“Did you see any of the invaders?” rang out the voice of Challenger. He, too, had come into the sitting room. He was in his shirt sleeves, drawing his braces up over the jutting ledges of his shoulders.
“I saw two of them, but far away, thank heaven.”
Again tears had come to her eyes, and she bowed her face in her hands. Solicitously Holmes helped her to her feet and led her to the door of his bedroom, from which Challenger had just emerged.
Challenger tapped my shoulder, as authoritatively as a constable. “Come,” he said.
“But Mrs Hudson may need my help,” I demurred.
“Holmes can look after her very well without any help from you.”
“At least let me put on some clothes.”
“Nonsense, man. There is nobody on the street to see us, not even an invader. Come as you are, I say.”
Grasping my arm, he fairly hustled me out upon the landing, then down the stairs. At the street door we looked carefully, as usual, for any hint of danger. Nothing stirred in the summer morning except a starling.
“Did I not see a stepladder down in the cellar yesterday?” Challenger asked. “Come and help me bring it up. I want to go up into this abandoned machine.”
We found the ladder and carried it up to the street. The machine crouched where its operator had left it the previous day. Its gigantic legs were telescoped down to a fraction of their usual height, with their joints doubled so that the oval body was opposite the upper window. I steadied the ladder while Challenger climbed, nimbly for all his bulk. He set a foot on the sill above and crept into the head like pilot chamber from which the invader had crawled to enter our sitting room. There he remained out of sight for well over a minute, while I stood barefoot in the street.
Still no invaders appeared there, though I briefly glimpsed a distant fleck in the blue sky that might have been their flying-machine. At last Challenger dragged himself back into view and descended, with something slung to his back. Standing beside me, he exhibited his find. It was an S-shaped metal arrangement, from which dangled wires. Along its curves showed studs that looked movable. In one bend of the S was set a crystal resembling the one Challenger has brought to our rooms.
“This is exactly the device I expected to find, the one I suggested might be called television,” he said. “As you see, there is another crystal egg, furnished with keys and switches to direct its power.” Again he slung it to his shoulder by the loose wires. “And now, since we are already downstairs, we can go across to Dolamore’s.”
He walked across the street, and obediently I followed him. Inside he fumbled in a bind and brought out a tall bottle, which he inspected with satisfaction.
“This is Chambertin, and of what I take to be a very good year,” he announced, drawing the cork. “Nor is this too early in the morning for a small sip, would you say?”
On a table stood glasses, and into two of these he poured some wine. I tasted it and found it excellent.
“Why did you climb into the machine from the street, Professor?” I asked. “You could more easily have gone out through our window.”
“I preferred not to disturb any researches Holmes might be making,” he replied. “But observe this other crystal I have recovered.”
It was dim enough in the wine shop for us to make out some details of our familiar sitting-room.
“I see Holmes there, standing with Mrs Hudson,” I said gazing. “He is holding her hand, Hullo, it’s gone cloudy. I can see nothing now.”
“Inadvertently I touched this key,” said Challenger. “That must have blurred the transmission of the image. Before we return, let us fetch along more of these very fine wines.”
He took excessive care in his selection from bin after bin. It was fully half an hour before we slipped across the street to our door, bearing armfuls of bottles. It seemed to me that Challenger stamped loudly as he mounted the stairs.
Holmes let us in at the door, smiling over his morning pipe. Mrs Hudson, he said, was much more cheerful, and was even then preparing breakfast in her own kitchen. She bore a tray with a great platter of griddle cakes, a dish of butter, and a pitcher of syrup. Coffee was already brewing on the spirit stove. Challenger drew up a fourth chair to the table and insisted almost dictatorially that Mrs Hudson sit and take breakfast with us.
The cakes were excellent and I, at least, relaxed a trifle as I partook of them.
“There seem to be no enemies strolling officiously outside,” declared Challenger as he finished his third stack of cakes. “Come, Doctor, I propose to go out and find some fresh clothes. Holmes undoubtedly is eager to examine this communication apparatus I brought out of that machine.”
I dressed hastily in my room and went downstairs with him. Nothing moved in the streets save for some twittering sparrows and a forlorn dog that hastened away as we approached. Challenger broke the lock of a haberdasher’s and prowled within for shirts to fit his huge frame—he was fifty-four inches around the chest, he told me, and he could find only two shirts large enough. From there we travelled as far as a provision store. It has already been visited by looters, but Challenger found a claw hammer and wrenched open a storage cabinet. From the shelves within we took smoked sausages done up in silver paper, a pineapple cheese, and some tinned vegetables. With these prizes, we returned home at noon.
Holmes sat alone in the sitting room. He told us that Mrs Hudson was asleep in her own quarters.
“I have been looking at both crystals, but now I have covered them in hopes that the invaders cannot locate them here,” he said. “Our original crystal shows a considerable camp of them.”
Challenger thrust his shaggy head under the covering blanket.
“I verify your observation, Holmes,” his muffled voice came out to us. “I see what would seem to be a considerable pit with rough earthen banks all around. There is a fighting-machine, too, against the rampart, not moving. Yes, and two handling-machines, with only a slight stir to their tentacles.” He emerged, blinking. “I daresay it is the headquarters Dr Watson approached on Primrose Hill.”
“Did you see any of the invaders?” asked Holmes, and again Challenger dived under the fabric.
“Yes,” he told us. “One is face to face with me this instant. I see the great, intent eyes. Now it is gone again, and I see the same camp. Several others are in view, lying prone on the ground. They move only slightly, even painfully.”
“They suffer from disease,” I offered.
“And are probably starving,” amplified Holmes, “By now, they must have realised that to drink human blood is to drink death.”
“It follows that there are no bacteria on Mars, as well as on their native planet,” said Challenger, “or they would have perished on Mars instead of here.”
“Professor, at what point did you realise that they were not Martians?” I asked.
“Almost at the very first, at Woking,” he replied, standing up. “From my first sight of them as they ventured out of their cylinder and breathed our air. Their slow, hesitant movements impelled Ogilvy to mention Earth’s gravity, to remind me and others that it is almost three times that of Mars. But in my mind I ascribed that slowness to the natural caution of sensible aliens venturing into any unfamiliar territory. But I kept my council until I could be sure.”
“And when were you sure?” I pursued.
“I became very sure indeed yesterday, when our specimen grappled me so powerfully, even in its dying moments. Wherever it came from, there is quite enough gravity to make it strong and active.”
That evening, Mrs Hudson appeared with a good dinner from her kitchen. We drew the curtains and lighted lamps, so confident were we that no attack would come. Holmes brought out his violin to play Strauss waltzes. It was quite a cheerful party. All of us rested well that night.
On both the twelfth and thirteenth days the three of us made more explorations. Mounting the highest roofs in the area, we observed through a pair of powerful binoculars belonging to Holm
es. We saw several machines on streets near Primrose Hill, moving slowly in the direction of the main camp.
“They are coming together in their misery,” said Holmes. “I am becoming certain, Challenger, that at close quarters they communicate by telepathy. Perhaps they gather in hopes of working out some solution to their desperate plight.”
“But any telepathic power might fail as they weaken,” said Challenger.
We became bolder in our excursions. Challenger seemed anxious to take me with him as he went scouting here and there. Early on the afternoon of the fifteenth day, he and I determined to push to the very borders of the enemy camp. Northward we stole, up Baker Street and across Park Road through the Clarence Gate into Regent’s Park.
As we entered among the green trees, we heard a dreadful wailing just ahead of us. Instantly we crouched to hide for several minutes. Then we dared approach, moving from the shelter of one trunk to another. Finally we saw the source of the long-drawn cry, a motionless fighting-machine toward the western limits of the Park. Keeping ourselves screened from its view, we continued northward.
The sun was beginning to set as we reached Primrose Hill. I did not see the green glow of five days earlier, when first I had started home from Highgate. Machines were visible on Primrose Hill, too apparently standing quietly in their great excavation. None of them moved.
“I shall go on,” vowed Challenger, and started up the grassy slope.
His audacity infected me and I followed him. I remember seeing the moon above the eastern horizon as we gained the top of that steep rampart of tossed earth. I paused there, but Challenger valiantly scrambled over the comb of the rampart and stood erect.
“Dead!” he roared, almost deafening me. “They are all dead or dying!”
At once I climbed over to stand beside him.
The wide pit below us was strewn with overturned machines, stacks of metal bars, strange shelters. Against the rampart opposite us lay the circular airship that had terrorized humanity. It looked like a gigantic saucer, flung there by the hand of a Titan. At the deep center of the pit sprawled a dozen collapsed bladdery shapes. One or two stirred feebly and emitted weak wails. I looked up at one of the silent machines. Fluttering birds pecked at the body of an invader, hanging halfway out of the hood.
“It is the end for them,” said Challenger. “The end of their adventure. Come, Doctor, we must carry the news.”
Down we scrambled and hurried away as fast as our legs could carry us. At St Martin-le-Grand we entered the telegraph office. Challenger inspected the instruments.
“Somehow the power is still turned on,” he growled, as he tinkered with the key. I watched as he experimented.
At last — for his resourceful brain seemed capable of anything — he began to tap out a message. Then he paused, tensely waiting. Other tappings sounded.
“We are in touch with Paris,” he informed me, and began manipulating the key again. At last he drew himself up impressively.
“There, Dr Watson, you have been present at an historic moment,” he proclaimed. “You can tell of it to your children, should you ever have any. As so often in the past, it is George Edward Challenger who gives to the world scientific information of the highest importance. That, sir, is manifest justice. Who is more deserving, better fitted, to announce the end of the war?”
“You seem to set yourself above Holmes,” I could not help reproaching him.
“Please do not mistake me,” he said unabashed. “I myself admire Holmes to a very high degree. But the highest level of human reason is that of pure science. It transcends even the applied analysis of human behavior.
“There is no way for me to argue with you.”
“Naturally not, my dear Doctor. But come, my duty is done here. Let us carry our tidings to Holmes.”
Twenty-Two
In happy excitement we set out together again for Baker Street.
I need not rehearse here the familiar detail of England’s resolute recovery from the blows dealt by the invasion. Wells’s The War of the Worlds gives as good a brief account as any of how the nations of Europe and America hurried shiploads of necessary supplies to the sufferers of stricken London and the Home Counties. Commerce and industry returned swiftly to a high volume of activity, and wrecked homes and stores and public buildings were restored. Holmes and Challenger and I helped many returning refugees as best we could.
The preserved body of the captured invader was presented to the Natural History Museum, where it is now on display. Challenger felt, and I was inclined to agree, that Curator James Illingworth was offhandedly cool in his acknowledgment of the gift. But Holmes took little notice of any slight, for among the professions that almost immediately resumed full swing in London was that of organised crime. At the end of June, Holmes solved the cunning deception that I have elsewhere chronicled as The Adventure of the Three Garridebs. In assisting Holmes to bring James Winter, alias Killer Evans, to the justice he so richly deserved, I was slightly wounded in the leg, and at the time I felt a sense of ironic comedy in suffering a hurt at the hands of my fellow man when I had come through the invasion without so much as a scratch.
No sooner was Winter safely in the hands of the police than Holmes became busy helping Scotland Yard trace the bold thieves who had stolen certain crown jewels from the Tower of London.
I saw little of him on that pursuit, for I had become busy on my own part. The privations and exertions of London citizens under those terrible sixteen days of oppression had stricken many with illness. Doctors were much in demand, and I returned to the practice I had all but given up, spending many days and nights in sickrooms and hospitals. It became necessary for me to leave the old lodgings in Baker Street and move to Queen Anne Street, where I could set up a dispensary and consulting room. It would be impossible to list all those who came under my care, but one of them proved a glorious reward to me for whatever useful labours I performed.
She had been Violet Hunter when, a dozen years before, Holmes and I had dealt with another case. She had been a governess like my dear first wife, and after the curious business which I have published under the title of The Adventure of the Copper Beeches she had become head of a girls’ school at Walsall. Though she was only in her mid-twenties, little more than a young girl herself, she was successful at her post for more than five years. She then married a naval man, the gallant first officer of the Thunder Child, who perished with his shipmates in destroying two invader machines at the mouth of the Blackwater.
His unhappy widow had been forced to flee from their home in Kensington, barely escaping a rush of machines herself. She spent days in a wretched cottage on the outskirts of London, where she contracted a severe fever. It was my fortune to have her as a patient, to bring her back to good health, and to find that she had never forgotten my very minor help to her years earlier. Recovering, she regained the happy, lively charm I myself had remembered so well. She was in the prime of life, with beautiful chestnut hair and a sweet, good-natured face, freckled like a plover’s egg.
It came as a dazzling surprise to me that she responded to my admiration. In September, at about the time when Holmes, too, suffered wounds in ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’, she agreed to be my wife.
On October day I had visited her home in Kensington to take an early tea with her. She was engaged for dinner with some old school friends, and so I said my farewells at five o’clock and departed. Since Enmore Park was near, I decided to call upon Challenger.
Austin answered the door, and little Mrs Challenger appeared behind him to greet me and lead me along the hall. She knocked at a door, a booming voice answered, and I entered the study. Challenger’s great bearded head and tremendous shoulders bulked behind a wide table strewn, as usual, with books, papers, and instruments.
“My dear Doctor, you come at an opportune moment,” he cried out. “I have been at work on a study, a truly brilliant study, which, as I am confident, will add even greater lustre to my alread
y considerable reputation.”
I came to the table. Challenger thrust a sheet of paper under my nose. Frowning, I tried to read what he had scrawled upon it.
“A highly complex mathematical equation,” I hazarded.
“It is a correction of some obvious errors in the late Professor Moriarty’s Dynamics of an Asteroid,” said Challenger. “Again and again I have reflected, how unfortunate it was that Holmes felt himself forced to destroy that brilliant intellect, that splendid adventurer among the abstractions of the cosmos. If asked to name a scientist capable of refining and advancing his researches, I can think of only — well, no matter for that, it does not become one to mention one’s own gifts and attainments. But for these improvements in his equations, I must gratefully recognise our recent acquaintances.”
“Recent acquaintances?” I repeated, uncomprehending.
“The invaders, or rather their fellows. The ones who did not come to Earth and die of our diseases. I am in contact with some of them.”
“You are?” I had thought myself beyond amazement at Challenger, but this was something new and startling. “And these figures are theirs? But I see Arabic numerals, such as we use.”
“Oh, they almost immediately learned to employ those. I began with pairs and groups of coins to demonstrate simple calculations, that two and two are four and that three from four leaves one, and so forth. Holmes has been here to observe my methods once or twice, and if he did not busy himself at his crime investigations, he might even be of some help. But come with me.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “I can show you at this moment how I exchange thoughts with them.”
He opened a door at the rear of the study. I followed him into a small, dim chamber with heavy curtains drawn at the windows. A small desk stood in a corner, and from its top shown a familiar gleam of soft blue. As we entered, a young man rose to his feet and faced us expectantly.
War of the Worlds Page 18
