I rushed downstairs, but the hall door was open, and I heard the voices of my companions, loud in astonishment and congratulation, in the yard. How we all shook hands and laughed as we came together, and how Mrs. Challenger kissed us all in her emotion, before she finally threw herself into the bear-hug of her husband.
“But they could not have been asleep!” cried Lord John. “Dash it all, Challenger, you don’t mean to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their faces!”
“It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy,” said Challenger. “It has been a rare phenomenon in the past and has constantly been mistaken for death. While it endures, the temperature falls, the respiration disappears, the heartbeat is indistinguishable — in fact, it is death, save that it is evanescent. Even the most comprehensive mind” — here he closed his eyes and simpered—”could hardly conceive a universal outbreak of it in this fashion.”
“You may label it catalepsy,” remarked Summerlee, “but, after all, that is only a name, and we know as little of the result as we do of the poison which has caused it. The most we can say is that the vitiated ether has produced a temporary death.”
Austin was seated all in a heap on the step of the car. It was his coughing which I had heard from above. He had been holding his head in silence, but now he was muttering to himself and running his eyes over the car.
“Young fat-head!” he grumbled. “Can’t leave things alone!”
“What’s the matter, Austin?”
“Lubricators left running, sir. Someone has been fooling with the car. I expect it’s that young garden boy, sir.”
Lord John looked guilty.
“I don’t know what’s amiss with me,” continued Austin, staggering to his feet. “I expect I came over queer when I was hosing her down. I seem to remember flopping over by the step. But I’ll swear I never left those lubricator taps on.”
In a condensed narrative the astonished Austin was told what had happened to himself and the world. The mystery of the dripping lubricators was also explained to him. He listened with an air of deep distrust when told how an amateur had driven his car and with absorbed interest to the few sentences in which our experiences of the sleeping city were recorded. I can remember his comment when the story was concluded.
“Was you outside the Bank of England, sir?”
“Yes, Austin.”
“With all them millions inside and everybody asleep?”
“That was so.”
“And I not there!” he groaned, and turned dismally once more to the hosing of his car.
There was a sudden grinding of wheels upon gravel. The old cab had actually pulled up at Challenger’s door. I saw the young occupant step out from it. An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest sleep, appeared with a card upon a tray. Challenger snorted ferociously as he looked at it, and his thick black hair seemed to bristle up in his wrath.
“A pressman!” he growled. Then with a deprecating smile: “After all, it is natural that the whole world should hasten to know what I think of such an episode.”
“That can hardly be his errand,” said Summerlee, “for he was on the road in his cab before ever the crisis came.”
I looked at the card: “James Baxter, London Correspondent, New York Monitor.”
“You’ll see him?” said I.
“Not I.”
“Oh, George! You should be kinder and more considerate to others. Surely you have learned something from what we have undergone.”
He tut-tutted and shook his big, obstinate head.
“A poisonous breed! Eh, Malone? The worst weed in modern civilization, the ready tool of the quack and the hindrance of the self-respecting man! When did they ever say a good word for me?”
“When did you ever say a good word to them?” I answered. “Come, sir, this is a stranger who has made a journey to see you. I am sure that you won’t be rude to him.”
“Well, well,” he grumbled, “you come with me and do the talking. I protest in advance against any such outrageous invasion of my private life.” Muttering and mumbling, he came rolling after me like an angry and rather ill-conditioned mastiff.
The dapper young American pulled out his notebook and plunged instantly into his subject.
“I came down, sir,” said he, “because our people in America would very much like to hear more about this danger which is, in your opinion, pressing upon the world.”
“I know of no danger which is now pressing upon the world,” Challenger answered gruffly.
The pressman looked at him in mild surprise.
“I meant, sir, the chances that the world might run into a belt of poisonous ether.”
“I do not now apprehend any such danger,” said Challenger.
The pressman looked even more perplexed.
“You are Professor Challenger, are you not?” he asked.
“Yes, sir; that is my name.”
“I cannot understand, then, how you can say that there is no such danger. I am alluding to your own letter, published above your name in the London Times of this morning.”
It was Challenger’s turn to look surprised.
“This morning?” said he. “No London Times was published this morning.”
“Surely, sir,” said the American in mild remonstrance, “you must admit that the London Times is a daily paper.” He drew out a copy from his inside pocket. “Here is the letter to which I refer.”
Challenger chuckled and rubbed his hands.
“I begin to understand,” said he. “So you read this letter this morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And came at once to interview me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you observe anything unusual upon the journey down?”
“Well, to tell the truth, your people seemed more lively and generally human than I have ever seen them. The baggage man set out to tell me a funny story, and that’s a new experience for me in this country.”
“Nothing else?”
“Why, no, sir, not that I can recall.”
“Well, now, what hour did you leave Victoria?”
The American smiled.
“I came here to interview you, Professor, but it seems to be a case of ‘Is this nigger fishing, or is this fish niggering?’ You’re doing most of the work.”
“It happens to interest me. Do you recall the hour?”
“Sure. It was half-past twelve.”
“And you arrived?”
“At a quarter-past two.”
“And you hired a cab?”
“That was so.”
“How far do you suppose it is to the station?”
“Well, I should reckon the best part of two miles.”
“So how long do you think it took you?”
“Well, half an hour, maybe, with that asthmatic in front.”
“So it should be three o’clock?”
“Yes, or a trifle after it.”
“Look at your watch.”
The American did so and then stared at us in astonishment.
“Say!” he cried. “It’s run down. That horse has broken every record, sure. The sun is pretty low, now that I come to look at it. Well, there’s something here I don’t understand.”
“Have you no remembrance of anything remarkable as you came up the hill?”
“Well, I seem to recollect that I was mighty sleepy once. It comes back to me that I wanted to say something to the driver and that I couldn’t make him heed me. I guess it was the heat, but I felt swimmy for a moment. That’s all.”
“So it is with the whole human race,” said Challenger to me. “They have all felt swimmy for a moment. None of them have as yet any comprehension of what has occurred. Each will go on with his interrupted job as Austin has snatched up his hose-pipe or the golfer continued his game. Your editor, Malone, will continue the
issue of his papers, and very much amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young friend,” he added to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused geniality, “it may interest you to know that the world has swum through the poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf Stream through the ocean of ether. You will also kindly note for your own future convenience that to-day is not Friday, August the twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in your cab for twenty-eight hours upon the Rotherfield hill.”
And “right here,” as my American colleague would say, I may bring this narrative to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, only a fuller and more detailed version of the account which appeared in the Monday edition of the Daily Gazette — an account which has been universally admitted to be the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, which sold no fewer than three-and-a-half million copies of the paper. Framed upon the wall of my sanctum I retain those magnificent headlines: —
TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS’ WORLD COMA
UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE
CHALLENGER JUSTIFIED
OUR CORRESPONDENT ESCAPES
ENTHRALLING NARRATIVE
THE OXYGEN ROOM
WEIRD MOTOR DRIVE
DEAD LONDON
REPLACING THE MISSING PAGE
GREAT FIRES AND LOSS OF LIFE
WILL IT RECUR?
Underneath this glorious scroll came nine and a half columns of narrative, in which appeared the first, last, and only account of the history of the planet, so far as one observer could draw it, during one long day of its existence. Challenger and Summerlee have treated the matter in a joint scientific paper, but to me alone was left the popular account. Surely I can sing “Nunc dimittis.” What is left but anti-climax in the life of a journalist after that!
But let me not end on sensational headlines and a merely personal triumph. Rather let me quote the sonorous passages in which the greatest of daily papers ended its admirable leader upon the subject — a leader which might well be filed for reference by every thoughtful man.
“It has been a well-worn truism,” said the Times, “that our human race are a feeble folk before the infinite latent forces which surround us. From the prophets of old and from the philosophers of our own time the same message and warning have reached us. But, like all oft-repeated truths, it has in time lost something of its actuality and cogency. A lesson, an actual experience, was needed to bring it home. It is from that salutory but terrible ordeal that we have just emerged, with minds which are still stunned by the suddenness of the blow and with spirits which are chastened by the realisation of our own limitations and impotence. The world has paid a fearful price for its schooling. Hardly yet have we learned the full tale of disaster, but the destruction by fire of New York, of Orleans, and of Brighton constitutes in itself one of the greatest tragedies in the history of our race. When the account of the railway and shipping accidents has been completed, it will furnish grim reading, although there is evidence to show that in the vast majority of cases the drivers of trains and engineers of steamers succeeded in shutting off their motive power before succumbing to the poison. But the material damage, enormous as it is both in life and in property, is not the consideration which will be uppermost in our minds to-day. All this may in time be forgotten. But what will not be forgotten, and what will and should continue to obsess our imaginations, is this revelation of the possibilities of the universe, this destruction of our ignorant self-complacency, and this demonstration of how narrow is the path of our material existence and what abysses may lie upon either side of it. Solemnity and humility are at the base of all our emotions to-day. May they be the foundations upon which a more earnest and reverent race may build a more worthy temple.”
THE LAND OF MIST
This novel was published in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and his old friend Edward Malone. Another friend from The Lost World, Lord John Roxton, also appears in the novel.
Conan Doyle, close to the time of publication
CONTENTS
1. In Which Our Special Commissioners Make A Start
2. Which Describes an Evening in Strange Company
3. In Which Professor Challenger Gives His Opinion
4. Which Describes Some Strange Doings In Hammersmith
5. Where Our Commissioners Have A Remarkable Experience
6. In Which The Reader Is Shown The Habits Of A Notorious Criminal
7. In Which The Notorious Criminal Gets What The British Law Considers To Be His Deserts
8. In Which Three Investigators Come Across A Dark Soul
9. Which Introduces Some Very Physical Phenomena
10. De Profundis
11. Where Silas Linden Comes Into His Own
12. There Are Heights And There Are Depths
13. In Which Professor Challenger Goes Forth To Battle
14. In Which Challenger Meets A Strange Colleague
15. In Which Traps Are Laid For A Great Quarry
16. In Which Challenger Has The Experience Of His Life
17. Where The Mists Clear Away
1. In Which Our Special Commissioners Make A Start
THE great Professor Challenger has been — very improperly and imperfectly — used in fiction. A daring author placed him in impossible and romantic situations in order to see how he would react to them. He reacted to the extent of a libel action, an abortive appeal for suppression, a riot in Sloane Street, two personal assaults, and the loss of his position as lecturer upon Physiology at the London School of Sub-Tropical Hygiene. Otherwise, the matter passed more peaceably than might have been expected.
But he was losing something of his fire. Those huge shoulders were a little bowed. The spade-shaped Assyrian beard showed tangles of grey amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less aggressive, his smile less self-complacent, his voice as monstrous as ever but less ready to roar down all opposition. Yet he was dangerous, as all around him were painfully aware. The volcano was not extinct, and constant rumblings threatened some new explosion. Life had much yet to teach him, but he was a little less intolerant in learning.
There was a definite date for the change which had been wrought in him. It was the death of his wife. That little bird of a woman had made her nest in the big man’s heart. He had all the tenderness and chivalry which the strong can have for the weak. By yielding everything she had won everything, as a sweet-natured, tactful woman can. And when she died suddenly from virulent pneumonia following influenza, the man staggered and went down. He came up again, smiling ruefully like the stricken boxer, and ready to carry on for many a round with Fate. But he was not the same man, and if it had not been for the help and comradeship of his daughter Enid, he might have never rallied from the blow. She it was who, with clever craft, lured him into every subject which would excite his combative nature and infuriate his mind, until he lived once more in the present and not the past. It was only when she saw him turbulent in controversy, violent to pressmen, and generally offensive to those around him, that she felt he was really in a fair way to recovery.
Enid Challenger was a remarkable girl and should have a paragraph to herself. With the raven-black hair of her father, and the blue eyes and fresh colour of her mother, she was striking, if not beautiful, in appearance. She was quiet, but she was very strong. From her infancy she had either to take her own part against her father, or else to consent to be crushed and to become a mere automaton worked by his strong fingers. She was strong enough to hold her own in a gentle, elastic fashion, which bent to his moods and reasserted itself when they were past. Lately she had felt the constant pressure too oppressive and she had relieved it by feeling out for a career of her own. She did occasional odd jobs for the London press, and did them in such fashion that her name was beginning to be known in Fleet Street. In finding this opening she had been greatly helped by an old friend of her father — and possibly of the reader — Mr. Edward Malone of
the Daily Gazette
Malone was still the same athletic Irishman who had once won his international cap at Rugby, but life had toned him down also, and made him a more subdued and thoughtful man. He had put away a good deal when last his football-boots had been packed away for good. His muscles may have wilted and his joints stiffened, but his mind was deeper and more active. The boy was dead and the man was born. In person he had altered little, but his moustache was heavier, his back a little rounded, and some lines of thought were tracing themselves upon his brow. Post-war conditions and new world problems had left their mark. For the rest he had made his name in journalism and even to a small degree in literature. He was still a bachelor, though there were some who thought that his hold on that condition was precarious and that Miss Enid Challenger’s little white fingers could disengage it. Certainly they were very good chums.
It was a Sunday evening in October, and the lights were just beginning to twinkle out through the fog which had shrouded London from early morning. Professor Challenger’s flat at Victoria West Gardens was upon the third floor, and the mist lay thick upon the windows, while the low hum of the attenuated Sunday traffic rose up from an invisible highway beneath, which was outlined only by scattered patches of dull radiance. Professor Challenger sat with his thick, bandy legs outstretched to the fire, and his hands thrust deeply into trouser pockets. His dress had a little of the eccentricity of genius, for he wore a loose-collared shirt, a large knotted maroon-coloured silk tie, and a black velvet smoking-jacket, which, with his flowing beard, gave him the appearance of an elderly and Bohemian artist. On one side of him ready for an excursion, with bowl hat, short-skirted dress of black, and all the other fashionable devices with which women contrive to deform the beauties of nature, there sat his daughter, while Malone, hat in hand, waited by the window.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 227
