Читать книгу Two in a Train and Other Stories - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

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It happened on an afternoon in June. Hands had carried an ancient basket chair into his piece of garden, and was proposing to enjoy a pipe and a little relaxation. His dog lay at his feet and blinked up at him through the sunlight. It was a warm and gentle summer day, but for Hands it had been a day of toil and trial.

A lorry full of stores had arrived from Garrod’s. The professor purchased everything in bulk in London, and Hands had had to deal with those stores and pack them away in the store-room.

The oil-tanker had laboured up the lane to recharge the storage tank. Also, it happened to be charging day, and the oil engine had behaved temperamentally. So, in fact, had the professor. When Hands had knocked at the door of the laboratory and attempted to inform his master that the stores had arrived and been checked and put away, the professor, forgetting Hand’s deafness, had screamed at him:

“Get out. Don’t interrupt me.”

Not hearing the order, Hands had continued to knock at the locked door.

“I’ve had trouble with the engine, sir.”

And suddenly the door had flown open, and Professor Pye, red lidded, wild as to the head, and in nothing but shirt and grey flannel trousers, had raged at him.

“Get out, you fool. Don’t come worrying here. I’m busy.”

The meek Hands, watching his master’s mouth, had repeated his news about the engine.

“Accumulator’s low, sir.”

“What!”

“I dare say I’ll get it going soon.”

The professor had gibbered at him.

“You’d better. Most damnably important. Telephone to Guildford for a mechanic.”

“Oh—I’ll get it right, sir.”

“You had better.”

And Professor Pye had slammed the door and locked it.

Hands, sucking his pipe, felt pleasantly sleepy. After all, some gentlemen were funny, just as colonels and sergeant-majors had been funny in the army, but this life suited Hands. Professor Pye might be a little grey bit of wire and wisdom, with a tufted chin and red-lidded eyes, an irritable gentleman, but after all he was a great man. He paid Hands generously. There were days when the professor was as smooth as silk. The dog was asleep with his head resting against his master’s right foot, and Hands himself was on the brink of dozing.

Then, something startled both man and dog. Hands straightened in his chair; the dog, up and quivering, emitted three sharp barks, and stood whimpering. There had been no sound, but both dog and man had felt a curious vibration like an earth tremor. Hands could have sworn that his chair had moved under him.

He stood up, holding in his right hand a pipe that had gone out. He looked at the quivering dog.

“What was it, Jumbo?”

Jumbo, tail down, whimpered and looked up obliquely at his master.

“I don’t know,” he was saying; “but whatever it was—I didn’t like it.”

Neither did Hands. He put his pipe away in his pocket. He stared at the white wall behind him. He was a man whose mind worked slowly.

“Anything wrong in there?”

He remembered reading somewhere that strange things sometimes happened to learned gentlemen who experimented in laboratories. Had anything happened to Professor Pye? The suggestion was a sufficient stimulus, and Hands became the man of action. He rushed into the house and found himself staring at a glazed door at the end of the corridor. The glass in the door had been smashed, blown out upon the floor.

Hands pushed it back, and crunching broken glass, made for the laboratory. He sniffed the air. No, there was no strange smell. The door of the laboratory was painted white, and down the two upper panels ran dark scars. They were cracks where the panels had been split.

Hands rushed at the door, seized the handle, and shook it.

“What’s happened, sir? Are you all right?”

Silence, an inevitable silence so far as Hands was concerned. The door was locked. He put his face close to one of the cracks and tried to see into the laboratory. He could distinguish a table, and he realized that the table, a stout, deal bench, was lying on its side. There was a foot visible beside it, or rather—a black boot, toe upturned and everted.

Hands put a shoulder to the door and heaved. It defied him. He drew back a yard and charged it. He was a heavy man, and the lock plate gave, and Hands and the door went in together. Recovering himself, he stood and stared. The laboratory looked as though a bull had been active in a glass and china shop. The windows were smashed; everything seemed on the floor.

Professor Pye was on the floor, surrounded by what appeared to be the glass and metal fragments of some complicated apparatus.

Hands bent over his master. Professor Pye’s face was the colour of old vellum; his eyes were closed, and from his nostrils blood oozed. Hands had seen dead men in the war; Professor Pye looked like death, and Hands was frightened.

He knelt down, and put his head close to the professor’s chest. No, his master was breathing. And Hands lumbered up and off into the dining-room. The professor did indulge occasionally in old French brandy. Hands extracted the bottle from the sideboard and hurried back.

But he paused in the laboratory doorway, and stood staring. The professor was sitting up, looking bemused, ghastly and bewildered. The fingers of his right hand were stroking his forehead. He gazed at Hands, and his eyes were vacant.

“My God—you gave me a shock, sir!”

The professor’s lips moved, mumbling something. He looked round the shattered room.

“What happened, sir? Something exploded? Have some brandy, sir.”

The professor looked at the brandy bottle, nodded, and allowed Hands to trickle some of the spirit between his lips. He gurgled, he spluttered, and suddenly, clutching Hands’s arm and shoulder, he struggled up. He still looked ghastly, but his very ghastliness was exultant.

“Eureka!”

Hands blinked at him.

“Where shall I find it, sir? In your shaving cupboard?”

And suddenly Professor Pye laughed, a strange, creaking and discordant laugh.

“No, I’ve got it, Hands, I’ve got it. Eureka, Eureka!”