Читать книгу Two in a Train and Other Stories - Warwick Deeping - Страница 22

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Mrs. Hector Hyde turned her plane to the left about a mile from the wooded crest of the North Downs. They were somewhere over Farley Heath when she spoke to Professor Cragg.

“Do you see those lights?”

Professor Cragg saw them, and realized their significance.

“The only lights in Southern England. If someone is alive there, it means——”

“The enemy.”

“That’s the inference. And we are still alive. Those lights are windows on the downs.”

“I think so. I am going to land near Newlands Corner.”

She brought the plane down perfectly on the broad and moonlit stretch of turf. They climbed out and stood side by side in that world of the dead. There was the most profound silence. Even here the faint odour of death and decay permeated the air. Almost, they spoke in whispers.

“We had better not waste any time.”

She shivered slightly.

“No, no—psychoanalysis. Those lights.”

Professor Cragg laid a hand on his bag of bombs.

“Yes—that’s our—objective. We are humanity’s forlorn hope. One can assume that life and electric light advertise—the enemy. If my theory holds—the devil has fallen asleep and left the lights burning.”

They followed the downland track under the full moon, nor had they gone thirty yards before they came upon the first dead, a man and a girl with a picnic basket between them. Professor Cragg turned his electric torch on the motionless figures. He said nothing, but quickly switched off the beam of light.

Mrs. Hyde’s voice sounded stifled. She had seen the faces of those dead.

“Let’s get on.”

He understood her. She was compelling herself to control instinctive terror. They passed on, having to step aside or diverge to avoid those dark objects on the grass. The moonlight made the scene more ghastly and macabre, those derelict cars, the tea-tables in the tea-gardens, the odour of death.

Mrs. Hyde spoke.

“And to think I have danced over there.”

“Where?”

“The Newlands Corner Hotel. Such a pleasant place.”

His voice came like a little cold wind.

“Do you know how to use those bombs?”

“Yes. The French showed me.”

“You won’t hesitate?”

“Is it likely?”

They crossed the main road to Shere, and followed the downs.

There was silence between them. The tension was so acute that time became relative. They might have been walking for an hour or for ten seconds when they emerged from the shadow of a grove of beech trees and on a bluff of the chalk lulls saw those lights shining. Mrs. Hyde paused, her hand on her companion’s arm.

“Windows.”

Professor Cragg looked at the lights.

“I’ll go on—alone.”

But she would not hear of it.

“No. I don’t think I could bear to be left alone here.”

“I—understand. We had better not speak.”

She nodded.

The track forked in a hollow space below the beech wood, one path ascending, the other descending. Professor Cragg chose the upper path, but on the edge of the plateau a stout fence of netting and barbed wire closed the path. It was Professor Pye’s boundary fence erected to keep out hikers and picnic parties, and since Professor Cragg had no wire-cutters and the five-foot fence was unclimbable, they had to retrace their steps and explore the lower path. It brought them out into Professor Pye’s private lane, whose rough and flinty surface had been loosened by a spell of dry weather. In fact, Professor Cragg trod on a loose flint, and the stone went rattling down the slope. He stood very still for a moment, inwardly cursing. If the house with the lights could be assumed to be the house of the ogre, then it was more than probable that its ingenious owner had installed some apparatus for the registration and amplifying of sound.

He spoke in a whisper.

“That damned flint may have betrayed us.”

But his companion was in no mood for loitering. Hesitation and delay might rupture an overstrained self-control. Professor Cragg saw her face in the moonlight. She pointed upwards, like some pale figure of Fate urging him on. The lane had a narrow grass verge on either side of it, and taking to the grass they pressed up and on. The lane ended in a cindered space outside the gates of the courtyard, and the white gates were closed.

Mrs. Hyde and Professor Cragg stood and looked at each other for a moment. He made a gesture with his right hand. He was telling her to sit down. She shook her head and remained standing, and Professor Cragg, realizing that her courage had to be humoured, sat down on the grass and removed his boots. He left the pistol and the field-glasses at her feet. He advanced on his socked feet to the white gates. Very cautiously he tried the latch. The gates were not locked, and Mrs. Hyde saw him swing one leaf back and disappear.

There was not a sound. In less than a minute she saw him reappear carrying what appeared to be an empty deal box. He moved round the house and along a terrace of grass and weeds under the front windows. She changed her position so as to be able to watch his movements. She saw him place the box under one of the laboratory windows. He unhitched his bag of bombs and lowered it to the ground, and climbing on to the box raised his head with infinite and deliberate caution.

He was looking in at one of the laboratory windows. They were casements, opening outwards, and Professor Cragg raised the casement stay from its iron leg, swung the window back, and put his hands on the sill. She held her breath. She saw the long, gawky figure raise itself and slip through the window. He disappeared.

Silence.

Professor Cragg was prowling like a cat round the laboratory, examining its contents. He came to the laboratory door; it stood ajar. Inch by inch he pulled it open until he could slip through into the corridor. He had pushed up the button of his torch before entering the laboratory, and with the electric torch in his left hand he crept along the corridor. He came to another door which stood ajar. He listened.

A sound of life, a most unmistakable sound, the heavy breathing of someone asleep! Professor Cragg put his hand to that door; so gradual was his pressure that the door hardly seemed to move. Very cautiously he shone his light into the room. The ray rested for a moment on a figure lying on a bed.

Professor Cragg drew back. He stood in the corridor for a moment listening to the sleeper’s heavy breathing. There was no break in the rhythm, and Professor Cragg crept step by step back into the laboratory. The bedroom was next to the laboratory, and he had noticed that the window was open and the blind down. He slipped out through the laboratory window, and shifted his box and his bag of bombs along the house. His movements were swift and easy.

He took a bomb from the bag, stood on the box, pushed the blind back with his lighted torch, and gave one glance into the room to make sure. He dropped the torch on the grass, pulled the bomb pin, and lobbing the bomb into the room, crouched down behind the wall. There was a moment’s silence, and then—the crash of the explosion. Fragments of broken window glass flew out and fell upon Professor Cragg’s head and shoulders.

He bent down and picked up two more bombs, and hurled them one after the other into the room.

A profound silence seemed to surge back like water that had been troubled by an explosion. Mrs. Hyde saw Professor Cragg standing on the box and shining his torch into that room. He gave a leap from the box to clear the broken glass, and came across the grass towards her. His face was very pale, and a stream of blood showed on his forehead.

He spoke.

“There was life—in there. I’ve effaced it. One had to be ruthless.”

She nodded.

He went for his shoes, sat down, put them on, and rejoined her.

“We’ll wait five minutes. He may have an understudy. Then—I’ll explore.”

They waited, motionless, voiceless. Not a sound came from the white house, and with a glance at his companion, Professor Cragg went forward to explore.

“Better stay there. One has to remember—that there may be other devilments—live wires, traps.”

She watched him climb in through the same window. The minutes went by in silence, and then she saw a flash of light up above, and heard his voice.

“Eureka!”

She saw him head and shoulders on the tower silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

“There’s a damned contraption up here—rather the sort of thing I expected to find. I daren’t touch it. It is better that nobody should touch it. I’m coming down.”

He rejoined her on the moonlit hill-side, and his face was grim.

“Genius gone mad. In one’s imaginative moments one has postulated the case of some anti-social intelligence making war on humanity. My God, but what a war! We little fellows who dabble in mysteries—will have to be watched—in the future.”

She looked up at the tower.

“So—your theory was sound.”

“Yes, even a super-scientist is human. He had to sleep. Sleep saved us. Well, let’s spread the news and prepare the funeral.”

“Funeral?”

“Yes, of Professor Pye and his infernal creation.”

They made their way along the moonlit hill-side to Newlands Corner. The silence was still profound, but it had lost its ghastly menace. They talked, and the sound of their voices seemed to fill the silence with a vibration of life reborn. The dead were there, but their destroyer was dead with them. The moonlight seemed to play more mysterious in the branches of the old yews and beeches.

Standing beside the motionless plane, Professor Cragg pulled out his watch.

“Another hour—and the dawn will be here. I should like to fly over that place.”

She nodded.

And then he glanced at the spread wings of her machine.

“I rather think that this plane of yours ought to be preserved—say—in St. Paul’s Cathedral, or a bronze model of it set up on these downs.”

She smiled faintly.

“I think I’d rather have some sandwiches and hot coffee. They are in the cockpit. Of course—I never knew—whether—we should need them. I’ll fetch the Thermos.”