chin, +your meaning would become clearer. Mental lucidity fulfils itself in many ways. +What do you mean by saying that the train has caught you? It may be my literary +fancy, but somehow I feel that it ought to mean something.” +</p> + +<p> +“It means everything,” said the other, “and the end of +everything. Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Us!” repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. “What do you +mean by ‘us’?” +</p> + +<p> +“The police, of course!” said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp +and half his face. +</p> + +<p> +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired head which +is common in the English constabulary, but the face was terribly pale. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Inspector Ratcliffe,” he said, with a sort of haste that +verged on harshness. “My name is pretty well known to the police, and I +can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt about my +position, I have a card,” and he began to pull a blue card from his +pocket. +</p> + +<p> +The Professor gave a tired gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t show it us,” he said wearily; “we’ve +got enough of them to equip a paper-chase.” +</p> + +<p> +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a mere +vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he certainly saved +the situation. In the midst of this staggering transformation scene he stepped +forward with all the gravity and responsibility of a second, and addressed the +two seconds of the Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all owe you a serious apology; but +I assure you that you have not been made the victims of such a low joke as you +imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of honour. You have not +wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but +very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. A secret society of +anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or +there throw a bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and +powerful and fanatical church, a church of eastern pessimism, which holds it +holy to destroy mankind like vermin. How hard they hunt us you can gather from +the fact that we are driven to such disguises as those for which I apologise, +and to such pranks as this one by which you suffer.” +</p> + +<p> +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black moustache, bowed +politely, and said— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive me if +I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and permit myself to +say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and distinguished +fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is unusual, and, upon the +whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel Ducroix, I would in no way influence +your actions, but if you feel with me that our present society is a little +abnormal, I am now going to walk back to the town.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his white +moustache and broke out— +</p> + +<p> +“No, by George! I won’t. If these gentlemen are really in a mess +with a lot of low wreckers like that, I’ll see them through it. I have +fought for France, and it is hard if I can’t fight for +civilization.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public meeting. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t make too much noise,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, +“Sunday may hear you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sunday!” cried Bull, and dropped his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” retorted Ratcliffe, “he may be with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“With whom?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“With the people out of that train,” said the other. +</p> + +<p> +“What you say seems utterly wild,” began Syme. “Why, as a +matter of fact—But, my God,” he cried out suddenly, like a man who +sees an explosion a long way off, “by God! if this is true the whole +bally lot of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man +was a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can it +mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mean!” said the new policeman with incredible violence. “It +means that we are struck dead! Don’t you know Sunday? Don’t you +know that his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of +them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put +all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care that it was +not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has captured every cable, +he has control of every railway line—especially of <i>that</i> railway +line!” and he pointed a shaking finger towards the small wayside station. +“The whole movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to +rise for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have resisted +him... and the old devil put them on the Supreme Council, to waste their time +in watching each other. Idiots that we are, he planned the whole of our +idiocies! Sunday knew that the Professor would chase Syme through London, and +that Syme would fight me in France. And he was combining great masses of +capital, and seizing great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were +running after each other like a lot of confounded babies playing blind +man’s buff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” replied the other with sudden serenity, “he has found +us playing blind man’s buff today in a field of great rustic beauty and +extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains to him to +capture this field and all the fools in it. And since you really want to know +what was my objection to the arrival of that train, I will tell you. My +objection was that Sunday or his Secretary has just this moment got out of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes towards the +far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable bulk of people seemed to +be moving in their direction. But they were too distant to be distinguished in +any way. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache,” said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, “always to carry a pair of opera +glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with that +mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place where we are under no +temptations to break our oaths by calling the police. Dr. Bull, I have a +suspicion that you will see better through these than through your own highly +decorative spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took off his +spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It cannot be as bad as you say,” said the Professor, somewhat +shaken. “There are a good number of them certainly, but they may easily +be ordinary tourists.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do ordinary tourists,” asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his +eyes, “wear black masks half-way down the face?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through them. Most men +in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; but it was quite true that +two or three of the leaders in front wore black half-masks almost down to their +mouths. This disguise is very complete, especially at such a distance, and Syme +found it impossible to conclude anything from the clean-shaven jaws and chins +of the men talking in the front. But presently as they talked they all smiled +and one of them smiled on one side. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br> +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE</h2> + +<p> +Syme put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly relief. +</p> + +<p> +“The President is not with them, anyhow,” he said, and wiped his +forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“But surely they are right away on the horizon,” said the +bewildered Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull’s hasty +though polite explanation. “Could you possibly know your President among +all those people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Could I know a white elephant among all those people!” answered +Syme somewhat irritably. “As you very truly say, they are on the horizon; +but if he were walking with them... by God! I believe this ground would +shake.” +</p> + +<p> +After an instant’s pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with gloomy +decision— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course the President isn’t with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, or sitting +on the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is absurd!” said Syme. “Something may have happened in +our absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like that. It is +quite true,” he added, frowning dubiously at the distant fields that lay +towards the little station, “it is certainly true that there seems to be +a crowd coming this way; but they are not all the army that you make +out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they,” said the new detective contemptuously; “no, they +are not a very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they are +precisely calculated to our value—we are not much, my boy, in +Sunday’s universe. He has got hold of all the cables and telegraphs +himself. But to kill the Supreme Council he regards as a trivial matter, like a +post card; it may be left to his private secretary,” and he spat on the +grass. +</p> + +<p> +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely— +</p> + +<p> +“There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has any +preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him to walk after +me.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent energy +towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their shoulders, and saw that +the dark cloud of men had detached itself from the station and was moving with +a mysterious discipline across the plain. They saw already, even with the naked +eye, black blots on the foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. They +turned and followed their leader, who had already struck the wood, and +disappeared among the twinkling trees. +</p> + +<p> +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood they had a +cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a dim pool. The inside of +the wood was full of shattered sunlight and shaken shadows. They made a sort of +shuddering veil, almost recalling the dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the +solid figures walking with him Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun +and shade that danced upon them. Now a man’s head was lit as with a light +of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring +white hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw +hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in +two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. +The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a +mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in +which men’s faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures +first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos +of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect +symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world +where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and +turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he +believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he +knew that the Marquis was a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all +these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there anything +that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and +turned out to be a detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and +turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this +bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, +the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found +in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found +there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which +is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the +universe. +</p> + +<p> +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme strove with +a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of his fancies. With two +impatient strides he overtook the man in the Marquis’s straw hat, the man +whom he had come to address as Ratcliffe. In a voice exaggeratively loud and +cheerful, he broke the bottomless silence and made conversation. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask,” he said, “where on earth we are all going +to?” +</p> + +<p> +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad to hear his +companion speak in an easy, human voice. +</p> + +<p> +“We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea,” he said. +“I think that part of the country is least likely to be with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can you mean by all this?” cried Syme. “They +can’t be running the real world in that way. Surely not many working men +are anarchists, and surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat modern armies +and police.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mere mobs!” repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. +“So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the +question. You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it +would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they +have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there +being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. +The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor +have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected +to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see +from the barons’ wars.” +</p> + +<p> +“As a lecture on English history for the little ones,” said Syme, +“this is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its +application.” +</p> + +<p> +“Its application is,” said his informant, “that most of old +Sunday’s right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That +is why he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last four +champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a wood like +rabbits.” +</p> + +<p> +“Millionaires I can understand,” said Syme thoughtfully, +“they are nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen +with hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is another. +I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that Sunday would stand +perfectly helpless before the task of converting any ordinary healthy person +anywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the other, “it rather depends what sort of +person you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, for instance,” said Syme, “he could never convert that +person,” and he pointed straight in front of him. +</p> + +<p> +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to Syme the +final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this forest clearing +was a figure that might well stand for that common sense in an almost awful +actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with perspiration, and grave with the +bottomless gravity of small necessary toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting +wood with a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards off, already half full of +timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was, like his master, valorous but +not desperate; like his master, he was even prosperous, but yet was almost sad. +The man was a Norman, taller than the average of the French and very angular; +and his swarthy figure stood dark against a square of sunlight, almost like +some allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a ground of gold. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme is saying,” called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, +“that this man, at least, will never be an anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Syme is right enough there,” answered Colonel Ducroix, +laughing, “if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to +defend. But I forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being +wealthy.” +</p> + +<p> +“He looks poor,” said Dr. Bull doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said the Colonel; “that is why he is rich.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have an idea,” called out Dr. Bull suddenly; “how much +would he take to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we +could soon leave them behind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, give him anything!” said Syme eagerly. “I have piles of +money on me.” +</p> + +<p> +“That will never do,” said the Colonel; “he will never have +any respect for you unless you drive a bargain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if he haggles!” began Bull impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“He haggles because he is a free man,” said the other. “You +do not understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being +tipped.” +</p> + +<p> +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange pursuers +behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French Colonel talked to the +French wood-cutter with all the leisurely badinage and bickering of market-day. +At the end of the four minutes, however, they saw that the Colonel was right, +for the wood-cutter entered into their plans, not with the vague servility of a +tout too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor who had been paid +the proper fee. He told them that the best thing they could do was to make +their way down to the little inn on the hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, +an old soldier who had become <i>dévot</i> in his latter years, would be +certain to sympathise with them, and even to take risks in their support. The +whole company, therefore, piled themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and +went rocking in the rude cart down the other and steeper side of the woodland. +Heavy and ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they +soon had the exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, whoever +they were, who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the +anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. One man’s +presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first sight of the +deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and then looked back over his +shoulder at the army on their track. +</p> + +<p> +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could see the +sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was still moving the +square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the very strong sunlight and +with his own very strong eyes, which were almost telescopic, Syme could see +this mass of men quite plainly. He could see them as separate human figures; +but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. +They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd +out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various +lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a +sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of automatons. +</p> + +<p> +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the policeman, “that’s discipline. +That’s Sunday. He is perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him +is on all of them, like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and +you bet your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking +regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they are disappearing +regularly.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was growing +smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse. +</p> + +<p> +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on the +farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, in a way +not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only difference was that +in Sussex the road would have been broken and angular like a little brook, but +here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a waterfall. Down +this direct descent the cart clattered at a considerable angle, and in a few +minutes, the road growing yet steeper, they saw below them the little harbour +of Lancy and a great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. +</p> + +<p> +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the +horse’s nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting +on the benches outside the little café of “Le Soleil d’Or.” +The peasant grunted an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also +descended one by one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary phrases +of courtesy, for it was quite evident from his expansive manner that he was the +owner of the little tavern. +</p> + +<p> +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey +moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may often be +found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. Everything about +him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an +ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up as they entered the +inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly into +the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. The military +decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to him, and he took the +opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask you, Colonel,” he said in a low voice, “why we +have come here?” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. +</p> + +<p> +“For two reasons, sir,” he said; “and I will give first, not +the most important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the +only place within twenty miles in which we can get horses.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horses!” repeated Syme, looking up quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied the other; “if you people are really to +distance your enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you +have bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where do you advise us to make for?” asked Syme doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Beyond question,” replied the Colonel, “you had better make +all haste to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded +under somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much the +possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly maintain, I +suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“And your other reason for coming here?” +</p> + +<p> +“My other reason for coming here,” said Ducroix soberly, “is +that it is just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to +death.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic religious +picture. Then he said— +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” and then almost immediately afterwards, “Has +anyone seen about the horses?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Ducroix, “you may be quite certain that I +gave orders the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of +hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a well-trained army. +I had no idea that the anarchists had so much discipline. You have not a moment +to waste.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair came +ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled outside. +</p> + +<p> +By Ducroix’s advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as the only +weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white road. The two +servants, who had carried the Marquis’s luggage when he was a marquis, +were left behind to drink at the café by common consent, and not at all against +their own inclination. +</p> + +<p> +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays Syme +could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller and smaller, +but still standing and looking after them quite silently, the sunshine in his +silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, left in his mind by the +chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps, the last honest +stranger whom he should ever see upon the earth. +</p> + +<p> +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere grey blot +touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the steep down +behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the innkeeper, +there appeared an army of black-clad and marching men. They seemed to hang +above the good man and his house like a black cloud of locusts. The horses had +been saddled none too soon. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br> +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY</h2> + +<p> +Urging the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged descent of +the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over the men on the march, +and at last the bulk of the first buildings of Lancy cut off the sight of their +pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and by the time they +reached the real town the west was warming with the colour and quality of +sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making finally for the police +station, they should make the effort, in passing, to attach to themselves one +more individual who might be useful. +</p> + +<p> +“Four out of the five rich men in this town,” he said, “are +common swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. +The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even more +important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid,” said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back +along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at any +moment, “I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor Renard’s house is only three minutes off,” said the +Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Our danger,” said Dr. Bull, “is not two minutes off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Syme, “if we ride on fast we must leave them +behind, for they are on foot.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has a motor-car,” said the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“But we may not get it,” said Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he is quite on your side.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he might be out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hold your tongue,” said Syme suddenly. “What is that +noise?” +</p> + +<p> +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a +second—for two or three or four seconds—heaven and earth seemed +equally still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the +road that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one +thing—horses! +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had +struck it, and yet left it scatheless. +</p> + +<p> +“They have done us,” he said, with brief military irony. +“Prepare to receive cavalry!” +</p> + +<p> +“Where can they have got the horses?” asked Syme, as he +mechanically urged his steed to a canter. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice— +</p> + +<p> +“I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the ‘Soleil +d’Or’ was the only place where one can get horses within twenty +miles.” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” said Syme violently, “I don’t believe he’d +do it. Not with all that white hair.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may have been forced,” said the Colonel gently. “They +must be at least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my +friend Renard, who has a motor-car.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and went +down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, though already +well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the flying tail of his horse. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep street, +so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once more see the solid +green ridge of the hill, with the white road across it, standing up above all +the roofs of the town. They breathed again to see that the road as yet was +clear, and they rang the bell. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that silent but +very busy professional class which France has preserved even more perfectly +than England. When the matter was explained to him he pooh-poohed the panic of +the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the solid French scepticism, that +there was no conceivable probability of a general anarchist rising. +“Anarchy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it is +childishness!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Et ça</i>,” cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the +other’s shoulder, “and that is childishness, isn’t it?” +</p> + +<p> +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping over the +top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they rode, however, +the whole rank still kept well together, and they could see the black vizards +of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. But although the main black +square was the same, though travelling faster, there was now one sensational +difference which they could see clearly upon the slope of the hill, as if upon +a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were in one block; but one rider flew far +ahead of the column, and with frantic movements of hand and heel urged his +horse faster and faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the +pursuer but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they knew it was +the Secretary himself. “I am sorry to cut short a cultured +discussion,” said the Colonel, “but can you lend me your motor-car +now, in two minutes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have a suspicion that you are all mad,” said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; “but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like the Musée +de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he seemed to use very +sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French middle class, and when his +impatient friends came to examine them, it took them some time to assure +themselves that one of them even could be made to work. This with some +difficulty they brought round into the street before the Doctor’s house. +When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that twilight +had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the tropics. Either they had +been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud +had gathered over the town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to +see a slight mist coming up from the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“It is now or never,” said Dr. Bull. “I hear horses.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” corrected the Professor, “a horse.” +</p> + +<p> +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming nearer on +the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade but that of the +one horseman, who had left it far behind—the insane Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once +owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into the +chauffeur’s seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging at the +disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and then said quite +quietly— +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid it’s no go.” +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing horse, +with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that thrust out his chin +as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the stationary car, into which +its company had crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It was the Secretary, +and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of triumph. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound but the +rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there came quite +suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt forward. It plucked the +Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife is whipped out of its sheath, +trailed him kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him flung flat upon the +road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car took the corner of the +street with a splendid curve, they could just see the other anarchists filling +the street and raising their fallen leader. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t understand why it has grown so dark,” said the +Professor at last in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Going to be a storm, I think,” said Dr. Bull. “I say, +it’s a pity we haven’t got a light on this car, if only to see +by.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have,” said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he +fished up a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. +It was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had been +in some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a cross upon one +of its sides. +</p> + +<p> +“Where on earth did you get that?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“I got it where I got the car,” answered the Colonel, chuckling, +“from my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the +steering wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who +was standing in his own porch, you will remember. ‘I suppose,’ I +said, ‘there’s no time to get a lamp.’ He looked up, blinking +amiably at the beautiful arched ceiling of his own front hall. From this was +suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the hundred +treasures of his treasure house. By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own +ceiling, shattering the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with +his violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was +I not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth knowing?” +</p> + +<p> +“You were,” said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over +the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast +between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto +they had passed through the quietest part of the town, meeting at most one or +two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of the peace or the hostility of +the place. Now, however, the windows in the houses began one by one to be lit +up, giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned to the +new detective who had led their flight, and permitted himself one of his +natural and friendly smiles. +</p> + +<p> +“These lights make one feel more cheerful.” +</p> + +<p> +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. +</p> + +<p> +“There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful,” he +said, “and they are those lights of the police station which I can see +beyond the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Then all Bull’s boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, this is all raving nonsense!” he cried. “If you really +think that ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be +madder than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the +whole town would fight for us.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the other with an immovable simplicity, “the whole +town would fight for them. We shall see.” +</p> + +<p> +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that noise?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose,” said the Colonel. “I +thought we had got clear of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“The horses behind us! No,” said the Professor, “it is not +horses, and it is not behind us.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you they were his,” he repeated, with wild eyes, “and +they were full of men in masks!” +</p> + +<p> +“Absurd!” said the Colonel angrily. “Dr. Renard would never +give them his cars.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may have been forced,” said Ratcliffe quietly. “The whole +town is on their side.” +</p> + +<p> +“You still believe that,” asked the Colonel incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +“You will all believe it soon,” said the other with a hopeless +calm. +</p> + +<p> +There was a puzzled pause for some little time, and then the Colonel began +again abruptly— +</p> + +<p> +“No, I can’t believe it. The thing is nonsense. The plain people of +a peaceable French town—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“My God!” said the Colonel, “someone has shot at us.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The staring Colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes all round +the street. +</p> + +<p> +“It is extraordinary,” he said, “most extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “we shall never get +there.” +</p> + +<p> +He had been standing up and looking keenly ahead of him. Now he sat down and +smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked Bull sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite true. There is a crowd or an army or some such thing across +the end of that street.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were all startled +by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” asked the professor, staring. +</p> + +<p> +“You blind bat,” cried Bull, “don’t you see who is +leading them?” +</p> + +<p> +They peered again, and then the Colonel, with a catch in his voice, cried +out— +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s Renard!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What a fool I’ve been!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Of +course, the dear old boy has turned out to help us.” +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the cigarette smoker slowly, “what do you think +now?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he did not +commonly make clear. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are really destroyed now,” said the man with a cigarette, and +rose with his hands in his pockets. “The devils are coming on!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Bull,” said Syme sardonically, “has at least got it into +his hat.” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you it can’t be!” cried the Colonel, stamping. +</p> + +<p> +“Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me,” and he strode +forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be in such a hurry,” drawled the smoker. “He +will very soon explain it to all of us.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is no good,” said Syme. “He will never get anything out +of that old heathen. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go back, then?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What the devil is up?” cried the Professor, seizing his arm. +</p> + +<p> +“The morning star has fallen!” said Syme, as his own car went down +the darkness like a falling star. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The world is insane!” said the Professor, and buried his face in +his hands. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, “it is I.” +</p> + +<p> +“What are we going to do?” asked the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“At this moment,” said Syme, with a scientific detachment, “I +think we are going to smash into a lamppost.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we smashed something,” said the Professor, with a faint +smile. “That’s some comfort.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re becoming an anarchist,” said Syme, dusting his +clothes with his instinct of daintiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Everyone is,” said Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive action, +leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The peasant!” cried Syme. “They have not risen since the +Middle Ages.” +</p> + +<p> +“Even if the police do come now,” said the Professor mournfully, +“they can do nothing with this mob.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said Bull desperately; “there must be some people +left in the town who are human.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the hopeless Inspector, “the human being will soon +be extinct. We are the last of mankind.” +</p> + +<p> +“It may be,” said the Professor absently. Then he added in his +dreamy voice, “What is all that at the end of the ‘Dunciad’? +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;<br> +Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!<br> +Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;<br> +Light dies before thine uncreating word:<br> +Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;<br> +And universal darkness buries all.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop!” cried Bull suddenly, “the gendarmes are out.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They are charging the mob!” cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme, “they are formed along the parade.” +</p> + +<p> +“They have unslung their carbines,” cried Bull dancing with +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Ratcliffe, “and they are going to fire on +us.” +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to hop +like hailstones on the stones in front of them. +</p> + +<p> +“The gendarmes have joined them!” cried the Professor, and struck +his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +“I am in the padded cell,” said Bull solidly. +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the swollen +sea, all a sort of grey purple— +</p> + +<p> +“What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead +soon.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme turned to him and said— +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite hopeless, then?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly— +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what or whom is your hope?” asked Syme with curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” said the other steadily; “but if so, he was the +only man whom Sunday found it hard to kill.” +</p> + +<p> +“I heard what you said,” said the Professor, with his back turned. +“I also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw.” +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +“Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!” +</p> + +<p> +“The Colonel! Yes,” cried Bull, “where on earth is the +Colonel?” +</p> + +<p> +“He went to speak to Renard,” said the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“We cannot leave him among all those beasts,” cried Syme. +“Let us die like gentlemen if—” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not pity the Colonel,” said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. +“He is extremely comfortable. He is—” +</p> + +<p> +“No! no! no!” cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, “not the +Colonel too! I will never believe it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you believe your eyes?” asked the other, and pointed to the +beach. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Swords!” shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three +behind him. “Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to +die.” +</p> + +<p> +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme’s sword was +broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him down. +In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob and +perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever since Syme’s +speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if dazed; now he +suddenly pulled off his black mask. +</p> + +<p> +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as +astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. +</p> + +<p> +“There is some mistake,” he said. “Mr. Syme, I hardly think +you understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of the law?” said Syme, and dropped his stick. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly!” said the Secretary. “I am a detective from +Scotland Yard,” and he took a small blue card from his pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you suppose we are?” asked the Professor, and threw up +his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“You,” said the Secretary stiffly, “are, as I know for a +fact, members of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, +I—” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We +were all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice +people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I +knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming over the +enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. +“Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I know. I am +now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br> +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT</h2> + +<p> +Next morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for Dover. The +poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having been first +forced to fight for two factions that didn’t exist, and then knocked down +with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman, and being much +relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off +on the pier with great geniality. +</p> + +<p> +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each other. +The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks originally in +order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a civilised +country. But above all these matters of detail which could be explained, rose +the central mountain of the matter that they could not explain. What did it all +mean? If they were all harmless officers, what was Sunday? If he had not seized +the world, what on earth had he been up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still +gloomy about this. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t make head or tail of old Sunday’s little game any +more than you can,” he said. “But whatever else Sunday is, he +isn’t a blameless citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?” +</p> + +<p> +“I grant you,” answered Syme, “that I have never been able to +forget it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the Secretary, “I suppose we can find out soon, +for tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me,” he +said, with a rather ghastly smile, “for being well acquainted with my +secretarial duties.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you are right,” said the Professor reflectively. +“I suppose we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should +feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” asked the Secretary, “for fear of bombs?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us have some drinks,” said Dr. Bull, after a silence. +</p> + +<p> +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly convivial, +but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had always been the +optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other four that the whole +company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was overruled, +and they went in a four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They +finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close to +the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even then the +adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, discontented with the +general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the hotel at about eleven to +see and taste some of the beauties of London. Twenty minutes afterwards, +however, he came back and made quite a clamour in the hall. Syme, who tried at +first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to his communication with +quite new attention. +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you I’ve seen him!” said Dr. Bull, with thick +emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +“Whom?” asked Syme quickly. “Not the President?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not so bad as that,” said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, +“not so bad as that. I’ve got him here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Got whom here?” asked Syme impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Hairy man,” said the other lucidly, “man that used to be +hairy man—Gogol. Here he is,” and he pulled forward by a reluctant +elbow the identical young man who five days before had marched out of the +Council with thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham +anarchists who had been exposed. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you worry with me?” he cried. “You have expelled me +as a spy.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are all spies!” whispered Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“We’re all spies!” shouted Dr. Bull. “Come and have a +drink.” +</p> + +<p> +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards the +hotel in Leicester Square. +</p> + +<p> +“This is more cheerful,” said Dr. Bull; “we are six men going +to ask one man what he means.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is a bit queerer than that,” said Syme. “I think +it is six men going to ask one man what they mean.” +</p> + +<p> +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the +opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that looked +too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over a newspaper. +But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, crossed that Square as +if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes. +</p> + +<p> +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should leave the +unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring +him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull +prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them +why they attacked Sunday so rashly. +</p> + +<p> +“My reason is quite simple,” said Syme. “I attack him rashly +because I am afraid of him.” +</p> + +<p> +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out +simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight of +Sunday’s smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Delightful!” he said. “So pleased to see you all. What an +exquisite day it is. Is the Czar dead?” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a +dignified outburst. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir,” he said sternly “there has been no massacre. I +bring you news of no such disgusting spectacles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Disgusting spectacles?” repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. “You mean Dr. Bull’s spectacles?” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a sort of +smooth appeal— +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to +call them disgusting before the man himself—” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“My spectacles are blackguardly,” he said, “but I’m +not. Look at my face.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say it’s the sort of face that grows on one,” said +the President, “in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with +the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some +day.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have no time for tomfoolery,” said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. “We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What +are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you +a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the +fool? Answer me, I tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Candidates,” murmured Sunday, “are only required to answer +eight out of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, +you want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, +and what this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. Well, I will +go so far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want to know what you are, +you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you,” said Syme, leaning forward, “what are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? What am I?” roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and break. +“You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science. Grub +in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme, you are a +poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have +found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth +about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall +know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the +world all men have hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and +lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been +caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given +them a good run for their money, and I will now.” +</p> + +<p> +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like some +huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before he dropped he +pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and thrusting his great chin +over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly— +</p> + +<p> +“There’s one thing I’ll tell you though about who I am. I am +the man in the dark room, who made you all policemen.” +</p> + +<p> +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a great +ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of the Alhambra, +where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The six detectives had been +standing thunderstruck and livid in the light of his last assertion; but when +he disappeared into the cab, Syme’s practical senses returned to him, and +leaping over the balcony so recklessly as almost to break his legs, he called +another cab. +</p> + +<p> +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the Inspector into +another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol scrambled into a third just in +time to pursue the flying Syme, who was pursuing the flying President. Sunday +led them a wild chase towards the north-west, his cabman, evidently under the +influence of more than common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck speed. +But Syme was in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in his own cab +shouting, “Stop thief!” until crowds ran along beside his cab, and +policemen began to stop and ask questions. All this had its influence upon the +President’s cabman, who began to look dubious, and to slow down to a +trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably to his fare, and in so doing let +the long whip droop over the front of the cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, +and jerked it violently out of the man’s hand. Then standing up in front +of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared aloud, so that they went +down the streets like a flying storm. Through street after street and square +after square went whirling this preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was +urging the horse and the driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three +cabs came after it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. +Shops and streets shot by like rattling arrows. +</p> + +<p> +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard where +he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, with white hair +whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his pursuers, like some +colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a ball of paper +in Syme’s face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while instinctively +warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One +was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it +is to be feared partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. +Bull’s address was, at any rate, considerably longer than his +communication, for the communication consisted entirely of the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“What about Martin Tupper <i>now?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“What does the old maniac mean?” asked Bull, staring at the words. +“What does yours say, Syme?” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the +Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the last +time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially after what +uncle said.” +</p> + +<p> +The President’s cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his +horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the Edgware +Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a providential +stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or left or stopping, for +down the long road was coming the unmistakable roar announcing the fire-engine, +which in a few seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went +by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, caught it, +slung himself on to it, and was seen as he disappeared in the noisy distance +talking to the astonished fireman with explanatory gestures. +</p> + +<p> +“After him!” howled Syme. “He can’t go astray now. +There’s no mistaking a fire-engine.” +</p> + +<p> +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their horses +and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their disappearing +prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming to the back of the +car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally flinging a neatly-folded +note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When that gentleman opened it, not +without impatience, he found it contained the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is +known.—A F<small>RIEND</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region that they +did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings shadowed with +trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved, to see the +President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through another whim or the +increasing protest of his entertainers they could not see. Before the three +cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings +like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished in a darkness of +leaves. +</p> + +<p> +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang also to the +escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his friends were following, he +turned a face on them which shone quite pale in the shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“What place can this be?” he asked. “Can it be the old +devil’s house? I’ve heard he has a house in North London.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the better,” said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a +foothold, “we shall find him at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but it isn’t that,” said Syme, knitting his brows. +“I hear the most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and +blowing their devilish noses!” +</p> + +<p> +“His dogs barking, of course,” said the Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not say his black-beetles barking!” said Syme furiously, +“snails barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like +that?” +</p> + +<p> +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling roar +that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh—a low thrilling +roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them. +</p> + +<p> +“The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs,” said Gogol, and +shuddered. +</p> + +<p> +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening +impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, listen to that,” he said, “is that a +dog—anybody’s dog?” +</p> + +<p> +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting and +clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what sounded like a +long nasal trumpet. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, his house ought to be hell!” said the Secretary; “and +if it is hell, I’m going in!” and he sprang over the tall railings +almost with one swing. +</p> + +<p> +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs, and came +out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull suddenly struck his +hands together. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you asses,” he cried, “it’s the Zoo!” +</p> + +<p> +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a keeper +in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain clothes. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it come this way?” gasped the keeper. +</p> + +<p> +“Has what?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“The elephant!” cried the keeper. “An elephant has gone mad +and run away!” +</p> + +<p> +“He has run away with an old gentleman,” said the other stranger +breathlessly, “a poor old gentleman with white hair!” +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of old gentleman?” asked Syme, with great curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes,” said +the keeper eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme, “if he’s that particular kind of old +gentleman, if you’re quite sure that he’s a large and fat old +gentleman in grey clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has +not run away with him. He has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not +made by God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the +elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!” +</p> + +<p> +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass, about +two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly at his +heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk thrown out +as rigid as a ship’s bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. +On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all +the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious speed with some +sharp object in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop him!” screamed the populace. “He’ll be out of the +gate!” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop a landslide!” said the keeper. “He is out of the +gate!” +</p> + +<p> +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that the great +grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological Gardens, and was +careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort of omnibus. +</p> + +<p> +“Great Lord!” cried Bull, “I never knew an elephant could go +so fast. Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in +sight.” +</p> + +<p> +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished, Syme +felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which they passed. +Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen them so clearly. He +remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their preposterous, pendant +throats. He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was +that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He remembered a +hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind +it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he could not +explain, that Nature was always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told +them that they would understand him when they had understood the stars. He +wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. +</p> + +<p> +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the elephant +sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of the streets. +This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the solid stretch of his +unconscious back, which maddened them, if possible, more than his previous +mockeries. Just before they came to Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw +something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball meaning to catch it again. +But at their rate of racing it fell far behind, just by the cab containing +Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or for some impulse unexplainable, he +stopped his cab so as to pick it up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite +a bulky parcel. On examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of +thirty-three pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. When the +last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip of paper, on +which was written:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.” +</p> + +<p> +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his hands and +feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed efforts. +</p> + +<p> +Through street after street, through district after district, went the prodigy +of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and driving the traffic +left and right. And still through all this insane publicity the three cabs +toiled after it, until they came to be regarded as part of a procession, and +perhaps the advertisement of a circus. They went at such a rate that distances +were shortened beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when +he thought that he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even +more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, +and he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line where the enormous +Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and +larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars. +</p> + +<p> +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners, and when +they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition they found +themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous crowd; in the +midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and shuddering as such shapeless +creatures do. But the President had disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir. +Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.” +</p> + +<p> +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the +Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“When the herring runs a mile,<br> +Let the Secretary smile;<br> +When the herring tries to <i>fly</i>,<br> +Let the Secretary die.<br> + Rustic Proverb.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why the eternal crikey,” began the Secretary, “did you let +the man in? Do people commonly come to your Exhibition riding on mad elephants? +Do—” +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” shouted Syme suddenly. “Look over there!” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at what?” asked the Secretary savagely. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the captive balloon!” said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. +</p> + +<p> +“Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?” demanded the +Secretary. “What is there queer about a captive balloon?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” said Syme, “except that it isn’t +captive!” +</p> + +<p> +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above the +Exhibition on a string, like a child’s balloon. A second afterwards the +string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken loose, floated +away with the freedom of a soap bubble. +</p> + +<p> +“Ten thousand devils!” shrieked the Secretary. “He’s +got into it!” and he shook his fists at the sky. +</p> + +<p> +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they could +see the great white head of the President peering over the side and looking +benevolently down on them. +</p> + +<p> +“God bless my soul!” said the Professor with the elderly manner +that he could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. +“God bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of +my hat!” +</p> + +<p> +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted paper, +which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true lover’s +knot and, the words:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Your beauty has not left me indifferent.—From +L<small>ITTLE</small> S<small>NOWDROP</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard— +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. +Let’s follow it!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br> +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS</h2> + +<p> +Across green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six draggled +detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of the party had at +first proposed that they should follow the balloon across South England in +hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of the persistent refusal of the +balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the +cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless though exasperated +travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed through ploughed fields +till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. +Those green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the admirable +light grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. His silk hat was +broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his coat-tails were torn to the +shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of England was splashed up to his +collar; but he still carried his yellow beard forward with a silent and furious +determination, and his eyes were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, +which in the full flush of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” he said, “it is very beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is singularly and strangely beautiful!” said the Professor. +“I wish the beastly gas-bag would burst!” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Dr. Bull, “I hope it won’t. It might hurt +the old boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hurt him!” said the vindictive Professor, “hurt him! Not as +much as I’d hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want him hurt, somehow,” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“What!” cried the Secretary bitterly. “Do you believe all +that tale about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” said Dr. Bull. +“But it isn’t that that I mean. I can’t wish old +Sunday’s balloon to burst because—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Syme impatiently, “because?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, because he’s so jolly like a balloon himself,” said +Dr. Bull desperately. “I don’t understand a word of all that idea +of his being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don’t care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great +bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn’t +prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked +him because he was so fat?” +</p> + +<p> +“You will not,” said the Secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got it now,” cried Bull, “it was because he was +so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as +heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. +Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It +was like the old speculations—what would happen if an elephant could leap +up in the sky like a grasshopper?” +</p> + +<p> +“Our elephant,” said Syme, looking upwards, “has leapt into +the sky like a grasshopper.” +</p> + +<p> +“And somehow,” concluded Bull, “that’s why I +can’t help liking old Sunday. No, it’s not an admiration of force, +or any silly thing like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he +were bursting with some good news. Haven’t you sometimes felt it on a +spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are +good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at +is literal truth, ‘Why leap ye, ye high hills?’ The hills do +leap—at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell +you?... because he’s such a Bounder.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, strained +voice— +</p> + +<p> +“You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better than +I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle morbid from the +first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us all, chose me because I +had all the crazy look of a conspirator—because my smile went crooked, +and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have been something +in me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men. For when I first +saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but something both gross +and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him smoking in a twilight room, a room +with brown blind down, infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in +which our master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark and +out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or even stirring. I +poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked my most eloquent questions. +Then, after a long silence, the Thing began to shake, and I thought it was +shaken by some secret malady. It shook like a loathsome and living jelly. It +reminded me of everything I had ever read about the base bodies that are the +origin of life—the deep sea lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like the +final form of matter, the most shapeless and the most shameful. I could only +tell myself, from its shudderings, that it was something at least that such a +monster could be miserable. And then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain +was shaking with a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me +to forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by something at once +lower and stronger than oneself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly,” cut in the clear +voice of Inspector Ratcliffe. “President Sunday is a terrible fellow for +one’s intellect, but he is not such a Barnum’s freak physically as +you make out. He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in +broad daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I’ll tell you +what is a trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat, +everything seems in order; but he’s absent-minded. Sometimes his great +bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now +absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think of a wicked +man as vigilant. We can’t think of a wicked man who is honestly and +sincerely dreamy, because we daren’t think of a wicked man alone with +himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. It means a man who, if +he happens to see you, will apologise. But how will you bear an absentminded +man who, if he happens to see you, will kill you? That is what tries the +nerves, abstraction combined with cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they +went through wild forests, and felt that the animals there were at once +innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you like to pass +ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded tiger?” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?” asked Syme. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think of Sunday on principle,” said Gogol simply, +“any more than I stare at the sun at noonday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that is a point of view,” said Syme thoughtfully. +“What do you say, Professor?” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did not +answer at all. +</p> + +<p> +“Wake up, Professor!” said Syme genially. “Tell us what you +think of Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“I think something,” he said, “that I cannot say clearly. Or, +rather, I think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something +like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, when I saw Sunday’s face I thought it was too +large—everybody does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was +so big, that one couldn’t focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was +so far away from the nose, that it wasn’t an eye. The mouth was so much +by itself, that one had to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard +to explain.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on— +</p> + +<p> +“But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp and +a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and unmistakable +face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him again. Yet when I +walked a little farther I found that there was no face, that the window was ten +yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, the cloud beyond the world. Well, +Sunday’s face escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as such chance +pictures run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt whether there +are any faces. I don’t know whether your face, Bull, is a face or a +combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly glasses is +quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a materialist are +not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the worst doubts, the +doubts of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a +creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you really have +a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme’s eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in the +evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you noticed an odd thing,” he said, “about all your +descriptions? Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you +can only find one thing to compare him to—the universe itself. Bull finds +him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is +reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness of +virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This is +queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd notion about the +President, and I also find that I think of Sunday as I think of the whole +world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get on a little faster, Syme,” said Bull; “never mind the +balloon.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I first saw Sunday,” said Syme slowly, “I only saw his +back; and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His +neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a +stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once +the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in +men’s clothes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get on,” said Dr. Bull. +</p> + +<p> +“And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the street, +as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round the other +side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me, as it did +everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil. On the +contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it was so +good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Syme,” exclaimed the Secretary, “are you ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after +heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and +sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that +I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he was an +animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pan,” said the Professor dreamily, “was a god and an +animal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, “that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the +mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is +but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a +jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so +good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to +a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind +him all the way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had you time for thinking then?” asked Ratcliffe. +</p> + +<p> +“Time,” replied Syme, “for one outrageous thought. I was +suddenly possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really +was his face—an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the +figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and +dancing as he ran.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible!” said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible is not the word,” said Syme. “It was exactly the +worst instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head +out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like +a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a long game,” said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen to me,” cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. +“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only +known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks +brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but +the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a +face? If we could only get round in front—” +</p> + +<p> +“Look!” cried out Bull clamorously, “the balloon is coming +down!” +</p> + +<p> +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off it. He +saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right itself, and +then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun. +</p> + +<p> +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary travels, +suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. +</p> + +<p> +“He is dead!” he cried. “And now I know he was my +friend—my friend in the dark!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dead!” snorted the Secretary. “You will not find him dead +easily. If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a +colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clashing his hoofs,” said the Professor. “The colts do, and +so did Pan.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pan again!” said Dr. Bull irritably. “You seem to think Pan +is everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he is,” said the Professor, “in Greek. He means +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t forget,” said the Secretary, looking down, “that +he also means Panic.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. +</p> + +<p> +“It fell over there,” he said shortly. “Let us follow +it!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he added with an indescribable gesture— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one of +his larks.” +</p> + +<p> +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and ribbons +fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more footsore and dubious +manner. And almost at the same moment all six men realised that they were not +alone in the little field. +</p> + +<p> +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, leaning on a +strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine but old-fashioned suit +with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade between blue, violet and grey +which can be seen in certain shadows of the woodland. His hair was whitish +grey, and at the first glance, taken along with his knee-breeches, looked as if +it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but for the silver frost upon his +head, he might have been one to the shadows of the wood. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen,” he said, “my master has a carriage waiting for +you in the road just by.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is your master?” asked Syme, standing quite still. +</p> + +<p> +“I was told you knew his name,” said the man respectfully. +</p> + +<p> +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said— +</p> + +<p> +“Where is this carriage?” +</p> + +<p> +“It has been waiting only a few moments,” said the stranger. +“My master has only just come home.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he found +himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed ordinary trees; yet +he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. +</p> + +<p> +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover nothing +except that the man’s coat was the exact colour of the purple shadows, +and that the man’s face was the exact colour of the red and brown and +golden sky. +</p> + +<p> +“Show us the place,” Syme said briefly, and without a word the man +in the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, which +let in suddenly the light of a white road. +</p> + +<p> +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the white road +blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a row of carriages as +might close the approach to some house in Park Lane. Along the side of these +carriages stood a rank of splendid servants, all dressed in the grey-blue +uniform, and all having a certain quality of stateliness and freedom which +would not commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the +officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than six +carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable band. All the +attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man crawled into his +carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of steel. +</p> + +<p> +“What can it all mean?” asked Bull of Syme as they separated. +“Is this another joke of Sunday’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” said Syme as he sank wearily back in the +cushions of his carriage; “but if it is, it’s one of the jokes you +talk about. It’s a good-natured one.” +</p> + +<p> +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had carried +them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of comfort. They had all +become inured to things going roughly; but things suddenly going smoothly +swamped them. They could not even feebly imagine what the carriages were; it +was enough for them to know that they were carriages, and carriages with +cushions. They could not conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it +was quite enough that he had certainly led them to the carriages. +</p> + +<p> +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment. It was +typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin forward fiercely so +long as anything could be done, when the whole business was taken out of his +hands he fell back on the cushions in a frank collapse. +</p> + +<p> +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the carriage +was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of what might have +been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill which, while wooded on +both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a forest. Then there began to grow +upon him, as upon a man slowly waking from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in +everything. He felt that the hedges were what hedges should be, living walls; +that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but all the more alive. He saw +high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought how happy boys would be +climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn of the path, and he saw suddenly +and quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in the +mild light of sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards and +quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the place +reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top or that crooked +path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that shape of a window; but each +man of them declared that he could remember this place before he could remember +his mother. +</p> + +<p> +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous gateway, +another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on the grey breast +of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive person said to the +bewildered Syme— +</p> + +<p> +“Refreshments are provided for you in your room.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went up the +large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a splendid suite +of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for him. He walked up to a +long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his class, to pull his tie straight +or to smooth his hair; and there he saw the frightful figure that he +was—blood running down his face from where the bough had struck him, his +hair standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his clothes torn into long, +wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang up, simply as the question of +how he had got there, and how he was to get out again. Exactly at the same +moment a man in blue, who had been appointed as his valet, said very +solemnly— +</p> + +<p> +“I have put out your clothes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clothes!” said Syme sardonically. “I have no clothes except +these,” and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating +festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl. +</p> + +<p> +“My master asks me to say,” said the attendant, “that there +is a fancy dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the costume +that I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some +cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours before +supper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cold pheasant is a good thing,” said Syme reflectively, “and +Burgundy is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so +much as I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of costume +you have got laid out for me. Where is it?” +</p> + +<p> +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery, rather of +the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned a large golden +sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming stars and crescents. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re to be dressed as Thursday, sir,” said the valet +somewhat affably. +</p> + +<p> +“Dressed as Thursday!” said Syme in meditation. “It +doesn’t sound a warm costume.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, sir,” said the other eagerly, “the Thursday costume +is quite warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I don’t understand anything,” said Syme, sighing. +“I have been used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable +adventures knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be +particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the sun and +moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, +I remember.” +</p> + +<p> +“Beg pardon, sir,” said the valet, “Bible also provided for +you,” and with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in +the first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which the +fourth day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun and moon. +Here, however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday. +</p> + +<p> +“This is getting wilder and wilder,” said Syme, as he sat down in a +chair. “Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, and +green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir, everything,” said the attendant gravely. “Shall I +help you on with your costume?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, hitch the bally thing on!” said Syme impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious freedom and +naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment fell about him; and +when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he +passed out of the room he flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, +his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. +For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br> +THE ACCUSER</h2> + +<p> +As Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the top of a +great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He was draped in a +long robe of starless black, down the centre of which fell a band or broad +stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light. The whole looked like some +very severe ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his +memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of creation marked +the mere creation of light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone +have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of +pure white and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with +his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make war on +the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was scarcely +surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of their new +surroundings, this man’s eyes were still stern. No smell of ale or +orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question. +</p> + +<p> +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he, too, +seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the Secretary +stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless light, Syme was +a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to +split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; +the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation +of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. +</p> + +<p> +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe, who was +clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whose garment was a +green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third day on which the earth and +green things were made, and his square, sensible face, with its not unfriendly +cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it. +</p> + +<p> +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large old +English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light of which a +vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme seemed to see every +shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. There was a man dressed as a +windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a +balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread of their farcical +adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an +enormous hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself—the queer bird +which had fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while he was rushing +down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such +objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a +dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some mad +musician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing an eternal +jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged and at rest, he could never +see one of those particular objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a +windmill—without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from that revel +of masquerade. +</p> + +<p> +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green bank, like +the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. +</p> + +<p> +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the thrones of the +seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their seats; the Professor was +just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had his simplicity well symbolised by +a dress designed upon the division of the waters, a dress that separated upon +his forehead and fell to his feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The +Professor, whose day was that on which the birds and fishes—the ruder +forms of life—were created, had a dress of dim purple, over which +sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical birds, the union in him of +unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the last day of Creation, wore a +coat covered with heraldic animals in red and gold, and on his crest a man +rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an +optimist in his element. +</p> + +<p> +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange seats. As +each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the carnival, such as that +with which crowds receive kings. Cups were clashed and torches shaken, and +feathered hats flung in the air. The men for whom these thrones were reserved +were men crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was +empty. +</p> + +<p> +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The Secretary +looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing his lips— +</p> + +<p> +“We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in front of +him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had opened behind his +head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the front like a shadow, and +had sat in the central seat. He was draped plainly, in a pure and terrible +white, and his hair was like a silver flame on his forehead. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time—it seemed for hours—that huge masquerade of mankind +swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. Every +couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy dancing with a +pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but in each case it was, +somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love +story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. Couples strolled +away into the garden-walks, or began to drift towards that end of the building +where stood smoking, in huge pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented +mixtures of old ale or wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on +the roof of the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit +up the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the face of +vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with warmth even the +emptiness of upper night. Yet this also, after a time, was allowed to grow +fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more round the great cauldrons, or +passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passages of that ancient house. +Soon there were only some ten loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally +the last stray merry-maker ran into the house whooping to his companions. The +fire faded, and the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were +left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them +had spoken a word. +</p> + +<p> +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of insects and +the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so dreamily that he might +have been continuing a conversation rather than beginning one. +</p> + +<p> +“We will eat and drink later,” he said. “Let us remain +together a little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so +long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always +heroes—epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms. +Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the +world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any +created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural +virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun +in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. +And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself.” +</p> + +<p> +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and the +incomprehensible went on. +</p> + +<p> +“But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the +whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew how near +you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords with King Satan, and +how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without hope.” +</p> + +<p> +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the black-browed +Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday, and said in a harsh +voice— +</p> + +<p> +“Who and what are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am the Sabbath,” said the other without moving. “I am the +peace of God.” +</p> + +<p> +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I know what you mean,” he cried, “and it is exactly that +that I cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they +call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you +were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the +sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you +also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our +souls—and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, +though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone upon +Syme as if asking a question. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Syme, “I do not feel fierce like that. I am +grateful to you, not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine +scamper and free fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as +happy and quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I +should like to know.” +</p> + +<p> +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said— +</p> + +<p> +“It seems so <i>silly</i> that you should have been on both sides and +fought yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Bull said— +</p> + +<p> +“I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to +sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not happy,” said the Professor with his head in his hands, +“because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near to +hell.” +</p> + +<p> +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child— +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.” +</p> + +<p> +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon his hand, and +gazed at the distance. Then at last he said— +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes another +to complain, and we will hear him also.” +</p> + +<p> +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a bar of +burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was outlined in +utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He seemed to have a fine +close suit with knee-breeches such as that which was worn by the servants of +the house, only that it was not blue, but of this absolute sable. He had, like +the servants, a kind of sword by his side. It was only when he had come quite +close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his face to look at them, that +Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost +ape-like face of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its +insulting smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Gregory!” gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. “Why, this +is the real anarchist!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, “I +am the real anarchist.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Now there was a day,’” murmured Bull, who seemed +really to have fallen asleep, “‘when the sons of God came to +present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among +them.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You are right,” said Gregory, and gazed all round. “I am a +destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could.” +</p> + +<p> +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he spoke +brokenly and without sequence. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have +red hair like your sister.” +</p> + +<p> +“My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,” said +Gregory. “I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate +anything; but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate +you!” +</p> + +<p> +“I never hated you,” said Syme very sadly. +</p> + +<p> +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. +</p> + +<p> +“You!” he cried. “You never hated because you never lived. I +know what you are all of you, from first to last—you are the people in +power! You are the police—the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! +You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive +that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? We in +revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of +the Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is that it +governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do +not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being +kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have +never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had +no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind, if +I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as +I—” +</p> + +<p> +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. +</p> + +<p> +“I see everything,” he cried, “everything that there is. Why +does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small +thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have +to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole +universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of +the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of +the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a +man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the +face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to +say to this man, ‘You lie!’ No agonies can be too great to buy the +right to say to this accuser, ‘We also have suffered.’ +</p> + +<p> +“It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon +the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We +have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at +the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I +repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the +great guards of Law whom he has accused. At least—” +</p> + +<p> +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which +wore a strange smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you,” he cried in a dreadful voice, “have you ever +suffered?” +</p> + +<p> +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the +colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger +and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the +blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant +voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, “Can ye +drink of the cup that I drink of?” +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in some +place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or lift +themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme’s experience was +something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything +unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For while +he could always remember afterwards that he had swooned before the face of +Sunday, he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could only +remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had been walking +along a country lane with an easy and conversational companion. That companion +had been a part of his recent drama; it was the red-haired poet Gregory. They +were walking like old friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about +some triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his body and +a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior to everything that +he said or did. He felt he was in possession of some impossible good news, +which made every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality. +</p> + +<p> +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; as if +Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose. A breeze +blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that it blew from the sky; it +blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple surprise when he +saw rising all round him on both sides of the road the red, irregular buildings +of Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so near London. He walked by +instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found +himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl +with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great +unconscious gravity of a girl. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY ***</div> + + +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Scanned and Edited by Harry Plantinga, planting@cs.pitt.edu + + + + + +The Man Who Was Thursday + +by G. K. Chesterton + + + + +A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is +possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous +criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that +the author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective +story like no-one else. On this level, therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS +THURSDAY succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent +tour-de-force of suspense-writing. + +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than +that. Carried along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by +Chesterton's wonderful high-spirited style, he will soon see that +he is being carried into much deeper waters than he had planned on; +and the totally unforeseeable denouement will prove for the modern +reader, as it has for thousands of others since 1908 when the book +was first published, an inevitable and moving experience, as the +investigators finally discover who Sunday is. + + + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + +A NIGHTMARE + +G. K. CHESTERTON + +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley + +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came-- +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us +Children we were--our forts of sand were even as weak as eve, +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, +When all church bells were silent our cap and beds were heard. + +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world. +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass, +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain-- +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain. +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day. +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms. +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms: +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved-- +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed. + +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells-- +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand-- +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, +And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain. +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. + +G. K. C. + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + +THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as +red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright +brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground +plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, +faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes +Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the +impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described +with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any +definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be +an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a +pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for +the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very +oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when +he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place +was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not +as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not +"artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with +the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was not +really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with +the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat--that venerable +humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause +of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, +egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the +airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new +in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered +more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place +had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much +as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. +A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had +stepped into a written comedy. + +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about +nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the +afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a +drifting cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many +nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often +illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish +trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest +of all on one particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the +locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not +by any means the only evening of which he was the hero. On many +nights those passing by his little back garden might hear his high, +didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly to +women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the +paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely +called emancipated, and professed some protest against male +supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the +extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, +that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the +red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listening +to, even if one only laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant +of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness with a certain +impudent freshness which gave at least a momentary pleasure. He was +helped in some degree by the arresting oddity of his appearance, +which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark +red hair parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and +curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. +From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected +suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of +cockney contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified +the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed like a walking +blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. + +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, +will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked +like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a +quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky +was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the +face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the +strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale +green; but towards the west the whole grew past description, +transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it +covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole +was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent +secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed +that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The +very sky seemed small. + +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening +if only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember +it because it marked the first appearance in the place of the +second poet of Saffron Park. For a long time the red-haired +revolutionary had reigned without a rival; it was upon the night +of the sunset that his solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who +introduced himself by the name of Gabriel Syme was a very +mild-looking mortal, with a fair, pointed beard and faint, yellow +hair. But an impression grew that he was less meek than he looked. +He signalised his entrance by differing with the established poet, +Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He said that he (Syme) +was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he was a poet of +respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him as if he +had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky. + +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two +events. + +"It may well be," he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, "it may +well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is +brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. +You say you are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in +terms. I only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the +night you appeared in this garden." + +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured +these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party +of the group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's +braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed +with such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave +commonly to the family oracle. + +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. + +"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might +transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man +who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment +to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of +blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common +bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all +governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in +disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the +world would be the Underground Railway." + +"So it is," said Mr. Syme. + +"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the +railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will +tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It +is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket +for that place they will reach. It is because after they have +passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be +Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, +their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next +station were unaccountably Baker Street!" + +"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you +say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. +The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious +thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild +arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with +one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because +in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to +Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that +he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books +of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of +pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give +me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I +say!" + +"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically. + +"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train +comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and +that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously +that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I +say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever +I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And +when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an +unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing +conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of +Adam." + +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. + +"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the question, 'And +what is Victoria now that you have got there?' You think Victoria +is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only +be like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the +streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt." + +"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about +being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be +sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being +rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate +occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical. +Revolt in the abstract is--revolting. It's mere vomiting." + +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was +too hot to heed her. + +"It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that +is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more +poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars--the most +poetical thing in the world is not being sick." + +"Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the examples you choose--" + +"I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I forgot we had abolished +all conventions." + +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory's forehead. + +"You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionise society on this +lawn?" + +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. + +"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious +about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do." + +Gregory's big bull's eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry +lion, and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. + +"Don't you think, then," he said in a dangerous voice, "that I am +serious about my anarchism?" + +"I beg your pardon?" said Syme. + +"Am I not serious about my anarchism?" cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. + +"My dear fellow!" said Syme, and strolled away. + +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond +Gregory still in his company. + +"Mr. Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like you and my +brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?" + +Syme smiled. + +"Do you?" he asked. + +"What do you mean?" asked the girl, with grave eyes. + +"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there are many kinds of +sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, +do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world is round,' +do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't mean it. +Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does +mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but +then he says more than he means--from sheer force of meaning it." + +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave +and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that +unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most +frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world. + +"Is he really an anarchist, then?" she asked. + +"Only in that sense I speak of," replied Syme; "or if you prefer +it, in that nonsense." + +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly-- + +"He wouldn't really use--bombs or that sort of thing?" + +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight +and somewhat dandified figure. + +"Good Lord, no!" he said, "that has to be done anonymously." + +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and +she thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory's absurdity +and of his safety. + +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and +continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and +in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. +And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man +watches himself too closely. He defended respectability with +violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of +tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac +all round him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a +barrel-organ begin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic +words were moving to a tiny tune from under or beyond the world. + +He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for +what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups +in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, +he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, +and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a +sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards +explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no +part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. +And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a +motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the +glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark +and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so +improbable, that it might well have been a dream. + +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the +moment empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence +was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the +door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree +that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the +lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the +lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the +face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of +fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the +attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something +of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe. + +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more +formally returned. + +"I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's +conversation?" + +"Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. + +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the +tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. +There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and +barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing +itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." + +"All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only +see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever +see the lamp by the light of the tree." Then after a pause he said, +"But may I ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only +to resume our little argument?" + +"No," cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, "I +did not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for ever." + +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, +listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a +smooth voice and with a rather bewildering smile. + +"Mr. Syme," he said, "this evening you succeeded in doing something +rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of +woman has ever succeeded in doing before." + +"Indeed!" + +"Now I remember," resumed Gregory reflectively, "one other person +succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I +remember correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me." + +"I am very sorry," replied Syme with gravity. + +"I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped +out even with an apology," said Gregory very calmly. "No duel +could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. +There is only one way by which that insult can be erased, and that +way I choose. I am going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and +honour, to prove to you that you were wrong in what you said." + +"In what I said?" + +"You said I was not serious about being an anarchist." + +"There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I have never +doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you +thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a +paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth." + +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. + +"And in no other sense," he asked, "you think me serious? You think +me a flaneur who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that +in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious." + +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. + +"Serious!" he cried. "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these +damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? +One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as +well, but I should think very little of a man who didn't keep +something in the background of his life that was more serious than +all this talking--something more serious, whether it was religion +or only drink." + +"Very well," said Gregory, his face darkening, "you shall see +something more serious than either drink or religion." + +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory +again opened his lips. + +"You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that +you have one?" + +"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now." + +"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your +religion involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to +tell you to any son of Adam, and especially not to the police? +Will you swear that! If you will take upon yourself this awful +abnegations if you will consent to burden your soul with a vow +that you should never make and a knowledge you should never dream +about, I will promise you in return--" + +"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the other +paused. + +"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme suddenly +took off his hat. + +"Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined. You say +that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least +that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as +a Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, +that I will not report anything of this, whatever it is, to the +police. And now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?" + +"I think," said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, "that we will +call a cab." + +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the +road. The two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the +trap the address of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank +of the river. The cab whisked itself away again, and in it these +two fantastics quitted their fantastic town. + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + +THE cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, +into which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated +themselves in a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained +wooden table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, +that very little could be seen of the attendant who was summoned, +beyond a vague and dark impression of something bulky and bearded. + +"Will you take a little supper?" asked Gregory politely. "The pate +de foie gras is not good here, but I can recommend the game." + +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. +Accepting the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred +indifference-- + +"Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise." + +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said "Certainly, +sir!" and went away apparently to get it. + +"What will you drink?" resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. "I shall only have a crepe de menthe myself; I have +dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you +with a half-bottle of Pommery at least?" + +"Thank you!" said the motionless Syme. "You are very good." + +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in +themselves, were cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the +actual appearance of the lobster. Syme tasted it, and found it +particularly good. Then he suddenly began to eat with great +rapidity and appetite. + +"Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!" he said to Gregory, +smiling. "I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It +is new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly +the other way." + +"You are not asleep, I assure you," said Gregory. "You are, on the +contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your +existence. Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be +a slight disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements +of this excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. +But that is all our modesty. We are the most modest men that ever +lived on earth." + +"And who are we?" asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. + +"It is quite simple," replied Gregory. "We are the serious +anarchists, in whom you do not believe." + +"Oh!" said Syme shortly. "You do yourselves well in drinks." + +"Yes, we are serious about everything," answered Gregory. + +Then after a pause he added-- + +"If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, +don't put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don't wish +you to do yourself an injustice." + +"Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect +calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either +condition. May I smoke?" + +"Certainly!" said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. "Try one of +mine." + +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out +of his waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and +let out a long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit +that he performed these rites with so much composure, for almost +before he had begun them the table at which he sat had begun to +revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane +seance. + +"You must not mind it," said Gregory; "it's a kind of screw." + +"Quite so," said Syme placidly, "a kind of screw. How simple that +is!" + +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering +across the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a +factory chimney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot +down through the floor as if the earth had swallowed them. They +went rattling down a kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift +cut loose, and they came with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But +when Gregory threw open a pair of doors and let in a red +subterranean light, Syme was still smoking with one leg thrown +over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair. + +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which +was the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as +big as a fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the +door there was a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory +struck five times. A heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him +who he was. To this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, +"Mr. Joseph Chamberlain." The heavy hinges began to move; it was +obviously some kind of password. + +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a +network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering +pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and +revolvers, closely packed or interlocked. + +"I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities," said Gregory; +"we have to be very strict here." + +"Oh, don't apologise," said Syme. "I know your passion for law and +order," and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel +weapons. With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he +looked a singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down +that shining avenue of death. + +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last +into a queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in +shape, but presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the +appearance of a scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or +pistols in this apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more +dubious and dreadful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of +iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the +very room itself seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his +cigar ash off against the wall, and went in. + +"And now, my dear Mr. Syme," said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, "now we are +quite cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give +you any notion of why I brought you here. It was one of those quite +arbitrary emotions, like jumping off a cliff or falling in love. +Suffice it to say that you were an inexpressibly irritating fellow, +and, to do you justice, you are still. I would break twenty oaths +of secrecy for the pleasure of taking you down a peg. That way you +have of lighting a cigar would make a priest break the seal of +confession. Well, you said that you were quite certain I was not a +serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?" + +"It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented +Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give +me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted +from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall +certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. +First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object +to? You want to abolish Government?" + +"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We +do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; +that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to +deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour +and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly +sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of +Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and +Wrong." + +"And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope +you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me." + +"You spoke of a second question," snapped Gregory. + +"With pleasure," resumed Syme. "In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an +aunt who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have +found people living from preference under a public-house. You have +a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the +humiliation of calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround +yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say +so, more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all +this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, +you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to +every silly woman in Saffron Park?" + +Gregory smiled. + +"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious +anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. +Unless I took them into this infernal room they would not believe +me." + +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory +went on. + +"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I +became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops +in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and +Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are +strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. +I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters +in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! +presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was +not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a +millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that +a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a +major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough +intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like +Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all +that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and +waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a +man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is +the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed +again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central +Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe." + +"What is his name?" asked Syme. + +"You would not know it," answered Gregory. "That is his greatness. +Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and +they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, +and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the +room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have +been children in his hands." + +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed-- + +"But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling +as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said +to him, 'What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find +more respectable than bishops and majors?' He looked at me with his +large but indecipherable face. 'You want a safe disguise, do you? +You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in +which no one would ever look for a bomb?' I nodded. He suddenly +lifted his lion's voice. 'Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you +fool!' he roared so that the room shook. 'Nobody will ever expect +you to do anything dangerous then.' And he turned his broad back +on me without another word. I took his advice, and have never +regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and +night, and--by God!--they would let me wheel their perambulators." + +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. + +"You took me in," he said. "It is really a smart dodge." + +Then after a pause he added-- + +"What do you call this tremendous President of yours?" + +"We generally call him Sunday," replied Gregory with simplicity. +"You see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist +Council, and they are named after days of the week. He is called +Sunday, by some of his admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you +should mention the matter, because the very night you have dropped +in (if I may so express it) is the night on which our London +branch, which assembles in this room, has to elect its own deputy +to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman who has for some +time past played, with propriety and general applause, the +difficult part of Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, +we have called a meeting this very evening to elect a successor." + +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of +smiling embarrassment. + +"I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme," he continued +casually. "I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have +promised to tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something +that I would not say in so many words to the anarchists who will be +coming to the room in about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go +through a form of election; but I don't mind telling you that it is +practically certain what the result will be." He looked down for a +moment modestly. "It is almost a settled thing that I am to be +Thursday." + +"My dear fellow." said Syme heartily, "I congratulate you. A great +career!" + +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking +rapidly. + +"As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table," he +said, "and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible." + +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, +a large Colt's revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of +brandy. Over the chair, beside the table, was thrown a +heavy-looking cape or cloak. + +"I have only to get the form of election finished," continued +Gregory with animation, "then I snatch up this cloak and stick, +stuff these other things into my pocket, step out of a door in +this cavern, which opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug +already waiting for me, and then--then--oh, the wild joy of being +Thursday!" And he clasped his hands. + +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, +got to his feet with an unusual air of hesitation. + +"Why is it," he asked vaguely, "that I think you are quite a decent +fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?" He paused a moment, +and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, "Is it because you +are such an ass?" + +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out-- + +"Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been +in in my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave +you a promise before I came into this place. That promise I would +keep under red-hot pincers. Would you give me, for my own safety, a +little promise of the same kind?" + +"A promise?" asked Gregory, wondering. + +"Yes," said Syme very seriously, "a promise. I swore before God +that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by +Humanity, or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will +not tell my secret to the anarchists?" + +"Your secret?" asked the staring Gregory. "Have you got a secret?" + +"Yes," said Syme, "I have a secret." Then after a pause, "Will you +swear?" + +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said +abruptly-- + +"You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about +you. Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell +me. But look sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes." + +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into +his long, grey trousers' pockets. Almost as he did so there came +five knocks on the outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the +first of the conspirators. + +"Well," said Syme slowly, "I don't know how to tell you the truth +more shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as +an aimless poet is not confined to you or your President. We have +known the dodge for some time at Scotland Yard." + +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. + +"What do you say?" he asked in an inhuman voice. + +"Yes," said Syme simply, "I am a police detective. But I think I +hear your friends coming." + +From the doorway there came a murmur of "Mr. Joseph Chamberlain." +It was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the +crowd of Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard +trampling down the corridor. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + +BEFORE one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, +Gregory's stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the +table with a bound, and a noise in his throat like a wild beast. +He caught up the Colt's revolver and took aim at Syme. Syme did +not flinch, but he put up a pale and polite hand. + +"Don't be such a silly man," he said, with the effeminate dignity +of a curate. "Don't you see it's not necessary? Don't you see that +we're both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea-sick." + +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he +looked his question. + +"Don't you see we've checkmated each other?" cried Syme. "I can't +tell the police you are an anarchist. You can't tell the anarchists +I'm a policeman. I can only watch you, knowing what you are; you +can only watch me, knowing what I am. In short, it's a lonely, +intellectual duel, my head against yours. I'm a policeman deprived +of the help of the police. You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist +deprived of the help of that law and organisation which is so +essential to anarchy. The one solitary difference is in your +favour. You are not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am +surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. I cannot betray you, but I +might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I +shall do it so nicely." + +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he +were a sea-monster. + +"I don't believe in immortality," he said at last, "but if, after +all this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only +for you, to howl in for ever." + +"I shall not break my word," said Syme sternly, "nor will you +break yours. Here are your friends." + +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a +slouching and somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a +black beard and glasses--a man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim +Healy--detached himself, and bustled forward with some papers +in his hand. + +"Comrade Gregory," he said, "I suppose this man is a delegate?" + +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of +Syme; but Syme replied almost pertly-- + +"I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it +hard for anyone to be here who was not a delegate." + +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still +contracted with something like suspicion. + +"What branch do you represent?" he asked sharply. + +"I should hardly call it a branch," said Syme, laughing; "I should +call it at the very least a root." + +"What do you mean?" + +"The fact is," said Syme serenely, "the truth is I am a +Sabbatarian. I have been specially sent here to see that you show +a due observance of Sunday." + +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear +went over all the faces of the group. Evidently the awful +President, whose name was Sunday, did sometimes send down such +irregular ambassadors to such branch meetings. + +"Well, comrade," said the man with the papers after a pause, "I +suppose we'd better give you a seat in the meeting?" + +"If you ask my advice as a friend," said Syme with severe +benevolence, "I think you'd better." + +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety +for his rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful +thought. He was, indeed, in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear +that Syme's inspired impudence was likely to bring him out of all +merely accidental dilemmas. Little was to be hoped from them. He +could not himself betray Syme, partly from honour, but partly also +because, if he betrayed him and for some reason failed to destroy +him, the Syme who escaped would be a Syme freed from all obligation +of secrecy, a Syme who would simply walk to the nearest police +station. After all, it was only one night's discussion, and only +one detective who would know of it. He would let out as little as +possible of their plans that night, and then let Syme go, and +chance it. + +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already +distributing itself along the benches. + +"I think it is time we began," he said; "the steam-tug is waiting +on the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the chair." + +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the +papers slipped into the presidential seat. + +"Comrades," he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, "our meeting +tonight is important, though it need not be long. This branch +has always had the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central +European Council. We have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We +all lament the sad decease of the heroic worker who occupied the +post until last week. As you know, his services to the cause were +considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of Brighton +which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody +on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as +his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of +chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which beverage he +regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. +Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. +But it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a +harder task. It is difficult properly to praise his qualities, but +it is more difficult to replace them. Upon you, comrades, it +devolves this evening to choose out of the company present the man +who shall be Thursday. If any comrade suggests a name I will put +it to the vote. If no comrade suggests a name, I can only tell +myself that that dear dynamiter, who is gone from us, has carried +into the unknowable abysses the last secret of his virtue and his +innocence." + +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes +heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable +white beard, perhaps the only real working-man present, rose +lumberingly and said-- + +"I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday," and sat +lumberingly down again. + +"Does anyone second?" asked the chairman. + +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. + +"Before I put the matter to the vote," said the chairman, "I will +call on Comrade Gregory to make a statement." + +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly +pale, so that by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. +But he was smiling and altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, +and he saw his best policy quite plain in front of him like a white +road. His best chance was to make a softened and ambiguous speech, +such as would leave on the detective's mind the impression that the +anarchist brotherhood was a very mild affair after all. He believed +in his own literary power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades +and picking perfect words. He thought that with care he could +succeed, in spite of all the people around him, in conveying an +impression of the institution, subtly and delicately false. Syme +had once thought that anarchists, under all their bravado, were +only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of peril, make +Syme think so again? + +"Comrades," began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, "it is +not necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your +policy also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, +it has been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been +altered. Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go +everywhere and anywhere to get their information, except to us, +except to the fountain head. They learn about anarchists from +sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from tradesmen's +newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's +Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about +anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the +mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end +of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are +walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not +hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is +deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to +assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by +some incredible accident, there were here tonight a man who all his +life had thus immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question +to him: 'When those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of +moral reputation had they in the streets above? What tales were +told of their atrocities by one educated Roman to another? Suppose' +(I would say to him), 'suppose that we are only repeating that +still mysterious paradox of history. Suppose we seem as shocking as +the Christians because we are really as harmless as the Christians. +Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as +meek."' + +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been +gradually growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped +suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket +said, in a high, squeaky voice-- + +"I'm not meek!" + +"Comrade Witherspoon tells us," resumed Gregory, "that he is not +meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, +extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary +taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and +delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness +which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I +repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too +late. We are simple, as they revere simple--look at Comrade +Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest--look at me. We are +merciful--" + +"No, no!" called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. + +"I say we are merciful," repeated Gregory furiously, "as the early +Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being +accused of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh--" + +"Shame!" cried Witherspoon. "Why not?" + +"Comrade Witherspoon," said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, "is +anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at +any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love--" + +"No, no!" said Witherspoon, "down with love." + +"Which is founded upon love," repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +"there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue +as a body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the +representative of that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that +represent us as assassins and enemies of human society, we shall +pursue with moral courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the +permanent ideals of brotherhood and simplicity." + +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. +The silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an +automaton, and said in a colourless voice-- + +"Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?" + +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and +Comrade Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in +his thick beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion +would have been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening +his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small +and quiet voice-- + +"Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose." + +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the +voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said +these first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief +simplicity, he made his next word ring and volley in the vault as +if one of the guns had gone off. + +"Comrades!" he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of +his boots, "have we come here for this? Do we live underground like +rats in order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might +listen to while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line +these walls with weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone +should come and hear Comrade Gregory saying to us, 'Be good, and +you will be happy,' 'Honesty is the best policy,' and 'Virtue is +its own reward'? There was not a word in Comrade Gregory's address +to which a curate could not have listened with pleasure (hear, +hear). But I am not a curate (loud cheers), and I did not listen to +it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The man who is fitted to make a +good curate is not fitted to make a resolute, forcible, and +efficient Thursday (hear, hear)." + +"Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that +we are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the +enemies of society, and so much the worse for society. We are the +enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its +oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory +has told us (apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There +I agree. We are not murderers, we are executioners (cheers)." + +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face +idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay +parted, and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness-- + +"You damnable hypocrite!" + +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale +blue ones, and said with dignity-- + +"Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do +that I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. +I do not mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade +Gregory is unfit to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He +is unfit to be Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not +want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy +(hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is +it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade +Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of +Europe, because the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has +forgotten modesty as much as he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am +not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed cheers). I set myself +against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as I should +choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the +wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his +milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself +for election--" + +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The +faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his +tirade grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with +grins of anticipation or cloven with delighted cries. At the +moment when he announced himself as ready to stand for the post of +Thursday, a roar of excitement and assent broke forth, and became +uncontrollable, and at the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, +with foam upon his mouth, and shouted against the shouting. + +"Stop, you blasted madmen!" he cried, at the top of a voice that +tore his throat. "Stop, you--" + +But louder than Gregory's shouting and louder than the roar of the +room came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless +thunder-- + +"I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the +priest who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the +judge who says these men are the enemies of law, to the fat +parliamentarian who says these men are the enemies of order and +public decency, to all these I will reply, 'You are false kings, +but you are true prophets. I am come to destroy you, and to fulfil +your prophecies.'" + +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased +Witherspoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, +and had said-- + +"I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the post." + +"Stop all this, I tell you!" cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. "Stop it, it is all--" + +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. + +"Does anyone second this amendment?" he said. A tall, tired man, +with melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on +the back bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been +screaming for some time past; now there was a change in his accent, +more shocking than any scream. "I end all this!" he said, in a +voice as heavy as stone. + +"This man cannot be elected. He is a--" + +"Yes," said Syme, quite motionless, "what is he?" Gregory's mouth +worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl +back into his dead face. "He is a man quite inexperienced in our +work," he said, and sat down abruptly. + +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard +was again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American +monotone-- + +"I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme." + +"The amendment will, as usual, be put first," said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. + +"The question is that Comrade Syme--" + +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. + +"Comrades," he cried out, "I am not a madman." + +"Oh, oh!" said Mr. Witherspoon. + +"I am not a madman," reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, "but I give you a counsel +which you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a +counsel, for I can give you no reason for it. I will call it a +command. Call it a mad command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear +me! Kill me, but obey me! Do not elect this man." Truth is so +terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment Syme's slender and +insane victory swayed like a reed. But you could not have guessed +it from Syme's bleak blue eyes. He merely began-- + +"Comrade Gregory commands--" + +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory-- + +"Who are you? You are not Sunday"; and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, "And you are not Thursday." + +"Comrades," cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in +an ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, "it is nothing to me +whether you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you +will not take my command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I +throw myself at your feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man." + +"Comrade Gregory," said the chairman after a painful pause, "this +is really not quite dignified." + +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a +real silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a +man, and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly +started again-- + +"The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of +Thursday on the General Council." + +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three +minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, +was elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the +Anarchists of Europe. + +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, +the sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant +the election was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the +paper proving his election, they all sprang to their feet, and the +fiery groups moved and mixed in the room. Syme found himself, +somehow or other, face to face with Gregory, who still regarded him +with a stare of stunned hatred. They were silent for many minutes. + +"You are a devil!" said Gregory at last. + +"And you are a gentleman," said Syme with gravity. + +"It was you that entrapped me," began Gregory, shaking from head +to foot, "entrapped me into--" + +"Talk sense," said Syme shortly. "Into what sort of devils' +parliament have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made me +swear before I made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think +right. But what we think right is so damned different that there +can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is +nothing possible between us but honour and death," and he pulled +the great cloak about his shoulders and picked up the flask from +the table. + +"The boat is quite ready," said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. "Be good +enough to step this way." + +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a +short, iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following +feverishly at their heels. At the end of the passage was a door, +which Buttons opened sharply, showing a sudden blue and silver +picture of the moonlit river, that looked like a scene in a +theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, dwarfish steam-launch, +like a baby dragon with one red eye. + +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the +gaping Gregory. + +"You have kept your word," he said gently, with his face in shadow. +"You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even +down to a small particular. There was one special thing you +promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have +certainly given me by the end of it." + +"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise +you?" + +"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military +salute with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + +GABRIEL SYME was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; +he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred +of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early +in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly +of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame +tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a +rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in +which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his +uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an +unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His +father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for +simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, +was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of +absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The +more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more +did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the +time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had +pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism. + +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from +infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into +the only thing left--sanity. But there was just enough in him of +the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common +sense a little too fierce to be sensible. His hatred of modern +lawlessness had been crowned also by an accident. It happened that +he was walking in a side street at the instant of a dynamite +outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, +the smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. +After that he went about as usual--quiet, courteous, rather gentle; +but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He did not +regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid men, +combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a +huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. + +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets +a torrent of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of +this deluge of barbaric denial. But he seemed to be getting no +nearer his enemy, and, what was worse, no nearer a living. As he +paced the Thames embankment, bitterly biting a cheap cigar and +brooding on the advance of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with +a bomb in his pocket so savage or so solitary as he. Indeed, he +always felt that Government stood alone and desperate, with its +back to the wall. He was too quixotic to have cared for it +otherwise. + +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red +river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The +sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively +so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the +sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding +under the vast caverns of a subterranean country. + +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black +chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, +black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the +early villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard +and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long +afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, +lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from +between his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very +satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a +holy war. Perhaps this was why a policeman on the Embankment spoke +to him, and said "Good evening." + +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by +the mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue +in the twilight. + +"A good evening is it?" he said sharply. "You fellows would call +the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun +and that bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human +blood, spilt and shining, you would still be standing here as solid +as ever, looking out for some poor harmless tramp whom you could +move on. You policemen are cruel to the poor, but I could forgive +you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm." + +"If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of +organised resistance." + +"Eh?" said Syme, staring. + +"The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle," pursued the +policeman. "The composure of an army is the anger of a nation." + +"Good God, the Board Schools!" said Syme. "Is this undenominational +education?" + +"No," said the policeman sadly, "I never had any of those +advantages. The Board Schools came after my time. What education +I had was very rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid." + +"Where did you have it?" asked Syme, wondering. + +"Oh, at Harrow," said the policeman + +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest +things in so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control +them. + +"But, good Lord, man," he said, "you oughtn't to be a policeman!" + +The policeman sighed and shook his head. + +"I know," he said solemnly, "I know I am not worthy." + +"But why did you join the police?" asked Syme with rude curiosity. + +"For much the same reason that you abused the police," replied the +other. "I found that there was a special opening in the service for +those whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the +aberrations of the scientific intellect than with the normal and +excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of the human will. I trust +I make myself clear." + +"If you mean that you make your opinion clear," said Syme, "I +suppose you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last +thing you do. How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy +in a blue helmet on the Thames embankment?" + +"You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our +police system," replied the other. "I am not surprised at it. We +are keeping it rather dark from the educated class, because that +class contains most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in +the right frame of mind. I think you might almost join us." + +"Join you in what?" asked Syme. + +"I will tell you," said the policeman slowly. "This is the +situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most +celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a +purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very +existence of civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and +artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family +and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of +policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their +business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in +a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, +and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of +ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be undesirable to +employ the common policeman in an investigation which is also a +heresy hunt." + +Syme's eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. + +"What do you do, then?" he said. + +"The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in +blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary +detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest +thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The +ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime +has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime +will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful +thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and +intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the +assassination at Hartle pool, and that was entirely due to the fact +that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a +triolet." + +"Do you mean," asked Syme, "that there is really as much connection +between crime and the modern intellect as all that?" + +"You are not sufficiently democratic," answered the policeman, "but +you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment +of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am +sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means +merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new +movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish +English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. +We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning +princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is +the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now +is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, +burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out +to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek +it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property +to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. +But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy +the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, +or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even +ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage +as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to +attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the +sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But +philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other +people's." + +Syme struck his hands together. + +"How true that is," he cried. "I have felt it from my boyhood, but +never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a +bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. +He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed--say a wealthy +uncle--he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise +God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse +the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is +not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the +modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are +really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the +spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified +work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and +powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not +punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to +punish anybody else." + +"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with +an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, "but +it is intolerable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're +wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army +against anarchy. Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt +is ready to fall. A moment more, and you may lose the glory of +working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with the last heroes +of the world." + +"It is a chance not to be missed, certainly," assented Syme, "but +still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that +the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little +movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one +merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their +leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is this anarchy?" + +"Do not confuse it," replied the constable, "with those chance +dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really +the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast +philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring. +You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring +the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent +section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer +ring--the main mass of their supporters--are merely anarchists; +that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed +human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human +crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They +do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe +that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a +man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless +as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a +pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the +innocent section." + +"Oh!" said Syme. + +"Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time +coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the +bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on. And so also +the men of the inner circle speak--the sacred priesthood. They +also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, +and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths"--and the +policeman lowered his voice--"in their mouths these happy phrases +have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too +intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite +free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When +they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without +right or wrong, they mean the grave. + +"They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. +The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has +not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it +has killed somebody." + +"How can I join you?" asked Syme, with a sort of passion. + +"I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment," said the +policeman, "as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence +of the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see +him. Or rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but +you can talk to him if you like." + +"Telephone?" inquired Syme, with interest. + +"No," said the policeman placidly, "he has a fancy for always +sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts +brighter. Do come along." + +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be +led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. +Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through +the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly +shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like +a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms +can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind. + +"Are you the new recruit?" asked a heavy voice. + +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape +in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man +of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him. + +"Are you the new recruit?" said the invisible chief, who seemed to +have heard all about it. "All right. You are engaged." + +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this +irrevocable phrase. + +"I really have no experience," he began. + +"No one has any experience," said the other, "of the Battle of +Armageddon." + +"But I am really unfit--" + +"You are willing, that is enough," said the unknown. + +"Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know any profession of which +mere willingness is the final test." + +"I do," said the other--"martyrs. I am condemning you to death. +Good day." + +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson +light of evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless +cloak, he came out a member of the New Detective Corps for the +frustration of the great conspiracy. Acting under the advice of his +friend the policeman (who was professionally inclined to neatness), +he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in +an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow +flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and +rather insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in +the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he finally left the +police premises his friend provided him with a small blue card, +on which was written, "The Last Crusade," and a number, the sign +of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper +waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and +fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his +adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about +half-past one on a February night he found himself steaming in a +small tug up the silent Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, +the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists. + +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular +sensation of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely +into the landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a +new planet. This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of +that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather +and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours +before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset +had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The +moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) +it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright +moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. + +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural +discoloration, as of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke +of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into +his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier +planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he felt +this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own +chivalric folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the +common things he carried with him--the food and the brandy and the +loaded pistol--took on exactly that concrete and material poetry +which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun +with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though in +themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the +expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick +became almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of +the stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies +depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be +mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. +George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was +only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme's +exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the +Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the +moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon. + +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went +comparatively slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had +gone down by the time that they passed Battersea, and when they +came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day had already begun +to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead, +showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire +when the tug, changing its onward course, turned inward to a large +landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross. + +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic +as Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge +white dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal +steps of some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his +mood, for he was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid +thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on +to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the +enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and +turned up stream. They had never spoken a word. + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE FEAST OF FEAR + +AT first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a +pyramid; but before he reached the top he had realised that there +was a man leaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking +out across the river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad +in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; +he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him +step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come +close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that +his face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended in a small +triangular tuft of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all +else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost seemed a mere +oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best +shaven--clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer +and closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. + +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he +was meant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had +concluded that he was not. And now again he had come back to a +certainty that the man had something to do with his mad adventure. +For the man remained more still than would have been natural if a +stranger had come so close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, +and got on the nerves somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again +and again at the pale, dignified and delicate face, and the face +still looked blankly across the river. Then he took out of his +pocket the note from Buttons proving his election, and put it +before that sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, and his +smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the +right cheek and down in the left. + +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about +this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and +in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, +with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the +great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. + +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even +classic face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his +smile suddenly went wrong. + +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man's face dropped +at once into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further +explanation or inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. + +"If we walk up towards Leicester Square," he said, "we shall just +be in time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early +breakfast. Have you had any sleep?" + +"No," said Syme. + +"Nor have I," answered the man in an ordinary tone. "I shall try to +get to bed after breakfast." + +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that +contradicted the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all +friendly words were to him lifeless conveniences, and that his only +life was hate. After a pause the man spoke again. + +"Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that +can be told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last +notion of the President, for his notions grow like a tropical +forest. So in case you don't know, I'd better tell you that he is +carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing +ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, +of course, we met in a cell underground, just as your branch does. +Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary restaurant. +He said that if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. +Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really +think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For +now we flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on +a balcony--on a balcony, if you please--overlooking Leicester +Square." + +"And what do the people say?" asked Syme. + +"It's quite simple what they say," answered his guide. + +"They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are +anarchists." + +"It seems to me a very clever idea," said Syme. + +"Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!" cried out the other in +a sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his +crooked smile. "When you've seen Sunday for a split second you'll +leave off calling him clever." + +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early +sunlight filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I +suppose, why this square itself should look so alien and in some +ways so continental. It will never be known whether it was the +foreign look that attracted the foreigners or the foreigners who +gave it the foreign look. But on this particular morning the effect +seemed singularly bright and clear. Between the open square and the +sunlit leaves and the statue and the Saracenic outlines of the +Alhambra, it looked the replica of some French or even Spanish +public place. And this effect increased in Syme the sensation, +which in many shapes he had had through the whole adventure, the +eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world. As a fact, he +had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square ever since he was a +boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the +Moorish cupolas, he could have sworn that he was turning into an +unknown Place de something or other in some foreign town. + +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a +prosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street +behind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably +the window of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost +literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed +balcony, big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did +contain a dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and +round the breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to +the street, were a group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed +in the insolence of fashion, with white waistcoats and expensive +button-holes. Some of their jokes could almost be heard across the +square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnatural smile, and Syme +knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secret conclave +of the European Dynamiters. + +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he +had not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was +too large to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a +great part of the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of +a man. When Syme had seen him, his first thought was that the +weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His vastness +did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite +incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original +proportions, like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His +head, crowned with white hair, as seen from behind looked bigger +than a head ought to be. The ears that stood out from it looked +larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to scale; and this +sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the +other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. +They were still sitting there as before with their flowers and +frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining +five children to tea. + +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a +waiter came out smiling with every tooth in his head. + +"The gentlemen are up there, sare," he said. "They do talk and they +do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze +king." + +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much +pleased with the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. + +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. + +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who +almost filled and broke the balcony was the great President of whom +the others stood in awe. He knew it was so, with an unaccountable +but instantaneous certainty. Syme, indeed, was one of those men who +are open to all the more nameless psychological influences in a +degree a little dangerous to mental health. Utterly devoid of fear +in physical dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive to the smell +of spiritual evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning things +had peeped out at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of +drawing nearer and nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this +sense became overpowering as he drew nearer to the great President. + +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked +across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday +grew larger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when +he was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and +that he would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would +not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it +was a face, and so large. + +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to +an empty seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted +him with good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He +sobered himself a little by looking at their conventional coats and +solid, shining coffee-pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face +was very large, but it was still possible to humanity. + +In the presence of the President the whole company looked +sufficiently commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at +first, except that by the President's caprice they had been dressed +up with a festive respectability, which gave the meal the look of a +wedding breakfast. One man indeed stood out at even a superficial +glance. He at least was the common or garden Dynamiter. He wore, +indeed, the high white collar and satin tie that were the uniform +of the occasion; but out of this collar there sprang a head quite +unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a bewildering bush of brown +hair and beard that almost obscured the eyes like those of a Skye +terrier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle, and they were the +sad eyes of some Russian serf. The effect of this figure was not +terrible like that of the President, but it had every diablerie +that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that stiff tie +and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it +could not have been a more idiotic contrast. + +The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this +circle of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were +incurably tragic; he could not force himself to play the +prosperous and frivolous part demanded of him by President Sunday. +And, indeed, when Syme came in the President, with that daring +disregard of public suspicion which was his policy, was actually +chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume conventional graces. + +"Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once +of quietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp +the idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too +great a soul to behave like one. He insists on the ways of the +stage conspirator. Now if a gentleman goes about London in a top +hat and a frock-coat, no one need know that he is an anarchist. +But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then +goes about on his hands and knees--well, he may attract attention. +That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and +knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he +finds it quite difficult to walk upright." + +"I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; "I am not ashamed of the cause." + +"Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the +President good-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you +can't do it, you see, you're such an ass! You try to combine two +inconsistent methods. When a householder finds a man under his +bed, he will probably pause to note the circumstance. But if he +finds a man under his bed in a top hat, you will agree with me, +my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even to forget it. Now +when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed--" + +"I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. + +"Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous +heartiness, "you aren't good at anything." + +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking +more steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually +felt all his sense of something spiritually queer return. + +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and +costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he +looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what +he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. +That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine +face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each +man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or +twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly +human. The only metaphor he could think of was this, that they +all looked as men of fashion and presence would look, with the +additional twist given in a false and curved mirror. + +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed +eccentricity. Syme's original cicerone bore the title of Monday; +he was the Secretary of the Council, and his twisted smile was +regarded with more terror than anything, except the President's +horrible, happy laughter. But now that Syme had more space and +light to observe him, there were other touches. His fine face +was so emaciated, that Syme thought it must be wasted with some +disease; yet somehow the very distress of his dark eyes denied +this. It was no physical ill that troubled him. His eyes were +alive with intellectual torture, as if pure thought was pain. + +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and +differently wrong. Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed +Gogol, a man more obviously mad. Next was Wednesday, a certain +Marquis de St. Eustache, a sufficiently characteristic figure. The +first few glances found nothing unusual about him, except that he +was the only man at table who wore the fashionable clothes as if +they were really his own. He had a black French beard cut square +and a black English frock-coat cut even squarer. But Syme, +sensitive to such things, felt somehow that the man carried a rich +atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that suffocated. It +reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying lamps in +the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his +being clad, not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his +black seemed richer and warmer than the black shades about him, as +if it were compounded of profound colour. His black coat looked as +if it were only black by being too dense a purple. His black beard +looked as if it were only black by being too deep a blue. And in +the gloom and thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed +sensual and scornful. Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he +might be a Jew; he might be something deeper yet in the dark heart +of the East. In the bright coloured Persian tiles and pictures +showing tyrants hunting, you may see just those almond eyes, those +blue-black beards, those cruel, crimson lips. + +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who +still kept the chair of Friday, though every day it was expected +that his death would leave it empty. Save for his intellect, he was +in the last dissolution of senile decay. His face was as grey as +his long grey beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed finally in a +furrow of mild despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, +did the bridegroom brilliancy of the morning dress express a more +painful contrast. For the red flower in his button-hole showed up +against a face that was literally discoloured like lead; the whole +hideous effect was as if some drunken dandies had put their clothes +upon a corpse. When he rose or sat down, which was with long labour +and peril, something worse was expressed than mere weakness, +something indefinably connected with the horror of the whole scene. +It did not express decrepitude merely, but corruption. Another +hateful fancy crossed Syme's quivering mind. He could not help +thinking that whenever the man moved a leg or arm might fall off. + +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the +most baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, +square face clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name +of Bull. He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of +well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He +carried his fine clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he +mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, +except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It +may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone +before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded +him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story about pennies +being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme's eye always caught the +black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying Professor worn +them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been appropriate. +But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. They +took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or +his gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had a +vulgar virility wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme +that he might be the wickedest of all those wicked men. Syme even +had the thought that his eyes might be covered up because they were +too frightful to see. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE EXPOSURE + +SUCH were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again +and again Syme strove to pull together his common sense in their +presence. Sometimes he saw for an instant that these notions were +subjective, that he was only looking at ordinary men, one of whom +was old, another nervous, another short-sighted. The sense of an +unnatural symbolism always settled back on him again. Each figure +seemed to be, somehow, on the borderland of things, just as their +theory was on the borderland of thought. He knew that each one of +these men stood at the extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road +of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in some old-world fable, +that if a man went westward to the end of the world he would find +something--say a tree--that was more or less than a tree, a tree +possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the +world he would find something else that was not wholly itself--a +tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these +figures seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an +ultimate horizon, visions from the verge. The ends of the earth +were closing in. + +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not +the least of the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was +the contrast between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its +terrible purport. They were deep in the discussion of an actual and +immediate plot. The waiter downstairs had spoken quite correctly +when he said that they were talking about bombs and kings. Only +three days afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the +French Republic in Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their +sunny balcony these beaming gentlemen had decided how both should +die. Even the instrument was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it +appeared, was to carry the bomb. + +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective +crime would have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely +mystical tremors. He would have thought of nothing but the need of +saving at least two human bodies from being ripped in pieces with +iron and roaring gas. But the truth was that by this time he had +begun to feel a third kind of fear, more piercing and practical +than either his moral revulsion or his social responsibility. Very +simply, he had no fear to spare for the French President or the +Czar; he had begun to fear for himself. Most of the talkers took +little heed of him, debating now with their faces closer together, +and almost uniformly grave, save when for an instant the smile of +the Secretary ran aslant across his face as the jagged lightning +runs aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent thing +which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. The President +was always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and baffling +interest. The enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes +stood out of his head. And they were always fixed on Syme. + +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. +He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and +extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He +looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing +abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the +sunlit trees. + +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment +him for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive +men, who were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the +frail and fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of +anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if +they had played together when children. But he remembered that he +was still tied to Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never +to do the very thing that he now felt himself almost in the act of +doing. He had promised not to jump over that balcony and speak to +that policeman. He took his cold hand off the cold stone +balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He +had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous +society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square +beneath him. He had, on the other hand, only to keep his antiquated +honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great +enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. +Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable +policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he +looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still +quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes. + +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that +never crossed his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt +that the President and his Council could crush him if he continued +to stand alone. The place might be public, the project might seem +impossible. But Sunday was not the man who would carry himself +thus easily without having, somehow or somewhere, set open his +iron trap. Either by anonymous poison or sudden street accident, +by hypnotism or by fire from hell, Sunday could certainly strike +him. If he defied the man he was probably dead, either struck +stiff there in his chair or long afterwards as by an innocent +ailment. If he called in the police promptly, arrested everyone, +told all, and set against them the whole energy of England, he +would probably escape; certainly not otherwise. They were a +balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy square; but +he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a boatful of +armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. + +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never +occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many +moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might +have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great +personality. They might have called Sunday the super-man. If any +such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, +with his earth-shaking abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. +He might have been called something above man, with his large +plans, which were too obvious to be detected, with his large face, +which was too frank to be understood. But this was a kind of +modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme +morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; +but he was not quite coward enough to admire it. + +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were +typical. Dr. Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally +of the best things on the table--cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. +But the Secretary was a vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the +projected murder over half a raw tomato and three quarters of a +glass of tepid water. The old Professor had such slops as suggested +a sickening second childhood. And even in this President Sunday +preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate like +twenty men; he ate incredibly, with a frightful freshness of +appetite, so that it was like watching a sausage factory. Yet +continually, when he had swallowed a dozen crumpets or drunk a +quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on one side +staring at Syme. + +"I have often wondered," said the Marquis, taking a great bite out +of a slice of bread and jam, "whether it wouldn't be better for me +to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought +off with a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into +a French President and wriggle it round." + +"You are wrong," said the Secretary, drawing his black brows +together. "The knife was merely the expression of the old personal +quarrel with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, +but our best symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense +of the prayers of the Christians. It expands; it only destroys +because it broadens; even so, thought only destroys because it +broadens. A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening +suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with +violence. "My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must +expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up +the universe." + +"I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the +Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. +I thought of one yesterday in bed." + +"No, if the only end of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with +his sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems worth doing." + +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. + +"Every man knows in his heart," he said, "that nothing is worth +doing." + +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said-- + +"We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is +how Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree +with the original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, +I should suggest that tomorrow morning he should go first of all +to--" + +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President +Sunday had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. + +"Before we discuss that," he said in a small, quiet voice, "let us +go into a private room. I have something very particular to say." + +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had +come at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before +he could hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, +though bright, was cold. + +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a +jovial tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before +the battle. He found himself filled with a supernatural courage +that came from nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the +vivacity, the vulgarity, and the irrational valour of the poor, who +in all those unclean streets were all clinging to the decencies and +the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of being a +policeman had faded from his mind; he did not think of himself as +the representative of the corps of gentlemen turned into fancy +constables, or of the old eccentric who lived in the dark room. +But he did feel himself as the ambassador of all these common and +kindly people in the street, who every day marched into battle to +the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in being human +had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the +monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down +upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle +of the commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and +elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts +or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the +intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday; but in +that moment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the +muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was +swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong +and that the barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that +unanswerable and terrible truism in the song of Roland-- + + "Pagens ont tort et Chretiens ont droit." + +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great +iron. This liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness +went with a quite clear decision to embrace death. If the people of +the barrel-organ could keep their old-world obligations, so could +he. This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it +to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go +down into their dark room and die for something that they could not +even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune +with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he +could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of +life, the drums of the pride of death. + +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and +into the rooms behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all +his brain and body throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President +led them down an irregular side stair, such as might be used by +servants, and into a dim, cold, empty room, with a table and +benches, like an abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, he +closed and locked the door. + +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed +bursting with inarticulate grievance. + +"Zso! Zso!" he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. "You zay you nod 'ide. You zay +you show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk +importance you run yourselves in a dark box!" + +The President seemed to take the foreigner's incoherent satire with +entire good humour. + +"You can't get hold of it yet, Gogol," he said in a fatherly way. +"When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they +will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we +should have had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to +know anything about mankind." + +"I die for zem," cried the Pole in thick excitement, "and I slay +zare oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would +zmite ze tyrant in ze open square." + +"I see, I see," said the President, nodding kindly as he seated +himself at the top of a long table. "You die for mankind first, and +then you get up and smite their oppressors. So that's all right. +And now may I ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit +down with the other gentlemen at this table. For the first time +this morning something intelligent is going to be said." + +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the +original summons, sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling +in his brown beard about gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to +have any notion of the blow that was about to fall. As for him, +he had merely the feeling of a man mounting the scaffold with the +intention, at any rate, of making a good speech. + +"Comrades," said the President, suddenly rising, "we have spun out +this farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you +something so simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs +(long inured to our levities) might hear some new seriousness in +my voice. Comrades, we were discussing plans and naming places. I +propose, before saying anything else, that those plans and places +should not be voted by this meeting, but should be left wholly in +the control of some one reliable member. I suggest Comrade +Saturday, Dr. Bull." + +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for +the next words, though not loud, had a living and sensational +emphasis. Sunday struck the table. + +"Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be +mentioned in this company." + +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it +seemed as if he had never really astonished them until now. They +all moved feverishly in their seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in +his, with his hand in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded +revolver. When the attack on him came he would sell his life dear. +He would find out at least if the President was mortal. + +Sunday went on smoothly-- + +"You will probably understand that there is only one possible +motive for forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. +Strangers overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we +are joking. But what would matter, even unto death, is this, +that there should be one actually among us who is not of us, +who knows our grave purpose, but does not share it, who--" + +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. + +"It can't be!" he cried, leaping. "There can't--" + +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the +fin of some huge fish. + +"Yes," he said slowly, "there is a spy in this room. There is a +traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name--" + +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. + +"His name is Gogol," said the President. "He is that hairy humbug +over there who pretends to be a Pole." + +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same +flash three men sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made +an effort to rise. But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was +blinded with a beneficent darkness; he had sunk down into his +seat shuddering, in a palsy of passionate relief. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + +"SIT down!" said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in +his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. + +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal +person himself resumed his seat. + +"Well, my man," said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, "will you oblige me by putting your +hand in your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have +there?" + +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, +but he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and +pulled out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the +table, he woke up again to the world outside him. For although +the card lay at the other extreme of the table, and he could read +nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance +to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given +to him when he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary. + +"Pathetic Slav," said the President, "tragic child of Poland, are +you prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in +this company--shall we say de trop?" + +"Right oh!" said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a +clear, commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that +forest of foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had +suddenly spoken with a Scotch accent. + +"I gather that you fully understand your position," said Sunday. + +"You bet," answered the Pole. "I see it's a fair cop. All I say is, +I don't believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did +his." + +"I concede the point," said Sunday. "I believe your own accent to +be inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind +leaving your beard with your card?" + +"Not a bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and +a pale, pert face. "It was hot," he added. + +"I will do you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort +of brutal admiration, "that you seem to have kept pretty cool under +it. Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would +annoy me for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you +had died in torments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any +human soul about us, I shall have that two and a half minutes of +discomfort. On your discomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the +step." + +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his +feet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of +perfect nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise +that this ease was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble +outside the door, which showed that the departing detective had not +minded the step. + +"Time is flying," said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed +bigger than it ought to be. "I must go off at once; I have to +take the chair at a Humanitarian meeting." + +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. + +"Would it not be better," he said a little sharply, "to discuss +further the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?" + +"No, I think not," said the President with a yawn like an +unobtrusive earthquake. "Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle +it. I must be off. Breakfast here next Sunday." + +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves +of the Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious +even in crime. + +"I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular," he said. +"It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be +debated in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your +forethought when in the actual presence of a traitor--" + +"Secretary," said the President seriously, "if you'd take your head +home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But +it might." + +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. + +"I really fail to understand--" he began in high offense. + +"That's it, that's it," said the President, nodding a great many +times. "That's where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. +Why, you dancing donkey," he roared, rising, "you didn't want to be +overheard by a spy, didn't you? How do you know you aren't +overheard now?" + +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking +with incomprehensible scorn. + +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent +glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and +such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the +President meant anything, they meant that he had not after all +passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce +him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. + +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook +themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past +midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme +sat long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. +He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At +last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester +Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and +when he came out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes +of snow. While he still carried the sword-stick and the rest of +Gregory's portable luggage, he had thrown the cloak down and left +it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhaps on the balcony. +Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped +back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the doorway +of a small and greasy hair-dresser's shop, the front window of +which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress. + +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having +found one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his +spirits, stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was +considerably astonished to see, standing quite still outside the +shop and staring into the window, a man. His top hat was loaded +with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the white drift was +rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if nothing +could tear him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax +doll in dirty evening dress. That any human being should stand in +such weather looking into such a shop was a matter of sufficient +wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned suddenly into a personal +shock; for he realised that the man standing there was the +paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for +a person of his years and infirmities. + +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this +dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the +Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He +could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved +some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, +however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On +the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's +stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to +escape from him and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first +and last to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only +for an hour. Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his +policy, and decide finally whether he should or should not keep +faith with Gregory. + +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three +streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho +restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and +quaint courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over +black coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his +seat in the upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the +chink of knives and the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that +in old days he had imagined that all these harmless and kindly +aliens were anarchists. He shuddered, remembering the real thing. +But even the shudder had the delightful shame of escape. The wine, +the common food, the familiar place, the faces of natural and +talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven +Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless +an objective reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses +and populous streets lay between him and his last sight of the +shameful seven; he was free in free London, and drinking wine among +the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took his hat and stick +and strolled down the stair into the shop below. + +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the +spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white +street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of +milk, with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an +instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a +gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing +open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the +snow. + +"Can that old corpse be following me?" he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. "I stopped too long up in that room, so that even +such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little +brisk walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. +Or am I too fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday +would not be such a fool as to send a lame man?" + +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in +the direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the +snow increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon +began to darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of +silver bees. Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their +unremitting futility to his already irritated nerves; and by the +time that he had come at a swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet +Street, he lost patience, and finding a Sunday teashop, turned +into it to take shelter. He ordered another cup of black coffee +as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when Professor de Worms +hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty and +ordered a glass of milk. + +Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, +which confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look +round. Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally +gaping as a rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab +following; he had heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal +appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man could only +walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He started up +and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in mere +arithmetic, and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee +untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank went rattling by with an +unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of a hundred yards to reach +it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the splash-board and, +pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he +had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind him a sort +of heavy and asthmatic breathing. + +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up +the omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and +under the shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky +shoulders of Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with +characteristic care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the +mackintosh rug. + +Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, +every uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put +it beyond question that he was helpless, that he was in the last +imbecility of the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down +with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless the philosophical +entities called time and space have no vestige even of a practical +existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after +the omnibus. + +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly +at the wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down +the steps. He had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the +side. + +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of +the little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes +into a hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old +Jack-in-the-box was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of +little streets he could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in +and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than +thoroughfares; and by the time that he had completed about twenty +alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused +to listen for any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could +not in any case have been much, for the little streets were thick +with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, +he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had cleared away +the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, +glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed +it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few +hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart +stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones +the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple. + +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London +in a darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the +evening. On each side of Syme the walls of the alley were blind +and featureless; there was no little window or any kind of eve. He +felt a new impulse to break out of this hive of houses, and to get +once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and +dodged for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. +When he did so, he struck it much farther up than he had fancied. +He came out into what seemed the vast and void of Ludgate Circus, +and saw St. Paul's Cathedral sitting in the sky. + +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if +a pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that +some degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm +was even dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And +at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for +hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in +the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very +queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed +and sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul's had in it +smoky and sinister colours--colours of sickly green, dead red or +decaying bronze, that were just bright enough to emphasise the +solid whiteness of the snow. But right up against these dreary +colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and upon the top of +the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, still +clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just +so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, +and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When +Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his +sword-stick an involuntary salute. + +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or +slowly behind him, and he did not care. + +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies +were darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The +devils might have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured +the cross. He had a new impulse to tear out the secret of this +dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of +the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in hand, +to face his pursuer. + +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular +alley behind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely +gas-lamp, irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in +the nursery rhymes, "the crooked man who went a crooked mile." He +really looked as if he had been twisted out of shape by the +tortuous streets he had been threading. He came nearer and nearer, +the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his lifted, +patient face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the +dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or for death. And +the old Professor came right up to him and passed him like a total +stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids. + +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that +left Syme in a final fury. The man's colourless face and manner +seemed to assert that the whole following had been an accident. +Syme was galvanised with an energy that was something between +bitterness and a burst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture +as if to knock the old man's hat off, called out something like +"Catch me if you can," and went racing away across the white, open +Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his +shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming +after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile +race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave +and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a +harlequin. + +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, +round St. Paul's Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all +the nightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the +river, and ended almost down by the docks. He saw the yellow panes +of a low, lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered +beer. It was a foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a +place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn. + +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down +carefully, and asked for a glass of milk. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + +WHEN Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, +and opposite to him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and +leaden eyelids of the Professor, his fears fully returned. This +incomprehensible man from the fierce council, after all, had +certainly pursued him. If the man had one character as a paralytic +and another character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him +more interesting, but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very +small comfort that he could not find the Professor out, if by some +serious accident the Professor should find him out. He emptied a +whole pewter pot of ale before the professor had touched his milk. + +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was +just possible that this escapade signified something other than +even a slight suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or +sign. Perhaps the foolish scamper was some sort of friendly signal +that he ought to have understood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps +the new Thursday was always chased along Cheapside, as the new Lord +Mayor is always escorted along it. He was just selecting a +tentative inquiry, when the old Professor opposite suddenly and +simply cut him short. Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic +question, the old anarchist had asked suddenly, without any sort of +preparation-- + +"Are you a policeman?" + +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so +brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could +only manage a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity. + +"A policeman?" he said, laughing vaguely. "Whatever made you think +of a policeman in connection with me?" + +"The process was simple enough," answered the Professor patiently. +"I thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now." + +"Did I take a policeman's hat by mistake out of the restaurant?" +asked Syme, smiling wildly. "Have I by any chance got a number +stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? +Why must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman." + +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, +but Syme ran on with a feverish irony. + +"But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German +philosophy. Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an +evolutionary sense, sir, the ape fades so gradually into the +policeman, that I myself can never detect the shade. The monkey is +only the policeman that may be. Perhaps a maiden lady on Clapham +Common is only the policeman that might have been. I don't mind +being the policeman that might have been. I don't mind being +anything in German thought." + +"Are you in the police service?" said the old man, ignoring all +Syme's improvised and desperate raillery. "Are you a detective?" + +Syme's heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. + +"Your suggestion is ridiculous," he began. "Why on earth--" + +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety +table, nearly breaking it. + +"Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?" he +shrieked in a high, crazy voice. "Are you, or are you not, a +police detective?" + +"No!" answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman's drop. + +"You swear it," said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead +face becoming as it were loathsomely alive. "You swear it! You +swear it! If you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be +sure that the devil dances at your funeral? Will you see that the +nightmare sits on your grave? Will there really be no mistake? You +are an anarchist, you are a dynamiter! Above all, you are not in +any sense a detective? You are not in the British police?" + +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his +large loose hand like a flap to his ear. + +"I am not in the British police," said Syme with insane calm. + +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of +kindly collapse. + +"That's a pity," he said, "because I am." + +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a +crash. + +"Because you are what?" he said thickly. "You are what?" + +"I am a policeman," said the Professor with his first broad smile. +and beaming through his spectacles. "But as you think policeman +only a relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I +am in the British police force; but as you tell me you are not in +the British police force, I can only say that I met you in a +dynamiters' club. I suppose I ought to arrest you." And with these +words he laid on the table before Syme an exact facsimile of the +blue card which Syme had in his own waistcoat pocket, the symbol +of his power from the police. + +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned +exactly upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and +that all stars were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite +conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really +been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come right side +up again. This devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only +an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the +table lay back and laughed at him. He did not for the moment ask +any questions of detail; he only knew the happy and silly fact that +this shadow, which had pursued him with an intolerable oppression +of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying to catch him up. +He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For with +any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy +humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when +only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic +pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard +to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted +the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist +coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head +back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, +and shouted with a barbaric laughter. + +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, +plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, +there was something Homeric in Syme's mirth which made many +half-drunken men look round. + +"What yer laughing at, guv'nor?" asked one wondering labourer from +the docks. + +"At myself," answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of +his ecstatic reaction. + +"Pull yourself together," said the Professor, "or you'll get +hysterical. Have some more beer. I'll join you." + +"You haven't drunk your milk," said Syme. + +"My milk!" said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when +I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in +this room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the +reeling crowd, "not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, +I'll finish it right enough!" and he knocked the tumbler off the +table, making a crash of glass and a splash of silver fluid. + +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. + +"I understand now," he cried; "of course, you're not an old man at +all." + +"I can't take my face off here," replied Professor de Worms. "It's +rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I'm an old man, that's +not for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday." + +"Yes, but I mean," said Syme impatiently, "there's nothing the +matter with you." + +"Yes," answered the other dispassionately. "I am subject to colds." + +Syme's laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. +He laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a +young actor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that +he would have laughed as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. + +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. + +"Did you know," he asked, "that that man Gogol was one of us?" + +"I? No, I didn't know it," answered Syme in some surprise. "But +didn't you?" + +"I knew no more than the dead," replied the man who called himself +de Worms. "I thought the President was talking about me, and I +rattled in my boots." + +"And I thought he was talking about me," said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. "I had my hand on my revolver all the time." + +"So had I," said the Professor grimly; "so had Gogol evidently." + +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. + +"Why, there were three of us there!" he cried. "Three out of seven +is a fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!" + +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. + +"We were three," he said. "If we had been three hundred we could +still have done nothing." + +"Not if we were three hundred against four?" asked Syme, jeering +rather boisterously. + +"No," said the Professor with sobriety, "not if we were three +hundred against Sunday." + +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had +died in his heart before it could die on his lips. The face of +the unforgettable President sprang into his mind as startling as +a coloured photograph, and he remarked this difference between +Sunday and all his satellites, that their faces, however fierce +or sinister, became gradually blurred by memory like other human +faces, whereas Sunday's seemed almost to grow more actual during +absence, as if a man's painted portrait should slowly come alive. + +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme's +speech came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. + +"Professor," he cried, "it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this +man?" + +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, +wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. + +"Yes, I am," he said mildly. "So are you." + +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like +an insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him. + +"Yes," he said in a voice indescribable, "you are right. I am +afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this +man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If +heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that +I would pull him down." + +"How?" asked the staring Professor. "Why?" + +"Because I am afraid of him," said Syme; "and no man should leave +in the universe anything of which he is afraid." + +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an +effort to speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an +undercurrent of inhuman exaltation-- + +"Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does +not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any +common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? +Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the +English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, +and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no +money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the +blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you +strike at the stars." + +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. + +"Sunday is a fixed star," he said. + +"You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat. + +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. + +"Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent +bewilderment, "exactly where you are going?" + +"Yes," replied Syme shortly, "I am going to prevent this bomb being +thrown in Paris." + +"Have you any conception how?" inquired the other. + +"No," said Syme with equal decision. + +"You remember, of course," resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling +his beard and looking out of the window, "that when we broke up +rather hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left +in the private hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by +this time probably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and +what he will do it is doubtful whether even the President knows; +certainly we don't know. The only man who does know is Dr. Bull." + +"Confound it!" cried Syme. "And we don't know where he is." + +"Yes," said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, "I know +where he is myself." + +"Will you tell me?" asked Syme with eager eyes. + +"I will take you there," said the Professor, and took down his own +hat from a peg. + +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. + +"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "Will you join me? Will you +take the risk?" + +"Young man," said the Professor pleasantly, "I am amused to observe +that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, +and that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical +rhetoric. You think that it is possible to pull down the President. +I know that it is impossible, and I am going to try it," and +opening the tavern door, which let in a blast of bitter air, they +went out together into the dark streets by the docks. + +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there +a clot of it still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The +small streets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the +flaming lamps irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some +other and fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped +through this growing confusion of lights and shadows; but his +companion walked on with a certain briskness, towards where, at +the end of the street, an inch or two of the lamplit river looked +like a bar of flame. + +"Where are you going?" Syme inquired. + +"Just now," answered the Professor, "I am going just round the +corner to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, +and retires early." + +"Dr. Bull!" exclaimed Syme. "Does he live round the corner?" + +"No," answered his friend. "As a matter of fact he lives some way +off, on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here +whether he has gone to bed." + +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked +with flame, he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the +Surrey side at this point there ran out into the Thames, seeming +almost to overhang it, a bulk and cluster of those tall tenements, +dotted with lighted windows, and rising like factory chimneys to +an almost insane height. Their special poise and position made one +block of buildings especially look like a Tower of Babel with a +hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any of the sky-scraping buildings +in America, so he could only think of the buildings in a dream. + +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted +turret abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him +with one of his innumerable eyes. + +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick +against his boot. + +"We are too late," he said, "the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed." + +"What do you mean?" asked Syme. "Does he live over there, then?" + +"Yes," said de Worms, "behind that particular window which you +can't see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him +tomorrow morning." + +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways +until they came out into the flare and clamour of the East India +Dock Road. The Professor, who seemed to know his way about the +neighbourhood, proceeded to a place where the line of lighted +shops fell back into a sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in which +an old white inn, all out of repair, stood back some twenty feet +from the road. + +"You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils," explained the Professor. "I once found a decent place in +the West End." + +"I suppose," said Syme, smiling, "that this is the corresponding +decent place in the East End?" + +"It is," said the Professor reverently, and went in. + +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The +beans and bacon, which these unaccountable people cooked well, +the astonishing emergence of Burgundy from their cellars, crowned +Syme's sense of a new comradeship and comfort. Through all this +ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words +to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may +be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two +is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in +spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to +monogamy. + +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his +outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to +the little tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a +luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On +his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms +was not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as +Syme's. + +"That's a good get-up of yours," said Syme, draining a glass of +Macon; "a lot better than old Gogol's. Even at the start I thought +he was a bit too hairy." + +"A difference of artistic theory," replied the Professor pensively. +"Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic +ideal of an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. +But, indeed, to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate +expression. I am a portrait." + +"I don't understand you," said Syme. + +"I am a portrait," repeated the Professor. "I am a portrait of the +celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples." + +"You mean you are made up like him," said Syme. "But doesn't he +know that you are taking his nose in vain?" + +"He knows it right enough," replied his friend cheerfully. + +"Then why doesn't he denounce you?" + +"I have denounced him," answered the Professor. + +"Do explain yourself," said Syme. + +"With pleasure, if you don't mind hearing my story," replied the +eminent foreign philosopher. "I am by profession an actor, and my +name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of +Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of +the turf, sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the +political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced +to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did +not gather much about him beyond his appearance, which was very +disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had +proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; +hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, +rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was +lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. When I met him I was +in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much that I resolved to +imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn a +caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I +made myself up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the +old Professor's dirty old self. When I went into the room full of +his supporters I expected to be received with a roar of laughter, +or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation at the +insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance was +received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the +perfect artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had +been too true. They thought I really was the great Nihilist +Professor. I was a healthy-minded young man at the time, and I +confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, however, +two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, +and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next +room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow +had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had +drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly +I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet +the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing +eyes that the real Professor came into the room. + +"I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round +me looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to +see which was really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor +health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively +feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really +had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he +couldn't be so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my +claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. +Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I +replied with something which I could not even understand myself. +'I don't fancy,' he said, 'that you could have worked out the +principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in +it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of +differentiation.' I replied quite scornfully, 'You read all that up +in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically +was exposed long ago by Glumpe.' It is unnecessary for me to say +that there never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the +people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them +quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and +mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly +deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of wit. +'I see,' he sneered, 'you prevail like the false pig in Aesop.' +'And you fail,' I answered, smiling, 'like the hedgehog in +Montaigne.' Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? +'Your claptrap comes off,' he said; 'so would your beard.' I had no +intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. +But I laughed heartily, answered, 'Like the Pantheist's boots,' at +random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. The +real Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though one +man tried very patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I +believe, received everywhere in Europe as a delightful impostor. +His apparent earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more +entertaining." + +"Well," said Syme, "I can understand your putting on his dirty old +beard for a night's practical joke, but I don't understand your +never taking it off again." + +"That is the rest of the story," said the impersonator. "When I +myself left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went +limping down the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far +enough away to be able to walk like a human being. To my +astonishment, as I was turning the corner, I felt a touch on the +shoulder, and turning, found myself under the shadow of an enormous +policeman. He told me I was wanted. I struck a sort of paralytic +attitude, and cried in a high German accent, 'Yes, I am wanted--by +the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me on the charge of +being the great anarchist, Professor de Worms.' The policeman +impassively consulted a paper in his hand, 'No, sir,' he said +civilly, 'at least, not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the +charge of not being the celebrated anarchist, Professor de Worms.' +This charge, if it was criminal at all, was certainly the lighter +of the two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, but not +greatly dismayed. I was shown into a number of rooms, and +eventually into the presence of a police officer, who explained +that a serious campaign had been opened against the centres of +anarchy, and that this, my successful masquerade, might be of +considerable value to the public safety. He offered me a good +salary and this little blue card. Though our conversation was +short, he struck me as a man of very massive common sense and +humour; but I cannot tell you much about him personally, because--" + +Syme laid down his knife and fork. + +"I know," he said, "because you talked to him in a dark room." + +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + +"BURGUNDY is a jolly thing," said the Professor sadly, as he set +his glass down. + +"You don't look as if it were," said Syme; "you drink it as if it +were medicine." + +"You must excuse my manner," said the Professor dismally, "my +position is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with +boyish merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that +now I can't leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no +need at all to disguise myself, I still can't help speaking slow +and wrinkling my forehead--just as if it were my forehead. I can be +quite happy, you understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. +The most buoyant exclamations leap up in my heart, but they come +out of my mouth quite different. You should hear me say, 'Buck up, +old cock!' It would bring tears to your eyes." + +"It does," said Syme; "but I cannot help thinking that apart from +all that you are really a bit worried." + +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. + +"You are a very clever fellow," he said, "it is a pleasure to work +with you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a +great problem to face," and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. + +Then he said in a low voice-- + +"Can you play the piano?" + +"Yes," said Syme in simple wonder, "I'm supposed to have a good +touch." + +Then, as the other did not speak, he added-- + +"I trust the great cloud is lifted." + +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous +shadow of his hands-- + +"It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter." + +"Thank you," said Syme, "you flatter me." + +"Listen to me," said the other, "and remember whom we have to see +tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which +is very much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels +out of the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very +sharp, very strong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, +except the President, of course, who is so seriously startling and +formidable as that little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not +perhaps the white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for +anarchy, which marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism +in the Secretary has a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming +trait. But the little Doctor has a brutal sanity that is more +shocking than the Secretary's disease. Don't you notice his +detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like an india-rubber +ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if he ever +sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the +round, black head of Dr. Bull." + +"And you think," said Syme, "that this unique monster will be +soothed if I play the piano to him?" + +"Don't be an ass," said his mentor. "I mentioned the piano because +it gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go +through this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have +some code of signals between us that this brute will not see. I +have made a rough alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five +fingers--like this, see," and he rippled with his fingers on the +wooden table--"B A D, bad, a word we may frequently require." + +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study +the scheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, +and with his hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to +learn how he might convey simple messages by what would seem to +be idle taps upon a table or knee. But wine and companionship had +always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and +the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast +energy of the new language, as it passed through the heated brain +of Syme. + +"We must have several word-signs," said Syme seriously--"words that +we are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is +'coeval'. What's yours?" + +"Do stop playing the goat," said the Professor plaintively. "You +don't know how serious this is." + +"'Lush' too," said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, "we must +have 'lush'--word applied to grass, don't you know?" + +"Do you imagine," asked the Professor furiously, "that we are going +to talk to Dr. Bull about grass?" + +"There are several ways in which the subject could be approached," +said Syme reflectively, "and the word introduced without appearing +forced. We might say, 'Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember +that a tyrant once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, +looking on the fresh lush grass of summer"' + +"Do you understand," said the other, "that this is a tragedy?" + +"Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy. What +the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a +wider scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers +to the toes? That would involve pulling off our boots and socks +during the conversation, which however unobtrusively performed--" + +"Syme," said his friend with a stern simplicity, "go to bed!" + +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the +new code. He was awakened next morning while the east was still +sealed with darkness, and found his grey-bearded ally standing like +a ghost beside his bed. + +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, +threw off the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some +curious way that all the safety and sociability of the night before +fell with the bedclothes off him, and he stood up in an air of cold +danger. He still felt an entire trust and loyalty towards his +companion; but it was the trust between two men going to the +scaffold. + +"Well," said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, "I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you +long to make it up?" + +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes +the colour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. + +"I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I'm considered +good at these things, and it was a good hour's grind. Did you +learn it all on the spot?" + +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a +fixed but very small smile. + +"How long did it take you?" + +The Professor did not move. + +"Confound you, can't you answer?" called out Syme, in a sudden +anger that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the +Professor could answer, he did not. + +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the +blank, blue eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone +mad, but his second thought was more frightful. After all, what did +he know about this queer creature whom he had heedlessly accepted +as a friend? What did he know, except that the man had been at the +anarchist breakfast and had told him a ridiculous tale? How +improbable it was that there should be another friend there beside +Gogol! Was this man's silence a sensational way of declaring war? +Was this adamantine stare after all only the awful sneer of some +threefold traitor, who had turned for the last time? He stood and +strained his ears in this heartless silence. He almost fancied he +could hear dynamiters come to capture him shifting softly in the +corridor outside. + +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though +the Professor himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his +five dumb fingers were dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme +watched the twinkling movements of the talking hand, and read +clearly the message-- + +"I will only talk like this. We must get used to it." + +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief-- + +"All right. Let's get out to breakfast." + +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his +sword-stick, he held it hard. + +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse +thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across +the river, which under the grey and growing light looked as +desolate as Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of +buildings which they had seen from across the river, and began in +silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing +now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At +about every other flight they passed a window; each window showed +them a pale and tragic dawn lifting itself laboriously over London. +From each the innumerable roofs of slate looked like the leaden +surges of a grey, troubled sea after rain. Syme was increasingly +conscious that his new adventure had somehow a quality of cold +sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past. Last night, for +instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in a +dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was +daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was +not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be +exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty +infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to +thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about +the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of +reason, a thing more hideous than unreason itself. + +By the time they reached Dr. Bull's landing, a last window showed +them a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, +more like red clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull's +bare garret it was full of light. + +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with +these empty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the +garret and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what +the memory was--the French Revolution. There should have been the +black outline of a guillotine against that heavy red and white of +the morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and black breeches +only; his cropped, dark head might well have just come out of its +wig; he might have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. + +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The +Jacobins were idealists; there was about this man a murderous +materialism. His position gave him a somewhat new appearance. The +strong, white light of morning coming from one side creating sharp +shadows, made him seem both more pale and more angular than he had +looked at the breakfast on the balcony. Thus the two black glasses +that encased his eyes might really have been black cavities in his +skull, making him look like a death's-head. And, indeed, if ever +Death himself sat writing at a wooden table, it might have been he. + +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and +rose with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had +spoken. He set chairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind +the door, proceeded to put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark +tweed; he buttoned it up neatly, and came back to sit down at his +table. + +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents +helpless. It was with some momentary difficulty that the +Professor broke silence and began, "I'm sorry to disturb you so +early, comrade," said he, with a careful resumption of the slow +de Worms manner. "You have no doubt made all the arrangements for +the Paris affair?" Then he added with infinite slowness, "We have +information which renders intolerable anything in the nature of a +moment's delay." + +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without +speaking. The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word-- + +"Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to +alter those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your +agent with all the support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and +I have had an experience which it would take more time to recount +than we can afford, if we are to act on it. I will, however, +relate the occurrence in detail, even at the risk of losing time, +if you really feel that it is essential to the understanding of +the problem we have to discuss." + +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long +and lingering, in the hope of maddening the practical little +Doctor into an explosion of impatience which might show his hand. +But the little Doctor continued only to stare and smile, and the +monologue was uphill work. Syme began to feel a new sickness and +despair. The Doctor's smile and silence were not at all like the +cataleptic stare and horrible silence which he had confronted in +the Professor half an hour before. About the Professor's makeup +and all his antics there was always something merely grotesque, +like a gollywog. Syme remembered those wild woes of yesterday as +one remembers being afraid of Bogy in childhood. But here was +daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in tweeds, +not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring +or grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. +The whole had a sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing +sunlight the colours of the Doctor's complexion, the pattern of +his tweeds, grew and expanded outrageously, as such things grow +too important in a realistic novel. But his smile was quite +slight, the pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was +his silence. + +"As I say," resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through +heavy sand, "the incident that has occurred to us and has led +us to ask for information about the Marquis, is one which you +may think it better to have narrated; but as it came in the +way of Comrade Syme rather than me--" + +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; +but Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly +on the edge of the crazy table. He read the message, "You must +go on. This devil has sucked me dry!" + +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation +which always came to him when he was alarmed. + +"Yes, the thing really happened to me," he said hastily. "I had +the good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who +took me, thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to +clinch my reputation for respectability, I took him and made him +very drunk at the Savoy. Under this influence he became friendly, +and told me in so many words that within a day or two they hope +to arrest the Marquis in France. + +"So unless you or I can get on his track--" + +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his +protected eyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to +Syme that he would resume his explanation, and he began again with +the same elaborate calm. + +"Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It +seems to me unquestionably urgent that--" + +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as +steadily as the Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without +the smile. The nerves of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping +under that strain of motionless amiability, when Syme suddenly +leant forward and idly tapped the edge of the table. His message +to his ally ran, "I have an intuition." + +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled +back, "Then sit on it." + +Syme telegraphed, "It is quite extraordinary." + +The other answered, "Extraordinary rot!" + +Syme said, "I am a poet." + +The other retorted, "You are a dead man." + +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were +burning feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had +risen to a sort of lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic +taps, he signalled to his friend, "You scarcely realise how poetic +my intuition is. It has that sudden quality we sometimes feel in +the coming of spring." + +He then studied the answer on his friend's fingers. The answer +was, "Go to hell!" + +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed +to the Doctor. + +"Perhaps I should rather say," said Syme on his fingers, "that it +resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the +heart of lush woods." + +His companion disdained to reply. + +"Or yet again," tapped Syme, "it is positive, as is the passionate +red hair of a beautiful woman." + +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it +Syme decided to act. He leant across the table, and said in a +voice that could not be neglected-- + +"Dr. Bull!" + +The Doctor's sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could +have sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards +Syme. + +"Dr. Bull," said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and +courteous, "would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind +as to take off your spectacles?" + +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a +sort of frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has +thrown his life and fortune on the table, leaned forward with a +fiery face. The Doctor did not move. + +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a +pin drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on +the Thames. Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took +off his spectacles. + +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a +chemical lecturer from a successful explosion. His eyes were like +stars, and for an instant he could only point without speaking. + +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his +supposed paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared +doubtfully at Dr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a +toad before his eyes. And indeed it was almost as great a +transformation scene. + +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very +boyish-looking young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an +open expression, cockney clothes like those of a city clerk, and +an unquestionable breath about him of being very good and rather +commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might have been the +first smile of a baby. + +"I knew I was a poet," cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. "I knew my +intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that +did it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, +and all the rest of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a +live devil among dead ones." + +"It certainly does make a queer difference," said the Professor +shakily. "But as regards the project of Dr. Bull--" + +"Project be damned!" roared Syme, beside himself. "Look at him! +Look at his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! +You don't suppose, do you, that that thing's an anarchist?" + +"Syme!" cried the other in an apprehensive agony. + +"Why, by God," said Syme, "I'll take the risk of that myself! Dr. +Bull, I am a police officer. There's my card," and he flung down +the blue card upon the table. + +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He +pulled out his own official card and put it beside his friend's. +Then the third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that +morning they heard his voice. + +"I'm awfully glad you chaps have come so early," he said, with +a sort of schoolboy flippancy, "for we can all start for France +together. Yes, I'm in the force right enough," and he flicked a +blue card towards them lightly as a matter of form. + +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin +glasses, the Doctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the +others instinctively followed him. Syme seemed a little distrait, +and as he passed under the doorway he suddenly struck his stick +on the stone passage so that it rang. + +"But Lord God Almighty," he cried out, "if this is all right, there +were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at +the damned Council!" + +"We might have fought easily," said Bull; "we were four against +three." + +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from +below. + +"No," said the voice, "we were not four against three--we were not +so lucky. We were four against One." + +The others went down the stairs in silence. + +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic +of him, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but +there his own robust rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he +walked quickly on ahead towards a railway inquiry office, talking +to the others over his shoulder. + +"It is jolly to get some pals," he said. "I've been half dead with +the jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol +and embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won't +despise me for having been in a blue funk." + +"All the blue devils in blue hell," said Syme, "contributed to my +blue funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles." + +The young man laughed delightedly. + +"Wasn't it a rag?" he said. "Such a simple idea--not my own. I +haven't got the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective +service, especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that +purpose they wanted someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they +all swore by blazes that I could never look like a dynamiter. They +said my very walk was respectable, and that seen from behind I +looked like the British Constitution. They said I looked too +healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable and benevolent; they +called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They said that if I +had been a criminal, I might have made my fortune by looking so +like an honest man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest +man, there was not even the remotest chance of my assisting them by +ever looking like a criminal. But as last I was brought before some +old josser who was high up in the force, and who seemed to have no +end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others all talked +hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my nice +smile; another said that if they blacked my face I might look like +a negro anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most +extraordinary remark. 'A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,' he +said positively. 'Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office +boy. Put him on a pair of smoked spectacles, and children will +scream at the sight of him.' And so it was, by George! When once my +eyes were covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and short +hair, made me look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was simple +enough when it was done, like miracles; but that wasn't the really +miraculous part of it. There was one really staggering thing about +the business, and my head still turns at it." + +"What was that?" asked Syme. + +"I'll tell you," answered the man in spectacles. "This big pot in +the police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would +go with my hair and socks--by God, he never saw me at all!" + +Syme's eyes suddenly flashed on him. + +"How was that?" he asked. "I thought you talked to him." + +"So I did," said Bull brightly; "but we talked in a pitch-dark +room like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that." + +"I could not have conceived it," said Syme gravely. + +"It is indeed a new idea," said the Professor. + +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the +inquiry office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains +for Dover. Having got his information, he bundled the company into +a cab, and put them and himself inside a railway carriage before +they had properly realised the breathless process. They were +already on the Calais boat before conversation flowed freely. + +"I had already arranged," he explained, "to go to France for my +lunch; but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You +see, I had to send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, +because the President had his eye on me, though God knows how. +I'll tell you the story some day. It was perfectly choking. +Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw the President somewhere, +smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or taking off his hat to +me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you can say what you +like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be in six +places at once." + +"So you sent the Marquis off, I understand," asked the Professor. +"Was it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?" + +"Yes," answered the new guide, "I've timed it all. He'll still be +at Calais when we arrive." + +"But when we do catch him at Calais," said the Professor, "what are +we going to do?" + +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first +time. He reflected a little, and then said-- + +"Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police." + +"Not I," said Syme. "Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. I +promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word +of honour not to tell the police. I'm no hand at casuistry, but I +can't break my word to a modern pessimist. It's like breaking one's +word to a child." + +"I'm in the same boat," said the Professor. "I tried to tell the +police and I couldn't, because of some silly oath I took. You see, +when I was an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or +treason is the only crime I haven't committed. If I did that I +shouldn't know the difference between right and wrong." + +"I've been through all that," said Dr. Bull, "and I've made up my +mind. I gave my promise to the Secretary--you know him, man who +smiles upside down. My friends, that man is the most utterly +unhappy man that was ever human. It may be his digestion, or his +conscience, or his nerves, or his philosophy of the universe, but +he's damned, he's in hell! Well, I can't turn on a man like that, +and hunt him down. It's like whipping a leper. I may be mad, but +that's how I feel; and there's jolly well the end of it." + +"I don't think you're mad," said Syme. "I knew you would decide +like that when first you--" + +"Eh?" said Dr. Bull. + +"When first you took off your spectacles." + +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at +the sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels +carelessly, and a companionable silence fell between the three men. + +"Well," said Syme, "it seems that we have all the same kind of +morality or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes +of it." + +"Yes," assented the Professor, "you're quite right; and we must +hurry up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France." + +"The fact that comes of it," said Syme seriously, "is this, that we +three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we +are three men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. +But we are worse off than that, first because they can appeal to +their organization and we cannot appeal to ours, and second +because--" + +"Because one of those other three men," said the Professor, "is not +a man." + +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said-- + +"My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in +Calais till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in +my head. We cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We +cannot get him detained on some trivial charge, for we should have +to appear; he knows us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend +to keep him on anarchist business; he might swallow much in that +way, but not the notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went +safely through Paris. We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up +ourselves; but he is a well-known man here. He has a whole +bodyguard of friends; he is very strong and brave, and the event is +doubtful. The only thing I can see to do is actually to take +advantage of the very things that are in the Marquis's favour. I am +going to profit by the fact that he is a highly respected nobleman. +I am going to profit by the fact that he has many friends and moves +in the best society." + +"What the devil are you talking about?" asked the Professor. + +"The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century," said +Syme; "but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce +at Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear." + +"He's gone off his head," said the little Doctor, staring. + +"Our bearings," continued Syme calmly, "are 'argent a chevron gules +charged with three cross crosslets of the field.' The motto +varies." + +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. + +"We are just inshore," he said. "Are you seasick or joking in the +wrong place?" + +"My remarks are almost painfully practical," answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. "The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. +The Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny +that I am a gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social +position quite beyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest +opportunity to knock his hat off. But here we are in the harbour." + +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, +who had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led +them along a kind of marine parade until he came to some cafes, +embowered in a bulk of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he +went before them his step was slightly swaggering, and he swung +his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme +end of the line of cafes, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp +gesture he motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one +gloved finger to a cafe table under a bank of flowering foliage +at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth shining in +his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by a +light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE DUEL + +SYME sat down at a cafe table with his companions, his blue eyes +sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of +Saumur with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a +condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were already +unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an +hour his talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be +making out a plan of the conversation which was going to ensue +between himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted it down wildly +with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed catechism, with +questions and answers, and was delivered with an extraordinary +rapidity of utterance. + +"I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my +own. I shall say, 'The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.' He +will say, 'The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.' He will say in the +most exquisite French, 'How are you?' I shall reply in the most +exquisite Cockney, 'Oh, just the Syme--' " + +"Oh, shut it," said the man in spectacles. "Pull yourself +together, and chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really +going to do?" + +"But it was a lovely catechism," said Syme pathetically. "Do let +me read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and +some of the Marquis's answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be +just to my enemy." + +"But what's the good of it all?" asked Dr. Bull in exasperation. + +"It leads up to my challenge, don't you see," said Syme, beaming. +"When the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs--" + +"Has it by any chance occurred to you," asked the Professor, with +a ponderous simplicity, "that the Marquis may not say all the +forty-three things you have put down for him? In that case, I +understand, your own epigrams may appear somewhat more forced." + +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. + +"Why, how true that is," he said, "and I never thought of it. Sir, +you have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name." + +"Oh, you're as drunk as an owl!" said the Doctor. + +"It only remains," continued Syme quite unperturbed, "to adopt +some other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) +between myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of +a dialogue cannot be predicted by one of its parties alone (as you +have pointed out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be +done, I suppose, is for the one party, as far as possible, to do +all the dialogue by himself. And so I will, by George!" And he +stood up suddenly, his yellow hair blowing in the slight sea +breeze. + +A band was playing in a cafe chantant hidden somewhere among the +trees, and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme's heated head +the bray of the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that +barrel-organ in Leicester Square, to the tune of which he had once +stood up to die. He looked across to the little table where the +Marquis sat. The man had two companions now, solemn Frenchmen in +frock-coats and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the +Legion of Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. +Besides these black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his +loose straw hat and light spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even +barbaric; but he looked the Marquis. Indeed, one might say that he +looked the king, with his animal elegance, his scornful eyes, and +his proud head lifted against the purple sea. But he was no +Christian king, at any rate; he was, rather, some swarthy despot, +half Greek, half Asiatic, who in the days when slavery seemed +natural looked down on the Mediterranean, on his galley and his +groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, would the brown-gold face +of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green olives and the +burning blue. + +"Are you going to address the meeting?" asked the Professor +peevishly, seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. + +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. + +"I am," he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +"that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting's great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose." + +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, +seeing him, arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but +smiled politely. + +"You are Mr. Syme, I think," he said. + +Syme bowed. + +"And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache," he said gracefully. +"Permit me to pull your nose." + +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, +upsetting his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back +by the shoulders. + +"This man has insulted me!" said Syme, with gestures of +explanation. + +"Insulted you?" cried the gentleman with the red rosette, "when?" + +"Oh, just now," said Syme recklessly. "He insulted my mother." + +"Insulted your mother!" exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. + +"Well, anyhow," said Syme, conceding a point, "my aunt." + +"But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?" said +the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. "He has been +sitting here all the time." + +"Ah, it was what he said!" said Syme darkly. + +"I said nothing at all," said the Marquis, "except something +about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well." + +"It was an allusion to my family," said Syme firmly. "My aunt +played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always +being insulted about it." + +"This seems most extraordinary," said the gentleman who was +decore, looking doubtfully at the Marquis. + +"Oh, I assure you," said Syme earnestly, "the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my +aunt's weaknesses." + +"This is nonsense!" said the second gentleman. "I for one have +said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of +that girl with black hair." + +"Well, there you are again!" said Syme indignantly. "My aunt's was +red." + +"It seems to me," said the other, "that you are simply seeking a +pretext to insult the Marquis." + +"By George!" said Syme, facing round and looking at him, "what a +clever chap you are!" + +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger's. + +"Seeking a quarrel with me!" he cried. "Seeking a fight with me! By +God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen +will perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. +Let us fight this evening." + +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. + +"Marquis," he said, "your action is worthy of your fame and blood. +Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose +hands I shall place myself." + +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who +had seen his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic +explanations, were quite startled at the look of him. For now that +he came back to them he was quite sober, a little pale, and he +spoke in a low voice of passionate practicality. + +"I have done it," he said hoarsely. "I have fixed a fight on the +beast. But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for +talk. You are my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now +you must insist, and insist absolutely, on the duel coming off +after seven tomorrow, so as to give me the chance of preventing him +from catching the 7.45 for Paris. If he misses that he misses his +crime. He can't refuse to meet you on such a small point of time +and place. But this is what he will do. He will choose a field +somewhere near a wayside station, where he can pick up the train. +He is a very good swordsman, and he will trust to killing me in +time to catch it. But I can fence well too, and I think I can keep +him in play, at any rate, until the train is lost. Then perhaps he +may kill me to console his feelings. You understand? Very well +then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of mine," and +leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to the +Marquis's seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had +not previously heard. + +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise +a part of his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about +the spectacles) poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the +exaltation of prophecy. + +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his +opponent. When the Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme +could only fight in the morning, he must fully have realised that +an obstacle had suddenly arisen between him and his bomb-throwing +business in the capital. Naturally he could not explain this +objection to his friends, so he chose the course which Syme had +predicted. He induced his seconds to settle on a small meadow not +far from the railway, and he trusted to the fatality of the first +engagement. + +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could +have guessed that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands +were in his pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his +handsome face brazen in the sun. But it might have struck a +stranger as odd that there appeared in his train, not only his +seconds carrying the sword-case, but two of his servants carrying +a portmanteau and a luncheon basket. + +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and +Syme was vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning +gold and silver in the tall grass in which the whole company stood +almost knee-deep. + +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and +solemn morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little +Doctor especially, with the addition of his black spectacles, +looked like an undertaker in a farce. Syme could not help feeling a +comic contrast between this funereal church parade of apparel and +the rich and glistening meadow, growing wild flowers everywhere. +But, indeed, this comic contrast between the yellow blossoms and +the black hats was but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the +yellow blossoms and the black business. On his right was a little +wood; far away to his left lay the long curve of the railway line, +which he was, so to speak, guarding from the Marquis, whose goal +and escape it was. In front of him, behind the black group of his +opponents, he could see, like a tinted cloud, a small almond bush +in flower against the faint line of the sea. + +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was +Colonel Ducroix, approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great +politeness, and suggested that the play should terminate with the +first considerable hurt. + +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this +point of policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad +French, that it should continue until one of the combatants was +disabled. Syme had made up his mind that he could avoid disabling +the Marquis and prevent the Marquis from disabling him for at +least twenty minutes. In twenty minutes the Paris train would have +gone by. + +"To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache," said the Professor solemnly, "it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong +reasons for demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy +of which prevent me from being explicit, but for the just and +honourable nature of which I can--" + +"Peste!" broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had suddenly +darkened, "let us stop talking and begin," and he slashed off the +head of a tall flower with his stick. + +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over +his shoulder to see whether the train was coming in sight. But +there was no smoke on the horizon. + +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a +pair of twin swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two +streaks of white fire. He offered one to the Marquis, who snatched +it without ceremony, and another to Syme, who took it, bent it, +and poised it with as much delay as was consistent with dignity. + +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one +himself and giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the +men. + +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and +stood sword in hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line +of fight with drawn swords also, but still sombre in their dark +frock-coats and hats. The principals saluted. The Colonel said +quietly, "Engage!" and the two blades touched and tingled. + +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme's arm, all the +fantastic fears that have been the subject of this story fell +from him like dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered +them clearly and in order as mere delusions of the nerves--how +the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the tyrannic +accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been +the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old +fear that any miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless +modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw that +these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of +the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless +common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of +falling over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he +was to be hanged. For as soon as he had seen the sunlight run +down the channel of his foe's foreshortened blade, and as soon as +he had felt the two tongues of steel touch, vibrating like two +living things, he knew that his enemy was a terrible fighter, and +that probably his last hour had come. + +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in +the grass under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living +things. He could almost fancy that he heard the grass growing; he +could almost fancy that even as he stood fresh flowers were +springing up and breaking into blossom in the meadow--flowers blood +red and burning gold and blue, fulfilling the whole pageant of the +spring. And whenever his eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, +staring, hypnotic eyes of the Marquis, they saw the little tuft of +almond tree against the sky-line. He had the feeling that if by +some miracle he escaped he would be ready to sit for ever before +that almond tree, desiring nothing else in the world. + +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a +thing lost, the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and +he was parrying his enemy's point with a kind of clockwork skill of +which he had hardly supposed himself capable. Once his enemy's +point ran along his wrist, leaving a slight streak of blood, but it +either was not noticed or was tacitly ignored. Every now and then +he riposted, and once or twice he could almost fancy that he felt +his point go home, but as there was no blood on blade or shirt he +supposed he was mistaken. Then came an interruption and a change. + +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet +stare, flashed one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway +on his right. Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of +a fiend, and began to fight as if with twenty weapons. The attack +came so fast and furious, that the one shining sword seemed a +shower of shining arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the +railway; but also he had no need. He could guess the reason of the +Marquis's sudden madness of battle--the Paris train was in sight. + +But the Marquis's morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent's point far out of the fighting +circle; and the third time his riposte was so rapid, that there +was no doubt about the hit this time. Syme's sword actually bent +under the weight of the Marquis's body, which it had pierced. + +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as +a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the +Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme +stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no +blood on it at all. + +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn +fell furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The +Marquis was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, +as he had surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis +seemed distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even +weakly, and he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost +as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the +other hand, fought fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual +fury, eager to solve the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For +this purpose, he aimed less at the Marquis's body, and more at his +throat and head. A minute and a half afterwards he felt his point +enter the man's neck below the jaw. It came out clean. Half mad, he +thrust again, and made what should have been a bloody scar on the +Marquis's cheek. But there was no scar. + +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with +supernatural terrors. Surely the man had a charmed life. But this +new spiritual dread was a more awful thing than had been the mere +spiritual topsy-turvydom symbolised by the paralytic who pursued +him. The Professor was only a goblin; this man was a devil--perhaps +he was the Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three times had a +human sword been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had +that thought he drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang +high up in the air as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of +all the human things in his story--of the Chinese lanterns in +Saffron Park, of the girl's red hair in the garden, of the honest, +beer-swilling sailors down by the dock, of his loyal companions +standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen as a champion of all these +fresh and kindly things to cross swords with the enemy of all +creation. "After all," he said to himself, "I am more than a devil; +I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do--I +can die," and as the word went through his head, he heard a faint +and far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris train. + +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a +Mohammedan panting for Paradise. As the train came nearer and +nearer he fancied he could see people putting up the floral +arches in Paris; he joined in the growing noise and the glory of +the great Republic whose gate he was guarding against Hell. His +thoughts rose higher and higher with the rising roar of the +train, which ended, as if proudly, in a long and piercing +whistle. The train stopped. + +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back +quite out of sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was +wonderful, and not the less wonderful because Syme had plunged his +sword a moment before into the man's thigh. + +"Stop!" said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. "I want to say something." + +"What is the matter?" asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. "Has there +been foul play?" + +"There has been foul play somewhere," said Dr. Bull, who was a +little pale. "Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times +at least, and he is none the worse ." + +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly +patience. + +"Please let me speak," he said. "It is rather important. Mr. +Syme," he continued, turning to his opponent, "we are fighting +today, if I remember right, because you expressed a wish (which +I thought irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by +pulling my nose now as quickly as possible? I have to catch a +train." + +"I protest that this is most irregular," said Dr. Bull +indignantly. + +"It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent," said Colonel +Ducroix, looking wistfully at his principal. "There is, I think, +one case on record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in +which the weapons were changed in the middle of the encounter at +the request of one of the combatants. But one can hardly call +one's nose a weapon." + +"Will you or will you not pull my nose?" said the Marquis in +exasperation. "Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! +You can have no conception of how important it is to me. Don't be +so selfish! Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!" and he bent +slightly forward with a fascinating smile. The Paris train, +panting and groaning, had grated into a little station behind the +neighbouring hill. + +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures +--the sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was +just toppling over. Walking in a world he half understood, he took +two paces forward and seized the Roman nose of this remarkable +nobleman. He pulled it hard, and it came off in his hand. + +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the +pasteboard proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, +while the sun and the clouds and the wooded hills looked down +upon this imbecile scene. + +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. + +"If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow," he said, "he can have +it. Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It's the kind of +thing that might come in useful any day," and he gravely tore off +one of his swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown +forehead with it, and politely offered it to the Colonel, who +stood crimson and speechless with rage. + +"If I had known," he spluttered, "that I was acting for a poltroon +who pads himself to fight--" + +"Oh, I know, I know!" said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. "You are making a +mistake; but it can't be explained just now. I tell you the train +has come into the station!" + +"Yes," said Dr. Bull fiercely, "and the train shall go out of the +station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil's work--" + +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. +He was a strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his +old face peeled off, and half another face glaring and grinning +from underneath. + +"Will you drive me mad?" he cried. "The train--" + +"You shall not go by the train," said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. + +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering +itself for a sublime effort before speaking. + +"You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, +brainless, Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!" he said without +taking breath. "You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! +You--" + +"You shall not go by this train," repeated Syme. + +"And why the infernal blazes," roared the other, "should I want to +go by the train?" + +"We know all," said the Professor sternly. "You are going to Paris +to throw a bomb!" + +"Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!" cried the other, tearing +his hair, which came off easily. + +"Have you all got softening of the brain, that you don't realise +what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? +Twenty Paris trains might go by for me. Damn Paris trains!" + +"Then what did you care about?" began the Professor. + +"What did I care about? I didn't care about catching the train; I +cared about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has +caught me." + +"I regret to inform you," said Syme with restraint, "that your +remarks convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to +remove the remains of your original forehead and some portion of +what was once your chin, your meaning would become clearer. Mental +lucidity fulfils itself in many ways. What do you mean by saying +that the train has caught you? It may be my literary fancy, but +somehow I feel that it ought to mean something." + +"It means everything," said the other, "and the end of everything. +Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand." + +"Us!" repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. "What do you mean by +'us'?" + +"The police, of course!" said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp +and half his face. + +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired +head which is common in the English constabulary, but the face was +terribly pale. + +"I am Inspector Ratcliffe," he said, with a sort of haste that +verged on harshness. "My name is pretty well known to the police, +and I can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is +any doubt about my position, I have a card" and he began to pull a +blue card from his pocket. + +The Professor gave a tired gesture. + +"Oh, don't show it us," he said wearily; "we've got enough of them +to equip a paper-chase." + +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a +mere vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he +certainly saved the situation. In the midst of this staggering +transformation scene he stepped forward with all the gravity and +responsibility of a second, and addressed the two seconds of the +Marquis. + +"Gentlemen," he said, "we all owe you a serious apology; but I +assure you that you have not been made the victims of such a low +joke as you imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of +honour. You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the +world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a +vast conspiracy. A secret society of anarchists is hunting us like +hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a +bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and +powerful and fanatical church, a church of eastern pessimism, which +holds it holy to destroy mankind like vermin. How hard they hunt us +you can gather from the fact that we are driven to such disguises +as those for which I apologise, and to such pranks as this one by +which you suffer." + +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black +moustache, bowed politely, and said-- + +"Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive +me if I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and +permit myself to say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and +distinguished fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is +unusual, and, upon the whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel +Ducroix, I would in no way influence your actions, but if you feel +with me that our present society is a little abnormal, I am now +going to walk back to the town." + +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his +white moustache and broke out-- + +"No, by George! I won't. If these gentlemen are really in a mess +with a lot of low wreckers like that, I'll see them through it. I +have fought for France, and it is hard if I can't fight for +civilization." + +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public +meeting. + +"Don't make too much noise," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "Sunday may +hear you." + +"Sunday!" cried Bull, and dropped his hat. + +"Yes," retorted Ratcliffe, "he may be with them." + +"With whom?" asked Syme. + +"With the people out of that train," said the other. + +"What you say seems utterly wild," began Syme. "Why, as a matter of +fact--But, my God," he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an +explosion a long way off, "by God! if this is true the whole bally +lot of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born +man was a detective except the President and his personal +secretary. What can it mean?" + +"Mean!" said the new policeman with incredible violence. "It means +that we are struck dead! Don't you know Sunday? Don't you know that +his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought +of them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that +he should put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and +then take care that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought +every trust, he has captured every cable, he has control of every +railway line--especially of that railway line!" and he pointed a +shaking finger towards the small wayside station. "The whole +movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to rise +for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have +resisted him . . . and the old devil put them on the Supreme +Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots that +we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the +Professor would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would +fight me in France. And he was combining great masses of capital, +and seizing great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were +running after each other like a lot of confounded babies playing +blind man's buff." + +"Well?" asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. + +"Well," replied the other with sudden serenity, "he has found us +playing blind man's buff today in a field of great rustic beauty +and extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only +remains to him to capture this field and all the fools in it. And +since you really want to know what was my objection to the arrival +of that train, I will tell you. My objection was that Sunday or his +Secretary has just this moment got out of it." + +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes +towards the far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable +bulk of people seemed to be moving in their direction. But they +were too distant to be distinguished in any way. + +"It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache," said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, "always to carry a pair of +opera glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming +after us with that mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place +where we are under no temptations to break our oaths by calling +the police. Dr. Bull, I have a suspicion that you will see better +through these than through your own highly decorative spectacles." + +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took +off his spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. + +"It cannot be as bad as you say," said the Professor, somewhat +shaken. "There are a good number of them certainly, but they may +easily be ordinary tourists." + +"Do ordinary tourists," asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his +eyes, "wear black masks half-way down the face?" + +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through +them. Most men in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; +but it was quite true that two or three of the leaders in front +wore black half-masks almost down to their mouths. This disguise +is very complete, especially at such a distance, and Syme found +it impossible to conclude anything from the clean-shaven jaws and +chins of the men talking in the front. But presently as they +talked they all smiled and one of them smiled on one side. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + +SYME put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly +relief. + +"The President is not with them, anyhow," he said, and wiped his +forehead. + +"But surely they are right away on the horizon," said the +bewildered Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull's +hasty though polite explanation. "Could you possibly know your +President among all those people?" + +"Could I know a white elephant among all those people!" answered +Syme somewhat irritably. "As you very truly say, they are on the +horizon; but if he were walking with them . . . by God! I believe +this ground would shake." + +After an instant's pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with +gloomy decision-- + +"Of course the President isn't with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, +or sitting on the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral." + +"This is absurd!" said Syme. "Something may have happened in our +absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like +that. It is quite true," he added, frowning dubiously at the +distant fields that lay towards the little station, "it is +certainly true that there seems to be a crowd coming this way; +but they are not all the army that you make out." + +"Oh, they," said the new detective contemptuously; "no they are +not a very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they +are precisely calculated to our value--we are not much, my boy, +in Sunday's universe. He has got hold of all the cables and +telegraphs himself. But to kill the Supreme Council he regards as +a trivial matter, like a post card; it may be left to his private +secretary," and he spat on the grass. + +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely-- + +"There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has +any preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him +to walk after me." + +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent +energy towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their +shoulders, and saw that the dark cloud of men had detached itself +from the station and was moving with a mysterious discipline +across the plain. They saw already, even with the naked eye, black +blots on the foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. +They turned and followed their leader, who had already struck the +wood, and disappeared among the twinkling trees. + +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood +they had a cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a +dim pool. The inside of the wood was full of shattered sunlight +and shaken shadows. They made a sort of shuddering veil, almost +recalling the dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the solid figures +walking with him Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and +shade that danced upon them. Now a man's head was lit as with a +light of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had +strong and staring white hands with the face of a negro. The +ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the +black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it +seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. +The fancy tinted Syme's overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he +wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? +This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white +by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and +then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro +(after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol +of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world +where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their +noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence +which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil +had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was +a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all these +bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there +anything that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken +off his nose and turned out to be a detective. Might he not just +as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not +everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance +of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always +unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in +the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had +found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call +Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism +which can find no floor to the universe. + +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme +strove with a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of +his fancies. With two impatient strides he overtook the man in the +Marquis's straw hat, the man whom he had come to address as +Ratcliffe. In a voice exaggeratively loud and cheerful, he broke +the bottomless silence and made conversation. + +"May I ask," he said, "where on earth we are all going to?" + +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad +to hear his companion speak in an easy, human voice. + +"We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea," he said. +"I think that part of the country is least likely to be with +them." + +"What can you mean by all this?" cried Syme. "They can't be +running the real world in that way. Surely not many working men +are anarchists, and surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat +modern armies and police." + +"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So +you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the +question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy +came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have +been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more +interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. +The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man +hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have +sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always +objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always +anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars." + +"As a lecture on English history for the little ones," said Syme, +"this is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application." + +"Its application is," said his informant, "that most of old Sunday's +right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is +why he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the +last four champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running +through a wood like rabbits." + +"Millionaires I can understand," said Syme thoughtfully, "they are +nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with +hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is +another. I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) +that Sunday would stand perfectly helpless before the task of +converting any ordinary healthy person anywhere." + +"Well," said the other, "it rather depends what sort of person you +mean." + +"Well, for instance," said Syme, "he could never convert that +person," and he pointed straight in front of him. + +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express +to Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle +of this forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that +common sense in an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and +stained with perspiration, and grave with the bottomless gravity of +small necessary toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting wood with +a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards off, already half full of +timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was, like his master, +valorous but not desperate; like his master, he was even +prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The man was a Norman, taller +than the average of the French and very angular; and his swarthy +figure stood dark against a square of sunlight, almost like some +allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a ground of gold. + +"Mr. Syme is saying," called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, +"that this man, at least, will never be an anarchist." + +"Mr. Syme is right enough there," answered Colonel Ducroix, +laughing, "if only for the reason that he has plenty of property +to defend. But I forgot that in your country you are not used to +peasants being wealthy." + +"He looks poor," said Dr. Bull doubtfully. + +"Quite so," said the Colonel; "that is why he is rich." + +"I have an idea," called out Dr. Bull suddenly; "how much would he +take to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and +we could soon leave them behind." + +"Oh, give him anything!" said Syme eagerly. "I have piles of money +on me." + +"That will never do," said the Colonel; "he will never have any +respect for you unless you drive a bargain." + +"Oh, if he haggles!" began Bull impatiently. + +"He haggles because he is a free man," said the other. "You do +not understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is +not being tipped." + +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange +pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French +Colonel talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely +badinage and bickering of market-day. At the end of the four +minutes, however, they saw that the Colonel was right, for the +wood-cutter entered into their plans, not with the vague servility +of a tout too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor +who had been paid the proper fee. He told them that the best thing +they could do was to make their way down to the little inn on the +hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had +become devot in his latter years, would be certain to sympathise +with them, and even to take risks in their support. The whole +company, therefore, piled themselves on top of the stacks of wood, +and went rocking in the rude cart down the other and steeper side +of the woodland. Heavy and ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was +driven quickly enough, and they soon had the exhilarating +impression of distancing altogether those, whoever they were, who +were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the +anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. One +man's presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first +sight of the deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and +then looked back over his shoulder at the army on their track. + +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he +could see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across +these was still moving the square black mob like one monstrous +beetle. In the very strong sunlight and with his own very strong +eyes, which were almost telescopic, Syme could see this mass of +men quite plainly. He could see them as separate human figures; +but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved +as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain +hats, like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not +spread and sprawl and trail by various lines to the attack, as +would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a sort of +dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of automatons. + +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. + +"Yes," replied the policeman, "that's discipline. That's Sunday. He +is perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of +them, like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and +you bet your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and +thinking regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they +are disappearing regularly." + +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men +was growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his +horse. + +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell +away on the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope +towards the sea, in a way not unlike the lower slopes of the +Sussex downs. The only difference was that in Sussex the road +would have been broken and angular like a little brook, but +here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a +waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart clattered at a +considerable angle, and in a few minutes, the road growing yet +steeper, they saw below them the little harbour of Lancy and a +great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. + +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and +the horse's nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who +was sitting on the benches outside the little cafe of "Le Soleil +d'Or." The peasant grunted an apology, and got down from his +seat. The others also descended one by one, and spoke to the old +gentleman with fragmentary phrases of courtesy, for it was quite +evident from his expansive manner that he was the owner of the +little tavern. + +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and +a grey moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type +that may often be found in France, but is still commoner in +Catholic Germany. Everything about him, his pipe, his pot of beer, +his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an ancestral peace; only +when his visitors looked up as they entered the inn-parlour, they +saw the sword upon the wall. + +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed +rapidly into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual +refreshment. The military decision of his action interested Syme, +who sat next to him, and he took the opportunity when the old +innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his curiosity. + +"May I ask you, Colonel," he said in a low voice, "why we have +come here?" + +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. + +"For two reasons, sir," he said; "and I will give first, not the +most important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because +this is the only place within twenty miles in which we can get +horses." + +"Horses!" repeated Syme, looking up quickly. + +"Yes," replied the other; "if you people are really to distance +your enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course +you have bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket." + +"And where do you advise us to make for?" asked Syme doubtfully. + +"Beyond question," replied the Colonel, "you had better make all +haste to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I +seconded under somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to +exaggerate very much the possibilities of a general rising; but +even he would hardly maintain, I suppose, that you were not safe +with the gendarmes." + +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly-- + +"And your other reason for coming here?" + +"My other reason for coming here," said Ducroix soberly, "is that +it is just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly +near to death." + +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic +religious picture. Then he said-- + +"You are right," and then almost immediately afterwards, "Has +anyone seen about the horses?" + +"Yes," answered Ducroix, "you may be quite certain that I gave +orders the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no +impression of hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, +like a well-trained army. I had no idea that the anarchists had so +much discipline. You have not a moment to waste." + +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white +hair came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses +were saddled outside. + +By Ducroix's advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords +as the only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, +white road. The two servants, who had carried the Marquis's +luggage when he was a marquis, were left behind to drink at the +cafe by common consent, and not at all against their own +inclination. + +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its +rays Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing +smaller and smaller, but still standing and looking after them +quite silently, the sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, +superstitious fancy, left in his mind by the chance phrase of the +Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps, the last honest stranger +whom he should ever see upon the earth. + +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a +mere grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green +wall of the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top +of the down behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of +black-clad and marching men. They seemed to hang above the good +man and his house like a black cloud of locusts. The horses had +been saddled none too soon. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + +URGING the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather +rugged descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their +advantage over the men on the march, and at last the bulk of the +first buildings of Lancy cut off the sight of their pursuers. +Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and by the time they +reached the real town the west was warming with the colour and +quality of sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making +finally for the police station, they should make the effort, in +passing, to attach to themselves one more individual who might be +useful. + +"Four out of the five rich men in this town," he said, "are common +swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the +world. The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and +what is even more important from our point of view, he owns a +motor-car." + +"I am afraid," said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking +back along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might +appear at any moment, "I am afraid we have hardly time for +afternoon calls." + +"Doctor Renard's house is only three minutes off," said the +Colonel. + +"Our danger," said Dr. Bull, "is not two minutes off." + +"Yes," said Syme, "if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, +for they are on foot." + +"He has a motor-car," said the Colonel. + +"But we may not get it," said Bull. + +"Yes, he is quite on your side." + +"But he might be out." + +"Hold your tongue," said Syme suddenly. "What is that noise?" + +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and +for a second--for two or three or four seconds--heaven and earth +seemed equally still. Then all their ears, in an agony of +attention, heard along the road that indescribable thrill and +throb that means only one thing--horses! + +The Colonel's face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning +had struck it, and yet left it scatheless. + +"They have done us," he said, with brief military irony. "Prepare +to receive cavalry!" + +"Where can they have got the horses?" asked Syme, as he +mechanically urged his steed to a canter. + +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained +voice-- + +"I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the 'Soleil +d'Or' was the only place where one can get horses within twenty +miles." + +"No!" said Syme violently, "I don't believe he'd do it. Not with +all that white hair." + +"He may have been forced," said the Colonel gently. "They must be +at least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to +see my friend Renard, who has a motor-car." + +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street +corner, and went down the street with such thundering speed, that +the others, though already well at the gallop, had difficulty in +following the flying tail of his horse. + +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a +steep street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they +could once more see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the +white road across it, standing up above all the roofs of the town. +They breathed again to see that the road as yet was clear, and they +rang the bell. + +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that +silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved +even more perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to +him he pooh-poohed the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, +with the solid French scepticism, that there was no conceivable +probability of a general anarchist rising. "Anarchy," he said, +shrugging his shoulders, "it is childishness!" + +"Et ca," cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other's +shoulder, "and that is childishness, isn't it?" + +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come +sweeping over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. +Swiftly as they rode, however, the whole rank still kept well +together, and they could see the black vizards of the first line +as level as a line of uniforms. But although the main black +square was the same, though travelling faster, there was now one +sensational difference which they could see clearly upon the slope +of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were +in one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the column, and with +frantic movements of hand and heel urged his horse faster and +faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the pursuer +but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they +knew it was the Secretary himself. "I am sorry to cut short a +cultured discussion," said the Colonel, "but can you lend me your +motor-car now, in two minutes?" + +"I have a suspicion that you are all mad," said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; "but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage." + +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were +like the Musee de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, +however, he seemed to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes +of the French middle class, and when his impatient friends came to +examine them, it took them some time to assure themselves that one +of them even could be made to work. This with some difficulty they +brought round into the street before the Doctor's house. When they +came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that +twilight had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the +tropics. Either they had been longer in the place than they +imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud had gathered over the +town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to see a +slight mist coming up from the sea. + +"It is now or never," said Dr. Bull. "I hear horses." + +"No," corrected the Professor, "a horse." + +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly +coming nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the +whole cavalcade but that of the one horseman, who had left it +far behind--the insane Secretary. + +Syme's family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had +once owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at +once into the chauffeur's seat, and with flushed face was wrenching +and tugging at the disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one +handle, and then said quite quietly-- + +"I am afraid it's no go." + +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his +rushing horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a +smile that thrust out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept +alongside of the stationary car, into which its company had +crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It was the Secretary, +and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of triumph. + +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no +sound but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. +Then there came quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the +car leapt forward. It plucked the Secretary clean out of his +saddle, as a knife is whipped out of its sheath, trailed him +kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him flung flat upon +the road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car took +the corner of the street with a splendid curve, they could just +see the other anarchists filling the street and raising their +fallen leader. + +"I can't understand why it has grown so dark," said the Professor +at last in a low voice. + +"Going to be a storm, I think," said Dr. Bull. "I say, it's a pity +we haven't got a light on this car, if only to see by." + +"We have," said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he +fished up a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light +inside it. It was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if +its original use had been in some way semi-religious, for there +was a rude moulding of a cross upon one of its sides. + +"Where on earth did you get that?" asked the Professor. + +"I got it where I got the car," answered the Colonel, chuckling, +"from my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the +steering wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to +Renard, who was standing in his own porch, you will remember. 'I +suppose,' I said, 'there's no time to get a lamp.' He looked up, +blinking amiably at the beautiful arched ceiling of his own front +hall. From this was suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, +this lantern, one of the hundred treasures of his treasure house. +By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own ceiling, shattering +the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with his +violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the +car. Was I not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth +knowing?" + +"You were," said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over +the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position +in the contrast between the modern automobile and its strange +ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto they had passed through the quietest +part of the town, meeting at most one or two pedestrians, who could +give them no hint of the peace or the hostility of the place. Now, +however, the windows in the houses began one by one to be lit up, +giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned +to the new detective who had led their flight, and permitted +himself one of his natural and friendly smiles. + +"These lights make one feel more cheerful." + +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. + +"There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful," he +said, "and they are those lights of the police station which I can +see beyond the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes." + +Then all Bull's boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out +of him. + +"Oh, this is all raving nonsense!" he cried. "If you really think +that ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be +madder than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these +fellows, the whole town would fight for us." + +"No," said the other with an immovable simplicity, "the whole town +would fight for them. We shall see." + +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with +sudden excitement. + +"What is that noise?" he said. + +"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 heathen. 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." + +"Nonsence!" 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. + +"Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three +behind him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to +die." + +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme's sword +was broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, +flinging him down. In a moment they would have flung themselves +upon the face of the mob and perished, when an interruption came. +The Secretary, ever since Syme's speech, had stood with his hand +to his stricken head as if dazed; now he suddenly pulled off his +black mask. + +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much +rage as astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. + +"There is some mistake," he said. "Mr. Syme, I hardly think you +understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law." + +"Of the law?" said Syme, and dropped his stick. + +"Certainly!" said the Secretary. "I am a detective from Scotland +Yard," and he took a small blue card from his pocket. + +"And what do you suppose we are?" asked the Professor, and threw +up his arms. + +"You," said the Secretary stiffly, "are, as I know for a fact, +members of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of +you, I--" + +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. + +"There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council," he said. "We were +all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these +nice people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were +the dynamiters. I knew I couldn't be wrong about the mob," he said, +beaming over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the +distance on both sides. "Vulgar people are never mad. I'm vulgar +myself, and I know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to +everybody here." + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + +NEXT morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for +Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, +having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn't +exist, and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a +magnanimous old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither +party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier +with great geniality. + +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to +each other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to +wear masks originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as +fellow-conspirators; + +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through +a civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which +could be explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that +they could not explain. What did it all mean? If they were all +harmless officers, what was Sunday? If he had not seized the world, +what on earth had he been up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still +gloomy about this. + +"I can't make head or tail of old Sunday's little game any more +than you can," he said. "But whatever else Sunday is, he isn't +a blameless citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?" + +"I grant you," answered Syme, "that I have never been able to +forget it." + +"Well," said the Secretary, "I suppose we can find out soon, for +tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," +he said, with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well acquainted +with my secretarial duties." + +"I suppose you are right," said the Professor reflectively. "I +suppose we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should +feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is." + +"Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?" + +"No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me." + +"Let us have some drinks," said Dr. Bull, after a silence. + +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly +convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had +always been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the +other four that the whole company could take the same hansom cab +from Victoria; but this was over-ruled, and they went in a +four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They finished +their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close +to the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even +then the adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, +discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled +out of the hotel at about eleven to see and taste some of the +beauties of London. Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came +back and made quite a clamour in the hall. Syme, who tried at +first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to his +communication with quite new attention. + +"I tell you I've seen him!" said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis. + +"Whom?" asked Syme quickly. "Not the President?" + +"Not so bad as that," said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, +"not so bad as that. I've got him here." + +"Got whom here?" asked Syme impatiently. + +"Hairy man," said the other lucidly, "man that used to be hairy +man--Gogol. Here he is," and he pulled forward by a reluctant +elbow the identical young man who five days before had marched +out of the Council with thin red hair and a pale face, the first +of all the sham anarchists who had been exposed. + +"Why do you worry with me?" he cried. "You have expelled me as a +spy." + +"We are all spies!" whispered Syme. + +"We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink." + +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly +towards the hotel in Leicester Square. + +"This is more cheerful," said Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to +ask one man what he means." + +"I think it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it +is six men going to ask one man what they mean." + +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was +in the opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a +figure that looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent +head, poring over a newspaper. But all his councillors, who had +come to vote him down, crossed that Square as if they were watched +out of heaven by a hundred eyes. + +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they +should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, +or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at +once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter +course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they +attacked Sunday so rashly. + +"My reason is quite simple," said Syme. "I attack him rashly +because I am afraid of him." + +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came +out simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the +broad sunlight of Sunday's smile. + +"Delightful!" he said. "So pleased to see you all. What an +exquisite day it is. Is the Czar dead?" + +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together +for a dignified outburst. + +"No, sir," he said sternly "there has been no massacre. I bring you +news of no such disgusting spectacles." + +"Disgusting spectacles?" repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. "You mean Dr. Bull's spectacles?" + +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with +a sort of smooth appeal-- + +"Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really +to call them disgusting before the man himself--" + +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. + +"My spectacles are blackguardly," he said, "but I'm not. Look at +my face." + +"I dare say it's the sort of face that grows on one," said the +President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel +with the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will +grow on me some day." + +"We have no time for tomfoolery," said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. "We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? +What are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and +what we are? Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, +or are you a clever man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you." + +"Candidates," murmured Sunday, "are only required to answer eight +out of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make +out, you want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what +this table is, and what this Council is, and what this world is +for all I know. Well, I will go so far as to rend the veil of one +mystery. If you want to know what you are, you are a set of +highly well-intentioned young jackasses." + +"And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?" + +"I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above +them and break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you +are a man of science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find +out the truth about them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those +morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have found +out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the +truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still +a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I +am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like +a wolf--kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the +churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught +yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have +given them a good run for their money, and I will now." + +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself +like some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. +Yet before he dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal +bar, and thrusting his great chin over the edge of the balcony, +said solemnly-- + +"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the +man in the dark room, who made you all policemen." + +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below +like a great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards +the corner of the Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang +inside it. The six detectives had been standing thunderstruck and +livid in the light of his last assertion; but when he disappeared +into the cab, Syme's practical senses returned to him, and leaping +over the balcony so recklessly as almost to break his legs, he +called another cab. + +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the +Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol +scrambled into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who +was pursuing the flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase +towards the north-west, his cabman, evidently under the influence +of more than common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck +speed. But Syme was in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in +his own cab shouting, "Stop thief!" until crowds ran along beside +his cab, and policemen began to stop and ask questions. All this +had its influence upon the President's cabman, who began to look +dubious, and to slow down to a trot. He opened the trap to talk +reasonably to his fare, and in so doing let the long whip droop +over the front of the cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, and +jerked it violently out of the man's hand. Then standing up in +front of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared aloud, +so that they went down the streets like a flying storm. Through +street after street and square after square went whirling this +preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and +the driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs +came after it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting +hounds. Shops and streets shot by like rattling arrows. + +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the +splashboard where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head +out of the cab, with white hair whistling in the wind, he made a +horrible face at his pursuers, like some colossal urchin. Then +raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a ball of paper in Syme's +face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while instinctively +warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two crumpled +papers. One was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull, +with a very long, and it is to be feared partly ironical, string +of letters after his name. Dr. Bull's address was, at any rate, +considerably longer than his communication, for the communication +consisted entirely of the words:-- + +"What about Martin Tupper now?" + +"What does the old maniac mean?" asked Bull, staring at the words. +"What does yours say, Syme?" + +Syme's message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:-- + +"No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by +the Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, +for the last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, +especially after what uncle said." + +The President's cabman seemed to be regaining some control over +his horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round +into the Edgware Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the +allies a providential stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving +to right or left or stopping, for down the long road was coming +the unmistakable roar announcing the fire-engine, which in a few +seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went +by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, +caught it, slung himself on to it, and was seen as he disappeared +in the noisy distance talking to the astonished fireman with +explanatory gestures. + +"After him!" howled Syme. "He can't go astray now. There's no +mistaking a fire-engine." + +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped +up their horses and slightly decreased the distance between +themselves and their disappearing prey. The President +acknowledged this proximity by coming to the back of the car, +bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally flinging a +neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When +that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he found it +contained the words:-- + +"Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known. +--A FRIEND." + +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a +region that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high +railings shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but +somewhat relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, +though whether through another whim or the increasing protest of +his entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, +however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high +railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished +in a darkness of leaves. + +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and +sprang also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence +and his friends were following, he turned a face on them which +shone quite pale in the shadow. + +"What place can this be?" he asked. "Can it be the old devil's +house? I've heard he has a house in North London." + +"All the better," said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in +a foothold, "we shall find him at home." + +"No, but it isn't that," said Syme, knitting his brows. "I hear +the most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and +blowing their devilish noses!" + +"His dogs barking, of course," said the Secretary. + +"Why not say his black-beetles barking!" said Syme furiously, +"snails barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark +like that?" + +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long +growling roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the +flesh--a low thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air +all about them. + +"The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs," said Gogol, and +shuddered. + +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood +listening impatiently. + +"Well, listen to that," he said, "is that a dog--anybody's dog?" + +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things +protesting and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off +like an echo, what sounded like a long nasal trumpet. + +"Well, his house ought to be hell!" said the Secretary; "and if +it is hell, I'm going in!" and he sprang over the tall railings +almost with one swing. + +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and +shrubs, and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but +Dr. Bull suddenly struck his hands together. + +"Why, you asses," he cried, "it's the Zoo!" + +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild +quarry, a keeper in uniform came running along the path with a +man in plain clothes. + +"Has it come this way?" gasped the keeper. + +"Has what?" asked Syme. + +"The elephant!" cried the keeper. "An elephant has gone mad and +run away!" + +"He has run away with an old gentleman," said the other stranger +breathlessly, "a poor old gentleman with white hair!" + +"What sort of old gentleman?" asked Syme, with great curiosity. + +"A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes," said +the keeper eagerly. + +"Well," said Syme, "if he's that particular kind of old gentleman, +if you're quite sure that he's a large and fat old gentleman in +grey clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has +not run away with him. He has run away with the elephant. The +elephant is not made by God that could run away with him if he +did not consent to the elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!" + +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of +grass, about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and +scampering vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an +awful stride, with his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's +bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. On the back of +the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all +the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious +speed with some sharp object in his hand. + +"Stop him!" screamed the populace. "He'll be out of the gate!" + +"Stop a landslide!" said the keeper. "He is out of the gate!" + +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced +that the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the +Zoological Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a +new and swift sort of omnibus. + +"Great Lord!" cried Bull, "I never knew an elephant could go so +fast. Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in +sight." + +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had +vanished, Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in +the cages which they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that +he should have seen them so clearly. He remembered especially +seeing pelicans, with their preposterous, pendant throats. He +wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was +that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He +remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a +small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a sensation, the +vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was always +making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they +would understand him when they had understood the stars. He +wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. + +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed +the elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long +stretch of the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but +offered them the solid stretch of his unconscious back, which +maddened them, if possible, more than his previous mockeries. Just +before they came to Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw +something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball meaning to +catch it again. But at their rate of racing it fell far behind, +just by the cab containing Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or +for some impulse unexplainable, he stopped his cab so as to pick it +up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite a bulky parcel. On +examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of thirty-three +pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. When the +last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip of +paper, on which was written:-- + +"The word, I fancy, should be 'pink'." + +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his +hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed +efforts. + +Through street after street, through district after district, went +the prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, +and driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this +insane publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to +be regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement +of a circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened +beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he +thought that he was still in Paddington. The animal's pace was even +more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South +Kensington, and he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line +where the enormous Wheel of Earl's Court stood up in the sky. The +wheel grew larger and larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel +of stars. + +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several +corners, and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl's Court +Exhibition they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them +was an enormous crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, +heaving and shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the +President had disappeared. + +"Where has he gone to?" asked Syme, slipping to the ground. + +"Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!" said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: "Funny gentleman, +sir. Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this." + +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: "To +the Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council." + +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:-- + + "When the herring runs a mile, + Let the Secretary smile; + When the herring tries to fly, + Let the Secretary die. + Rustic Proverb." + +"Why the eternal crikey," began the Secretary, "did you let the +man in? Do people commonly come to you Exhibition riding on mad +elephants? Do--" + +"Look!" shouted Syme suddenly. "Look over there!" + +"Look at what?" asked the Secretary savagely. + +"Look at the captive balloon!" said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. + +"Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?" demanded the +Secretary. "What is there queer about a captive balloon?" + +"Nothing," said Syme, "except that it isn't captive!" + +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled +above the Exhibition on a string, like a child's balloon. A second +afterwards the string came in two just under the car, and the +balloon, broken loose, floated away with the freedom of a soap +bubble. + +"Ten thousand devils!" shrieked the Secretary. "He's got into it!" +and he shook his fists at the sky. + +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and +they could see the great white head of the President peering over +the side and looking benevolently down on them. + +"God bless my soul!" said the Professor with the elderly manner +that he could never disconnect from his bleached beard and +parchment face. "God bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that +something fell on the top of my hat!" + +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of +twisted paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed +with a true lover's knot and, the words:-- + +"Your beauty has not left me indifferent.--From LITTLE SNOWDROP." + +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard-- + +"I'm not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. +Let's follow it!" + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + +ACROSS green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled +six draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The +optimist of the party had at first proposed that they should +follow the balloon across South England in hansom-cabs. But he +was ultimately convinced of the persistent refusal of the balloon +to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the +cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless though +exasperated travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed +through ploughed fields till each was turned into a figure too +outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. Those green hills of +Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the admirable light +grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. His silk +hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his coat-tails +were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of +England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his +yellow beard forward with a silent and furious determination, and +his eyes were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in +the full flush of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. + +"After all," he said, "it is very beautiful!" + +"It is singularly and strangely beautiful!" said the Professor. "I +wish the beastly gas-bag would burst!" + +"No," said Dr. Bull, "I hope it won't. It might hurt the old boy." + +"Hurt him!" said the vindictive Professor, "hurt him! Not as much +as I'd hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!" + +"I don't want him hurt, somehow," said Dr. Bull. + +"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale +about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody." + +"I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it +isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst +because--" + +"Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?" + +"Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull +desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his +being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he +was a great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy +was? It didn't prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it +clear if I say that I liked him because he was so fat?" + +"You will not," said the Secretary. + +"I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so +light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, +but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. +Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown +in levity. It was like the old speculations--what would happen if +an elephant could leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?" + +"Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the +sky like a grasshopper." + +"And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old +Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing +like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were +bursting with some good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a +spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day +proves they are good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, +but that part they laugh at is literal truth, 'Why leap ye, ye high +hills?' The hills do leap--at least, they try to. . . . Why do I +like Sunday? . . . how can I tell you? . . . because he's such a +Bounder." + +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, +strained voice-- + +"You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are +better than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a +trifle morbid from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and +who chose us all, chose me because I had all the crazy look of a +conspirator--because my smile went crooked, and my eyes were +gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have been something in +me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men. For when +I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but +something both gross and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him +smoking in a twilight room, a room with brown blind down, +infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in which our +master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark +and out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or +even stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked +my most eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing +began to shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. +It shook like a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of +everything I had ever read about the base bodies that are the +origin of life--the deep sea lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like +the final form of matter, the most shapeless and the most shameful. +I could only tell myself, from its shudderings, that it was +something at least that such a monster could be miserable. And +then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was shaking with +a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me to +forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by +something at once lower and stronger than oneself." + +"Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly," cut in the clear +voice of Inspector Ratcliffe. "President Sunday is a terrible +fellow for one's intellect, but he is not such a Barnum's freak +physically as you make out. He received me in an ordinary office, +in a grey check coat, in broad daylight. He talked to me in an +ordinary way. But I'll tell you what is a trifle creepy about +Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat, everything seems +in order; but he's absent-minded. Sometimes his great bright eyes +go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now +absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think +of a wicked man as vigilant. We can't think of a wicked man who is +honestly and sincerely dreamy, because we daren't think of a wicked +man alone with himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured +man. It means a man who, if he happens to see you, will apologise. +But how will you bear an absentminded man who, if he happens to see +you, will kill you? That is what tries the nerves, abstraction +combined with cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they went +through wild forests, and felt that the animals there were at once +innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you +like to pass ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded +tiger?" + +"And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?" asked Syme. + +"I don't think of Sunday on principle," said Gogol simply, "any +more than I stare at the sun at noonday." + +"Well, that is a point of view," said Syme thoughtfully. "What do +you say, Professor?" + +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and +he did not answer at all. + +"Wake up, Professor!" said Syme genially. "Tell us what you think +of Sunday." + +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. + +"I think something," he said, "that I cannot say clearly. Or, +rather, I think something that I cannot even think clearly. But +it is something like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit +too large and loose. + +"Well, when I saw Sunday's face I thought it was too large-- +everybody does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face +was so big, that one couldn't focus it or make it a face at all. +The eye was so far away from the nose, that it wasn't an eye. +The mouth was so much by itself, that one had to think of it by +itself. The whole thing is too hard to explain." + +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went +on-- + +"But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a +lamp and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete +and unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall +know him again. Yet when I walked a little farther I found that +there was no face, that the window was ten yards away, the lamp ten +hundred yards, the cloud beyond the world. Well, Sunday's face +escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as such chance pictures +run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt whether there +are any faces. I don't know whether your face, Bull, is a face or a +combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly +glasses is quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts +of a materialist are not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the +last and the worst doubts, the doubts of a spiritualist. I am a +Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. My +poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you really have a face. I +have not faith enough to believe in matter." + +Syme's eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened +in the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent +world. + +"Have you noticed an odd thing," he said, "about all your +descriptions? Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet +each man of you can only find one thing to compare him to--the +universe itself. Bull finds him like the earth in spring, Gogol +like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is reminded of the shapeless +protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness of virgin +forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This +is queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd +notion about the President, and I also find that I think of Sunday +as I think of the whole world." + +"Get on a little faster, Syme," said Bull; "never mind the +balloon." + +"When I first saw Sunday," said Syme slowly, "I only saw his back; +and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. +His neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. +His head had a stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an +ox. In fact, I had at once the revolting fancy that this was not +a man at all, but a beast dressed up in men's clothes." + +"Get on," said Dr. Bull. + +"And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the +street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and +coming round the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. +His face frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was +brutal, not because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me +because it was so beautiful, because it was so good." + +"Syme," exclaimed the Secretary, "are you ill?" + +"It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly +after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth +honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, +grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him +from behind I was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in +front I knew he was a god." + +"Pan," said the Professor dreamily, "was a god and an animal." + +"Then, and again and always," went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, "that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is +also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am +sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an +instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we +cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel +certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to a kind +of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just +behind him all the way." + +"Had you time for thinking then?" asked Ratcliffe. + +"Time," replied Syme, "for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly +possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head +really was his face--an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I +fancied that the figure running in front of me was really a figure +running backwards, and dancing as he ran." + +"Horrible!" said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. + +"Horrible is not the word," said Syme. "It was exactly the worst +instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his +head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that +he was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children." + +"It is a long game," said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. + +"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I +tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only +known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it +looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is +not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that +everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get +round in front--" + +"Look!" cried out Bull clamorously, "the balloon is coming down!" + +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes +off it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the +sky, right itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a +setting sun. + +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary +travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. + +"He is dead!" he cried. "And now I know he was my friend--my friend +in the dark!" + +"Dead!" snorted the Secretary. "You will not find him dead easily. +If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as +a colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun." + +"Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did +Pan." + +"Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is +everything." + +"So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything." + +"Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also +means Panic." + +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. + +"It fell over there," he said shortly. "Let us follow it!" + +Then he added with an indescribable gesture-- + +"Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like +one of his larks." + +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags +and ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a +more footsore and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all +six men realised that they were not alone in the little field. + +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, +leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a +fine but old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was +that shade between blue, violet and grey which can be seen in +certain shadows of the woodland. His hair was whitish grey, and +at the first glance, taken along with his knee-breeches, looked +as if it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but for the +silver frost upon his head, he might have been one to the shadows +of the wood. + +"Gentlemen," he said, "my master has a carriage waiting for you in +the road just by." + +"Who is your master?" asked Syme, standing quite still. + +"I was told you knew his name," said the man respectfully. + +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said-- + +"Where is this carriage?" + +"It has been waiting only a few moments," said the stranger. "My +master has only just come home." + +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which +he found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed +ordinary trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. + +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could +discover nothing except that the man's coat was the exact colour of +the purple shadows, and that the man's face was the exact colour of +the red and brown and golden sky. + +"Show us the place," Syme said briefly, and without a word the man +in the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the +hedge, which let in suddenly the light of a white road. + +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the +white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, +such a row of carriages as might close the approach to some house +in Park Lane. Along the side of these carriages stood a rank of +splendid servants, all dressed in the grey-blue uniform, and all +having a certain quality of stateliness and freedom which would not +commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the +officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than +six carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable +band. All the attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as +each man crawled into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with +a sudden blaze of steel. + +"What can it all mean?" asked Bull of Syme as they separated. "Is +this another joke of Sunday's?" + +"I don't know," said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions +of his carriage; "but if it is, it's one of the jokes you talk +about. It's a good-natured one." + +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one +had carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure +of comfort. They had all become inured to things going roughly; but +things suddenly going smoothly swamped them. They could not even +feebly imagine what the carriages were; it was enough for them to +know that they were carriages, and carriages with cushions. They +could not conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it was +quite enough that he had certainly led them to the carriages. + +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter +abandonment. It was typical of him that while he had carried his +bearded chin forward fiercely so long as anything could be done, +when the whole business was taken out of his hands he fell back +on the cushions in a frank collapse. + +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads +the carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone +gates of what might have been a park, that they began gradually to +climb a hill which, while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more +orderly than a forest. Then there began to grow upon him, as upon a +man slowly waking from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in everything. +He felt that the hedges were what hedges should be, living walls; +that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but all the more +alive. He saw high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought how +happy boys would be climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn +of the path, and he saw suddenly and quietly, like a long, low, +sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in the mild light of +sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards and +quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the +place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top +or that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that +shape of a window; but each man of them declared that he could +remember this place before he could remember his mother. + +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous +gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star +on the grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This +impressive person said to the bewildered Syme-- + +"Refreshments are provided for you in your room." + +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, +went up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He +entered a splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed +specially for him. He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary +instinct of his class, to pull his tie straight or to smooth his +hair; and there he saw the frightful figure that he was--blood +running down his face from where the bough had struck him, his hair +standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his clothes torn into +long, wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang up, simply +as the question of how he had got there, and how he was to get out +again. Exactly at the same moment a man in blue, who had been +appointed as his valet, said very solemnly-- + +"I have put out your clothes, sir." + +"Clothes!" said Syme sardonically. "I have no clothes except +these," and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in +fascinating festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like +a ballet girl. + +"My master asks me to say," said the attendant, "that there is a +fancy dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the +costume that I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle +of Burgundy and some cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not +refuse, as it is some hours before supper." + +"Cold pheasant is a good thing," said Syme reflectively, "and +Burgundy is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either +of them so much as I want to know what the devil all this means, +and what sort of costume you have got laid out for me. Where is +it?" + +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue +drapery, rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which +was emblazoned a large golden sun, and which was splashed here +and there with flaming stars and crescents. + +"You're to be dressed as Thursday, sir," said the valet somewhat +affably. + +"Dressed as Thursday!" said Syme in meditation. "It doesn't sound +a warm costume." + +"Oh, yes, sir," said the other eagerly, "the Thursday costume is +quite warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin." + +"Well, I don't understand anything," said Syme, sighing. "I have +been used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable +adventures knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I +should be particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted +all over with the sun and moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on +other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, I remember." + +"Beg pardon, sir," said the valet, "Bible also provided for you," +and with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage +in the first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was +that in which the fourth day of the week is associated with the +creation of the sun and moon. Here, however, they reckoned from +a Christian Sunday. + +"This is getting wilder and wilder," said Syme, as he sat down +in a chair. "Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and +Burgundy, and green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide +everything?" + +"Yes, sir, everything," said the attendant gravely. "Shall I help +you on with your costume?" + +"Oh, hitch the bally thing on!" said Syme impatiently. + +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious +freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold +garment fell about him; and when he found that he had to wear a +sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he +flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword +stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. +For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ACCUSER + +AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at +the top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so +noble. He was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the +centre of which fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a +single shaft of light. The whole looked like some very severe +ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his +memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of +creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The +vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme +felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black +expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his +inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily +make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of +them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the +ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes +were still stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the +Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question. + +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that +he, too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. +For if the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the +original and formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks +always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into +sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the +poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the +creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. + +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook +Ratcliffe, who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the +pattern upon whose garment was a green tangle of trees. For he +stood for that third day on which the earth and green things were +made, and his square, sensible face, with its not unfriendly +cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it. + +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very +large old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the +broken light of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in +motley dress. Syme seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated +in some crazy costume. There was a man dressed as a windmill with +enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a +balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread of +their farcical adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, +one dancer dressed like an enormous hornbill, with a beak twice +as big as himself--the queer bird which had fixed itself on his +fancy like a living question while he was rushing down the long +road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such +objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple +tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable +tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field +and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme +was middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those +particular objects--a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill-- +without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from that revel +of masquerade. + +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green +bank, like the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. + +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the +thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their +seats; the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, +had his simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the +division of the waters, a dress that separated upon his forehead +and fell to his feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The +Professor, whose day was that on which the birds and fishes--the +ruder forms of life--were created, had a dress of dim purple, over +which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical birds, +the union in him of unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the +last day of Creation, wore a coat covered with heraldic animals in +red and gold, and on his crest a man rampant. He lay back in his +chair with a broad smile, the picture of an optimist in his +element. + +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their +strange seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose +from the carnival, such as that with which crowds receive kings. +Cups were clashed and torches shaken, and feathered hats flung in +the air. The men for whom these thrones were reserved were men +crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was +empty. + +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. +The Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, +compressing his lips-- + +"We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field." + +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in +front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had +opened behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along +the front like a shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was +draped plainly, in a pure and terrible white, and his hair was like +a silver flame on his forehead. + +For a long time--it seemed for hours--that huge masquerade of +mankind swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and +exultant music. Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; +it might be a fairy dancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl +dancing with the moon; but in each case it was, somehow, as +absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love +story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. +Couples strolled away into the garden-walks, or began to drift +towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge +pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale +or wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the +roof of the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, +which lit up the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of +firelight over the face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it +seemed to fill with warmth even the emptiness of upper night. +Yet this also, after a time, was allowed to grow fainter; the +dim groups gathered more and more round the great cauldrons, or +passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passages of that +ancient house. Soon there were only some ten loiterers in the +garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker ran +into the house whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and +the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were +left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. +Not one of them had spoken a word. + +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of +insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but +so dreamily that he might have been continuing a conversation +rather than beginning one. + +"We will eat and drink later," he said. "Let us remain together a +little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so +long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which +you were always heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you +always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is +nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to +war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, +and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural +virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it +again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, +all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I +denied it myself." + +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, +and the incomprehensible went on. + +"But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though +the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of +you. I knew how near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, +crossed swords with King Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me +in the hour without hope." + +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the +black-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards +Sunday, and said in a harsh voice-- + +"Who and what are you?" + +"I am the Sabbath," said the other without moving. "I am the peace +of God." + +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his +hand. + +"I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I +cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do +they call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not +reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also +Sunday, an offense to the sunlight? If you were from the first our +father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy? We +wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our souls--and you +are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, though it +destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace." + +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of +stone upon Syme as if asking a question. + +"No," said Syme, "I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful +to you, not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a +fine scamper and free fight. But I should like to know. My soul +and heart are as happy and quiet here as this old garden, but my +reason is still crying out. I should like to know." + +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said-- + +"It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and +fought yourself." + +Bull said-- + +"I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to +sleep." + +"I am not happy," said the Professor with his head in his hands, +"because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near +to hell." + +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child-- + +"I wish I knew why I was hurt so much." + +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon +his hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said-- + +"I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes +another to complain, and we will hear him also." + +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like +a bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery +band was outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad +figure. He seemed to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such +as that which was worn by the servants of the house, only that it +was not blue, but of this absolute sable. He had, like the +servants, a kind of sword by his side. It was only when he had come +quite close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his face to +look at them, that Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that +the face was the broad, almost ape-like face of his old friend +Gregory, with its rank red hair and its insulting smile. + +"Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is +the real anarchist!" + +"Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am +the real anarchist." + +"'Now there was a day,'" murmured Bull, who seemed really to have +fallen asleep, "'when the sons of God came to present themselves +before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.'" + +"You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a +destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could." + +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and +he spoke brokenly and without sequence. + +"Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red +hair like your sister." + +"My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world," said +Gregory. "I thought I hated everything more than common men can +hate anything; but I find that I do not hate everything so much +as I hate you!" + +"I never hated you," said Syme very sadly. + +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. + +"You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know +what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people +in power! You are the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue +and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But +is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only +because you have never been broken? We in revolt talk all kind of +nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of the +Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is +that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is +that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not +curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being +safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down +from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had +no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule +all mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for +one hour a real agony such as I--" + +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. + +"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does +each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does +each small thing in the world have to fight against the world +itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does +a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason +that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So +that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of +the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave +and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may +be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and +torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No +agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, +'We also have suffered.' + +"It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken +upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from +these thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of +unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man +entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; +we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great +guards of Law whom he has accused. At least--" + +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of +Sunday, which wore a strange smile. + +"Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?" + +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than +the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. +It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything +went black. Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his +brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text +that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink +of?" + +* * * + +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find +themselves in some place in which they might have fallen asleep; +they yawn in a chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a +field. Syme's experience was something much more psychologically +strange if there was indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, +about the things he had gone through. For while he could always +remember afterwards that he had swooned before the face of Sunday, +he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could only +remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had +been walking along a country lane with an easy and conversational +companion. That companion had been a part of his recent drama; it +was the red-haired poet Gregory. They were walking like old +friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about some +triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his +body and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be +superior to everything that he said or did. He felt he was in +possession of some impossible good news, which made every other +thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality. + +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and +timid; as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first +attempt at rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could +not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some +hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple surprise when he saw rising all +round him on both sides of the road the red, irregular buildings of +Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so near London. He +walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds +hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There +he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, +cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity +of a girl. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Man Who Was Thursday, by Chesterton + diff --git a/old/tmwht10.txt~ b/old/tmwht10.txt~ new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f8fc6f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmwht10.txt~ @@ -0,0 +1,7119 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext The Man Who Was Thursday, by Chesterton +#7 in our series by G. K. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Scanned and Edited by Harry Plantinga, planting@cs.pitt.edu + + + + + +The Man Who Was Thursday + +by G. K. Chesterton + + + + +A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE + +It is very difficult to classify THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. It is +possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous +criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that +the author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective +story like no-one else. On this level, therefore, THE MAN WHO WAS +THURSDAY succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent +tour-de-force of suspense-writing. + +However, the reader will soon discover that it is much more than +that. Carried along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by +Chesterton's wonderful high-spirited style, he will soon see that +he is being carried into much deeper waters than he had planned on; +and the totally unforeseeable denouement will prove for the modern +reader, as it has for thousands of others since 1908 when the book +was first published, an inevitable and moving experience, as the +investigators finally discover who Sunday is. + + + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + +A NIGHTMARE + +G. K. CHESTERTON + +To Edmund Clerihew Bentley + +A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, +Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. +Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; +The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; +Round us in antic order their crippled vices came-- +Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. +Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, +Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. +Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; +The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. +They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: +Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. +Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; +When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us +Children we were--our forts of sand were even as weak as eve, +High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. +Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, +When all church bells were silent our cap and beds were heard. + +Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; +Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world. +I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings +Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; +And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass, +Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; +Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain-- +Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain. +Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, +Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day. +But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms. +God and the good Republic come riding back in arms: +We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved-- +Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed. + +This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, +And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells-- +Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, +Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. +The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand-- +Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? +The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, +And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain. +Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; +Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. +We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, +And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. + +G. K. C. + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK + +THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as +red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright +brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground +plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, +faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes +Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the +impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described +with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any +definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be +an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a +pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for +the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very +oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when +he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place +was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not +as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not +"artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with +the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was not +really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with +the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat--that venerable +humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause +of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, +egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the +airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new +in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered +more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place +had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much +as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. +A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had +stepped into a written comedy. + +More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about +nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the +afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a +drifting cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many +nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often +illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish +trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest +of all on one particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the +locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not +by any means the only evening of which he was the hero. On many +nights those passing by his little back garden might hear his high, +didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly to +women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the +paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely +called emancipated, and professed some protest against male +supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the +extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, +that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the +red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listening +to, even if one only laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant +of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness with a certain +impudent freshness which gave at least a momentary pleasure. He was +helped in some degree by the arresting oddity of his appearance, +which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark +red hair parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and +curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. +From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected +suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of +cockney contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified +the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed like a walking +blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape. + +This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, +will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked +like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a +quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky +was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the +face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the +strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale +green; but towards the west the whole grew past description, +transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it +covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole +was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent +secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed +that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The +very sky seemed small. + +I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening +if only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember +it because it marked the first appearance in the place of the +second poet of Saffron Park. For a long time the red-haired +revolutionary had reigned without a rival; it was upon the night +of the sunset that his solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who +introduced himself by the name of Gabriel Syme was a very +mild-looking mortal, with a fair, pointed beard and faint, yellow +hair. But an impression grew that he was less meek than he looked. +He signalised his entrance by differing with the established poet, +Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry. He said that he (Syme) +was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said he was a poet of +respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at him as if he +had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky. + +In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two +events. + +"It may well be," he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, "it may +well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is +brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. +You say you are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in +terms. I only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the +night you appeared in this garden." + +The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured +these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party +of the group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's +braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed +with such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave +commonly to the family oracle. + +Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour. + +"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might +transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man +who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment +to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of +blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common +bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all +governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in +disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the +world would be the Underground Railway." + +"So it is," said Mr. Syme. + +"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else +attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the +railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will +tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It +is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket +for that place they will reach. It is because after they have +passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be +Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, +their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next +station were unaccountably Baker Street!" + +"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you +say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. +The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious +thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild +arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with +one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because +in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to +Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that +he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books +of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of +pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give +me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I +say!" + +"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically. + +"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train +comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and +that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously +that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I +say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever +I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And +when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an +unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing +conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of +Adam." + +Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile. + +"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the question, 'And +what is Victoria now that you have got there?' You think Victoria +is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only +be like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the +streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt." + +"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about +being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be +sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being +rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate +occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical. +Revolt in the abstract is--revolting. It's mere vomiting." + +The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was +too hot to heed her. + +"It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our +digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that +is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more +poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars--the most +poetical thing in the world is not being sick." + +"Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the examples you choose--" + +"I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I forgot we had abolished +all conventions." + +For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory's forehead. + +"You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionise society on this +lawn?" + +Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. + +"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious +about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do." + +Gregory's big bull's eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry +lion, and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose. + +"Don't you think, then," he said in a dangerous voice, "that I am +serious about my anarchism?" + +"I beg your pardon?" said Syme. + +"Am I not serious about my anarchism?" cried Gregory, with knotted +fists. + +"My dear fellow!" said Syme, and strolled away. + +With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond +Gregory still in his company. + +"Mr. Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like you and my +brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?" + +Syme smiled. + +"Do you?" he asked. + +"What do you mean?" asked the girl, with grave eyes. + +"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there are many kinds of +sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, +do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world is round,' +do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't mean it. +Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does +mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but +then he says more than he means--from sheer force of meaning it." + +She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave +and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that +unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most +frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world. + +"Is he really an anarchist, then?" she asked. + +"Only in that sense I speak of," replied Syme; "or if you prefer +it, in that nonsense." + +She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly-- + +"He wouldn't really use--bombs or that sort of thing?" + +Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight +and somewhat dandified figure. + +"Good Lord, no!" he said, "that has to be done anonymously." + +And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and +she thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory's absurdity +and of his safety. + +Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and +continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and +in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. +And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man +watches himself too closely. He defended respectability with +violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of +tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac +all round him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a +barrel-organ begin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic +words were moving to a tiny tune from under or beyond the world. + +He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for +what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups +in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, +he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, +and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a +sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards +explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no +part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. +And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a +motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the +glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark +and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so +improbable, that it might well have been a dream. + +When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the +moment empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence +was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the +door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree +that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the +lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the +lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the +face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of +fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the +attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something +of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe. + +He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more +formally returned. + +"I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's +conversation?" + +"Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder. + +Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the +tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. +There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and +barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing +itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." + +"All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only +see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever +see the lamp by the light of the tree." Then after a pause he said, +"But may I ask if you have been standing out here in the dark only +to resume our little argument?" + +"No," cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, "I +did not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for ever." + +The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing, +listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a +smooth voice and with a rather bewildering smile. + +"Mr. Syme," he said, "this evening you succeeded in doing something +rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of +woman has ever succeeded in doing before." + +"Indeed!" + +"Now I remember," resumed Gregory reflectively, "one other person +succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I +remember correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me." + +"I am very sorry," replied Syme with gravity. + +"I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped +out even with an apology," said Gregory very calmly. "No duel +could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. +There is only one way by which that insult can be erased, and that +way I choose. I am going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and +honour, to prove to you that you were wrong in what you said." + +"In what I said?" + +"You said I was not serious about being an anarchist." + +"There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I have never +doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you +thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a +paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth." + +Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully. + +"And in no other sense," he asked, "you think me serious? You think +me a flaneur who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that +in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious." + +Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road. + +"Serious!" he cried. "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these +damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? +One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as +well, but I should think very little of a man who didn't keep +something in the background of his life that was more serious than +all this talking--something more serious, whether it was religion +or only drink." + +"Very well," said Gregory, his face darkening, "you shall see +something more serious than either drink or religion." + +Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory +again opened his lips. + +"You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that +you have one?" + +"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now." + +"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your +religion involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to +tell you to any son of Adam, and especially not to the police? +Will you swear that! If you will take upon yourself this awful +abnegations if you will consent to burden your soul with a vow +that you should never make and a knowledge you should never dream +about, I will promise you in return--" + +"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the other +paused. + +"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme suddenly +took off his hat. + +"Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined. You say +that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least +that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as +a Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, +that I will not report anything of this, whatever it is, to the +police. And now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?" + +"I think," said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, "that we will +call a cab." + +He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the +road. The two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the +trap the address of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank +of the river. The cab whisked itself away again, and in it these +two fantastics quitted their fantastic town. + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME + +THE cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, +into which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated +themselves in a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained +wooden table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, +that very little could be seen of the attendant who was summoned, +beyond a vague and dark impression of something bulky and bearded. + +"Will you take a little supper?" asked Gregory politely. "The pate +de foie gras is not good here, but I can recommend the game." + +Syme received the remark with stolidity, imagining it to be a joke. +Accepting the vein of humour, he said, with a well-bred +indifference-- + +"Oh, bring me some lobster mayonnaise." + +To his indescribable astonishment, the man only said "Certainly, +sir!" and went away apparently to get it. + +"What will you drink?" resumed Gregory, with the same careless yet +apologetic air. "I shall only have a crepe de menthe myself; I have +dined. But the champagne can really be trusted. Do let me start you +with a half-bottle of Pommery at least?" + +"Thank you!" said the motionless Syme. "You are very good." + +His further attempts at conversation, somewhat disorganised in +themselves, were cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the +actual appearance of the lobster. Syme tasted it, and found it +particularly good. Then he suddenly began to eat with great +rapidity and appetite. + +"Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!" he said to Gregory, +smiling. "I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It +is new to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly +the other way." + +"You are not asleep, I assure you," said Gregory. "You are, on the +contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your +existence. Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be +a slight disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements +of this excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. +But that is all our modesty. We are the most modest men that ever +lived on earth." + +"And who are we?" asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass. + +"It is quite simple," replied Gregory. "We are the serious +anarchists, in whom you do not believe." + +"Oh!" said Syme shortly. "You do yourselves well in drinks." + +"Yes, we are serious about everything," answered Gregory. + +Then after a pause he added-- + +"If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, +don't put it down to your inroads into the champagne. I don't wish +you to do yourself an injustice." + +"Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect +calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either +condition. May I smoke?" + +"Certainly!" said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. "Try one of +mine." + +Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out +of his waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and +let out a long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit +that he performed these rites with so much composure, for almost +before he had begun them the table at which he sat had begun to +revolve, first slowly, and then rapidly, as if at an insane +seance. + +"You must not mind it," said Gregory; "it's a kind of screw." + +"Quite so," said Syme placidly, "a kind of screw. How simple that +is!" + +The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering +across the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a +factory chimney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot +down through the floor as if the earth had swallowed them. They +went rattling down a kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift +cut loose, and they came with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But +when Gregory threw open a pair of doors and let in a red +subterranean light, Syme was still smoking with one leg thrown +over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair. + +Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which +was the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as +big as a fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the +door there was a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory +struck five times. A heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him +who he was. To this he gave the more or less unexpected reply, +"Mr. Joseph Chamberlain." The heavy hinges began to move; it was +obviously some kind of password. + +Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a +network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering +pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and +revolvers, closely packed or interlocked. + +"I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities," said Gregory; +"we have to be very strict here." + +"Oh, don't apologise," said Syme. "I know your passion for law and +order," and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel +weapons. With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he +looked a singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down +that shining avenue of death. + +They passed through several such passages, and came out at last +into a queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in +shape, but presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the +appearance of a scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or +pistols in this apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more +dubious and dreadful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of +iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the +very room itself seemed like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his +cigar ash off against the wall, and went in. + +"And now, my dear Mr. Syme," said Gregory, throwing himself in an +expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, "now we are +quite cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give +you any notion of why I brought you here. It was one of those quite +arbitrary emotions, like jumping off a cliff or falling in love. +Suffice it to say that you were an inexpressibly irritating fellow, +and, to do you justice, you are still. I would break twenty oaths +of secrecy for the pleasure of taking you down a peg. That way you +have of lighting a cigar would make a priest break the seal of +confession. Well, you said that you were quite certain I was not a +serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?" + +"It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented +Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give +me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted +from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall +certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. +First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object +to? You want to abolish Government?" + +"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We +do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; +that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the +Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to +deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour +and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly +sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of +Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and +Wrong." + +"And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope +you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me." + +"You spoke of a second question," snapped Gregory. + +"With pleasure," resumed Syme. "In all your present acts and +surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an +aunt who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have +found people living from preference under a public-house. You have +a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the +humiliation of calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround +yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say +so, more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all +this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, +you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to +every silly woman in Saffron Park?" + +Gregory smiled. + +"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious +anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. +Unless I took them into this infernal room they would not believe +me." + +Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory +went on. + +"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I +became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable +disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops +in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and +Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are +strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. +I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters +in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! +presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was +not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a +millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that +a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a +major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough +intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like +Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all +that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and +waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a +man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is +the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed +again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central +Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe." + +"What is his name?" asked Syme. + +"You would not know it," answered Gregory. "That is his greatness. +Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and +they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, +and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the +room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have +been children in his hands." + +He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed-- + +"But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling +as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said +to him, 'What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find +more respectable than bishops and majors?' He looked at me with his +large but indecipherable face. 'You want a safe disguise, do you? +You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in +which no one would ever look for a bomb?' I nodded. He suddenly +lifted his lion's voice. 'Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you +fool!' he roared so that the room shook. 'Nobody will ever expect +you to do anything dangerous then.' And he turned his broad back +on me without another word. I took his advice, and have never +regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and +night, and--by God!--they would let me wheel their perambulators." + +Syme sat watching him with some respect in his large, blue eyes. + +"You took me in," he said. "It is really a smart dodge." + +Then after a pause he added-- + +"What do you call this tremendous President of yours?" + +"We generally call him Sunday," replied Gregory with simplicity. +"You see, there are seven members of the Central Anarchist +Council, and they are named after days of the week. He is called +Sunday, by some of his admirers Bloody Sunday. It is curious you +should mention the matter, because the very night you have dropped +in (if I may so express it) is the night on which our London +branch, which assembles in this room, has to elect its own deputy +to fill a vacancy in the Council. The gentleman who has for some +time past played, with propriety and general applause, the +difficult part of Thursday, has died quite suddenly. Consequently, +we have called a meeting this very evening to elect a successor." + +He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of +smiling embarrassment. + +"I feel somehow as if you were my mother, Syme," he continued +casually. "I feel that I can confide anything to you, as you have +promised to tell nobody. In fact, I will confide to you something +that I would not say in so many words to the anarchists who will be +coming to the room in about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go +through a form of election; but I don't mind telling you that it is +practically certain what the result will be." He looked down for a +moment modestly. "It is almost a settled thing that I am to be +Thursday." + +"My dear fellow." said Syme heartily, "I congratulate you. A great +career!" + +Gregory smiled in deprecation, and walked across the room, talking +rapidly. + +"As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table," he +said, "and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible." + +Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a +walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, +a large Colt's revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of +brandy. Over the chair, beside the table, was thrown a +heavy-looking cape or cloak. + +"I have only to get the form of election finished," continued +Gregory with animation, "then I snatch up this cloak and stick, +stuff these other things into my pocket, step out of a door in +this cavern, which opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug +already waiting for me, and then--then--oh, the wild joy of being +Thursday!" And he clasped his hands. + +Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual insolent languor, +got to his feet with an unusual air of hesitation. + +"Why is it," he asked vaguely, "that I think you are quite a decent +fellow? Why do I positively like you, Gregory?" He paused a moment, +and then added with a sort of fresh curiosity, "Is it because you +are such an ass?" + +There was a thoughtful silence again, and then he cried out-- + +"Well, damn it all! this is the funniest situation I have ever been +in in my life, and I am going to act accordingly. Gregory, I gave +you a promise before I came into this place. That promise I would +keep under red-hot pincers. Would you give me, for my own safety, a +little promise of the same kind?" + +"A promise?" asked Gregory, wondering. + +"Yes," said Syme very seriously, "a promise. I swore before God +that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by +Humanity, or whatever beastly thing you believe in, that you will +not tell my secret to the anarchists?" + +"Your secret?" asked the staring Gregory. "Have you got a secret?" + +"Yes," said Syme, "I have a secret." Then after a pause, "Will you +swear?" + +Gregory glared at him gravely for a few moments, and then said +abruptly-- + +"You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furious curiosity about +you. Yes, I will swear not to tell the anarchists anything you tell +me. But look sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes." + +Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into +his long, grey trousers' pockets. Almost as he did so there came +five knocks on the outer grating, proclaiming the arrival of the +first of the conspirators. + +"Well," said Syme slowly, "I don't know how to tell you the truth +more shortly than by saying that your expedient of dressing up as +an aimless poet is not confined to you or your President. We have +known the dodge for some time at Scotland Yard." + +Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice. + +"What do you say?" he asked in an inhuman voice. + +"Yes," said Syme simply, "I am a police detective. But I think I +hear your friends coming." + +From the doorway there came a murmur of "Mr. Joseph Chamberlain." +It was repeated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the +crowd of Joseph Chamberlains (a solemn thought) could be heard +trampling down the corridor. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY + +BEFORE one of the fresh faces could appear at the doorway, +Gregory's stunned surprise had fallen from him. He was beside the +table with a bound, and a noise in his throat like a wild beast. +He caught up the Colt's revolver and took aim at Syme. Syme did +not flinch, but he put up a pale and polite hand. + +"Don't be such a silly man," he said, with the effeminate dignity +of a curate. "Don't you see it's not necessary? Don't you see that +we're both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea-sick." + +Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he +looked his question. + +"Don't you see we've checkmated each other?" cried Syme. "I can't +tell the police you are an anarchist. You can't tell the anarchists +I'm a policeman. I can only watch you, knowing what you are; you +can only watch me, knowing what I am. In short, it's a lonely, +intellectual duel, my head against yours. I'm a policeman deprived +of the help of the police. You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist +deprived of the help of that law and organisation which is so +essential to anarchy. The one solitary difference is in your +favour. You are not surrounded by inquisitive policemen; I am +surrounded by inquisitive anarchists. I cannot betray you, but I +might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I +shall do it so nicely." + +Gregory put the pistol slowly down, still staring at Syme as if he +were a sea-monster. + +"I don't believe in immortality," he said at last, "but if, after +all this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only +for you, to howl in for ever." + +"I shall not break my word," said Syme sternly, "nor will you +break yours. Here are your friends." + +The mass of the anarchists entered the room heavily, with a +slouching and somewhat weary gait; but one little man, with a +black beard and glasses--a man somewhat of the type of Mr. Tim +Healy--detached himself, and bustled forward with some papers +in his hand. + +"Comrade Gregory," he said, "I suppose this man is a delegate?" + +Gregory, taken by surprise, looked down and muttered the name of +Syme; but Syme replied almost pertly-- + +"I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it +hard for anyone to be here who was not a delegate." + +The brow of the little man with the black beard was, however, still +contracted with something like suspicion. + +"What branch do you represent?" he asked sharply. + +"I should hardly call it a branch," said Syme, laughing; "I should +call it at the very least a root." + +"What do you mean?" + +"The fact is," said Syme serenely, "the truth is I am a +Sabbatarian. I have been specially sent here to see that you show +a due observance of Sunday." + +The little man dropped one of his papers, and a flicker of fear +went over all the faces of the group. Evidently the awful +President, whose name was Sunday, did sometimes send down such +irregular ambassadors to such branch meetings. + +"Well, comrade," said the man with the papers after a pause, "I +suppose we'd better give you a seat in the meeting?" + +"If you ask my advice as a friend," said Syme with severe +benevolence, "I think you'd better." + +When Gregory heard the dangerous dialogue end, with a sudden safety +for his rival, he rose abruptly and paced the floor in painful +thought. He was, indeed, in an agony of diplomacy. It was clear +that Syme's inspired impudence was likely to bring him out of all +merely accidental dilemmas. Little was to be hoped from them. He +could not himself betray Syme, partly from honour, but partly also +because, if he betrayed him and for some reason failed to destroy +him, the Syme who escaped would be a Syme freed from all obligation +of secrecy, a Syme who would simply walk to the nearest police +station. After all, it was only one night's discussion, and only +one detective who would know of it. He would let out as little as +possible of their plans that night, and then let Syme go, and +chance it. + +He strode across to the group of anarchists, which was already +distributing itself along the benches. + +"I think it is time we began," he said; "the steam-tug is waiting +on the river already. I move that Comrade Buttons takes the chair." + +This being approved by a show of hands, the little man with the +papers slipped into the presidential seat. + +"Comrades," he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, "our meeting +tonight is important, though it need not be long. This branch +has always had the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central +European Council. We have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We +all lament the sad decease of the heroic worker who occupied the +post until last week. As you know, his services to the cause were +considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of Brighton +which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody +on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as +his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of +chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which beverage he +regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. +Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. +But it is not to acclaim his virtues that we are met, but for a +harder task. It is difficult properly to praise his qualities, but +it is more difficult to replace them. Upon you, comrades, it +devolves this evening to choose out of the company present the man +who shall be Thursday. If any comrade suggests a name I will put +it to the vote. If no comrade suggests a name, I can only tell +myself that that dear dynamiter, who is gone from us, has carried +into the unknowable abysses the last secret of his virtue and his +innocence." + +There was a stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes +heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable +white beard, perhaps the only real working-man present, rose +lumberingly and said-- + +"I move that Comrade Gregory be elected Thursday," and sat +lumberingly down again. + +"Does anyone second?" asked the chairman. + +A little man with a velvet coat and pointed beard seconded. + +"Before I put the matter to the vote," said the chairman, "I will +call on Comrade Gregory to make a statement." + +Gregory rose amid a great rumble of applause. His face was deadly +pale, so that by contrast his queer red hair looked almost scarlet. +But he was smiling and altogether at ease. He had made up his mind, +and he saw his best policy quite plain in front of him like a white +road. His best chance was to make a softened and ambiguous speech, +such as would leave on the detective's mind the impression that the +anarchist brotherhood was a very mild affair after all. He believed +in his own literary power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades +and picking perfect words. He thought that with care he could +succeed, in spite of all the people around him, in conveying an +impression of the institution, subtly and delicately false. Syme +had once thought that anarchists, under all their bravado, were +only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of peril, make +Syme think so again? + +"Comrades," began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, "it is +not necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your +policy also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, +it has been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been +altered. Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go +everywhere and anywhere to get their information, except to us, +except to the fountain head. They learn about anarchists from +sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from tradesmen's +newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's +Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about +anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the +mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end +of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are +walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not +hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is +deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to +assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by +some incredible accident, there were here tonight a man who all his +life had thus immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question +to him: 'When those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of +moral reputation had they in the streets above? What tales were +told of their atrocities by one educated Roman to another? Suppose' +(I would say to him), 'suppose that we are only repeating that +still mysterious paradox of history. Suppose we seem as shocking as +the Christians because we are really as harmless as the Christians. +Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as +meek."' + +The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been +gradually growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped +suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket +said, in a high, squeaky voice-- + +"I'm not meek!" + +"Comrade Witherspoon tells us," resumed Gregory, "that he is not +meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, +extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary +taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and +delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness +which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I +repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too +late. We are simple, as they revere simple--look at Comrade +Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest--look at me. We are +merciful--" + +"No, no!" called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket. + +"I say we are merciful," repeated Gregory furiously, "as the early +Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being +accused of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh--" + +"Shame!" cried Witherspoon. "Why not?" + +"Comrade Witherspoon," said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, "is +anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at +any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love--" + +"No, no!" said Witherspoon, "down with love." + +"Which is founded upon love," repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, +"there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue +as a body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the +representative of that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that +represent us as assassins and enemies of human society, we shall +pursue with moral courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the +permanent ideals of brotherhood and simplicity." + +Gregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. +The silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an +automaton, and said in a colourless voice-- + +"Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?" + +The assembly seemed vague and sub-consciously disappointed, and +Comrade Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in +his thick beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion +would have been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening +his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small +and quiet voice-- + +"Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose." + +The most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the +voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said +these first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief +simplicity, he made his next word ring and volley in the vault as +if one of the guns had gone off. + +"Comrades!" he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of +his boots, "have we come here for this? Do we live underground like +rats in order to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might +listen to while eating buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line +these walls with weapons and bar that door with death lest anyone +should come and hear Comrade Gregory saying to us, 'Be good, and +you will be happy,' 'Honesty is the best policy,' and 'Virtue is +its own reward'? There was not a word in Comrade Gregory's address +to which a curate could not have listened with pleasure (hear, +hear). But I am not a curate (loud cheers), and I did not listen to +it with pleasure (renewed cheers). The man who is fitted to make a +good curate is not fitted to make a resolute, forcible, and +efficient Thursday (hear, hear)." + +"Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that +we are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the +enemies of society, and so much the worse for society. We are the +enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its +oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear). Comrade Gregory +has told us (apologetically again) that we are not murderers. There +I agree. We are not murderers, we are executioners (cheers)." + +Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face +idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay +parted, and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness-- + +"You damnable hypocrite!" + +Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale +blue ones, and said with dignity-- + +"Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do +that I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty. +I do not mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade +Gregory is unfit to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He +is unfit to be Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not +want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy +(hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is +it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade +Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of +Europe, because the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has +forgotten modesty as much as he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am +not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed cheers). I set myself +against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as I should +choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the +wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his +milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself +for election--" + +His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The +faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his +tirade grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with +grins of anticipation or cloven with delighted cries. At the +moment when he announced himself as ready to stand for the post of +Thursday, a roar of excitement and assent broke forth, and became +uncontrollable, and at the same moment Gregory sprang to his feet, +with foam upon his mouth, and shouted against the shouting. + +"Stop, you blasted madmen!" he cried, at the top of a voice that +tore his throat. "Stop, you--" + +But louder than Gregory's shouting and louder than the roar of the +room came the voice of Syme, still speaking in a peal of pitiless +thunder-- + +"I do not go to the Council to rebut that slander that calls us +murderers; I go to earn it (loud and prolonged cheering). To the +priest who says these men are the enemies of religion, to the +judge who says these men are the enemies of law, to the fat +parliamentarian who says these men are the enemies of order and +public decency, to all these I will reply, 'You are false kings, +but you are true prophets. I am come to destroy you, and to fulfil +your prophecies.'" + +The heavy clamour gradually died away, but before it had ceased +Witherspoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, +and had said-- + +"I move, as an amendment, that Comrade Syme be appointed to the post." + +"Stop all this, I tell you!" cried Gregory, with frantic face and +hands. "Stop it, it is all--" + +The voice of the chairman clove his speech with a cold accent. + +"Does anyone second this amendment?" he said. A tall, tired man, +with melancholy eyes and an American chin beard, was observed on +the back bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been +screaming for some time past; now there was a change in his accent, +more shocking than any scream. "I end all this!" he said, in a +voice as heavy as stone. + +"This man cannot be elected. He is a--" + +"Yes," said Syme, quite motionless, "what is he?" Gregory's mouth +worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl +back into his dead face. "He is a man quite inexperienced in our +work," he said, and sat down abruptly. + +Before he had done so, the long, lean man with the American beard +was again upon his feet, and was repeating in a high American +monotone-- + +"I beg to second the election of Comrade Syme." + +"The amendment will, as usual, be put first," said Mr. Buttons, the +chairman, with mechanical rapidity. + +"The question is that Comrade Syme--" + +Gregory had again sprung to his feet, panting and passionate. + +"Comrades," he cried out, "I am not a madman." + +"Oh, oh!" said Mr. Witherspoon. + +"I am not a madman," reiterated Gregory, with a frightful sincerity +which for a moment staggered the room, "but I give you a counsel +which you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a +counsel, for I can give you no reason for it. I will call it a +command. Call it a mad command, but act upon it. Strike, but hear +me! Kill me, but obey me! Do not elect this man." Truth is so +terrible, even in fetters, that for a moment Syme's slender and +insane victory swayed like a reed. But you could not have guessed +it from Syme's bleak blue eyes. He merely began-- + +"Comrade Gregory commands--" + +Then the spell was snapped, and one anarchist called out to Gregory-- + +"Who are you? You are not Sunday"; and another anarchist added in a +heavier voice, "And you are not Thursday." + +"Comrades," cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a martyr who in +an ecstacy of pain has passed beyond pain, "it is nothing to me +whether you detest me as a tyrant or detest me as a slave. If you +will not take my command, accept my degradation. I kneel to you. I +throw myself at your feet. I implore you. Do not elect this man." + +"Comrade Gregory," said the chairman after a painful pause, "this +is really not quite dignified." + +For the first time in the proceedings there was for a few seconds a +real silence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a +man, and the chairman repeated, like a piece of clock-work suddenly +started again-- + +"The question is that Comrade Syme be elected to the post of +Thursday on the General Council." + +The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three +minutes afterwards Mr. Gabriel Syme, of the Secret Police Service, +was elected to the post of Thursday on the General Council of the +Anarchists of Europe. + +Everyone in the room seemed to feel the tug waiting on the river, +the sword-stick and the revolver, waiting on the table. The instant +the election was ended and irrevocable, and Syme had received the +paper proving his election, they all sprang to their feet, and the +fiery groups moved and mixed in the room. Syme found himself, +somehow or other, face to face with Gregory, who still regarded him +with a stare of stunned hatred. They were silent for many minutes. + +"You are a devil!" said Gregory at last. + +"And you are a gentleman," said Syme with gravity. + +"It was you that entrapped me," began Gregory, shaking from head +to foot, "entrapped me into--" + +"Talk sense," said Syme shortly. "Into what sort of devils' +parliament have you entrapped me, if it comes to that? You made me +swear before I made you. Perhaps we are both doing what we think +right. But what we think right is so damned different that there +can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is +nothing possible between us but honour and death," and he pulled +the great cloak about his shoulders and picked up the flask from +the table. + +"The boat is quite ready," said Mr. Buttons, bustling up. "Be good +enough to step this way." + +With a gesture that revealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a +short, iron-bound passage, the still agonised Gregory following +feverishly at their heels. At the end of the passage was a door, +which Buttons opened sharply, showing a sudden blue and silver +picture of the moonlit river, that looked like a scene in a +theatre. Close to the opening lay a dark, dwarfish steam-launch, +like a baby dragon with one red eye. + +Almost in the act of stepping on board, Gabriel Syme turned to the +gaping Gregory. + +"You have kept your word," he said gently, with his face in shadow. +"You are a man of honour, and I thank you. You have kept it even +down to a small particular. There was one special thing you +promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have +certainly given me by the end of it." + +"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise +you?" + +"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military +salute with the sword-stick as the steamboat slid away. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TALE OF A DETECTIVE + +GABRIEL SYME was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; +he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred +of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early +in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly +of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame +tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a +rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in +which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his +uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an +unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His +father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for +simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, +was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of +absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The +more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more +did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the +time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had +pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism. + +Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from +infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into +the only thing left--sanity. But there was just enough in him of +the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common +sense a little too fierce to be sensible. His hatred of modern +lawlessness had been crowned also by an accident. It happened that +he was walking in a side street at the instant of a dynamite +outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, +the smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. +After that he went about as usual--quiet, courteous, rather gentle; +but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He did not +regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid men, +combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a +huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion. + +He poured perpetually into newspapers and their waste-paper baskets +a torrent of tales, verses and violent articles, warning men of +this deluge of barbaric denial. But he seemed to be getting no +nearer his enemy, and, what was worse, no nearer a living. As he +paced the Thames embankment, bitterly biting a cheap cigar and +brooding on the advance of Anarchy, there was no anarchist with +a bomb in his pocket so savage or so solitary as he. Indeed, he +always felt that Government stood alone and desperate, with its +back to the wall. He was too quixotic to have cared for it +otherwise. + +He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red +river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The +sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively +so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the +sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding +under the vast caverns of a subterranean country. + +Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black +chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, +black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the +early villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard +and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long +afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, +lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from +between his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very +satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a +holy war. Perhaps this was why a policeman on the Embankment spoke +to him, and said "Good evening." + +Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by +the mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue +in the twilight. + +"A good evening is it?" he said sharply. "You fellows would call +the end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun +and that bloody river! I tell you that if that were literally human +blood, spilt and shining, you would still be standing here as solid +as ever, looking out for some poor harmless tramp whom you could +move on. You policemen are cruel to the poor, but I could forgive +you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm." + +"If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of +organised resistance." + +"Eh?" said Syme, staring. + +"The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle," pursued the +policeman. "The composure of an army is the anger of a nation." + +"Good God, the Board Schools!" said Syme. "Is this undenominational +education?" + +"No," said the policeman sadly, "I never had any of those +advantages. The Board Schools came after my time. What education +I had was very rough and old-fashioned, I am afraid." + +"Where did you have it?" asked Syme, wondering. + +"Oh, at Harrow," said the policeman + +The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest +things in so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control +them. + +"But, good Lord, man," he said, "you oughtn't to be a policeman!" + +The policeman sighed and shook his head. + +"I know," he said solemnly, "I know I am not worthy." + +"But why did you join the police?" asked Syme with rude curiosity. + +"For much the same reason that you abused the police," replied the +other. "I found that there was a special opening in the service for +those whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the +aberrations of the scientific intellect than with the normal and +excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of the human will. I trust +I make myself clear." + +"If you mean that you make your opinion clear," said Syme, "I +suppose you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last +thing you do. How comes a man like you to be talking philosophy +in a blue helmet on the Thames embankment?" + +"You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our +police system," replied the other. "I am not surprised at it. We +are keeping it rather dark from the educated class, because that +class contains most of our enemies. But you seem to be exactly in +the right frame of mind. I think you might almost join us." + +"Join you in what?" asked Syme. + +"I will tell you," said the policeman slowly. "This is the +situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most +celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a +purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very +existence of civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and +artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family +and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of +policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their +business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in +a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, +and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of +ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be undesirable to +employ the common policeman in an investigation which is also a +heresy hunt." + +Syme's eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. + +"What do you do, then?" he said. + +"The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in +blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary +detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest +thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The +ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime +has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime +will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful +thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and +intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the +assassination at Hartle pool, and that was entirely due to the fact +that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a +triolet." + +"Do you mean," asked Syme, "that there is really as much connection +between crime and the modern intellect as all that?" + +"You are not sufficiently democratic," answered the policeman, "but +you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment +of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am +sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means +merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new +movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish +English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. +We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning +princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is +the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now +is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, +burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out +to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek +it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property +to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. +But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy +the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, +or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even +ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage +as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to +attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the +sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But +philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other +people's." + +Syme struck his hands together. + +"How true that is," he cried. "I have felt it from my boyhood, but +never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a +bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. +He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed--say a wealthy +uncle--he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise +God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse +the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is +not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the +modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are +really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the +spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified +work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and +powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not +punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to +punish anybody else." + +"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with +an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, "but +it is intolerable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're +wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army +against anarchy. Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt +is ready to fall. A moment more, and you may lose the glory of +working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with the last heroes +of the world." + +"It is a chance not to be missed, certainly," assented Syme, "but +still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that +the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little +movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one +merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their +leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is this anarchy?" + +"Do not confuse it," replied the constable, "with those chance +dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really +the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast +philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring. +You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring +the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent +section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer +ring--the main mass of their supporters--are merely anarchists; +that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed +human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human +crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They +do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe +that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a +man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless +as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a +pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the +innocent section." + +"Oh!" said Syme. + +"Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time +coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the +bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on. And so also +the men of the inner circle speak--the sacred priesthood. They +also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, +and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths"--and the +policeman lowered his voice--"in their mouths these happy phrases +have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too +intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite +free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When +they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that +mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without +right or wrong, they mean the grave. + +"They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then +themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. +The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has +not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it +has killed somebody." + +"How can I join you?" asked Syme, with a sort of passion. + +"I know for a fact that there is a vacancy at the moment," said the +policeman, "as I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence +of the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see +him. Or rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but +you can talk to him if you like." + +"Telephone?" inquired Syme, with interest. + +"No," said the policeman placidly, "he has a fancy for always +sitting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts +brighter. Do come along." + +Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be +led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. +Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through +the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly +shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like +a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms +can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind. + +"Are you the new recruit?" asked a heavy voice. + +And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape +in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man +of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him. + +"Are you the new recruit?" said the invisible chief, who seemed to +have heard all about it. "All right. You are engaged." + +Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this +irrevocable phrase. + +"I really have no experience," he began. + +"No one has any experience," said the other, "of the Battle of +Armageddon." + +"But I am really unfit--" + +"You are willing, that is enough," said the unknown. + +"Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know any profession of which +mere willingness is the final test." + +"I do," said the other--"martyrs. I am condemning you to death. +Good day." + +Thus it was that when Gabriel Syme came out again into the crimson +light of evening, in his shabby black hat and shabby, lawless +cloak, he came out a member of the New Detective Corps for the +frustration of the great conspiracy. Acting under the advice of his +friend the policeman (who was professionally inclined to neatness), +he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in +an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow +flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and +rather insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in +the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he finally left the +police premises his friend provided him with a small blue card, +on which was written, "The Last Crusade," and a number, the sign +of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper +waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and +fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his +adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about +half-past one on a February night he found himself steaming in a +small tug up the silent Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, +the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists. + +When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular +sensation of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely +into the landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a +new planet. This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of +that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather +and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours +before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset +had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The +moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) +it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright +moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight. + +Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural +discoloration, as of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke +of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into +his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier +planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he felt +this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own +chivalric folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the +common things he carried with him--the food and the brandy and the +loaded pistol--took on exactly that concrete and material poetry +which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun +with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though in +themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the +expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick +became almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of +the stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies +depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be +mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. +George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was +only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme's +exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the +Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the +moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon. + +The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went +comparatively slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had +gone down by the time that they passed Battersea, and when they +came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day had already begun +to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead, +showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire +when the tug, changing its onward course, turned inward to a large +landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross. + +The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic +as Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge +white dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal +steps of some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his +mood, for he was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid +thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on +to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the +enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and +turned up stream. They had never spoken a word. + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE FEAST OF FEAR + +AT first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a +pyramid; but before he reached the top he had realised that there +was a man leaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking +out across the river. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad +in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; +he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him +step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come +close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that +his face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended in a small +triangular tuft of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all +else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost seemed a mere +oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best +shaven--clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer +and closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir. + +At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he +was meant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had +concluded that he was not. And now again he had come back to a +certainty that the man had something to do with his mad adventure. +For the man remained more still than would have been natural if a +stranger had come so close. He was as motionless as a wax-work, +and got on the nerves somewhat in the same way. Syme looked again +and again at the pale, dignified and delicate face, and the face +still looked blankly across the river. Then he took out of his +pocket the note from Buttons proving his election, and put it +before that sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, and his +smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the +right cheek and down in the left. + +There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about +this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and +in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, +with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the +great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. + +There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even +classic face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his +smile suddenly went wrong. + +The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man's face dropped +at once into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further +explanation or inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague. + +"If we walk up towards Leicester Square," he said, "we shall just +be in time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early +breakfast. Have you had any sleep?" + +"No," said Syme. + +"Nor have I," answered the man in an ordinary tone. "I shall try to +get to bed after breakfast." + +He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that +contradicted the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if all +friendly words were to him lifeless conveniences, and that his only +life was hate. After a pause the man spoke again. + +"Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that +can be told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last +notion of the President, for his notions grow like a tropical +forest. So in case you don't know, I'd better tell you that he is +carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing +ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, +of course, we met in a cell underground, just as your branch does. +Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary restaurant. +He said that if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. +Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really +think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For +now we flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on +a balcony--on a balcony, if you please--overlooking Leicester +Square." + +"And what do the people say?" asked Syme. + +"It's quite simple what they say," answered his guide. + +"They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are +anarchists." + +"It seems to me a very clever idea," said Syme. + +"Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!" cried out the other in +a sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as his +crooked smile. "When you've seen Sunday for a split second you'll +leave off calling him clever." + +With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the early +sunlight filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I +suppose, why this square itself should look so alien and in some +ways so continental. It will never be known whether it was the +foreign look that attracted the foreigners or the foreigners who +gave it the foreign look. But on this particular morning the effect +seemed singularly bright and clear. Between the open square and the +sunlit leaves and the statue and the Saracenic outlines of the +Alhambra, it looked the replica of some French or even Spanish +public place. And this effect increased in Syme the sensation, +which in many shapes he had had through the whole adventure, the +eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world. As a fact, he +had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square ever since he was a +boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the +Moorish cupolas, he could have sworn that he was turning into an +unknown Place de something or other in some foreign town. + +At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of a +prosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street +behind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably +the window of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost +literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed +balcony, big enough to contain a dining-table. In fact, it did +contain a dining-table, or more strictly a breakfast-table; and +round the breakfast-table, glowing in the sunlight and evident to +the street, were a group of noisy and talkative men, all dressed +in the insolence of fashion, with white waistcoats and expensive +button-holes. Some of their jokes could almost be heard across the +square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnatural smile, and Syme +knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secret conclave +of the European Dynamiters. + +Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he +had not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was +too large to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a +great part of the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of +a man. When Syme had seen him, his first thought was that the +weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His vastness +did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite +incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original +proportions, like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His +head, crowned with white hair, as seen from behind looked bigger +than a head ought to be. The ears that stood out from it looked +larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to scale; and this +sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the +other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. +They were still sitting there as before with their flowers and +frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining +five children to tea. + +As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a +waiter came out smiling with every tooth in his head. + +"The gentlemen are up there, sare," he said. "They do talk and they +do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze +king." + +And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much +pleased with the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs. + +The two men mounted the stairs in silence. + +Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who +almost filled and broke the balcony was the great President of whom +the others stood in awe. He knew it was so, with an unaccountable +but instantaneous certainty. Syme, indeed, was one of those men who +are open to all the more nameless psychological influences in a +degree a little dangerous to mental health. Utterly devoid of fear +in physical dangers, he was a great deal too sensitive to the smell +of spiritual evil. Twice already that night little unmeaning things +had peeped out at him almost pruriently, and given him a sense of +drawing nearer and nearer to the head-quarters of hell. And this +sense became overpowering as he drew nearer to the great President. + +The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walked +across the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday +grew larger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when +he was quite close the face would be too big to be possible, and +that he would scream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would +not look at the mask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it +was a face, and so large. + +By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to +an empty seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted +him with good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He +sobered himself a little by looking at their conventional coats and +solid, shining coffee-pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face +was very large, but it was still possible to humanity. + +In the presence of the President the whole company looked +sufficiently commonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at +first, except that by the President's caprice they had been dressed +up with a festive respectability, which gave the meal the look of a +wedding breakfast. One man indeed stood out at even a superficial +glance. He at least was the common or garden Dynamiter. He wore, +indeed, the high white collar and satin tie that were the uniform +of the occasion; but out of this collar there sprang a head quite +unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a bewildering bush of brown +hair and beard that almost obscured the eyes like those of a Skye +terrier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle, and they were the +sad eyes of some Russian serf. The effect of this figure was not +terrible like that of the President, but it had every diablerie +that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that stiff tie +and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it +could not have been a more idiotic contrast. + +The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this +circle of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were +incurably tragic; he could not force himself to play the +prosperous and frivolous part demanded of him by President Sunday. +And, indeed, when Syme came in the President, with that daring +disregard of public suspicion which was his policy, was actually +chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume conventional graces. + +"Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once +of quietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp +the idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too +great a soul to behave like one. He insists on the ways of the +stage conspirator. Now if a gentleman goes about London in a top +hat and a frock-coat, no one need know that he is an anarchist. +But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then +goes about on his hands and knees--well, he may attract attention. +That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his hands and +knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he +finds it quite difficult to walk upright." + +"I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick +foreign accent; "I am not ashamed of the cause." + +"Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the +President good-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you +can't do it, you see, you're such an ass! You try to combine two +inconsistent methods. When a householder finds a man under his +bed, he will probably pause to note the circumstance. But if he +finds a man under his bed in a top hat, you will agree with me, +my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even to forget it. Now +when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed--" + +"I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing. + +"Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous +heartiness, "you aren't good at anything." + +While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking +more steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually +felt all his sense of something spiritually queer return. + +He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and +costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he +looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what +he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. +That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine +face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each +man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or +twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly +human. The only metaphor he could think of was this, that they +all looked as men of fashion and presence would look, with the +additional twist given in a false and curved mirror. + +Only the individual examples will express this half-concealed +eccentricity. Syme's original cicerone bore the title of Monday; +he was the Secretary of the Council, and his twisted smile was +regarded with more terror than anything, except the President's +horrible, happy laughter. But now that Syme had more space and +light to observe him, there were other touches. His fine face +was so emaciated, that Syme thought it must be wasted with some +disease; yet somehow the very distress of his dark eyes denied +this. It was no physical ill that troubled him. His eyes were +alive with intellectual torture, as if pure thought was pain. + +He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and +differently wrong. Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed +Gogol, a man more obviously mad. Next was Wednesday, a certain +Marquis de St. Eustache, a sufficiently characteristic figure. The +first few glances found nothing unusual about him, except that he +was the only man at table who wore the fashionable clothes as if +they were really his own. He had a black French beard cut square +and a black English frock-coat cut even squarer. But Syme, +sensitive to such things, felt somehow that the man carried a rich +atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that suffocated. It +reminded one irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying lamps in +the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his +being clad, not in lighter colours, but in softer materials; his +black seemed richer and warmer than the black shades about him, as +if it were compounded of profound colour. His black coat looked as +if it were only black by being too dense a purple. His black beard +looked as if it were only black by being too deep a blue. And in +the gloom and thickness of the beard his dark red mouth showed +sensual and scornful. Whatever he was he was not a Frenchman; he +might be a Jew; he might be something deeper yet in the dark heart +of the East. In the bright coloured Persian tiles and pictures +showing tyrants hunting, you may see just those almond eyes, those +blue-black beards, those cruel, crimson lips. + +Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who +still kept the chair of Friday, though every day it was expected +that his death would leave it empty. Save for his intellect, he was +in the last dissolution of senile decay. His face was as grey as +his long grey beard, his forehead was lifted and fixed finally in a +furrow of mild despair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, +did the bridegroom brilliancy of the morning dress express a more +painful contrast. For the red flower in his button-hole showed up +against a face that was literally discoloured like lead; the whole +hideous effect was as if some drunken dandies had put their clothes +upon a corpse. When he rose or sat down, which was with long labour +and peril, something worse was expressed than mere weakness, +something indefinably connected with the horror of the whole scene. +It did not express decrepitude merely, but corruption. Another +hateful fancy crossed Syme's quivering mind. He could not help +thinking that whenever the man moved a leg or arm might fall off. + +Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the +most baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, +square face clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name +of Bull. He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of +well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He +carried his fine clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he +mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, +except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It +may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone +before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded +him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story about pennies +being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme's eye always caught the +black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying Professor worn +them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been appropriate. +But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. They +took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or +his gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had a +vulgar virility wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme +that he might be the wickedest of all those wicked men. Syme even +had the thought that his eyes might be covered up because they were +too frightful to see. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE EXPOSURE + +SUCH were the six men who had sworn to destroy the world. Again +and again Syme strove to pull together his common sense in their +presence. Sometimes he saw for an instant that these notions were +subjective, that he was only looking at ordinary men, one of whom +was old, another nervous, another short-sighted. The sense of an +unnatural symbolism always settled back on him again. Each figure +seemed to be, somehow, on the borderland of things, just as their +theory was on the borderland of thought. He knew that each one of +these men stood at the extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road +of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in some old-world fable, +that if a man went westward to the end of the world he would find +something--say a tree--that was more or less than a tree, a tree +possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the +world he would find something else that was not wholly itself--a +tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these +figures seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an +ultimate horizon, visions from the verge. The ends of the earth +were closing in. + +Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not +the least of the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was +the contrast between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its +terrible purport. They were deep in the discussion of an actual and +immediate plot. The waiter downstairs had spoken quite correctly +when he said that they were talking about bombs and kings. Only +three days afterwards the Czar was to meet the President of the +French Republic in Paris, and over their bacon and eggs upon their +sunny balcony these beaming gentlemen had decided how both should +die. Even the instrument was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it +appeared, was to carry the bomb. + +Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective +crime would have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely +mystical tremors. He would have thought of nothing but the need of +saving at least two human bodies from being ripped in pieces with +iron and roaring gas. But the truth was that by this time he had +begun to feel a third kind of fear, more piercing and practical +than either his moral revulsion or his social responsibility. Very +simply, he had no fear to spare for the French President or the +Czar; he had begun to fear for himself. Most of the talkers took +little heed of him, debating now with their faces closer together, +and almost uniformly grave, save when for an instant the smile of +the Secretary ran aslant across his face as the jagged lightning +runs aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent thing +which first troubled Syme and at last terrified him. The President +was always looking at him, steadily, and with a great and baffling +interest. The enormous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes +stood out of his head. And they were always fixed on Syme. + +Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the +President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. +He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and +extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He +looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing +abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the +sunlit trees. + +Then there fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment +him for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive +men, who were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the +frail and fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of +anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if +they had played together when children. But he remembered that he +was still tied to Gregory by a great promise. He had promised never +to do the very thing that he now felt himself almost in the act of +doing. He had promised not to jump over that balcony and speak to +that policeman. He took his cold hand off the cold stone +balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He +had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous +society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square +beneath him. He had, on the other hand, only to keep his antiquated +honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great +enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. +Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable +policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he +looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still +quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes. + +In all the torrent of his thought there were two thoughts that +never crossed his mind. First, it never occurred to him to doubt +that the President and his Council could crush him if he continued +to stand alone. The place might be public, the project might seem +impossible. But Sunday was not the man who would carry himself +thus easily without having, somehow or somewhere, set open his +iron trap. Either by anonymous poison or sudden street accident, +by hypnotism or by fire from hell, Sunday could certainly strike +him. If he defied the man he was probably dead, either struck +stiff there in his chair or long afterwards as by an innocent +ailment. If he called in the police promptly, arrested everyone, +told all, and set against them the whole energy of England, he +would probably escape; certainly not otherwise. They were a +balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy square; but +he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a boatful of +armed pirates overlooking an empty sea. + +There was a second thought that never came to him. It never +occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many +moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might +have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great +personality. They might have called Sunday the super-man. If any +such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, +with his earth-shaking abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. +He might have been called something above man, with his large +plans, which were too obvious to be detected, with his large face, +which was too frank to be understood. But this was a kind of +modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme +morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; +but he was not quite coward enough to admire it. + +The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were +typical. Dr. Bull and the Marquis ate casually and conventionally +of the best things on the table--cold pheasant or Strasbourg pie. +But the Secretary was a vegetarian, and he spoke earnestly of the +projected murder over half a raw tomato and three quarters of a +glass of tepid water. The old Professor had such slops as suggested +a sickening second childhood. And even in this President Sunday +preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate like +twenty men; he ate incredibly, with a frightful freshness of +appetite, so that it was like watching a sausage factory. Yet +continually, when he had swallowed a dozen crumpets or drunk a +quart of coffee, he would be found with his great head on one side +staring at Syme. + +"I have often wondered," said the Marquis, taking a great bite out +of a slice of bread and jam, "whether it wouldn't be better for me +to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought +off with a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into +a French President and wriggle it round." + +"You are wrong," said the Secretary, drawing his black brows +together. "The knife was merely the expression of the old personal +quarrel with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, +but our best symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense +of the prayers of the Christians. It expands; it only destroys +because it broadens; even so, thought only destroys because it +broadens. A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening +suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with +violence. "My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must +expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up +the universe." + +"I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the +Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. +I thought of one yesterday in bed." + +"No, if the only end of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with +his sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems worth doing." + +The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. + +"Every man knows in his heart," he said, "that nothing is worth +doing." + +There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said-- + +"We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is +how Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree +with the original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, +I should suggest that tomorrow morning he should go first of all +to--" + +The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President +Sunday had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them. + +"Before we discuss that," he said in a small, quiet voice, "let us +go into a private room. I have something very particular to say." + +Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had +come at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before +he could hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, +though bright, was cold. + +A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a +jovial tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before +the battle. He found himself filled with a supernatural courage +that came from nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the +vivacity, the vulgarity, and the irrational valour of the poor, who +in all those unclean streets were all clinging to the decencies and +the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of being a +policeman had faded from his mind; he did not think of himself as +the representative of the corps of gentlemen turned into fancy +constables, or of the old eccentric who lived in the dark room. +But he did feel himself as the ambassador of all these common and +kindly people in the street, who every day marched into battle to +the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in being human +had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the +monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down +upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle +of the commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and +elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts +or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the +intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday; but in +that moment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the +muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was +swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong +and that the barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that +unanswerable and terrible truism in the song of Roland-- + + "Pagens ont tort et Chretiens ont droit." + +which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great +iron. This liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness +went with a quite clear decision to embrace death. If the people of +the barrel-organ could keep their old-world obligations, so could +he. This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it +to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go +down into their dark room and die for something that they could not +even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune +with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he +could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of +life, the drums of the pride of death. + +The conspirators were already filing through the open window and +into the rooms behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all +his brain and body throbbing with romantic rhythm. The President +led them down an irregular side stair, such as might be used by +servants, and into a dim, cold, empty room, with a table and +benches, like an abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, he +closed and locked the door. + +The first to speak was Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed +bursting with inarticulate grievance. + +"Zso! Zso!" he cried, with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish +accent becoming almost impenetrable. "You zay you nod 'ide. You zay +you show himselves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk +importance you run yourselves in a dark box!" + +The President seemed to take the foreigner's incoherent satire with +entire good humour. + +"You can't get hold of it yet, Gogol," he said in a fatherly way. +"When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they +will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we +should have had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to +know anything about mankind." + +"I die for zem," cried the Pole in thick excitement, "and I slay +zare oppressors. I care not for these games of gonzealment. I would +zmite ze tyrant in ze open square." + +"I see, I see," said the President, nodding kindly as he seated +himself at the top of a long table. "You die for mankind first, and +then you get up and smite their oppressors. So that's all right. +And now may I ask you to control your beautiful sentiments, and sit +down with the other gentlemen at this table. For the first time +this morning something intelligent is going to be said." + +Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had shown since the +original summons, sat down first. Gogol sat down last, grumbling +in his brown beard about gombromise. No one except Syme seemed to +have any notion of the blow that was about to fall. As for him, +he had merely the feeling of a man mounting the scaffold with the +intention, at any rate, of making a good speech. + +"Comrades," said the President, suddenly rising, "we have spun out +this farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you +something so simple and shocking that even the waiters upstairs +(long inured to our levities) might hear some new seriousness in +my voice. Comrades, we were discussing plans and naming places. I +propose, before saying anything else, that those plans and places +should not be voted by this meeting, but should be left wholly in +the control of some one reliable member. I suggest Comrade +Saturday, Dr. Bull." + +They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats, for +the next words, though not loud, had a living and sensational +emphasis. Sunday struck the table. + +"Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this +meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be +mentioned in this company." + +Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers; but it +seemed as if he had never really astonished them until now. They +all moved feverishly in their seats, except Syme. He sat stiff in +his, with his hand in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded +revolver. When the attack on him came he would sell his life dear. +He would find out at least if the President was mortal. + +Sunday went on smoothly-- + +"You will probably understand that there is only one possible +motive for forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom. +Strangers overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we +are joking. But what would matter, even unto death, is this, +that there should be one actually among us who is not of us, +who knows our grave purpose, but does not share it, who--" + +The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman. + +"It can't be!" he cried, leaping. "There can't--" + +The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the +fin of some huge fish. + +"Yes," he said slowly, "there is a spy in this room. There is a +traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name--" + +Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger. + +"His name is Gogol," said the President. "He is that hairy humbug +over there who pretends to be a Pole." + +Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same +flash three men sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made +an effort to rise. But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was +blinded with a beneficent darkness; he had sunk down into his +seat shuddering, in a palsy of passionate relief. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS + +"SIT down!" said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in +his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords. + +The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal +person himself resumed his seat. + +"Well, my man," said the President briskly, addressing him as one +addresses a total stranger, "will you oblige me by putting your +hand in your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have +there?" + +The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, +but he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and +pulled out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the +table, he woke up again to the world outside him. For although +the card lay at the other extreme of the table, and he could read +nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance +to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given +to him when he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary. + +"Pathetic Slav," said the President, "tragic child of Poland, are +you prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in +this company--shall we say de trop?" + +"Right oh!" said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a +clear, commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that +forest of foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had +suddenly spoken with a Scotch accent. + +"I gather that you fully understand your position," said Sunday. + +"You bet," answered the Pole. "I see it's a fair cop. All I say is, +I don't believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did +his." + +"I concede the point," said Sunday. "I believe your own accent to +be inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind +leaving your beard with your card?" + +"Not a bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the +whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and +a pale, pert face. "It was hot," he added. + +"I will do you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort +of brutal admiration, "that you seem to have kept pretty cool under +it. Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would +annoy me for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you +had died in torments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any +human soul about us, I shall have that two and a half minutes of +discomfort. On your discomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the +step." + +The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his +feet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of +perfect nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise +that this ease was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble +outside the door, which showed that the departing detective had not +minded the step. + +"Time is flying," said the President in his gayest manner, after +glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed +bigger than it ought to be. "I must go off at once; I have to +take the chair at a Humanitarian meeting." + +The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows. + +"Would it not be better," he said a little sharply, "to discuss +further the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?" + +"No, I think not," said the President with a yawn like an +unobtrusive earthquake. "Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle +it. I must be off. Breakfast here next Sunday." + +But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves +of the Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious +even in crime. + +"I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular," he said. +"It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be +debated in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your +forethought when in the actual presence of a traitor--" + +"Secretary," said the President seriously, "if you'd take your head +home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But +it might." + +The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger. + +"I really fail to understand--" he began in high offense. + +"That's it, that's it," said the President, nodding a great many +times. "That's where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. +Why, you dancing donkey," he roared, rising, "you didn't want to be +overheard by a spy, didn't you? How do you know you aren't +overheard now?" + +And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking +with incomprehensible scorn. + +Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent +glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and +such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the +President meant anything, they meant that he had not after all +passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce +him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others. + +The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook +themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past +midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme +sat long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. +He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At +last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester +Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and +when he came out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes +of snow. While he still carried the sword-stick and the rest of +Gregory's portable luggage, he had thrown the cloak down and left +it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhaps on the balcony. +Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped +back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the doorway +of a small and greasy hair-dresser's shop, the front window of +which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress. + +Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having +found one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his +spirits, stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was +considerably astonished to see, standing quite still outside the +shop and staring into the window, a man. His top hat was loaded +with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the white drift was +rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if nothing +could tear him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax +doll in dirty evening dress. That any human being should stand in +such weather looking into such a shop was a matter of sufficient +wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned suddenly into a personal +shock; for he realised that the man standing there was the +paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for +a person of his years and infirmities. + +Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this +dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the +Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He +could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved +some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, +however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On +the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's +stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to +escape from him and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first +and last to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only +for an hour. Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his +policy, and decide finally whether he should or should not keep +faith with Gregory. + +He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three +streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho +restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and +quaint courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over +black coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his +seat in the upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the +chink of knives and the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that +in old days he had imagined that all these harmless and kindly +aliens were anarchists. He shuddered, remembering the real thing. +But even the shudder had the delightful shame of escape. The wine, +the common food, the familiar place, the faces of natural and +talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven +Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless +an objective reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses +and populous streets lay between him and his last sight of the +shameful seven; he was free in free London, and drinking wine among +the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took his hat and stick +and strolled down the stair into the shop below. + +When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the +spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white +street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of +milk, with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an +instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a +gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing +open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the +snow. + +"Can that old corpse be following me?" he asked himself, biting his +yellow moustache. "I stopped too long up in that room, so that even +such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little +brisk walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. +Or am I too fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday +would not be such a fool as to send a lame man?" + +He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in +the direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the +snow increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon +began to darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of +silver bees. Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their +unremitting futility to his already irritated nerves; and by the +time that he had come at a swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet +Street, he lost patience, and finding a Sunday teashop, turned +into it to take shelter. He ordered another cup of black coffee +as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when Professor de Worms +hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty and +ordered a glass of milk. + +Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, +which confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look +round. Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally +gaping as a rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab +following; he had heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal +appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man could only +walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He started up +and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in mere +arithmetic, and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee +untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank went rattling by with an +unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of a hundred yards to reach +it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the splash-board and, +pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he +had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind him a sort +of heavy and asthmatic breathing. + +Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up +the omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and +under the shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky +shoulders of Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with +characteristic care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the +mackintosh rug. + +Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, +every uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put +it beyond question that he was helpless, that he was in the last +imbecility of the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down +with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless the philosophical +entities called time and space have no vestige even of a practical +existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after +the omnibus. + +Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly +at the wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down +the steps. He had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the +side. + +Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of +the little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes +into a hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old +Jack-in-the-box was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of +little streets he could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in +and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than +thoroughfares; and by the time that he had completed about twenty +alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused +to listen for any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could +not in any case have been much, for the little streets were thick +with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, +he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had cleared away +the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, +glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed +it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few +hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart +stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones +the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple. + +The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London +in a darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the +evening. On each side of Syme the walls of the alley were blind +and featureless; there was no little window or any kind of eve. He +felt a new impulse to break out of this hive of houses, and to get +once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and +dodged for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. +When he did so, he struck it much farther up than he had fancied. +He came out into what seemed the vast and void of Ludgate Circus, +and saw St. Paul's Cathedral sitting in the sky. + +At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if +a pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that +some degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm +was even dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And +at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for +hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in +the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very +queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed +and sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul's had in it +smoky and sinister colours--colours of sickly green, dead red or +decaying bronze, that were just bright enough to emphasise the +solid whiteness of the snow. But right up against these dreary +colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and upon the top of +the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, still +clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just +so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, +and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When +Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his +sword-stick an involuntary salute. + +He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or +slowly behind him, and he did not care. + +It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies +were darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The +devils might have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured +the cross. He had a new impulse to tear out the secret of this +dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of +the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in hand, +to face his pursuer. + +Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular +alley behind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely +gas-lamp, irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in +the nursery rhymes, "the crooked man who went a crooked mile." He +really looked as if he had been twisted out of shape by the +tortuous streets he had been threading. He came nearer and nearer, +the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his lifted, +patient face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the +dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or for death. And +the old Professor came right up to him and passed him like a total +stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids. + +There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that +left Syme in a final fury. The man's colourless face and manner +seemed to assert that the whole following had been an accident. +Syme was galvanised with an energy that was something between +bitterness and a burst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture +as if to knock the old man's hat off, called out something like +"Catch me if you can," and went racing away across the white, open +Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his +shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming +after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile +race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave +and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a +harlequin. + +This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, +round St. Paul's Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all +the nightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the +river, and ended almost down by the docks. He saw the yellow panes +of a low, lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered +beer. It was a foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a +place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn. + +A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down +carefully, and asked for a glass of milk. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS + +WHEN Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, +and opposite to him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows and +leaden eyelids of the Professor, his fears fully returned. This +incomprehensible man from the fierce council, after all, had +certainly pursued him. If the man had one character as a paralytic +and another character as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him +more interesting, but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very +small comfort that he could not find the Professor out, if by some +serious accident the Professor should find him out. He emptied a +whole pewter pot of ale before the professor had touched his milk. + +One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was +just possible that this escapade signified something other than +even a slight suspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or +sign. Perhaps the foolish scamper was some sort of friendly signal +that he ought to have understood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps +the new Thursday was always chased along Cheapside, as the new Lord +Mayor is always escorted along it. He was just selecting a +tentative inquiry, when the old Professor opposite suddenly and +simply cut him short. Before Syme could ask the first diplomatic +question, the old anarchist had asked suddenly, without any sort of +preparation-- + +"Are you a policeman?" + +Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything so +brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could +only manage a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity. + +"A policeman?" he said, laughing vaguely. "Whatever made you think +of a policeman in connection with me?" + +"The process was simple enough," answered the Professor patiently. +"I thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now." + +"Did I take a policeman's hat by mistake out of the restaurant?" +asked Syme, smiling wildly. "Have I by any chance got a number +stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? +Why must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman." + +The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, +but Syme ran on with a feverish irony. + +"But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German +philosophy. Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an +evolutionary sense, sir, the ape fades so gradually into the +policeman, that I myself can never detect the shade. The monkey is +only the policeman that may be. Perhaps a maiden lady on Clapham +Common is only the policeman that might have been. I don't mind +being the policeman that might have been. I don't mind being +anything in German thought." + +"Are you in the police service?" said the old man, ignoring all +Syme's improvised and desperate raillery. "Are you a detective?" + +Syme's heart turned to stone, but his face never changed. + +"Your suggestion is ridiculous," he began. "Why on earth--" + +The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety +table, nearly breaking it. + +"Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?" he +shrieked in a high, crazy voice. "Are you, or are you not, a +police detective?" + +"No!" answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman's drop. + +"You swear it," said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead +face becoming as it were loathsomely alive. "You swear it! You +swear it! If you swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be +sure that the devil dances at your funeral? Will you see that the +nightmare sits on your grave? Will there really be no mistake? You +are an anarchist, you are a dynamiter! Above all, you are not in +any sense a detective? You are not in the British police?" + +He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his +large loose hand like a flap to his ear. + +"I am not in the British police," said Syme with insane calm. + +Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of +kindly collapse. + +"That's a pity," he said, "because I am." + +Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a +crash. + +"Because you are what?" he said thickly. "You are what?" + +"I am a policeman," said the Professor with his first broad smile. +and beaming through his spectacles. "But as you think policeman +only a relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I +am in the British police force; but as you tell me you are not in +the British police force, I can only say that I met you in a +dynamiters' club. I suppose I ought to arrest you." And with these +words he laid on the table before Syme an exact facsimile of the +blue card which Syme had in his own waistcoat pocket, the symbol +of his power from the police. + +Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned +exactly upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and +that all stars were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite +conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really +been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come right side +up again. This devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only +an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the +table lay back and laughed at him. He did not for the moment ask +any questions of detail; he only knew the happy and silly fact that +this shadow, which had pursued him with an intolerable oppression +of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying to catch him up. +He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For with +any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy +humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when +only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic +pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard +to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted +the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist +coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head +back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, +and shouted with a barbaric laughter. + +Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives, +plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, +there was something Homeric in Syme's mirth which made many +half-drunken men look round. + +"What yer laughing at, guv'nor?" asked one wondering labourer from +the docks. + +"At myself," answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of +his ecstatic reaction. + +"Pull yourself together," said the Professor, "or you'll get +hysterical. Have some more beer. I'll join you." + +"You haven't drunk your milk," said Syme. + +"My milk!" said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable +contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when +I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in +this room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the +reeling crowd, "not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, +I'll finish it right enough!" and he knocked the tumbler off the +table, making a crash of glass and a splash of silver fluid. + +Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity. + +"I understand now," he cried; "of course, you're not an old man at +all." + +"I can't take my face off here," replied Professor de Worms. "It's +rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I'm an old man, that's +not for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday." + +"Yes, but I mean," said Syme impatiently, "there's nothing the +matter with you." + +"Yes," answered the other dispassionately. "I am subject to colds." + +Syme's laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. +He laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a +young actor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that +he would have laughed as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over. + +The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard. + +"Did you know," he asked, "that that man Gogol was one of us?" + +"I? No, I didn't know it," answered Syme in some surprise. "But +didn't you?" + +"I knew no more than the dead," replied the man who called himself +de Worms. "I thought the President was talking about me, and I +rattled in my boots." + +"And I thought he was talking about me," said Syme, with his rather +reckless laughter. "I had my hand on my revolver all the time." + +"So had I," said the Professor grimly; "so had Gogol evidently." + +Syme struck the table with an exclamation. + +"Why, there were three of us there!" he cried. "Three out of seven +is a fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!" + +The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up. + +"We were three," he said. "If we had been three hundred we could +still have done nothing." + +"Not if we were three hundred against four?" asked Syme, jeering +rather boisterously. + +"No," said the Professor with sobriety, "not if we were three +hundred against Sunday." + +And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had +died in his heart before it could die on his lips. The face of +the unforgettable President sprang into his mind as startling as +a coloured photograph, and he remarked this difference between +Sunday and all his satellites, that their faces, however fierce +or sinister, became gradually blurred by memory like other human +faces, whereas Sunday's seemed almost to grow more actual during +absence, as if a man's painted portrait should slowly come alive. + +They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme's +speech came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne. + +"Professor," he cried, "it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this +man?" + +The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large, +wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty. + +"Yes, I am," he said mildly. "So are you." + +Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like +an insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him. + +"Yes," he said in a voice indescribable, "you are right. I am +afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this +man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If +heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that +I would pull him down." + +"How?" asked the staring Professor. "Why?" + +"Because I am afraid of him," said Syme; "and no man should leave +in the universe anything of which he is afraid." + +De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an +effort to speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an +undercurrent of inhuman exaltation-- + +"Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does +not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any +common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? +Fight the thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the +English clergyman who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, +and how on his death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no +money, but I can give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the +blade, and strike upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you +strike at the stars." + +The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose. + +"Sunday is a fixed star," he said. + +"You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat. + +The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. + +"Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent +bewilderment, "exactly where you are going?" + +"Yes," replied Syme shortly, "I am going to prevent this bomb being +thrown in Paris." + +"Have you any conception how?" inquired the other. + +"No," said Syme with equal decision. + +"You remember, of course," resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling +his beard and looking out of the window, "that when we broke up +rather hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left +in the private hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by +this time probably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and +what he will do it is doubtful whether even the President knows; +certainly we don't know. The only man who does know is Dr. Bull." + +"Confound it!" cried Syme. "And we don't know where he is." + +"Yes," said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, "I know +where he is myself." + +"Will you tell me?" asked Syme with eager eyes. + +"I will take you there," said the Professor, and took down his own +hat from a peg. + +Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement. + +"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "Will you join me? Will you +take the risk?" + +"Young man," said the Professor pleasantly, "I am amused to observe +that you think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, +and that shall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical +rhetoric. You think that it is possible to pull down the President. +I know that it is impossible, and I am going to try it," and +opening the tavern door, which let in a blast of bitter air, they +went out together into the dark streets by the docks. + +Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there +a clot of it still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The +small streets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the +flaming lamps irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some +other and fallen world. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped +through this growing confusion of lights and shadows; but his +companion walked on with a certain briskness, towards where, at +the end of the street, an inch or two of the lamplit river looked +like a bar of flame. + +"Where are you going?" Syme inquired. + +"Just now," answered the Professor, "I am going just round the +corner to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, +and retires early." + +"Dr. Bull!" exclaimed Syme. "Does he live round the corner?" + +"No," answered his friend. "As a matter of fact he lives some way +off, on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here +whether he has gone to bed." + +Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked +with flame, he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the +Surrey side at this point there ran out into the Thames, seeming +almost to overhang it, a bulk and cluster of those tall tenements, +dotted with lighted windows, and rising like factory chimneys to +an almost insane height. Their special poise and position made one +block of buildings especially look like a Tower of Babel with a +hundred eyes. Syme had never seen any of the sky-scraping buildings +in America, so he could only think of the buildings in a dream. + +Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted +turret abruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him +with one of his innumerable eyes. + +Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick +against his boot. + +"We are too late," he said, "the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed." + +"What do you mean?" asked Syme. "Does he live over there, then?" + +"Yes," said de Worms, "behind that particular window which you +can't see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him +tomorrow morning." + +Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways +until they came out into the flare and clamour of the East India +Dock Road. The Professor, who seemed to know his way about the +neighbourhood, proceeded to a place where the line of lighted +shops fell back into a sort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in which +an old white inn, all out of repair, stood back some twenty feet +from the road. + +"You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, like +fossils," explained the Professor. "I once found a decent place in +the West End." + +"I suppose," said Syme, smiling, "that this is the corresponding +decent place in the East End?" + +"It is," said the Professor reverently, and went in. + +In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The +beans and bacon, which these unaccountable people cooked well, +the astonishing emergence of Burgundy from their cellars, crowned +Syme's sense of a new comradeship and comfort. Through all this +ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words +to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may +be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two +is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in +spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to +monogamy. + +Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his +outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to +the little tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a +luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On +his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms +was not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as +Syme's. + +"That's a good get-up of yours," said Syme, draining a glass of +Macon; "a lot better than old Gogol's. Even at the start I thought +he was a bit too hairy." + +"A difference of artistic theory," replied the Professor pensively. +"Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic +ideal of an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. +But, indeed, to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate +expression. I am a portrait." + +"I don't understand you," said Syme. + +"I am a portrait," repeated the Professor. "I am a portrait of the +celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples." + +"You mean you are made up like him," said Syme. "But doesn't he +know that you are taking his nose in vain?" + +"He knows it right enough," replied his friend cheerfully. + +"Then why doesn't he denounce you?" + +"I have denounced him," answered the Professor. + +"Do explain yourself," said Syme. + +"With pleasure, if you don't mind hearing my story," replied the +eminent foreign philosopher. "I am by profession an actor, and my +name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of +Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of +the turf, sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the +political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced +to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did +not gather much about him beyond his appearance, which was very +disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had +proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; +hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, +rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was +lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. When I met him I was +in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much that I resolved to +imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn a +caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I +made myself up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the +old Professor's dirty old self. When I went into the room full of +his supporters I expected to be received with a roar of laughter, +or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation at the +insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance was +received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first +opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the +perfect artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had +been too true. They thought I really was the great Nihilist +Professor. I was a healthy-minded young man at the time, and I +confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover, however, +two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, +and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next +room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow +had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had +drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly +I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet +the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing +eyes that the real Professor came into the room. + +"I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round +me looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to +see which was really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor +health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively +feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really +had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he +couldn't be so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my +claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. +Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I +replied with something which I could not even understand myself. +'I don't fancy,' he said, 'that you could have worked out the +principle that evolution is only negation, since there inheres in +it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essential of +differentiation.' I replied quite scornfully, 'You read all that up +in Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically +was exposed long ago by Glumpe.' It is unnecessary for me to say +that there never were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the +people all round (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them +quite well, and the Professor, finding that the learned and +mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly +deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of wit. +'I see,' he sneered, 'you prevail like the false pig in Aesop.' +'And you fail,' I answered, smiling, 'like the hedgehog in +Montaigne.' Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? +'Your claptrap comes off,' he said; 'so would your beard.' I had no +intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. +But I laughed heartily, answered, 'Like the Pantheist's boots,' at +random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. The +real Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though one +man tried very patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I +believe, received everywhere in Europe as a delightful impostor. +His apparent earnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more +entertaining." + +"Well," said Syme, "I can understand your putting on his dirty old +beard for a night's practical joke, but I don't understand your +never taking it off again." + +"That is the rest of the story," said the impersonator. "When I +myself left the company, followed by reverent applause, I went +limping down the dark street, hoping that I should soon be far +enough away to be able to walk like a human being. To my +astonishment, as I was turning the corner, I felt a touch on the +shoulder, and turning, found myself under the shadow of an enormous +policeman. He told me I was wanted. I struck a sort of paralytic +attitude, and cried in a high German accent, 'Yes, I am wanted--by +the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me on the charge of +being the great anarchist, Professor de Worms.' The policeman +impassively consulted a paper in his hand, 'No, sir,' he said +civilly, 'at least, not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the +charge of not being the celebrated anarchist, Professor de Worms.' +This charge, if it was criminal at all, was certainly the lighter +of the two, and I went along with the man, doubtful, but not +greatly dismayed. I was shown into a number of rooms, and +eventually into the presence of a police officer, who explained +that a serious campaign had been opened against the centres of +anarchy, and that this, my successful masquerade, might be of +considerable value to the public safety. He offered me a good +salary and this little blue card. Though our conversation was +short, he struck me as a man of very massive common sense and +humour; but I cannot tell you much about him personally, because--" + +Syme laid down his knife and fork. + +"I know," he said, "because you talked to him in a dark room." + +Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE MAN IN SPECTACLES + +"BURGUNDY is a jolly thing," said the Professor sadly, as he set +his glass down. + +"You don't look as if it were," said Syme; "you drink it as if it +were medicine." + +"You must excuse my manner," said the Professor dismally, "my +position is rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with +boyish merriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that +now I can't leave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no +need at all to disguise myself, I still can't help speaking slow +and wrinkling my forehead--just as if it were my forehead. I can be +quite happy, you understand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. +The most buoyant exclamations leap up in my heart, but they come +out of my mouth quite different. You should hear me say, 'Buck up, +old cock!' It would bring tears to your eyes." + +"It does," said Syme; "but I cannot help thinking that apart from +all that you are really a bit worried." + +The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily. + +"You are a very clever fellow," he said, "it is a pleasure to work +with you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a +great problem to face," and he sank his bald brow in his two hands. + +Then he said in a low voice-- + +"Can you play the piano?" + +"Yes," said Syme in simple wonder, "I'm supposed to have a good +touch." + +Then, as the other did not speak, he added-- + +"I trust the great cloud is lifted." + +After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous +shadow of his hands-- + +"It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter." + +"Thank you," said Syme, "you flatter me." + +"Listen to me," said the other, "and remember whom we have to see +tomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which +is very much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels +out of the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very +sharp, very strong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, +except the President, of course, who is so seriously startling and +formidable as that little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not +perhaps the white-hot enthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for +anarchy, which marks the Secretary. But then that very fanaticism +in the Secretary has a human pathos, and is almost a redeeming +trait. But the little Doctor has a brutal sanity that is more +shocking than the Secretary's disease. Don't you notice his +detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like an india-rubber +ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if he ever +sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in the +round, black head of Dr. Bull." + +"And you think," said Syme, "that this unique monster will be +soothed if I play the piano to him?" + +"Don't be an ass," said his mentor. "I mentioned the piano because +it gives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go +through this interview and come out sane or alive, we must have +some code of signals between us that this brute will not see. I +have made a rough alphabetical cypher corresponding to the five +fingers--like this, see," and he rippled with his fingers on the +wooden table--"B A D, bad, a word we may frequently require." + +Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study +the scheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, +and with his hands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to +learn how he might convey simple messages by what would seem to +be idle taps upon a table or knee. But wine and companionship had +always the effect of inspiring him to a farcical ingenuity, and +the Professor soon found himself struggling with the too vast +energy of the new language, as it passed through the heated brain +of Syme. + +"We must have several word-signs," said Syme seriously--"words that +we are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is +'coeval'. What's yours?" + +"Do stop playing the goat," said the Professor plaintively. "You +don't know how serious this is." + +"'Lush' too," said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, "we must +have 'lush'--word applied to grass, don't you know?" + +"Do you imagine," asked the Professor furiously, "that we are going +to talk to Dr. Bull about grass?" + +"There are several ways in which the subject could be approached," +said Syme reflectively, "and the word introduced without appearing +forced. We might say, 'Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember +that a tyrant once advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, +looking on the fresh lush grass of summer"' + +"Do you understand," said the other, "that this is a tragedy?" + +"Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy. What +the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a +wider scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers +to the toes? That would involve pulling off our boots and socks +during the conversation, which however unobtrusively performed--" + +"Syme," said his friend with a stern simplicity, "go to bed!" + +Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the +new code. He was awakened next morning while the east was still +sealed with darkness, and found his grey-bearded ally standing like +a ghost beside his bed. + +Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, +threw off the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some +curious way that all the safety and sociability of the night before +fell with the bedclothes off him, and he stood up in an air of cold +danger. He still felt an entire trust and loyalty towards his +companion; but it was the trust between two men going to the +scaffold. + +"Well," said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on his +trousers, "I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you +long to make it up?" + +The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes +the colour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question. + +"I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I'm considered +good at these things, and it was a good hour's grind. Did you +learn it all on the spot?" + +The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a +fixed but very small smile. + +"How long did it take you?" + +The Professor did not move. + +"Confound you, can't you answer?" called out Syme, in a sudden +anger that had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the +Professor could answer, he did not. + +Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the +blank, blue eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone +mad, but his second thought was more frightful. After all, what did +he know about this queer creature whom he had heedlessly accepted +as a friend? What did he know, except that the man had been at the +anarchist breakfast and had told him a ridiculous tale? How +improbable it was that there should be another friend there beside +Gogol! Was this man's silence a sensational way of declaring war? +Was this adamantine stare after all only the awful sneer of some +threefold traitor, who had turned for the last time? He stood and +strained his ears in this heartless silence. He almost fancied he +could hear dynamiters come to capture him shifting softly in the +corridor outside. + +Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though +the Professor himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his +five dumb fingers were dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme +watched the twinkling movements of the talking hand, and read +clearly the message-- + +"I will only talk like this. We must get used to it." + +He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief-- + +"All right. Let's get out to breakfast." + +They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took his +sword-stick, he held it hard. + +They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse +thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across +the river, which under the grey and growing light looked as +desolate as Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of +buildings which they had seen from across the river, and began in +silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing +now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. At +about every other flight they passed a window; each window showed +them a pale and tragic dawn lifting itself laboriously over London. +From each the innumerable roofs of slate looked like the leaden +surges of a grey, troubled sea after rain. Syme was increasingly +conscious that his new adventure had somehow a quality of cold +sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past. Last night, for +instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in a +dream. As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was +daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was +not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be +exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty +infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to +thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about +the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of +reason, a thing more hideous than unreason itself. + +By the time they reached Dr. Bull's landing, a last window showed +them a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, +more like red clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull's +bare garret it was full of light. + +Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with +these empty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the +garret and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what +the memory was--the French Revolution. There should have been the +black outline of a guillotine against that heavy red and white of +the morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and black breeches +only; his cropped, dark head might well have just come out of its +wig; he might have been Marat or a more slipshod Robespierre. + +Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The +Jacobins were idealists; there was about this man a murderous +materialism. His position gave him a somewhat new appearance. The +strong, white light of morning coming from one side creating sharp +shadows, made him seem both more pale and more angular than he had +looked at the breakfast on the balcony. Thus the two black glasses +that encased his eyes might really have been black cavities in his +skull, making him look like a death's-head. And, indeed, if ever +Death himself sat writing at a wooden table, it might have been he. + +He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and +rose with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had +spoken. He set chairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind +the door, proceeded to put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark +tweed; he buttoned it up neatly, and came back to sit down at his +table. + +The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents +helpless. It was with some momentary difficulty that the +Professor broke silence and began, "I'm sorry to disturb you so +early, comrade," said he, with a careful resumption of the slow +de Worms manner. "You have no doubt made all the arrangements for +the Paris affair?" Then he added with infinite slowness, "We have +information which renders intolerable anything in the nature of a +moment's delay." + +Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without +speaking. The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word-- + +"Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to +alter those plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your +agent with all the support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and +I have had an experience which it would take more time to recount +than we can afford, if we are to act on it. I will, however, +relate the occurrence in detail, even at the risk of losing time, +if you really feel that it is essential to the understanding of +the problem we have to discuss." + +He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long +and lingering, in the hope of maddening the practical little +Doctor into an explosion of impatience which might show his hand. +But the little Doctor continued only to stare and smile, and the +monologue was uphill work. Syme began to feel a new sickness and +despair. The Doctor's smile and silence were not at all like the +cataleptic stare and horrible silence which he had confronted in +the Professor half an hour before. About the Professor's makeup +and all his antics there was always something merely grotesque, +like a gollywog. Syme remembered those wild woes of yesterday as +one remembers being afraid of Bogy in childhood. But here was +daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in tweeds, +not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring +or grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. +The whole had a sense of unbearable reality. Under the increasing +sunlight the colours of the Doctor's complexion, the pattern of +his tweeds, grew and expanded outrageously, as such things grow +too important in a realistic novel. But his smile was quite +slight, the pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was +his silence. + +"As I say," resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through +heavy sand, "the incident that has occurred to us and has led +us to ask for information about the Marquis, is one which you +may think it better to have narrated; but as it came in the +way of Comrade Syme rather than me--" + +His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; +but Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly +on the edge of the crazy table. He read the message, "You must +go on. This devil has sucked me dry!" + +Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation +which always came to him when he was alarmed. + +"Yes, the thing really happened to me," he said hastily. "I had +the good fortune to fall into conversation with a detective who +took me, thanks to my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to +clinch my reputation for respectability, I took him and made him +very drunk at the Savoy. Under this influence he became friendly, +and told me in so many words that within a day or two they hope +to arrest the Marquis in France. + +"So unless you or I can get on his track--" + +The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his +protected eyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to +Syme that he would resume his explanation, and he began again with +the same elaborate calm. + +"Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came here +together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It +seems to me unquestionably urgent that--" + +All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as +steadily as the Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without +the smile. The nerves of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping +under that strain of motionless amiability, when Syme suddenly +leant forward and idly tapped the edge of the table. His message +to his ally ran, "I have an intuition." + +The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled +back, "Then sit on it." + +Syme telegraphed, "It is quite extraordinary." + +The other answered, "Extraordinary rot!" + +Syme said, "I am a poet." + +The other retorted, "You are a dead man." + +Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were +burning feverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had +risen to a sort of lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic +taps, he signalled to his friend, "You scarcely realise how poetic +my intuition is. It has that sudden quality we sometimes feel in +the coming of spring." + +He then studied the answer on his friend's fingers. The answer +was, "Go to hell!" + +The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed +to the Doctor. + +"Perhaps I should rather say," said Syme on his fingers, "that it +resembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the +heart of lush woods." + +His companion disdained to reply. + +"Or yet again," tapped Syme, "it is positive, as is the passionate +red hair of a beautiful woman." + +The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it +Syme decided to act. He leant across the table, and said in a +voice that could not be neglected-- + +"Dr. Bull!" + +The Doctor's sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could +have sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards +Syme. + +"Dr. Bull," said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and +courteous, "would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind +as to take off your spectacles?" + +The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a +sort of frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has +thrown his life and fortune on the table, leaned forward with a +fiery face. The Doctor did not move. + +For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a +pin drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on +the Thames. Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took +off his spectacles. + +Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a +chemical lecturer from a successful explosion. His eyes were like +stars, and for an instant he could only point without speaking. + +The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his +supposed paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared +doubtfully at Dr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a +toad before his eyes. And indeed it was almost as great a +transformation scene. + +The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a very +boyish-looking young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, an +open expression, cockney clothes like those of a city clerk, and +an unquestionable breath about him of being very good and rather +commonplace. The smile was still there, but it might have been the +first smile of a baby. + +"I knew I was a poet," cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. "I knew my +intuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that +did it! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, +and all the rest of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a +live devil among dead ones." + +"It certainly does make a queer difference," said the Professor +shakily. "But as regards the project of Dr. Bull--" + +"Project be damned!" roared Syme, beside himself. "Look at him! +Look at his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! +You don't suppose, do you, that that thing's an anarchist?" + +"Syme!" cried the other in an apprehensive agony. + +"Why, by God," said Syme, "I'll take the risk of that myself! Dr. +Bull, I am a police officer. There's my card," and he flung down +the blue card upon the table. + +The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. He +pulled out his own official card and put it beside his friend's. +Then the third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that +morning they heard his voice. + +"I'm awfully glad you chaps have come so early," he said, with +a sort of schoolboy flippancy, "for we can all start for France +together. Yes, I'm in the force right enough," and he flicked a +blue card towards them lightly as a matter of form. + +Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin +glasses, the Doctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the +others instinctively followed him. Syme seemed a little distrait, +and as he passed under the doorway he suddenly struck his stick +on the stone passage so that it rang. + +"But Lord God Almighty," he cried out, "if this is all right, there +were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at +the damned Council!" + +"We might have fought easily," said Bull; "we were four against +three." + +The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up from +below. + +"No," said the voice, "we were not four against three--we were not +so lucky. We were four against One." + +The others went down the stairs in silence. + +The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic +of him, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but +there his own robust rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he +walked quickly on ahead towards a railway inquiry office, talking +to the others over his shoulder. + +"It is jolly to get some pals," he said. "I've been half dead with +the jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol +and embraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won't +despise me for having been in a blue funk." + +"All the blue devils in blue hell," said Syme, "contributed to my +blue funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles." + +The young man laughed delightedly. + +"Wasn't it a rag?" he said. "Such a simple idea--not my own. I +haven't got the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective +service, especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that +purpose they wanted someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they +all swore by blazes that I could never look like a dynamiter. They +said my very walk was respectable, and that seen from behind I +looked like the British Constitution. They said I looked too +healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable and benevolent; they +called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They said that if I +had been a criminal, I might have made my fortune by looking so +like an honest man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest +man, there was not even the remotest chance of my assisting them by +ever looking like a criminal. But as last I was brought before some +old josser who was high up in the force, and who seemed to have no +end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others all talked +hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my nice +smile; another said that if they blacked my face I might look like +a negro anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most +extraordinary remark. 'A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,' he +said positively. 'Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office +boy. Put him on a pair of smoked spectacles, and children will +scream at the sight of him.' And so it was, by George! When once my +eyes were covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and short +hair, made me look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was simple +enough when it was done, like miracles; but that wasn't the really +miraculous part of it. There was one really staggering thing about +the business, and my head still turns at it." + +"What was that?" asked Syme. + +"I'll tell you," answered the man in spectacles. "This big pot in +the police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would +go with my hair and socks--by God, he never saw me at all!" + +Syme's eyes suddenly flashed on him. + +"How was that?" he asked. "I thought you talked to him." + +"So I did," said Bull brightly; "but we talked in a pitch-dark +room like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that." + +"I could not have conceived it," said Syme gravely. + +"It is indeed a new idea," said the Professor. + +Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the +inquiry office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains +for Dover. Having got his information, he bundled the company into +a cab, and put them and himself inside a railway carriage before +they had properly realised the breathless process. They were +already on the Calais boat before conversation flowed freely. + +"I had already arranged," he explained, "to go to France for my +lunch; but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You +see, I had to send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, +because the President had his eye on me, though God knows how. +I'll tell you the story some day. It was perfectly choking. +Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw the President somewhere, +smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or taking off his hat to +me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you can say what you +like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be in six +places at once." + +"So you sent the Marquis off, I understand," asked the Professor. +"Was it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?" + +"Yes," answered the new guide, "I've timed it all. He'll still be +at Calais when we arrive." + +"But when we do catch him at Calais," said the Professor, "what are +we going to do?" + +At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first +time. He reflected a little, and then said-- + +"Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police." + +"Not I," said Syme. "Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. I +promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word +of honour not to tell the police. I'm no hand at casuistry, but I +can't break my word to a modern pessimist. It's like breaking one's +word to a child." + +"I'm in the same boat," said the Professor. "I tried to tell the +police and I couldn't, because of some silly oath I took. You see, +when I was an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or +treason is the only crime I haven't committed. If I did that I +shouldn't know the difference between right and wrong." + +"I've been through all that," said Dr. Bull, "and I've made up my +mind. I gave my promise to the Secretary--you know him, man who +smiles upside down. My friends, that man is the most utterly +unhappy man that was ever human. It may be his digestion, or his +conscience, or his nerves, or his philosophy of the universe, but +he's damned, he's in hell! Well, I can't turn on a man like that, +and hunt him down. It's like whipping a leper. I may be mad, but +that's how I feel; and there's jolly well the end of it." + +"I don't think you're mad," said Syme. "I knew you would decide +like that when first you--" + +"Eh?" said Dr. Bull. + +"When first you took off your spectacles." + +Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at +the sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels +carelessly, and a companionable silence fell between the three men. + +"Well," said Syme, "it seems that we have all the same kind of +morality or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes +of it." + +"Yes," assented the Professor, "you're quite right; and we must +hurry up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France." + +"The fact that comes of it," said Syme seriously, "is this, that we +three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; +perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we +are three men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. +But we are worse off than that, first because they can appeal to +their organization and we cannot appeal to ours, and second +because--" + +"Because one of those other three men," said the Professor, "is not +a man." + +Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said-- + +"My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in +Calais till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in +my head. We cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We +cannot get him detained on some trivial charge, for we should have +to appear; he knows us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend +to keep him on anarchist business; he might swallow much in that +way, but not the notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went +safely through Paris. We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up +ourselves; but he is a well-known man here. He has a whole +bodyguard of friends; he is very strong and brave, and the event is +doubtful. The only thing I can see to do is actually to take +advantage of the very things that are in the Marquis's favour. I am +going to profit by the fact that he is a highly respected nobleman. +I am going to profit by the fact that he has many friends and moves +in the best society." + +"What the devil are you talking about?" asked the Professor. + +"The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century," said +Syme; "but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce +at Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear." + +"He's gone off his head," said the little Doctor, staring. + +"Our bearings," continued Syme calmly, "are 'argent a chevron gules +charged with three cross crosslets of the field.' The motto +varies." + +The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat. + +"We are just inshore," he said. "Are you seasick or joking in the +wrong place?" + +"My remarks are almost painfully practical," answered Syme, in an +unhurried manner. "The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. +The Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny +that I am a gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social +position quite beyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest +opportunity to knock his hat off. But here we are in the harbour." + +They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, +who had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led +them along a kind of marine parade until he came to some cafes, +embowered in a bulk of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he +went before them his step was slightly swaggering, and he swung +his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme +end of the line of cafes, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp +gesture he motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one +gloved finger to a cafe table under a bank of flowering foliage +at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth shining in +his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by a +light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE DUEL + +SYME sat down at a cafe table with his companions, his blue eyes +sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of +Saumur with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a +condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were already +unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an +hour his talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be +making out a plan of the conversation which was going to ensue +between himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted it down wildly +with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed catechism, with +questions and answers, and was delivered with an extraordinary +rapidity of utterance. + +"I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my +own. I shall say, 'The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.' He +will say, 'The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.' He will say in the +most exquisite French, 'How are you?' I shall reply in the most +exquisite Cockney, 'Oh, just the Syme--' " + +"Oh, shut it," said the man in spectacles. "Pull yourself +together, and chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really +going to do?" + +"But it was a lovely catechism," said Syme pathetically. "Do let +me read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and +some of the Marquis's answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be +just to my enemy." + +"But what's the good of it all?" asked Dr. Bull in exasperation. + +"It leads up to my challenge, don't you see," said Syme, beaming. +"When the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs--" + +"Has it by any chance occurred to you," asked the Professor, with +a ponderous simplicity, "that the Marquis may not say all the +forty-three things you have put down for him? In that case, I +understand, your own epigrams may appear somewhat more forced." + +Syme struck the table with a radiant face. + +"Why, how true that is," he said, "and I never thought of it. Sir, +you have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name." + +"Oh, you're as drunk as an owl!" said the Doctor. + +"It only remains," continued Syme quite unperturbed, "to adopt +some other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) +between myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of +a dialogue cannot be predicted by one of its parties alone (as you +have pointed out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be +done, I suppose, is for the one party, as far as possible, to do +all the dialogue by himself. And so I will, by George!" And he +stood up suddenly, his yellow hair blowing in the slight sea +breeze. + +A band was playing in a cafe chantant hidden somewhere among the +trees, and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme's heated head +the bray of the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that +barrel-organ in Leicester Square, to the tune of which he had once +stood up to die. He looked across to the little table where the +Marquis sat. The man had two companions now, solemn Frenchmen in +frock-coats and silk hats, one of them with the red rosette of the +Legion of Honour, evidently people of a solid social position. +Besides these black, cylindrical costumes, the Marquis, in his +loose straw hat and light spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even +barbaric; but he looked the Marquis. Indeed, one might say that he +looked the king, with his animal elegance, his scornful eyes, and +his proud head lifted against the purple sea. But he was no +Christian king, at any rate; he was, rather, some swarthy despot, +half Greek, half Asiatic, who in the days when slavery seemed +natural looked down on the Mediterranean, on his galley and his +groaning slaves. Just so, Syme thought, would the brown-gold face +of such a tyrant have shown against the dark green olives and the +burning blue. + +"Are you going to address the meeting?" asked the Professor +peevishly, seeing that Syme still stood up without moving. + +Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine. + +"I am," he said, pointing across to the Marquis and his companions, +"that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that +meeting's great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose." + +He stepped across swiftly, if not quite steadily. The Marquis, +seeing him, arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but +smiled politely. + +"You are Mr. Syme, I think," he said. + +Syme bowed. + +"And you are the Marquis de Saint Eustache," he said gracefully. +"Permit me to pull your nose." + +He leant over to do so, but the Marquis started backwards, +upsetting his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back +by the shoulders. + +"This man has insulted me!" said Syme, with gestures of +explanation. + +"Insulted you?" cried the gentleman with the red rosette, "when?" + +"Oh, just now," said Syme recklessly. "He insulted my mother." + +"Insulted your mother!" exclaimed the gentleman incredulously. + +"Well, anyhow," said Syme, conceding a point, "my aunt." + +"But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?" said +the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. "He has been +sitting here all the time." + +"Ah, it was what he said!" said Syme darkly. + +"I said nothing at all," said the Marquis, "except something +about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well." + +"It was an allusion to my family," said Syme firmly. "My aunt +played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always +being insulted about it." + +"This seems most extraordinary," said the gentleman who was +decore, looking doubtfully at the Marquis. + +"Oh, I assure you," said Syme earnestly, "the whole of your +conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my +aunt's weaknesses." + +"This is nonsense!" said the second gentleman. "I for one have +said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of +that girl with black hair." + +"Well, there you are again!" said Syme indignantly. "My aunt's was +red." + +"It seems to me," said the other, "that you are simply seeking a +pretext to insult the Marquis." + +"By George!" said Syme, facing round and looking at him, "what a +clever chap you are!" + +The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger's. + +"Seeking a quarrel with me!" he cried. "Seeking a fight with me! By +God! there was never a man who had to seek long. These gentlemen +will perhaps act for me. There are still four hours of daylight. +Let us fight this evening." + +Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness. + +"Marquis," he said, "your action is worthy of your fame and blood. +Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose +hands I shall place myself." + +In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who +had seen his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic +explanations, were quite startled at the look of him. For now that +he came back to them he was quite sober, a little pale, and he +spoke in a low voice of passionate practicality. + +"I have done it," he said hoarsely. "I have fixed a fight on the +beast. But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for +talk. You are my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now +you must insist, and insist absolutely, on the duel coming off +after seven tomorrow, so as to give me the chance of preventing him +from catching the 7.45 for Paris. If he misses that he misses his +crime. He can't refuse to meet you on such a small point of time +and place. But this is what he will do. He will choose a field +somewhere near a wayside station, where he can pick up the train. +He is a very good swordsman, and he will trust to killing me in +time to catch it. But I can fence well too, and I think I can keep +him in play, at any rate, until the train is lost. Then perhaps he +may kill me to console his feelings. You understand? Very well +then, let me introduce you to some charming friends of mine," and +leading them quickly across the parade, he presented them to the +Marquis's seconds by two very aristocratic names of which they had +not previously heard. + +Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise +a part of his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about +the spectacles) poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the +exaltation of prophecy. + +He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his +opponent. When the Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme +could only fight in the morning, he must fully have realised that +an obstacle had suddenly arisen between him and his bomb-throwing +business in the capital. Naturally he could not explain this +objection to his friends, so he chose the course which Syme had +predicted. He induced his seconds to settle on a small meadow not +far from the railway, and he trusted to the fatality of the first +engagement. + +When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could +have guessed that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands +were in his pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his +handsome face brazen in the sun. But it might have struck a +stranger as odd that there appeared in his train, not only his +seconds carrying the sword-case, but two of his servants carrying +a portmanteau and a luncheon basket. + +Early as was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and +Syme was vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning +gold and silver in the tall grass in which the whole company stood +almost knee-deep. + +With the exception of the Marquis, all the men were in sombre and +solemn morning-dress, with hats like black chimney-pots; the little +Doctor especially, with the addition of his black spectacles, +looked like an undertaker in a farce. Syme could not help feeling a +comic contrast between this funereal church parade of apparel and +the rich and glistening meadow, growing wild flowers everywhere. +But, indeed, this comic contrast between the yellow blossoms and +the black hats was but a symbol of the tragic contrast between the +yellow blossoms and the black business. On his right was a little +wood; far away to his left lay the long curve of the railway line, +which he was, so to speak, guarding from the Marquis, whose goal +and escape it was. In front of him, behind the black group of his +opponents, he could see, like a tinted cloud, a small almond bush +in flower against the faint line of the sea. + +The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name it seemed was +Colonel Ducroix, approached the Professor and Dr. Bull with great +politeness, and suggested that the play should terminate with the +first considerable hurt. + +Dr. Bull, however, having been carefully coached by Syme upon this +point of policy, insisted, with great dignity and in very bad +French, that it should continue until one of the combatants was +disabled. Syme had made up his mind that he could avoid disabling +the Marquis and prevent the Marquis from disabling him for at +least twenty minutes. In twenty minutes the Paris train would have +gone by. + +"To a man of the well-known skill and valour of Monsieur de St. +Eustache," said the Professor solemnly, "it must be a matter of +indifference which method is adopted, and our principal has strong +reasons for demanding the longer encounter, reasons the delicacy +of which prevent me from being explicit, but for the just and +honourable nature of which I can--" + +"Peste!" broke from the Marquis behind, whose face had suddenly +darkened, "let us stop talking and begin," and he slashed off the +head of a tall flower with his stick. + +Syme understood his rude impatience and instinctively looked over +his shoulder to see whether the train was coming in sight. But +there was no smoke on the horizon. + +Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a +pair of twin swords, which took the sunlight and turned to two +streaks of white fire. He offered one to the Marquis, who snatched +it without ceremony, and another to Syme, who took it, bent it, +and poised it with as much delay as was consistent with dignity. + +Then the Colonel took out another pair of blades, and taking one +himself and giving another to Dr. Bull, proceeded to place the +men. + +Both combatants had thrown off their coats and waistcoats, and +stood sword in hand. The seconds stood on each side of the line +of fight with drawn swords also, but still sombre in their dark +frock-coats and hats. The principals saluted. The Colonel said +quietly, "Engage!" and the two blades touched and tingled. + +When the jar of the joined iron ran up Syme's arm, all the +fantastic fears that have been the subject of this story fell +from him like dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered +them clearly and in order as mere delusions of the nerves--how +the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the tyrannic +accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been +the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old +fear that any miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless +modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw that +these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of +the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless +common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of +falling over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he +was to be hanged. For as soon as he had seen the sunlight run +down the channel of his foe's foreshortened blade, and as soon as +he had felt the two tongues of steel touch, vibrating like two +living things, he knew that his enemy was a terrible fighter, and +that probably his last hour had come. + +He felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in +the grass under his feet; he felt the love of life in all living +things. He could almost fancy that he heard the grass growing; he +could almost fancy that even as he stood fresh flowers were +springing up and breaking into blossom in the meadow--flowers blood +red and burning gold and blue, fulfilling the whole pageant of the +spring. And whenever his eyes strayed for a flash from the calm, +staring, hypnotic eyes of the Marquis, they saw the little tuft of +almond tree against the sky-line. He had the feeling that if by +some miracle he escaped he would be ready to sit for ever before +that almond tree, desiring nothing else in the world. + +But while earth and sky and everything had the living beauty of a +thing lost, the other half of his head was as clear as glass, and +he was parrying his enemy's point with a kind of clockwork skill of +which he had hardly supposed himself capable. Once his enemy's +point ran along his wrist, leaving a slight streak of blood, but it +either was not noticed or was tacitly ignored. Every now and then +he riposted, and once or twice he could almost fancy that he felt +his point go home, but as there was no blood on blade or shirt he +supposed he was mistaken. Then came an interruption and a change. + +At the risk of losing all, the Marquis, interrupting his quiet +stare, flashed one glance over his shoulder at the line of railway +on his right. Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of +a fiend, and began to fight as if with twenty weapons. The attack +came so fast and furious, that the one shining sword seemed a +shower of shining arrows. Syme had no chance to look at the +railway; but also he had no need. He could guess the reason of the +Marquis's sudden madness of battle--the Paris train was in sight. + +But the Marquis's morbid energy over-reached itself. Twice Syme, +parrying, knocked his opponent's point far out of the fighting +circle; and the third time his riposte was so rapid, that there +was no doubt about the hit this time. Syme's sword actually bent +under the weight of the Marquis's body, which it had pierced. + +Syme was as certain that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as +a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the +Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme +stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no +blood on it at all. + +There was an instant of rigid silence, and then Syme in his turn +fell furiously on the other, filled with a flaming curiosity. The +Marquis was probably, in a general sense, a better fencer than he, +as he had surmised at the beginning, but at the moment the Marquis +seemed distraught and at a disadvantage. He fought wildly and even +weakly, and he constantly looked away at the railway line, almost +as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the +other hand, fought fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual +fury, eager to solve the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For +this purpose, he aimed less at the Marquis's body, and more at his +throat and head. A minute and a half afterwards he felt his point +enter the man's neck below the jaw. It came out clean. Half mad, he +thrust again, and made what should have been a bloody scar on the +Marquis's cheek. But there was no scar. + +For one moment the heaven of Syme again grew black with +supernatural terrors. Surely the man had a charmed life. But this +new spiritual dread was a more awful thing than had been the mere +spiritual topsy-turvydom symbolised by the paralytic who pursued +him. The Professor was only a goblin; this man was a devil--perhaps +he was the Devil! Anyhow, this was certain, that three times had a +human sword been driven into him and made no mark. When Syme had +that thought he drew himself up, and all that was good in him sang +high up in the air as a high wind sings in the trees. He thought of +all the human things in his story--of the Chinese lanterns in +Saffron Park, of the girl's red hair in the garden, of the honest, +beer-swilling sailors down by the dock, of his loyal companions +standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen as a champion of all these +fresh and kindly things to cross swords with the enemy of all +creation. "After all," he said to himself, "I am more than a devil; +I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do--I +can die," and as the word went through his head, he heard a faint +and far-off hoot, which would soon be the roar of the Paris train. + +He fell to fighting again with a supernatural levity, like a +Mohammedan panting for Paradise. As the train came nearer and +nearer he fancied he could see people putting up the floral +arches in Paris; he joined in the growing noise and the glory of +the great Republic whose gate he was guarding against Hell. His +thoughts rose higher and higher with the rising roar of the +train, which ended, as if proudly, in a long and piercing +whistle. The train stopped. + +Suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone the Marquis sprang back +quite out of sword reach and threw down his sword. The leap was +wonderful, and not the less wonderful because Syme had plunged his +sword a moment before into the man's thigh. + +"Stop!" said the Marquis in a voice that compelled a momentary +obedience. "I want to say something." + +"What is the matter?" asked Colonel Ducroix, staring. "Has there +been foul play?" + +"There has been foul play somewhere," said Dr. Bull, who was a +little pale. "Our principal has wounded the Marquis four times +at least, and he is none the worse ." + +The Marquis put up his hand with a curious air of ghastly +patience. + +"Please let me speak," he said. "It is rather important. Mr. +Syme," he continued, turning to his opponent, "we are fighting +today, if I remember right, because you expressed a wish (which +I thought irrational) to pull my nose. Would you oblige me by +pulling my nose now as quickly as possible? I have to catch a +train." + +"I protest that this is most irregular," said Dr. Bull +indignantly. + +"It is certainly somewhat opposed to precedent," said Colonel +Ducroix, looking wistfully at his principal. "There is, I think, +one case on record (Captain Bellegarde and the Baron Zumpt) in +which the weapons were changed in the middle of the encounter at +the request of one of the combatants. But one can hardly call +one's nose a weapon." + +"Will you or will you not pull my nose?" said the Marquis in +exasperation. "Come, come, Mr. Syme! You wanted to do it, do it! +You can have no conception of how important it is to me. Don't be +so selfish! Pull my nose at once, when I ask you!" and he bent +slightly forward with a fascinating smile. The Paris train, +panting and groaning, had grated into a little station behind the +neighbouring hill. + +Syme had the feeling he had more than once had in these adventures +--the sense that a horrible and sublime wave lifted to heaven was +just toppling over. Walking in a world he half understood, he took +two paces forward and seized the Roman nose of this remarkable +nobleman. He pulled it hard, and it came off in his hand. + +He stood for some seconds with a foolish solemnity, with the +pasteboard proboscis still between his fingers, looking at it, +while the sun and the clouds and the wooded hills looked down +upon this imbecile scene. + +The Marquis broke the silence in a loud and cheerful voice. + +"If anyone has any use for my left eyebrow," he said, "he can have +it. Colonel Ducroix, do accept my left eyebrow! It's the kind of +thing that might come in useful any day," and he gravely tore off +one of his swarthy Assyrian brows, bringing about half his brown +forehead with it, and politely offered it to the Colonel, who +stood crimson and speechless with rage. + +"If I had known," he spluttered, "that I was acting for a poltroon +who pads himself to fight--" + +"Oh, I know, I know!" said the Marquis, recklessly throwing various +parts of himself right and left about the field. "You are making a +mistake; but it can't be explained just now. I tell you the train +has come into the station!" + +"Yes," said Dr. Bull fiercely, "and the train shall go out of the +station. It shall go out without you. We know well enough for what +devil's work--" + +The mysterious Marquis lifted his hands with a desperate gesture. +He was a strange scarecrow standing there in the sun with half his +old face peeled off, and half another face glaring and grinning +from underneath. + +"Will you drive me mad?" he cried. "The train--" + +"You shall not go by the train," said Syme firmly, and grasped his +sword. + +The wild figure turned towards Syme, and seemed to be gathering +itself for a sublime effort before speaking. + +"You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, +brainless, Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!" he said without +taking breath. "You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip! +You--" + +"You shall not go by this train," repeated Syme. + +"And why the infernal blazes," roared the other, "should I want to +go by the train?" + +"We know all," said the Professor sternly. "You are going to Paris +to throw a bomb!" + +"Going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock!" cried the other, tearing +his hair, which came off easily. + +"Have you all got softening of the brain, that you don't realise +what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? +Twenty Paris trains might go by for me. Damn Paris trains!" + +"Then what did you care about?" began the Professor. + +"What did I care about? I didn't care about catching the train; I +cared about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has +caught me." + +"I regret to inform you," said Syme with restraint, "that your +remarks convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to +remove the remains of your original forehead and some portion of +what was once your chin, your meaning would become clearer. Mental +lucidity fulfils itself in many ways. What do you mean by saying +that the train has caught you? It may be my literary fancy, but +somehow I feel that it ought to mean something." + +"It means everything," said the other, "and the end of everything. +Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand." + +"Us!" repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. "What do you mean by +'us'?" + +"The police, of course!" said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp +and half his face. + +The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired +head which is common in the English constabulary, but the face was +terribly pale. + +"I am Inspector Ratcliffe," he said, with a sort of haste that +verged on harshness. "My name is pretty well known to the police, +and I can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is +any doubt about my position, I have a card" and he began to pull a +blue card from his pocket. + +The Professor gave a tired gesture. + +"Oh, don't show it us," he said wearily; "we've got enough of them +to equip a paper-chase." + +The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a +mere vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he +certainly saved the situation. In the midst of this staggering +transformation scene he stepped forward with all the gravity and +responsibility of a second, and addressed the two seconds of the +Marquis. + +"Gentlemen," he said, "we all owe you a serious apology; but I +assure you that you have not been made the victims of such a low +joke as you imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of +honour. You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the +world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a +vast conspiracy. A secret society of anarchists is hunting us like +hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a +bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and +powerful and fanatical church, a church of eastern pessimism, which +holds it holy to destroy mankind like vermin. How hard they hunt us +you can gather from the fact that we are driven to such disguises +as those for which I apologise, and to such pranks as this one by +which you suffer." + +The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black +moustache, bowed politely, and said-- + +"Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive +me if I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and +permit myself to say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and +distinguished fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is +unusual, and, upon the whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel +Ducroix, I would in no way influence your actions, but if you feel +with me that our present society is a little abnormal, I am now +going to walk back to the town." + +Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his +white moustache and broke out-- + +"No, by George! I won't. If these gentlemen are really in a mess +with a lot of low wreckers like that, I'll see them through it. I +have fought for France, and it is hard if I can't fight for +civilization." + +Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public +meeting. + +"Don't make too much noise," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "Sunday may +hear you." + +"Sunday!" cried Bull, and dropped his hat. + +"Yes," retorted Ratcliffe, "he may be with them." + +"With whom?" asked Syme. + +"With the people out of that train," said the other. + +"What you say seems utterly wild," began Syme. "Why, as a matter of +fact--But, my God," he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an +explosion a long way off, "by God! if this is true the whole bally +lot of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born +man was a detective except the President and his personal +secretary. What can it mean?" + +"Mean!" said the new policeman with incredible violence. "It means +that we are struck dead! Don't you know Sunday? Don't you know that +his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought +of them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that +he should put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and +then take care that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought +every trust, he has captured every cable, he has control of every +railway line--especially of that railway line!" and he pointed a +shaking finger towards the small wayside station. "The whole +movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to rise +for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have +resisted him . . . and the old devil put them on the Supreme +Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots that +we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the +Professor would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would +fight me in France. And he was combining great masses of capital, +and seizing great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were +running after each other like a lot of confounded babies playing +blind man's buff." + +"Well?" asked Syme with a sort of steadiness. + +"Well," replied the other with sudden serenity, "he has found us +playing blind man's buff today in a field of great rustic beauty +and extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only +remains to him to capture this field and all the fools in it. And +since you really want to know what was my objection to the arrival +of that train, I will tell you. My objection was that Sunday or his +Secretary has just this moment got out of it." + +Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes +towards the far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable +bulk of people seemed to be moving in their direction. But they +were too distant to be distinguished in any way. + +"It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache," said the new +policeman, producing a leather case, "always to carry a pair of +opera glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming +after us with that mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place +where we are under no temptations to break our oaths by calling +the police. Dr. Bull, I have a suspicion that you will see better +through these than through your own highly decorative spectacles." + +He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took +off his spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes. + +"It cannot be as bad as you say," said the Professor, somewhat +shaken. "There are a good number of them certainly, but they may +easily be ordinary tourists." + +"Do ordinary tourists," asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his +eyes, "wear black masks half-way down the face?" + +Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through +them. Most men in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; +but it was quite true that two or three of the leaders in front +wore black half-masks almost down to their mouths. This disguise +is very complete, especially at such a distance, and Syme found +it impossible to conclude anything from the clean-shaven jaws and +chins of the men talking in the front. But presently as they +talked they all smiled and one of them smiled on one side. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE + +SYME put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly +relief. + +"The President is not with them, anyhow," he said, and wiped his +forehead. + +"But surely they are right away on the horizon," said the +bewildered Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull's +hasty though polite explanation. "Could you possibly know your +President among all those people?" + +"Could I know a white elephant among all those people!" answered +Syme somewhat irritably. "As you very truly say, they are on the +horizon; but if he were walking with them . . . by God! I believe +this ground would shake." + +After an instant's pause the new man called Ratcliffe said with +gloomy decision-- + +"Of course the President isn't with them. I wish to Gemini he were. +Much more likely the President is riding in triumph through Paris, +or sitting on the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral." + +"This is absurd!" said Syme. "Something may have happened in our +absence; but he cannot have carried the world with a rush like +that. It is quite true," he added, frowning dubiously at the +distant fields that lay towards the little station, "it is +certainly true that there seems to be a crowd coming this way; +but they are not all the army that you make out." + +"Oh, they," said the new detective contemptuously; "no they are +not a very valuable force. But let me tell you frankly that they +are precisely calculated to our value--we are not much, my boy, +in Sunday's universe. He has got hold of all the cables and +telegraphs himself. But to kill the Supreme Council he regards as +a trivial matter, like a post card; it may be left to his private +secretary," and he spat on the grass. + +Then he turned to the others and said somewhat austerely-- + +"There is a great deal to be said for death; but if anyone has +any preference for the other alternative, I strongly advise him +to walk after me." + +With these words, he turned his broad back and strode with silent +energy towards the wood. The others gave one glance over their +shoulders, and saw that the dark cloud of men had detached itself +from the station and was moving with a mysterious discipline +across the plain. They saw already, even with the naked eye, black +blots on the foremost faces, which marked the masks they wore. +They turned and followed their leader, who had already struck the +wood, and disappeared among the twinkling trees. + +The sun on the grass was dry and hot. So in plunging into the wood +they had a cool shock of shadow, as of divers who plunge into a +dim pool. The inside of the wood was full of shattered sunlight +and shaken shadows. They made a sort of shuddering veil, almost +recalling the dizziness of a cinematograph. Even the solid figures +walking with him Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and +shade that danced upon them. Now a man's head was lit as with a +light of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had +strong and staring white hands with the face of a negro. The +ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the +black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it +seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. +The fancy tinted Syme's overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he +wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? +This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white +by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and +then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro +(after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol +of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world +where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their +noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence +which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil +had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was +a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all these +bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there +anything that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken +off his nose and turned out to be a detective. Might he not just +as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not +everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance +of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always +unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in +the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had +found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call +Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism +which can find no floor to the universe. + +As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme +strove with a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of +his fancies. With two impatient strides he overtook the man in the +Marquis's straw hat, the man whom he had come to address as +Ratcliffe. In a voice exaggeratively loud and cheerful, he broke +the bottomless silence and made conversation. + +"May I ask," he said, "where on earth we are all going to?" + +So genuine had been the doubts of his soul, that he was quite glad +to hear his companion speak in an easy, human voice. + +"We must get down through the town of Lancy to the sea," he said. +"I think that part of the country is least likely to be with +them." + +"What can you mean by all this?" cried Syme. "They can't be +running the real world in that way. Surely not many working men +are anarchists, and surely if they were, mere mobs could not beat +modern armies and police." + +"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So +you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the +question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy +came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have +been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more +interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. +The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man +hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have +sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always +objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always +anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars." + +"As a lecture on English history for the little ones," said Syme, +"this is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application." + +"Its application is," said his informant, "that most of old Sunday's +right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is +why he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the +last four champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running +through a wood like rabbits." + +"Millionaires I can understand," said Syme thoughtfully, "they are +nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with +hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is +another. I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) +that Sunday would stand perfectly helpless before the task of +converting any ordinary healthy person anywhere." + +"Well," said the other, "it rather depends what sort of person you +mean." + +"Well, for instance," said Syme, "he could never convert that +person," and he pointed straight in front of him. + +They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express +to Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle +of this forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that +common sense in an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and +stained with perspiration, and grave with the bottomless gravity of +small necessary toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting wood with +a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards off, already half full of +timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was, like his master, +valorous but not desperate; like his master, he was even +prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The man was a Norman, taller +than the average of the French and very angular; and his swarthy +figure stood dark against a square of sunlight, almost like some +allegoric figure of labour frescoed on a ground of gold. + +"Mr. Syme is saying," called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, +"that this man, at least, will never be an anarchist." + +"Mr. Syme is right enough there," answered Colonel Ducroix, +laughing, "if only for the reason that he has plenty of property +to defend. But I forgot that in your country you are not used to +peasants being wealthy." + +"He looks poor," said Dr. Bull doubtfully. + +"Quite so," said the Colonel; "that is why he is rich." + +"I have an idea," called out Dr. Bull suddenly; "how much would he +take to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and +we could soon leave them behind." + +"Oh, give him anything!" said Syme eagerly. "I have piles of money +on me." + +"That will never do," said the Colonel; "he will never have any +respect for you unless you drive a bargain." + +"Oh, if he haggles!" began Bull impatiently. + +"He haggles because he is a free man," said the other. "You do +not understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is +not being tipped." + +And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange +pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French +Colonel talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely +badinage and bickering of market-day. At the end of the four +minutes, however, they saw that the Colonel was right, for the +wood-cutter entered into their plans, not with the vague servility +of a tout too-well paid, but with the seriousness of a solicitor +who had been paid the proper fee. He told them that the best thing +they could do was to make their way down to the little inn on the +hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had +become devot in his latter years, would be certain to sympathise +with them, and even to take risks in their support. The whole +company, therefore, piled themselves on top of the stacks of wood, +and went rocking in the rude cart down the other and steeper side +of the woodland. Heavy and ramshackle as was the vehicle, it was +driven quickly enough, and they soon had the exhilarating +impression of distancing altogether those, whoever they were, who +were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the +anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. One +man's presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first +sight of the deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and +then looked back over his shoulder at the army on their track. + +As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he +could see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across +these was still moving the square black mob like one monstrous +beetle. In the very strong sunlight and with his own very strong +eyes, which were almost telescopic, Syme could see this mass of +men quite plainly. He could see them as separate human figures; +but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved +as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain +hats, like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not +spread and sprawl and trail by various lines to the attack, as +would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a sort of +dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army of automatons. + +Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe. + +"Yes," replied the policeman, "that's discipline. That's Sunday. He +is perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of +them, like the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and +you bet your boots that they are talking regularly, yes, and +thinking regularly. But the one important thing for us is that they +are disappearing regularly." + +Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men +was growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his +horse. + +The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell +away on the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope +towards the sea, in a way not unlike the lower slopes of the +Sussex downs. The only difference was that in Sussex the road +would have been broken and angular like a little brook, but +here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a +waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart clattered at a +considerable angle, and in a few minutes, the road growing yet +steeper, they saw below them the little harbour of Lancy and a +great blue arc of the sea. The travelling cloud of their enemies +had wholly disappeared from the horizon. + +The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and +the horse's nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who +was sitting on the benches outside the little cafe of "Le Soleil +d'Or." The peasant grunted an apology, and got down from his +seat. The others also descended one by one, and spoke to the old +gentleman with fragmentary phrases of courtesy, for it was quite +evident from his expansive manner that he was the owner of the +little tavern. + +He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and +a grey moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type +that may often be found in France, but is still commoner in +Catholic Germany. Everything about him, his pipe, his pot of beer, +his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an ancestral peace; only +when his visitors looked up as they entered the inn-parlour, they +saw the sword upon the wall. + +The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed +rapidly into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual +refreshment. The military decision of his action interested Syme, +who sat next to him, and he took the opportunity when the old +innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his curiosity. + +"May I ask you, Colonel," he said in a low voice, "why we have +come here?" + +Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache. + +"For two reasons, sir," he said; "and I will give first, not the +most important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because +this is the only place within twenty miles in which we can get +horses." + +"Horses!" repeated Syme, looking up quickly. + +"Yes," replied the other; "if you people are really to distance +your enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course +you have bicycles and motor-cars in your pocket." + +"And where do you advise us to make for?" asked Syme doubtfully. + +"Beyond question," replied the Colonel, "you had better make all +haste to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I +seconded under somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to +exaggerate very much the possibilities of a general rising; but +even he would hardly maintain, I suppose, that you were not safe +with the gendarmes." + +Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly-- + +"And your other reason for coming here?" + +"My other reason for coming here," said Ducroix soberly, "is that +it is just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly +near to death." + +Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic +religious picture. Then he said-- + +"You are right," and then almost immediately afterwards, "Has +anyone seen about the horses?" + +"Yes," answered Ducroix, "you may be quite certain that I gave +orders the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no +impression of hurry, but they were really moving wonderfully fast, +like a well-trained army. I had no idea that the anarchists had so +much discipline. You have not a moment to waste." + +Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white +hair came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses +were saddled outside. + +By Ducroix's advice the five others equipped themselves with some +portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords +as the only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, +white road. The two servants, who had carried the Marquis's +luggage when he was a marquis, were left behind to drink at the +cafe by common consent, and not at all against their own +inclination. + +By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its +rays Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing +smaller and smaller, but still standing and looking after them +quite silently, the sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, +superstitious fancy, left in his mind by the chance phrase of the +Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps, the last honest stranger +whom he should ever see upon the earth. + +He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a +mere grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green +wall of the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top +of the down behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of +black-clad and marching men. They seemed to hang above the good +man and his house like a black cloud of locusts. The horses had +been saddled none too soon. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE EARTH IN ANARCHY + +URGING the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather +rugged descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their +advantage over the men on the march, and at last the bulk of the +first buildings of Lancy cut off the sight of their pursuers. +Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and by the time they +reached the real town the west was warming with the colour and +quality of sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making +finally for the police station, they should make the effort, in +passing, to attach to themselves one more individual who might be +useful. + +"Four out of the five rich men in this town," he said, "are common +swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the +world. The fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and +what is even more important from our point of view, he owns a +motor-car." + +"I am afraid," said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking +back along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might +appear at any moment, "I am afraid we have hardly time for +afternoon calls." + +"Doctor Renard's house is only three minutes off," said the +Colonel. + +"Our danger," said Dr. Bull, "is not two minutes off." + +"Yes," said Syme, "if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, +for they are on foot." + +"He has a motor-car," said the Colonel. + +"But we may not get it," said Bull. + +"Yes, he is quite on your side." + +"But he might be out." + +"Hold your tongue," said Syme suddenly. "What is that noise?" + +For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and +for a second--for two or three or four seconds--heaven and earth +seemed equally still. Then all their ears, in an agony of +attention, heard along the road that indescribable thrill and +throb that means only one thing--horses! + +The Colonel's face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning +had struck it, and yet left it scatheless. + +"They have done us," he said, with brief military irony. "Prepare +to receive cavalry!" + +"Where can they have got the horses?" asked Syme, as he +mechanically urged his steed to a canter. + +The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained +voice-- + +"I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the 'Soleil +d'Or' was the only place where one can get horses within twenty +miles." + +"No!" said Syme violently, "I don't believe he'd do it. Not with +all that white hair." + +"He may have been forced," said the Colonel gently. "They must be +at least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to +see my friend Renard, who has a motor-car." + +With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street +corner, and went down the street with such thundering speed, that +the others, though already well at the gallop, had difficulty in +following the flying tail of his horse. + +Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a +steep street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they +could once more see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the +white road across it, standing up above all the roofs of the town. +They breathed again to see that the road as yet was clear, and they +rang the bell. + +Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that +silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved +even more perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to +him he pooh-poohed the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, +with the solid French scepticism, that there was no conceivable +probability of a general anarchist rising. "Anarchy," he said, +shrugging his shoulders, "it is childishness!" + +"Et ca," cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other's +shoulder, "and that is childishness, isn't it?" + +They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come +sweeping over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. +Swiftly as they rode, however, the whole rank still kept well +together, and they could see the black vizards of the first line +as level as a line of uniforms. But although the main black +square was the same, though travelling faster, there was now one +sensational difference which they could see clearly upon the slope +of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were +in one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the column, and with +frantic movements of hand and heel urged his horse faster and +faster, so that one might have fancied that he was not the pursuer +but the pursued. But even at that great distance they could see +something so fanatical, so unquestionable in his figure, that they +knew it was the Secretary himself. "I am sorry to cut short a +cultured discussion," said the Colonel, "but can you lend me your +motor-car now, in two minutes?" + +"I have a suspicion that you are all mad," said Dr. Renard, smiling +sociably; "but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt +friendship. Let us go round to the garage." + +Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were +like the Musee de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, +however, he seemed to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes +of the French middle class, and when his impatient friends came to +examine them, it took them some time to assure themselves that one +of them even could be made to work. This with some difficulty they +brought round into the street before the Doctor's house. When they +came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that +twilight had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the +tropics. Either they had been longer in the place than they +imagined, or some unusual canopy of cloud had gathered over the +town. They looked down the steep streets, and seemed to see a +slight mist coming up from the sea. + +"It is now or never," said Dr. Bull. "I hear horses." + +"No," corrected the Professor, "a horse." + +And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly +coming nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the +whole cavalcade but that of the one horseman, who had left it +far behind--the insane Secretary. + +Syme's family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had +once owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at +once into the chauffeur's seat, and with flushed face was wrenching +and tugging at the disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one +handle, and then said quite quietly-- + +"I am afraid it's no go." + +As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his +rushing horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a +smile that thrust out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept +alongside of the stationary car, into which its company had +crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It was the Secretary, +and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of triumph. + +Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no +sound but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. +Then there came quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the +car leapt forward. It plucked the Secretary clean out of his +saddle, as a knife is whipped out of its sheath, trailed him +kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him flung flat upon +the road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car took +the corner of the street with a splendid curve, they could just +see the other anarchists filling the street and raising their +fallen leader. + +"I can't understand why it has grown so dark," said the Professor +at last in a low voice. + +"Going to be a storm, I think," said Dr. Bull. "I say, it's a pity +we haven't got a light on this car, if only to see by." + +"We have," said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he +fished up a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light +inside it. It was obviously an antique, and it would seem as if +its original use had been in some way semi-religious, for there +was a rude moulding of a cross upon one of its sides. + +"Where on earth did you get that?" asked the Professor. + +"I got it where I got the car," answered the Colonel, chuckling, +"from my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the +steering wheel, I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to +Renard, who was standing in his own porch, you will remember. 'I +suppose,' I said, 'there's no time to get a lamp.' He looked up, +blinking amiably at the beautiful arched ceiling of his own front +hall. From this was suspended, by chains of exquisite ironwork, +this lantern, one of the hundred treasures of his treasure house. +By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own ceiling, shattering +the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with his +violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the +car. Was I not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth +knowing?" + +"You were," said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over +the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position +in the contrast between the modern automobile and its strange +ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto they had passed through the quietest +part of the town, meeting at most one or two pedestrians, who could +give them no hint of the peace or the hostility of the place. Now, +however, the windows in the houses began one by one to be lit up, +giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr. Bull turned +to the new detective who had led their flight, and permitted +himself one of his natural and friendly smiles. + +"These lights make one feel more cheerful." + +Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together. + +"There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful," he +said, "and they are those lights of the police station which I can +see beyond the town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes." + +Then all Bull's boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out +of him. + +"Oh, this is all raving nonsense!" he cried. "If you really think +that ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be +madder than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these +fellows, the whole town would fight for us." + +"No," said the other with an immovable simplicity, "the whole town +would fight for them. We shall see." + +While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with +sudden excitement. + +"What is that noise?" he said. + +"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 heathen. 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." + +"Nonsence!" 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. + +"Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face to the three +behind him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to +die." + +His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme's sword +was broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, +flinging him down. In a moment they would have flung themselves +upon the face of the mob and perished, when an interruption came. +The Secretary, ever since Syme's speech, had stood with his hand +to his stricken head as if dazed; now he suddenly pulled off his +black mask. + +The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much +rage as astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority. + +"There is some mistake," he said. "Mr. Syme, I hardly think you +understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law." + +"Of the law?" said Syme, and dropped his stick. + +"Certainly!" said the Secretary. "I am a detective from Scotland +Yard," and he took a small blue card from his pocket. + +"And what do you suppose we are?" asked the Professor, and threw +up his arms. + +"You," said the Secretary stiffly, "are, as I know for a fact, +members of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of +you, I--" + +Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea. + +"There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council," he said. "We were +all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these +nice people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were +the dynamiters. I knew I couldn't be wrong about the mob," he said, +beaming over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the +distance on both sides. "Vulgar people are never mad. I'm vulgar +myself, and I know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to +everybody here." + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT + +NEXT morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for +Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, +having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn't +exist, and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a +magnanimous old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither +party had anything to do with dynamite, he saw them off on the pier +with great geniality. + +The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to +each other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to +wear masks originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as +fellow-conspirators; + +Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through +a civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which +could be explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that +they could not explain. What did it all mean? If they were all +harmless officers, what was Sunday? If he had not seized the world, +what on earth had he been up to? Inspector Ratcliffe was still +gloomy about this. + +"I can't make head or tail of old Sunday's little game any more +than you can," he said. "But whatever else Sunday is, he isn't +a blameless citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?" + +"I grant you," answered Syme, "that I have never been able to +forget it." + +"Well," said the Secretary, "I suppose we can find out soon, for +tomorrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," +he said, with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well acquainted +with my secretarial duties." + +"I suppose you are right," said the Professor reflectively. "I +suppose we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should +feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is." + +"Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?" + +"No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me." + +"Let us have some drinks," said Dr. Bull, after a silence. + +Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly +convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had +always been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the +other four that the whole company could take the same hansom cab +from Victoria; but this was over-ruled, and they went in a +four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box, singing. They finished +their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as to be close +to the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet even +then the adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull, +discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled +out of the hotel at about eleven to see and taste some of the +beauties of London. Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came +back and made quite a clamour in the hall. Syme, who tried at +first to soothe him, was forced at last to listen to his +communication with quite new attention. + +"I tell you I've seen him!" said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis. + +"Whom?" asked Syme quickly. "Not the President?" + +"Not so bad as that," said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, +"not so bad as that. I've got him here." + +"Got whom here?" asked Syme impatiently. + +"Hairy man," said the other lucidly, "man that used to be hairy +man--Gogol. Here he is," and he pulled forward by a reluctant +elbow the identical young man who five days before had marched +out of the Council with thin red hair and a pale face, the first +of all the sham anarchists who had been exposed. + +"Why do you worry with me?" he cried. "You have expelled me as a +spy." + +"We are all spies!" whispered Syme. + +"We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink." + +Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly +towards the hotel in Leicester Square. + +"This is more cheerful," said Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to +ask one man what he means." + +"I think it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it +is six men going to ask one man what they mean." + +They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was +in the opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a +figure that looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent +head, poring over a newspaper. But all his councillors, who had +come to vote him down, crossed that Square as if they were watched +out of heaven by a hundred eyes. + +They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they +should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, +or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at +once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter +course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they +attacked Sunday so rashly. + +"My reason is quite simple," said Syme. "I attack him rashly +because I am afraid of him." + +They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came +out simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the +broad sunlight of Sunday's smile. + +"Delightful!" he said. "So pleased to see you all. What an +exquisite day it is. Is the Czar dead?" + +The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together +for a dignified outburst. + +"No, sir," he said sternly "there has been no massacre. I bring you +news of no such disgusting spectacles." + +"Disgusting spectacles?" repeated the President, with a bright, +inquiring smile. "You mean Dr. Bull's spectacles?" + +The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with +a sort of smooth appeal-- + +"Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really +to call them disgusting before the man himself--" + +Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table. + +"My spectacles are blackguardly," he said, "but I'm not. Look at +my face." + +"I dare say it's the sort of face that grows on one," said the +President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel +with the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will +grow on me some day." + +"We have no time for tomfoolery," said the Secretary, breaking in +savagely. "We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? +What are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and +what we are? Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, +or are you a clever man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you." + +"Candidates," murmured Sunday, "are only required to answer eight +out of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make +out, you want me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what +this table is, and what this Council is, and what this world is +for all I know. Well, I will go so far as to rend the veil of one +mystery. If you want to know what you are, you are a set of +highly well-intentioned young jackasses." + +"And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?" + +"I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an +incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above +them and break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you +are a man of science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find +out the truth about them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those +morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have found +out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the +truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still +a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I +am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like +a wolf--kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the +churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught +yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have +given them a good run for their money, and I will now." + +Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself +like some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. +Yet before he dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal +bar, and thrusting his great chin over the edge of the balcony, +said solemnly-- + +"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the +man in the dark room, who made you all policemen." + +With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below +like a great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards +the corner of the Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang +inside it. The six detectives had been standing thunderstruck and +livid in the light of his last assertion; but when he disappeared +into the cab, Syme's practical senses returned to him, and leaping +over the balcony so recklessly as almost to break his legs, he +called another cab. + +He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the +Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol +scrambled into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who +was pursuing the flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase +towards the north-west, his cabman, evidently under the influence +of more than common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck +speed. But Syme was in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in +his own cab shouting, "Stop thief!" until crowds ran along beside +his cab, and policemen began to stop and ask questions. All this +had its influence upon the President's cabman, who began to look +dubious, and to slow down to a trot. He opened the trap to talk +reasonably to his fare, and in so doing let the long whip droop +over the front of the cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, and +jerked it violently out of the man's hand. Then standing up in +front of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared aloud, +so that they went down the streets like a flying storm. Through +street after street and square after square went whirling this +preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and +the driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs +came after it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting +hounds. Shops and streets shot by like rattling arrows. + +At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the +splashboard where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head +out of the cab, with white hair whistling in the wind, he made a +horrible face at his pursuers, like some colossal urchin. Then +raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a ball of paper in Syme's +face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while instinctively +warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two crumpled +papers. One was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull, +with a very long, and it is to be feared partly ironical, string +of letters after his name. Dr. Bull's address was, at any rate, +considerably longer than his communication, for the communication +consisted entirely of the words:-- + +"What about Martin Tupper now?" + +"What does the old maniac mean?" asked Bull, staring at the words. +"What does yours say, Syme?" + +Syme's message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:-- + +"No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by +the Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, +for the last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, +especially after what uncle said." + +The President's cabman seemed to be regaining some control over +his horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round +into the Edgware Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the +allies a providential stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving +to right or left or stopping, for down the long road was coming +the unmistakable roar announcing the fire-engine, which in a few +seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went +by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, +caught it, slung himself on to it, and was seen as he disappeared +in the noisy distance talking to the astonished fireman with +explanatory gestures. + +"After him!" howled Syme. "He can't go astray now. There's no +mistaking a fire-engine." + +The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped +up their horses and slightly decreased the distance between +themselves and their disappearing prey. The President +acknowledged this proximity by coming to the back of the car, +bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally flinging a +neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When +that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he found it +contained the words:-- + +"Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known. +--A FRIEND." + +The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a +region that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high +railings shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but +somewhat relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, +though whether through another whim or the increasing protest of +his entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, +however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high +railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished +in a darkness of leaves. + +Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and +sprang also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence +and his friends were following, he turned a face on them which +shone quite pale in the shadow. + +"What place can this be?" he asked. "Can it be the old devil's +house? I've heard he has a house in North London." + +"All the better," said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in +a foothold, "we shall find him at home." + +"No, but it isn't that," said Syme, knitting his brows. "I hear +the most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and +blowing their devilish noses!" + +"His dogs barking, of course," said the Secretary. + +"Why not say his black-beetles barking!" said Syme furiously, +"snails barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark +like that?" + +He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long +growling roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the +flesh--a low thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air +all about them. + +"The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs," said Gogol, and +shuddered. + +Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood +listening impatiently. + +"Well, listen to that," he said, "is that a dog--anybody's dog?" + +There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things +protesting and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off +like an echo, what sounded like a long nasal trumpet. + +"Well, his house ought to be hell!" said the Secretary; "and if +it is hell, I'm going in!" and he sprang over the tall railings +almost with one swing. + +The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and +shrubs, and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but +Dr. Bull suddenly struck his hands together. + +"Why, you asses," he cried, "it's the Zoo!" + +As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild +quarry, a keeper in uniform came running along the path with a +man in plain clothes. + +"Has it come this way?" gasped the keeper. + +"Has what?" asked Syme. + +"The elephant!" cried the keeper. "An elephant has gone mad and +run away!" + +"He has run away with an old gentleman," said the other stranger +breathlessly, "a poor old gentleman with white hair!" + +"What sort of old gentleman?" asked Syme, with great curiosity. + +"A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes," said +the keeper eagerly. + +"Well," said Syme, "if he's that particular kind of old gentleman, +if you're quite sure that he's a large and fat old gentleman in +grey clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has +not run away with him. He has run away with the elephant. The +elephant is not made by God that could run away with him if he +did not consent to the elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!" + +There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of +grass, about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and +scampering vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an +awful stride, with his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship's +bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of doom. On the back of +the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday with all +the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious +speed with some sharp object in his hand. + +"Stop him!" screamed the populace. "He'll be out of the gate!" + +"Stop a landslide!" said the keeper. "He is out of the gate!" + +And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced +that the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the +Zoological Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a +new and swift sort of omnibus. + +"Great Lord!" cried Bull, "I never knew an elephant could go so +fast. Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in +sight." + +As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had +vanished, Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in +the cages which they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that +he should have seen them so clearly. He remembered especially +seeing pelicans, with their preposterous, pendant throats. He +wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was +that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He +remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a +small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a sensation, the +vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was always +making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they +would understand him when they had understood the stars. He +wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. + +The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed +the elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long +stretch of the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but +offered them the solid stretch of his unconscious back, which +maddened them, if possible, more than his previous mockeries. Just +before they came to Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw +something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball meaning to +catch it again. But at their rate of racing it fell far behind, +just by the cab containing Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or +for some impulse unexplainable, he stopped his cab so as to pick it +up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite a bulky parcel. On +examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of thirty-three +pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other. When the +last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip of +paper, on which was written:-- + +"The word, I fancy, should be 'pink'." + +The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his +hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed +efforts. + +Through street after street, through district after district, went +the prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, +and driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this +insane publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to +be regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement +of a circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened +beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he +thought that he was still in Paddington. The animal's pace was even +more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South +Kensington, and he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line +where the enormous Wheel of Earl's Court stood up in the sky. The +wheel grew larger and larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel +of stars. + +The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several +corners, and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl's Court +Exhibition they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them +was an enormous crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, +heaving and shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the +President had disappeared. + +"Where has he gone to?" asked Syme, slipping to the ground. + +"Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!" said an official in a +dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: "Funny gentleman, +sir. Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this." + +He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: "To +the Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council." + +The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:-- + + "When the herring runs a mile, + Let the Secretary smile; + When the herring tries to fly, + Let the Secretary die. + Rustic Proverb." + +"Why the eternal crikey," began the Secretary, "did you let the +man in? Do people commonly come to you Exhibition riding on mad +elephants? Do--" + +"Look!" shouted Syme suddenly. "Look over there!" + +"Look at what?" asked the Secretary savagely. + +"Look at the captive balloon!" said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. + +"Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?" demanded the +Secretary. "What is there queer about a captive balloon?" + +"Nothing," said Syme, "except that it isn't captive!" + +They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled +above the Exhibition on a string, like a child's balloon. A second +afterwards the string came in two just under the car, and the +balloon, broken loose, floated away with the freedom of a soap +bubble. + +"Ten thousand devils!" shrieked the Secretary. "He's got into it!" +and he shook his fists at the sky. + +The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and +they could see the great white head of the President peering over +the side and looking benevolently down on them. + +"God bless my soul!" said the Professor with the elderly manner +that he could never disconnect from his bleached beard and +parchment face. "God bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that +something fell on the top of my hat!" + +He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of +twisted paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed +with a true lover's knot and, the words:-- + +"Your beauty has not left me indifferent.--From LITTLE SNOWDROP." + +There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard-- + +"I'm not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. +Let's follow it!" + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS + +ACROSS green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled +six draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The +optimist of the party had at first proposed that they should +follow the balloon across South England in hansom-cabs. But he +was ultimately convinced of the persistent refusal of the balloon +to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the +cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless though +exasperated travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed +through ploughed fields till each was turned into a figure too +outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. Those green hills of +Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the admirable light +grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. His silk +hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his coat-tails +were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of +England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his +yellow beard forward with a silent and furious determination, and +his eyes were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in +the full flush of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud. + +"After all," he said, "it is very beautiful!" + +"It is singularly and strangely beautiful!" said the Professor. "I +wish the beastly gas-bag would burst!" + +"No," said Dr. Bull, "I hope it won't. It might hurt the old boy." + +"Hurt him!" said the vindictive Professor, "hurt him! Not as much +as I'd hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!" + +"I don't want him hurt, somehow," said Dr. Bull. + +"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale +about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was +anybody." + +"I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it +isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst +because--" + +"Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?" + +"Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull +desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his +being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make +everything nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a +sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he +was a great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy +was? It didn't prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it +clear if I say that I liked him because he was so fat?" + +"You will not," said the Secretary. + +"I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so +light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, +but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. +Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown +in levity. It was like the old speculations--what would happen if +an elephant could leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?" + +"Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the +sky like a grasshopper." + +"And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old +Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing +like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were +bursting with some good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a +spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day +proves they are good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, +but that part they laugh at is literal truth, 'Why leap ye, ye high +hills?' The hills do leap--at least, they try to. . . . Why do I +like Sunday? . . . how can I tell you? . . . because he's such a +Bounder." + +There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, +strained voice-- + +"You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are +better than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a +trifle morbid from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and +who chose us all, chose me because I had all the crazy look of a +conspirator--because my smile went crooked, and my eyes were +gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have been something in +me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men. For when +I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but +something both gross and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him +smoking in a twilight room, a room with brown blind down, +infinitely more depressing than the genial darkness in which our +master lives. He sat there on a bench, a huge heap of a man, dark +and out of shape. He listened to all my words without speaking or +even stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals, and asked +my most eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing +began to shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. +It shook like a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of +everything I had ever read about the base bodies that are the +origin of life--the deep sea lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like +the final form of matter, the most shapeless and the most shameful. +I could only tell myself, from its shudderings, that it was +something at least that such a monster could be miserable. And +then it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was shaking with +a lonely laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me to +forgive him that? It is no small thing to be laughed at by +something at once lower and stronger than oneself." + +"Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly," cut in the clear +voice of Inspector Ratcliffe. "President Sunday is a terrible +fellow for one's intellect, but he is not such a Barnum's freak +physically as you make out. He received me in an ordinary office, +in a grey check coat, in broad daylight. He talked to me in an +ordinary way. But I'll tell you what is a trifle creepy about +Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat, everything seems +in order; but he's absent-minded. Sometimes his great bright eyes +go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now +absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think +of a wicked man as vigilant. We can't think of a wicked man who is +honestly and sincerely dreamy, because we daren't think of a wicked +man alone with himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured +man. It means a man who, if he happens to see you, will apologise. +But how will you bear an absentminded man who, if he happens to see +you, will kill you? That is what tries the nerves, abstraction +combined with cruelty. Men have felt it sometimes when they went +through wild forests, and felt that the animals there were at once +innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How would you +like to pass ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded +tiger?" + +"And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?" asked Syme. + +"I don't think of Sunday on principle," said Gogol simply, "any +more than I stare at the sun at noonday." + +"Well, that is a point of view," said Syme thoughtfully. "What do +you say, Professor?" + +The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and +he did not answer at all. + +"Wake up, Professor!" said Syme genially. "Tell us what you think +of Sunday." + +The Professor spoke at last very slowly. + +"I think something," he said, "that I cannot say clearly. Or, +rather, I think something that I cannot even think clearly. But +it is something like this. My early life, as you know, was a bit +too large and loose. + +"Well, when I saw Sunday's face I thought it was too large-- +everybody does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face +was so big, that one couldn't focus it or make it a face at all. +The eye was so far away from the nose, that it wasn't an eye. +The mouth was so much by itself, that one had to think of it by +itself. The whole thing is too hard to explain." + +He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went +on-- + +"But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a +lamp and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete +and unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall +know him again. Yet when I walked a little farther I found that +there was no face, that the window was ten yards away, the lamp ten +hundred yards, the cloud beyond the world. Well, Sunday's face +escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as such chance pictures +run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt whether there +are any faces. I don't know whether your face, Bull, is a face or a +combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly +glasses is quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts +of a materialist are not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the +last and the worst doubts, the doubts of a spiritualist. I am a +Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. My +poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you really have a face. I +have not faith enough to believe in matter." + +Syme's eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened +in the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent +world. + +"Have you noticed an odd thing," he said, "about all your +descriptions? Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet +each man of you can only find one thing to compare him to--the +universe itself. Bull finds him like the earth in spring, Gogol +like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is reminded of the shapeless +protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness of virgin +forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This +is queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd +notion about the President, and I also find that I think of Sunday +as I think of the whole world." + +"Get on a little faster, Syme," said Bull; "never mind the +balloon." + +"When I first saw Sunday," said Syme slowly, "I only saw his back; +and when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. +His neck and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. +His head had a stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an +ox. In fact, I had at once the revolting fancy that this was not +a man at all, but a beast dressed up in men's clothes." + +"Get on," said Dr. Bull. + +"And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the +street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and +coming round the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. +His face frightened me, as it did everyone; but not because it was +brutal, not because it was evil. On the contrary, it frightened me +because it was so beautiful, because it was so good." + +"Syme," exclaimed the Secretary, "are you ill?" + +"It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly +after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth +honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, +grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him +from behind I was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in +front I knew he was a god." + +"Pan," said the Professor dreamily, "was a god and an animal." + +"Then, and again and always," went on Syme like a man talking to +himself, "that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is +also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am +sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an +instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we +cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel +certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to a kind +of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just +behind him all the way." + +"Had you time for thinking then?" asked Ratcliffe. + +"Time," replied Syme, "for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly +possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head +really was his face--an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I +fancied that the figure running in front of me was really a figure +running backwards, and dancing as he ran." + +"Horrible!" said Dr. Bull, and shuddered. + +"Horrible is not the word," said Syme. "It was exactly the worst +instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his +head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that +he was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children." + +"It is a long game," said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken +boots. + +"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I +tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only +known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it +looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is +not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that +everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get +round in front--" + +"Look!" cried out Bull clamorously, "the balloon is coming down!" + +There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes +off it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the +sky, right itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a +setting sun. + +The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary +travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. + +"He is dead!" he cried. "And now I know he was my friend--my friend +in the dark!" + +"Dead!" snorted the Secretary. "You will not find him dead easily. +If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as +a colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun." + +"Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did +Pan." + +"Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is +everything." + +"So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything." + +"Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also +means Panic." + +Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations. + +"It fell over there," he said shortly. "Let us follow it!" + +Then he added with an indescribable gesture-- + +"Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like +one of his larks." + +He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags +and ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a +more footsore and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all +six men realised that they were not alone in the little field. + +Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them, +leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a +fine but old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was +that shade between blue, violet and grey which can be seen in +certain shadows of the woodland. His hair was whitish grey, and +at the first glance, taken along with his knee-breeches, looked +as if it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but for the +silver frost upon his head, he might have been one to the shadows +of the wood. + +"Gentlemen," he said, "my master has a carriage waiting for you in +the road just by." + +"Who is your master?" asked Syme, standing quite still. + +"I was told you knew his name," said the man respectfully. + +There was a silence, and then the Secretary said-- + +"Where is this carriage?" + +"It has been waiting only a few moments," said the stranger. "My +master has only just come home." + +Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which +he found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed +ordinary trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland. + +He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could +discover nothing except that the man's coat was the exact colour of +the purple shadows, and that the man's face was the exact colour of +the red and brown and golden sky. + +"Show us the place," Syme said briefly, and without a word the man +in the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the +hedge, which let in suddenly the light of a white road. + +As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the +white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, +such a row of carriages as might close the approach to some house +in Park Lane. Along the side of these carriages stood a rank of +splendid servants, all dressed in the grey-blue uniform, and all +having a certain quality of stateliness and freedom which would not +commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman, but rather to the +officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no less than +six carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable +band. All the attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as +each man crawled into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with +a sudden blaze of steel. + +"What can it all mean?" asked Bull of Syme as they separated. "Is +this another joke of Sunday's?" + +"I don't know," said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions +of his carriage; "but if it is, it's one of the jokes you talk +about. It's a good-natured one." + +The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one +had carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure +of comfort. They had all become inured to things going roughly; but +things suddenly going smoothly swamped them. They could not even +feebly imagine what the carriages were; it was enough for them to +know that they were carriages, and carriages with cushions. They +could not conceive who the old man was who had led them; but it was +quite enough that he had certainly led them to the carriages. + +Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter +abandonment. It was typical of him that while he had carried his +bearded chin forward fiercely so long as anything could be done, +when the whole business was taken out of his hands he fell back +on the cushions in a frank collapse. + +Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads +the carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone +gates of what might have been a park, that they began gradually to +climb a hill which, while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more +orderly than a forest. Then there began to grow upon him, as upon a +man slowly waking from a healthy sleep, a pleasure in everything. +He felt that the hedges were what hedges should be, living walls; +that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but all the more +alive. He saw high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought how +happy boys would be climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn +of the path, and he saw suddenly and quietly, like a long, low, +sunset cloud, a long, low house, mellow in the mild light of +sunset. All the six friends compared notes afterwards and +quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some unaccountable way the +place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either this elm-top +or that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or that +shape of a window; but each man of them declared that he could +remember this place before he could remember his mother. + +When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous +gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star +on the grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This +impressive person said to the bewildered Syme-- + +"Refreshments are provided for you in your room." + +Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, +went up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He +entered a splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed +specially for him. He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary +instinct of his class, to pull his tie straight or to smooth his +hair; and there he saw the frightful figure that he was--blood +running down his face from where the bough had struck him, his hair +standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his clothes torn into +long, wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang up, simply +as the question of how he had got there, and how he was to get out +again. Exactly at the same moment a man in blue, who had been +appointed as his valet, said very solemnly-- + +"I have put out your clothes, sir." + +"Clothes!" said Syme sardonically. "I have no clothes except +these," and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in +fascinating festoons, and made a movement as if to twirl like +a ballet girl. + +"My master asks me to say," said the attendant, "that there is a +fancy dress ball tonight, and that he desires you to put on the +costume that I have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle +of Burgundy and some cold pheasant, which he hopes you will not +refuse, as it is some hours before supper." + +"Cold pheasant is a good thing," said Syme reflectively, "and +Burgundy is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either +of them so much as I want to know what the devil all this means, +and what sort of costume you have got laid out for me. Where is +it?" + +The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue +drapery, rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which +was emblazoned a large golden sun, and which was splashed here +and there with flaming stars and crescents. + +"You're to be dressed as Thursday, sir," said the valet somewhat +affably. + +"Dressed as Thursday!" said Syme in meditation. "It doesn't sound +a warm costume." + +"Oh, yes, sir," said the other eagerly, "the Thursday costume is +quite warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin." + +"Well, I don't understand anything," said Syme, sighing. "I have +been used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable +adventures knock me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I +should be particularly like Thursday in a green frock spotted +all over with the sun and moon. Those orbs, I think, shine on +other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, I remember." + +"Beg pardon, sir," said the valet, "Bible also provided for you," +and with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage +in the first chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was +that in which the fourth day of the week is associated with the +creation of the sun and moon. Here, however, they reckoned from +a Christian Sunday. + +"This is getting wilder and wilder," said Syme, as he sat down +in a chair. "Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and +Burgundy, and green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide +everything?" + +"Yes, sir, everything," said the attendant gravely. "Shall I help +you on with your costume?" + +"Oh, hitch the bally thing on!" said Syme impatiently. + +But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious +freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold +garment fell about him; and when he found that he had to wear a +sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he +flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword +stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. +For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ACCUSER + +AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at +the top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so +noble. He was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the +centre of which fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a +single shaft of light. The whole looked like some very severe +ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his +memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of +creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The +vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme +felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black +expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his +inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily +make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of +them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the +ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes +were still stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the +Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question. + +If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that +he, too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. +For if the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the +original and formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks +always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into +sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the +poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the +creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. + +As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook +Ratcliffe, who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the +pattern upon whose garment was a green tangle of trees. For he +stood for that third day on which the earth and green things were +made, and his square, sensible face, with its not unfriendly +cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it. + +They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very +large old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the +broken light of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in +motley dress. Syme seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated +in some crazy costume. There was a man dressed as a windmill with +enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a man dressed as a +balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread of +their farcical adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, +one dancer dressed like an enormous hornbill, with a beak twice +as big as himself--the queer bird which had fixed itself on his +fancy like a living question while he was rushing down the long +road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such +objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple +tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable +tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field +and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme +was middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those +particular objects--a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill-- +without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from that revel +of masquerade. + +On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green +bank, like the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens. + +Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the +thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their +seats; the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, +had his simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the +division of the waters, a dress that separated upon his forehead +and fell to his feet, grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The +Professor, whose day was that on which the birds and fishes--the +ruder forms of life--were created, had a dress of dim purple, over +which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical birds, +the union in him of unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the +last day of Creation, wore a coat covered with heraldic animals in +red and gold, and on his crest a man rampant. He lay back in his +chair with a broad smile, the picture of an optimist in his +element. + +One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their +strange seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose +from the carnival, such as that with which crowds receive kings. +Cups were clashed and torches shaken, and feathered hats flung in +the air. The men for whom these thrones were reserved were men +crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the central chair was +empty. + +Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. +The Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, +compressing his lips-- + +"We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field." + +Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces in +front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had +opened behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along +the front like a shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was +draped plainly, in a pure and terrible white, and his hair was like +a silver flame on his forehead. + +For a long time--it seemed for hours--that huge masquerade of +mankind swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and +exultant music. Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; +it might be a fairy dancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl +dancing with the moon; but in each case it was, somehow, as +absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love +story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. +Couples strolled away into the garden-walks, or began to drift +towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge +pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale +or wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the +roof of the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, +which lit up the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of +firelight over the face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it +seemed to fill with warmth even the emptiness of upper night. +Yet this also, after a time, was allowed to grow fainter; the +dim groups gathered more and more round the great cauldrons, or +passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passages of that +ancient house. Soon there were only some ten loiterers in the +garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker ran +into the house whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and +the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were +left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. +Not one of them had spoken a word. + +They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of +insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but +so dreamily that he might have been continuing a conversation +rather than beginning one. + +"We will eat and drink later," he said. "Let us remain together a +little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so +long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which +you were always heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you +always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is +nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to +war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, +and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural +virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it +again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, +all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I +denied it myself." + +Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, +and the incomprehensible went on. + +"But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though +the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of +you. I knew how near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, +crossed swords with King Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me +in the hour without hope." + +There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the +black-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards +Sunday, and said in a harsh voice-- + +"Who and what are you?" + +"I am the Sabbath," said the other without moving. "I am the peace +of God." + +The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his +hand. + +"I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I +cannot forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do +they call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not +reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also +Sunday, an offense to the sunlight? If you were from the first our +father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy? We +wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our souls--and you +are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, though it +destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace." + +Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of +stone upon Syme as if asking a question. + +"No," said Syme, "I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful +to you, not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a +fine scamper and free fight. But I should like to know. My soul +and heart are as happy and quiet here as this old garden, but my +reason is still crying out. I should like to know." + +Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said-- + +"It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and +fought yourself." + +Bull said-- + +"I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to +sleep." + +"I am not happy," said the Professor with his head in his hands, +"because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near +to hell." + +And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child-- + +"I wish I knew why I was hurt so much." + +Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon +his hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said-- + +"I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes +another to complain, and we will hear him also." + +The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like +a bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery +band was outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad +figure. He seemed to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such +as that which was worn by the servants of the house, only that it +was not blue, but of this absolute sable. He had, like the +servants, a kind of sword by his side. It was only when he had come +quite close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his face to +look at them, that Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that +the face was the broad, almost ape-like face of his old friend +Gregory, with its rank red hair and its insulting smile. + +"Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is +the real anarchist!" + +"Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am +the real anarchist." + +"'Now there was a day,'" murmured Bull, who seemed really to have +fallen asleep, "'when the sons of God came to present themselves +before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.'" + +"You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a +destroyer. I would destroy the world if I could." + +A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and +he spoke brokenly and without sequence. + +"Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red +hair like your sister." + +"My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world," said +Gregory. "I thought I hated everything more than common men can +hate anything; but I find that I do not hate everything so much +as I hate you!" + +"I never hated you," said Syme very sadly. + +Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke. + +"You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know +what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people +in power! You are the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue +and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But +is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only +because you have never been broken? We in revolt talk all kind of +nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of the +Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is +that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is +that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not +curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being +safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down +from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had +no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule +all mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for +one hour a real agony such as I--" + +Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot. + +"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does +each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does +each small thing in the world have to fight against the world +itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does +a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason +that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So +that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of +the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave +and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may +be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and +torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No +agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, +'We also have suffered.' + +"It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken +upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from +these thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of +unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man +entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; +we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great +guards of Law whom he has accused. At least--" + +He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of +Sunday, which wore a strange smile. + +"Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?" + +As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than +the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. +It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything +went black. Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his +brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text +that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink +of?" + +* * * + +When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find +themselves in some place in which they might have fallen asleep; +they yawn in a chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a +field. Syme's experience was something much more psychologically +strange if there was indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, +about the things he had gone through. For while he could always +remember afterwards that he had swooned before the face of Sunday, +he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could only +remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had +been walking along a country lane with an easy and conversational +companion. That companion had been a part of his recent drama; it +was the red-haired poet Gregory. They were walking like old +friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about some +triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his +body and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be +superior to everything that he said or did. He felt he was in +possession of some impossible good news, which made every other +thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality. + +Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and +timid; as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first +attempt at rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could +not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some +hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple surprise when he saw rising all +round him on both sides of the road the red, irregular buildings of +Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so near London. He +walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds +hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There +he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, +cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity +of a girl. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Man Who Was Thursday, by Chesterton + diff --git a/old/tmwht10.zip b/old/tmwht10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..412e5c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmwht10.zip diff --git a/old/tmwht10.zip~ b/old/tmwht10.zip~ Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..412e5c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmwht10.zip~ |
