Читать книгу Two in a Train and Other Stories - Warwick Deeping - Страница 13

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But the alarm was being sounded. Professor Pye had silenced everything within a radius of fifteen miles, but into that reservation other humans were beginning to penetrate. Waterloo Station was all crowds and chaos. Telephone operators, tired of calling, “Hallo, Guildford,” and finding themselves repulsed by a most strange silence in all that part of Surrey, left their instruments and became part of a London that stood in the streets and listened to monstrous rumours. The bus depots were disorganized. Such and such a bus had never returned. Scared motorists who had passed through that zone of death, pulled up when they rediscovered people who were living, and with white faces spread the incredible news.

“Half Surrey’s dead.”

“Miles of derelict cars and buses.”

“At Addlestone a train had stopped at the level crossing. Full of dead people. Signalman dead in his box. We couldn’t get through that way.”

The thing seemed too ghastly and immense to be true.

But already police cars and pressmen and adventurous motorists, and agonized city men were penetrating into that circle of death. The Prime Minister had called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet at No. 10, Downing Street. Scotland Yard was at work. The Press rushed out alarmist editions. Almost, they were fought for by the crowds in the streets. Press agencies were telephoning from all over the world.

“What Has Happened in Surrey?”

“Is it an Attack from Mars?”

Police cars, returning from the dead area, had to force their way through scared and eager crowds. Rumour became actuality, and as the news spread a shocked and bewildered silence seemed to spread over London. People were inarticulate. The thing was too vast, too terrible, too astounding. It was said that the P.M. himself had hurried down into Surrey. Aldershot had been wiped out as well as Guildford and Godalming. Woking, Byfleet and the districts along the river were full of dead people. The Guards were being paraded. The whole of the available police were being mobilized.

People rushed to their wireless sets. What had the B.B.C. to say?

The little voice of the announcer was official.

“The Prime Minister appeals to everyone to remain calm. He asks you to mistrust all wild rumours, and to avoid panic. All the possible causes of this unprecedented and terrible tragedy are being explored.”

Night.

Professor Pye had been sitting at his wireless set. It had an extensive range and he could listen in to London, Paris, Berlin, Milan. He picked up fragments of Continental agitation. Paris was commenting upon the incredible cataclysm in England. Had there been an escape of some strange subterranean gas through a crack in the earth’s crust? No seismic shock had been recorded. Milan was speculating as to cosmic dust. Or had the lethal atmosphere of some passing comet brushed across a portion of Great Britain? Eminent scientists were being asked to give their views upon a catastrophe that was of startling significance to the whole world.

Professor Pye went up to his tower. He looked out over Surrey. He heard the lowing of those abandoned and unmilked cows in the field below. He heard the sound of a car in the valley, and saw its headlights clearing the darkness. That ingenious and irrepressible insect man was buzzing back into the death zone. The car stopped in the valley. And then Professor Pye heard the drone of an aeroplane overhead.

His madness became cunning. He had left the lights in the laboratory, and he hurried downstairs and switched them off. If he showed a light—especially a stationary light—his enemies might infer that someone was alive. Life itself would inspire curiosity—suspicion. He had other brains pitted against his.

He returned to the tower. He had hurried up the staircase. He was agitated. That aeroplane was droning overhead, and its sound was angry and menacing. He would have to deal with aeroplanes. Just before dusk he had taken his bearings and left the atomic gun trained upon Brighton. Yes, he would try more current. It was a risk, but he would have to take that risk. He stood in the darkness behind the tube and released a larger volume of On-force.

The gun had stood the strain.

But just how far would its lethal effect carry? Supposing that the range was limited by the size of the apparatus? What then? Yes, he would have to experiment and discover how far this power extended. By listening in he would be able to define the dead zone from the living. If Paris remained vocal he would have discovered the limitations of his gun. What then? To maintain about him a zone of death, to repulse all penetration, until he had built a more powerful apparatus.

Ruthlessness, a kind of divine ruthlessness, was inevitable.

Meanwhile, these explorers, these angry human insects in cars and aeroplanes were beginning to buzz about him. They would have to be dealt with—and that instantly. He must make his desert so deadly that no human creature would dare to venture into it. It was necessary for him to have leisure, breathing space, security. He had food and water, electricity, oil.

Inexorably, but with a slight and significant tremor of the hands he slewed the gun this way and that. There had been voices, in the valley, but suddenly they were stilled, though the cars’ headlights continued to blaze. Crouching, he pointed the gun skywards towards the sound of the cruising plane. The drone did not cease, but it seemed to slip and to descend. There was a sound of a crash in the valley, and presently a knot of flame sprang up.