Читать книгу Two in a Train and Other Stories - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

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But it was not merely a question of dead cows.

The beasts in the near field had not been touched, and Professor Pye, reflecting upon that fact, realized that for some unknown reason there was a non-lethal zone surrounding his gun. Queer, that! The area of the dispersion of the On-force would have to be studied and tabulated.

What was its range?

His gaze travelled beyond the farther field, and then it was that Professor Pye realized that something unusual was happening down there in the valley. The projected line of force had traversed the strip of high road that was visible from the tower, and in the roadway, or rather in the hedges, the professor could distinguish what appeared to be the wreckage of motor-cars. One of them was alight and burning brightly.

He raised his glasses and crouched.

Other cars were piling up in the road to left and right of the wreckage. Little figures were active. A man could be seen squirting the burning car with a fire extinguisher. Another man joined him.

And then Professor Pye understood, and drew swift and stark conclusions. The On-force had caught those two cars, killed the drivers, and the machines had run off the road and crashed! For a moment his face showed bleak and sharp, lips retracted, nostrils pinched. He crouched there. He had killed more than a few cows. And what—exactly—had he killed? How far had the force travelled? Had it sped for miles and left a death track behind it?

If ever a man was taken to a high place by the Satan that is self and tempted, Professor Pye was that man. He crouched between compassion and the consciousness of unrestrained and intoxicating power. He was tempted perhaps as few men of science have been tempted. He could bless or he could curse. But whereas most men of science are also social men, Professor Pye was not a social creature. He was one of the world’s paranoiacs, a man who had cherished a sense of his own infinite significance, and the conviction that the world had persecuted him and denied him greatness. His was a case in which a malignantly sane intelligence was socially insane. He was a little, venomous Jehovah looking down upon the world of men and finding it vile and hateful.

He stood up. He extended his arms like some prophet cursing his generation. Almost his face was maniacal. He slavered into his beard.

“You legion of swine. Mine—is the power. It shall not spare you.”