The Doomsday Men

by J. B. Priestley

“I see. And I suppose it would be another breach of confidence if you told me what it is he wants over there at Barstow?”

  “Naturally, sir. This company regards all its commissions as being strictly confidential. You would expect that yourself, I imagine, sir.”

  “I might—at that,” said Hooker gloomily. He hesitated a moment, then added: “Tell Mr. Morrison I called but couldn’t stop. And tell him the Cavendish crowd agrees with me about the evacuated tubes.” And out he marched, feeling defeated.

  What next? Had he made an ass of himself, or was that really Engelfield, plus a beard and spectacles? If Engelfield, for some reason best known to himself, wanted to disappear, perhaps so that he could experiment in secret, he might easily have grown a beard—the spectacles were probably necessary to him now—and have changed his name. It was not, Hooker reminded himself as he walked moodily away, as if he had seen the man anywhere, in an hotel, at a theatre, having a drink; then he might have understood that he could have been mistaken. But this fellow not only looked and talked like Engelfield, but he had actually been giving an order—and Hooker had a notion that it was no small order—at one of the most famous firms of laboratory instrument makers in the world. As a coincidence, that was a bit thick. Then again, his manner, if that of a total stranger, was all a mistake. Why be so gruff, peremptory, and hurry out like that? To be mistaken for Professor Engelfield was no insult to a man who could give an order to the Camford Instrument Company. Whichever way Hooker looked at it, something was wrong. Well, what next? Did he give in and tamely take the next boat home? If he did, he concluded, he would be spending the next six months calling himself names instead of getting on with his work.

  So the tall young man who strolled into the Savoy Hotel, an hour later, did not announce himself at the desk. He looked about him in the big busy entrance hall, where so many of his fellow-countrymen and women were asking questions about boats and baggage, buying theatre tickets and copies of the New Yorker, or waiting for Father, Mother, Sis or Junior; and then he went upstairs to find suite Seven A. After several walks along warm corridors, he found the door he wanted and knocked sharply on it. Actually it was not properly closed, and he heard a voice inside roaring “Come in.” Once inside, he felt the fool he had anticipated feeling, for the man sitting in there was not the man he had spoken to earlier that afternoon.

  No, this was a heavily-built, clean-shaven man, about sixty or so, with a square jaw and a permanent slight scowl; and he had that indefinable look of wealth and power and successful bullying which suggests big and not too scrupulous business. Yet—and Hooker saw it in a flash before they had exchanged a single word—he too reminded him of Engelfield, a rather older, richer, big business Engelfield.

  “Well?” asked this big man sharply. “What do you want?” His tone suggested that people were always wanting things from him—and generally not getting them.

  And what did he want? Hooker asked himself this, desperately, and decided that what he chiefly wanted was to be safely outside.

  “I seem to have made a mistake,” he stammered. “I used to know a Professor Engelfield, and I’ve been looking for him——”

  “Why?” This was as sharp as it was unexpected.

  “Well—we happen to be doing—roughly—the same sort of research. I’m a physicist, you see—and—well—I had an idea Professor Engelfield was staying here——”

  “Where did you get that idea from?”

  “I thought I saw him—and overheard him giving this address——”

  The other grunted, and stared hard at Hooker, as if to discover what his little game was. “You didn’t send your name up, did you?” he said, finally, with an unpleasant intonation. “Just came charging in, eh?”

  “Yes. But I only wanted to make sure——”

  “Well, now you have—because I can tell you right now I’m not Professor Engelfield or whatever his name is—you’d better charge out again, eh?”

  “All right. Sorry I made a mistake.”

  And Hooker turned and opened the door, only to find himself face-to-face again with the bearded man who had been at the Instrument Company. And the bearded man, startled, muttered something very rude. But that was not all. This time Hooker noticed a little old scar above the left eyebrow of this bearded man, and the last time he had noticed that scar was at the Cleveland Conference. Yes, this was Engelfield all right, whatever he might say. Triumphantly, Hooker stepped back and let him enter the room.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I wanted a word with you, Professor Engelfield.”

  “I told you before——”

  “Yes, and you needn’t tell me again,” cried Hooker in triumph, “because now I know. That little scar. I remember it. You’re Professor Engelfield all right—and it’s useless denying it.”

  “And what if I am?”

  This was not easy to answer politely. Hooker longed to say, “Well, what in the name of science and decency is the idea of pretending you’re not, growing that beard, changing your name, trying to disappear? What are you after, man?” But all he did was to mutter: “I wanted to find you, that’s all.”

  The other two exchanged a quick glance, neither of them looking very pleased. Then Engelfield hung up his hat, and sat down. Hooker remained standing, near the door.

  “Who is this?” the older man asked irritably.

  “He’s what he looks like, Henry,” replied Engelfield with a grin. “A young American scientist—and not a bad one as they go—called—let’s see—Bunker——?”

  “Hooker,” said that young man sharply. Engelfield was as arrogant as ever, it seemed. This other fellow, Henry, might possibly be his brother. A nice family.

  Then he made up his mind to say what he had to say and then clear out. “Listen, Professor Engelfield,” he began earnestly, “I’m sorry if I’m butting in where I’m not wanted, but I’ve been trying to find you for a long time. After all, we were working in the same field, and I felt you might be able to tell me something——”

  “I might—at that,” said Engelfield, sardonically.

  “Well, nobody knew anything about you—and I tried to find out where you were—knew you must be working somewhere—then this afternoon when I heard you asking for those instruments to be sent out to Barstow——”

  “How’s that?” This came like a pistol shot from the older man, who glanced angrily at Engelfield. The latter gave a shrug, exchanged a further glance with the other, then suddenly, as if he had now made up his mind, turned and smiled.

  “Your guess was right, of course, Hooker,” he said, quite pleasantly. “I haven’t been wasting my time. But—well, this is difficult. I’ll have to have a word with my brother here—he’s been paying the piper lately—before I can decide if I can tell you anything. Now if you’ll excuse us a minute—just sit right here—have a cigarette?—fine!”

  In a glow of triumph, for here at the last minute he seemed to have pulled it off, not only having found Engelfield but now standing a fair chance, it seemed, of being admitted to his confidence, George Glenway Hooker smoked his cigarette, and had come to the end of it before the brothers returned from the neighbouring room in the suite. They returned smiling, confident, and for some obscure reason Hooker did not like the look of them. Yet they were now quite friendly.

  “Well, that’s all settled,” said Engelfield smoothly. “I don’t say I can tell you everything—but I might be able to tell you one or two things you don’t know.”

  “Fine!” cried Hooker, so delighted that he began to babble a little. “And I don’t mind telling you, Professor Engelfield, I’m so dead keen I’d have followed you right out to Barstow or wherever you are in California—just to see what you’re doing.”

  “You would, eh? What did I tell you, Henry? These boys mean business. And when were you thinking
of sailing, Hooker?”

  “This week.”

  “Well, we’ve time. Now what I suggest is this—and of course it’s up to you—I’ve nothing here, and for the next twenty-four hours I have to stay here, to clear things up—but I’ve been staying at a little place in the country that Henry rented—and all my notes are down there. Now if you could get down there to-morrow night, when we could be quietly by ourselves, I could give you some idea of what I’ve been doing—and, believe me, it’s worth a little trouble.”

  Hooker was all enthusiasm. His ship did not sail until the day following; he could just manage it. What a break! “There’s nothing I’d like better,” he cried. “Where is it?”

  “The house is called The Old Farm, and it’s just outside a village called Ewsbury, about twenty miles this side of Oxford. If you’re going down by train—you’d have to, eh?—all right, then—it’s what they call a Halt on a side-line of the Great Western Railway. You get down there about nine to-morrow night. I’ll be there then or as soon afterwards as I can make it. Now, there’ll be nobody in, because we’ve just dismissed the servants—we’re giving the place up—but if I’m there, the front door will be open. If I’m not, don’t wait outside, go round to the back—you can easily get in through a window if the door happens to be locked—and go right upstairs, turn to the right at the top and it’s the far room, and wait in my study. I left a sheaf of notes on the table there, and if you have to wait, you can amuse yourself trying to decipher ’em. How’s that?”

  It sounded a bit complicated, but Hooker enthusiastically agreed, and made a careful note of the place and all the other directions.

  “You’re a fortunate young man,” said the heavy brother Henry, rather grimly.

  “I’ll say I am,” cried Hooker, who felt he was. “There’s something pretty big coming, I guess. You’re sure to be there to-morrow night, aren’t you, Professor Engelfield, because my boat sails pretty soon?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He waited a moment. “There’s something you could do for me. That bag, Henry.” The latter nodded, and went into the adjoining room. Engelfield smiled at Hooker, and continued: “If you want to be sure I’ll be there, and do something for me at the same time, I wish you’d take this bag down there for me—I’m going to be pretty loaded up and I’m mighty forgetful these days. All you have to do is to take it down with you and, if I’m not there first, see that you take it upstairs with you into the study. All right? Fine! By the way, you needn’t bring a bag of your own down there because I can easily fix you up with everything you want, if you stay the night. Now here’s the bag I want you to take down for me.”

  Henry had returned and solemnly handed over to Hooker a small but heavy leather suitcase. “It’s locked, young man,” he said. “So you don’t need to worry about that. And now—if my brother doesn’t mind parting from you so soon——” It was a dismissal.

  Hooker accepted it cheerfully. Once this ponderous brother was out of the way, and he and Engelfield were together, with a sheaf of notes and the quiet night in front of them, they could really talk.

  “To-morrow night then—at the Old Farm, eh?” said Engelfield, steering him and the bag towards the door. “Sorry we can’t start right now, but Henry here has too many irons in the fire and we’re trying to clear things up—you know how it is?”

  “Yes. And thanks. This is a great chance for me,” said Hooker earnestly, looking his gratitude. There was a kind of flicker went across the dark bearded face, as if a tiny shadow passed over it, but at that moment Hooker was too intent upon showing his gratitude even to wonder what it meant. He strode out of the Savoy Hotel, heavy little bag in hand, like a conqueror. At one tremendous stroke he had not only found Professor Engelfield but had miraculously contrived to win his confidence. Hooker did not doubt for a moment that there was something sensational coming: Engelfield had the look of a man whose research had been wildly successful. And during the next twenty-four hours, when he was outwardly busy packing and sending his baggage off to the ship, paying his bills, and clearing up generally, George Glenway Hooker was also too happily busy in his mind wondering what form Engelfield’s new discovery would take, whether there had been at last some startling results from the heavier nuclei, to give more than a passing thought or two to Engelfield’s sudden change of attitude, and indeed of character. So far as he came to any conclusion at all about that, he concluded with some self-reproaches that what he and some others had thought was arrogance was really a form of shyness, the equivalent in the older man of his own awkward manner. In his gratitude, in his sense of lively expectation, he felt now that Professor Engelfield was at heart as good a fellow as he was a scientist.

  So it was a very happy tall young American who went down, the next evening, on the leisurely little Great Western train to Ewsbury. He dined off a meat pie and bread and cheese and beer in a tiny inn not far from the railway, and began to feel a new affection for this damp green island. The countryside down there was one of rounded hills and sudden hollows, like fragrant cups of greenness and blue dusk, and everything seemed to be touched with mouldering antiquity. Ewsbury itself, however, which straggled along the road for half a mile or so, was not lost in the deep silence of the neighbouring hills and hollows. It was enjoying a fair, a noisy whirl of gilt and coloured lights, which Hooker passed on his way to the Old Farm. It seemed quite a large fair for so small a place, and Hooker, who had a nice taste in roundabouts and side-shows, was sorry he had no time to explore it. The Old Farm, an ancient gnome informed him in a sing-song hard to understand, was about a mile farther on; so the young man, still carrying the bag he had been entrusted with, kept his long legs in motion, waving a farewell to both the fairground and the ancient gnome who stood shakily looking at it. If the miserable parody that the English called a summer had been doing its worst to-night, Hooker would still have marched happily through it, but actually the night was fine, very rich in fragrance, and with a damp green magic of its own. His thoughts hazily expanded with the wide misty-blue night itself; anything, he felt, might happen; miracles were possible in this antique enchanted kingdom, whose influence might explain the sudden change in Engelfield, himself transformed—perhaps like his heavier nuclei—under these mild stars. Many a time afterwards, sometimes with regret, sometimes with derision, Hooker remembered that walk.

  Not a light showed at the Old Farm, which revealed itself reluctantly and uncertainly in that queer dusk as an irregular low house, at the end of a wandering drive about three hundred yards from the road. Hooker tried the front door, but it was locked. He had arrived first, as Engelfield had said he might. So he groped his way, past beds of sweet-smelling flowers and tall damp weeds, round to the back, where the door was hard to find. It too was locked. The nearest window, however, was open a little, and Hooker was able to open it still more, to let himself in that way, landing awkwardly on a kitchen table. After that it was easy to find the study upstairs that Engelfield had described, a long low room, all beams and nooks and uneven surfaces. Putting down the bag on the table, a big table with several piles of books on it, some small files, and a great many odd sheets of paper, probably notes, Hooker looked about him comfortably, and decided that though the place was too low and beamy and nooky, had too much furniture in it, too many fusty old things, and the electric light was poor, it would be a good place in which to work, once a fellow had completed all his experiments and had his notes in front of him. For a few minutes he pottered about, opening and looking out of the broad low window in front of the table, and examining some of the bookshelves, which did not look as if they belonged to Engelfield. The scattered sheaves of notes on the table obviously did, however, for familiar symbols and equations caught his eye. Engelfield had distinctly said he could amuse himself, if he had to wait, by trying to decipher these notes. So he wasted no more time, but sat down to them.

  They were very tough going, these notes of
Engelfield’s. To begin with, Engelfield appeared to have one or two special symbols of his own, and it took the young man about ten minutes to discover what they stood for. The delta symbol could not mean, as it usually did, merely augmentation, for if so the notes did not make sense at all. Then the usual symbol for kinetic energy was missing. Again, some of the notes were meaningless because the formulæ in them clearly referred to elements that were represented here by mysterious squiggles that meant nothing to Hooker. It was all very puzzling, but very fascinating too, and soon, here in this rum study in an empty house, far away from anything he had ever known, in mysterious rural England, Hooker was fathoms deep in bewildered speculation, chasing uncertain deuterons and electrons from formula to formula, now as far away from the surface of things outside that Oxfordshire village as if he had been sitting at the bottom of the ocean. There were occasional sounds from outside, sudden voices or passing automobiles, but they meant nothing to him. The point was, what did Engelfield mean? He had to set foot on this new track before the owner of the notes returned, to make him look an ignorant fool. So there he was, completely lost to the world around him, when the door suddenly opened and the place seemed to be full of people.

  Actually, there were three: the large grim brother Henry, wearing a light overcoat, and two hefty middle-aged men in blue uniform, obviously policemen. The one in front with Henry looked a sort of inspector, and the one at the back, standing just inside the door, an ordinary constable.

  “Now then!” said the inspector, sharply.

  Hooker looked up, grinned vaguely, then stood up. “Hello!” he cried cheerfully, mostly to Henry.

  But Henry did not respond. “You see,” he said to the inspector. Then he turned again. “And look—there’s the very bag.” And he stepped forward, held up the bag, suddenly and unaccountably opened it, and with a dramatic gesture spilt some of its contents on the table. Valuable metal shone there: little gold cases, silver-backed hairbrushes, and the like. No wonder, Hooker thought, the bag had seemed so heavy. But what was all this about?