"Wace told Wells that before he could secure that crystal from the curiosity shop where it had been taken, a tall, dark man in gray had bought it and vanished beyond reach."
"And what does that tall, dark man in gray suggest to you?" inquired Holmes casually.
"To me? Why, nothing in particular."
"Really, Watson, and you always admired my gray suit I got at Shingleton's."
I almost choked on a bit of cracknel. "Do you mean that you got possession of that crystal?"
"I did indeed. Challenger and I have studied it, and I left it at his home for his further observations. So, you see, we are not wholly unprepared for this voyage across space from Mars to Earth. When the first cylinder struck at Woking, a week ago last Friday, I hurried at once to Challenger's home in West Kensington. His wife said that he had joined the scientists at Woking, but I could not find him when I went there myself. I fear he may have been killed by the heat-ray, along with Ogilvy of the observatory there, and Stent, the Astronomer Royal."
"May I come in?" boomed a great voice from the passage outside.
20
Swift as thought, Holmes turned and stepped to the door. He opened it, and in tramped a squat, heavy man with the deep chest of a gorilla and the sort of black spade beard that suggests a sculptured Assyrian king. I judged him to be in his late thirties. He wore rumpled dark trousers and a rather boyish tweed jacket. In one huge hairy hand he clamped an oblong leaden case, of the sort in which choice Oriental tea is packed.
"My dear Challenger," Holmes greeted him. "Only this moment we were speaking of you."
"I have been here twice, Holmes, but you were out," said the other, looking somewhat wistfully at the remains of the food on the table.
"I must have been observing the Martians or laying in provisions," said Holmes, "And speaking of provisions, you may care to help yourself to what we have here."
"Thank you very much."
The big man crossed the floor, stepping lightly for all his bulk and the heavy boots he wore. He laid his case on the table, then put two sardines upon a cracknel and opened his black beard to take in the whole arrangement at a bite. Brilliant blue eyes under shaggy brows raked me from head to foot.
"Medium height, well built," the deep voice rolled out oratorically. "Dolichocephalic—a prominent development of the cheekbones. Celtic, undoubtedly. Perhaps Scottish." He forked up two more sardines. "You are kind, Holmes, to give shelter to this poor vagrant."
"No, Challenger," said Holmes, busy at opening another tin. "This is my valued associate, Dr. Watson, whose name I have mentioned to you from time to time."
"Indeed?" said Challenger, and suddenly I felt embarrassingly aware of how dirty and unkempt I must look.
"Perhaps I would be better off for a shave and clean linen," I admitted, rising. "If you gentlemen will excuse me."
I headed for my own room. There I soaped away grime and shaved my shaggy chin and washed well. Afterward, I changed clothes and returned to the sitting room, feeling much better.
Challenger had taken a comfortable armchair and was munching cracknels as he talked to Holmes. "On Monday I was able to get a carriage, and I drove with my wife to the channel coast," he was saying. "There, I saw her aboard a ship for France, and then I returned to London on foot."
"Would not the ship take you also?" Holmes asked him.
"Yes, I could have gone with her, but my presence was badly needed here," growled Challenger. "My intelligence—and perhaps yours, too, in a lesser degree may yet cope successfully with these invaders."
"So far they have driven all before them, but they have not had everything their own way," nodded Holmes. "In Surrey, one was destroyed by a shell. The loss of even one makes a perceptible gap in their ranks, for they can number no more than fifty."
"And they suffered losses at the coast, too," Challenger told us. "I saw it happen. Three of them came wading out to destroy or capture the fugitive shipping, and the ironclad torpedo-ram Thunder Child smashed two of them before she herself blew up. You should have seen that action, Holmes. It was capital."
"I heard a report of that engagement at sea," said Holmes. "It struck me that, if the Martians were so ready to take to the water, they have some experience of it, after all. We did see a waterway with the aid of the crystal, Challenger. Though you seem to feel they were mystified by that attack of the ironclad, it may well be that they understand travel on water, may even have some sort of boats of their own at home."
"Marvelous, Holmes!" cried Challenger, applauding, and Holmes forbore to say that it was elementary.
"In any case, they displayed ovefconfidence in that situation," he said.
"Two at the seacoast, and the other killed at Woking, before the others there wiped out the men and guns with the heat-ray," went on Challenger, his beard tilting with aggressive assurance. "That makes a total of three out of fifty—a six percent loss, and one which they cannot at once replace. My friends, we may yet survive, we may even fight back against them."
I, too, had sat down. "How can we fight back? I demanded. "They are infinitely superior to us in science, able to cross millions of miles in space. Their armament must be unthinkably greater than ours."
"All that is true, Watson," said Holmes, filling his pipe again. "But reflect, Watson, they are few, as I have said. And they could fetch only relatively simple equipment across space. I keep comparing them to a party of hunters armed with sporting rifles—no really heavy artillery or high explosives—attacking a swarm of baboons. And those baboons are on familiar ground. They can roll huge rocks down slopes to crush their enemies, or perhaps lurk in ambush to charge out at them. I have heard of such things happening. Yes, beasts have fought and defeated men on more occasions than one. Rats evade the trap, foxes outrun and outwit the galloping huntsman—"
"Marvelous, Holmes!" I could not help applauding in my turn, for his calm analysis had suddenly roused a warm flicker of hope within me.
"Elementary," said Challenger, before Holmes had a chance to say it himself. "I take leave to remind you, it is not enough to state the obvious. The feeling that these invaders were less than omnipotent occurred to me strongly before this conversation. I reflected on the matter while at the seacoast. There I watched their machines at a disadvantage when they waded confidently out in the water, and I conjectured that their unfamiliarity with maritime warfare might indicate unfamiliarity with other difficulties upon our earth." He blew out a deep breath, stirring his beard. "They were truly nonplussed as the Thunder Child came full speed upon them. They were not ready for any such manifestation. They hesitated—and they were lost, two of them." He gestured with his big hands. "They may be destroyed by some other agency than our relatively ineffectual weapons. It remains a simple matter of scientific rationalization to decide what that agency may be."
And he poured claret for himself and sipped it grandly, as though his own words pleased him.
"Let us begin," he continued, "by saying, once for all, that they are not invulnerable."
"Nor omniscient, by any means," added Holmes, his fingertips together. "I take time to ponder, gentlemen, that all three of us have been afoot here in London these past few days, and never once has any of us fallen into their toils, though I have had a narrow escape."
"And I too," I said, unhappy again as I remembered how near they had come to me.
"When it comes to that," Holmes went on, "I deduce that they do not seek simply to exterminate mankind."
"Why should they show any mercy to us if they want to take our whole world?" I asked.
"It is my privilege to answer that question," put in Challenger grandly. "They have descended upon London as the world's largest center of human population, exactly because they have a practical use for men. Last night I lurked near Regent Street, and in some manner the lights had been turned on. I saw hosts of people out in the open, drinking from bottles and dancing together in a sort of saturnalia. Then, just at
the sky was beginning to get pale before dawn, a big machine stepped in among them and scooped them up. It must have captured a hundred or so, and stowed them in a big cage of sorts."
Sickly I remembered those same lights in the street and the lurking monster. "For what purpose, then?" I asked.
"For food," Challenger replied.
I sat up and cried out in protest.
"And I saw some others captured at the seacoast, after I had sent my wife away to France," he continued, again sipping from his glass. "And with the crystal I have observed them twice. Once at what seemed to be their first landing site near Woking, and again at what must be their principal camp. Holmes tells me you have been close to it, Dr. Watson, north of here on Primrose Hill."
"Yes, I came almost to that place,"I said. "But at the time I never dreamed that—"
Again I fell silent, with horror hanging over me.
"They esteem us as edible," said Challenger, stroking his beard.
"Yes," agreed Holmes quietly. "No doubt in the world about that. And you say that you have watched them, Challenger."
"Very closely. It is a most interesting process. The victims are held down by the tentacles of smaller machines. I could see their mouths gape open as though to scream. The Martians gather around and pierce their veins with metal pipettes. The living blood is drawn directly into the bodies of the Martians, much as we drink with a straw. Probably it goes into their circulatory systems."
"Horrible!" I could not help exclaiming. "Horrible!"
Challenger eyed me expressionlessly. "Permit me to say that in my opinion those drunken fools I saw last night will be no loss to respectable human society," he rumbled. "As for horror, Dr. Watson, how do you imagine an intelligent pig would view you or me in our frank relish for the flesh of his species? With alarm and disgust, you may be sure. However, their methods of feeding, together with certain other factors of life on earth may suggest an effective campaign against them."
"And that?" inquired Holmes.
"Suppose," said Challenger slowly, "that we were to give them diseased victims, to infect their bodies."
Once again I was stricken with icy chills. "Surely you would not deliver our fellow men into their hands."
"Oh," said Challenger reassuringly, "I do not suggest to give them healthy specimens like ourselves. Nor intelligent ones, and all three of us possess, in varying degrees, intelligence. That policy would not be effective to this campaign of which I speak, and in any case men like us—though I estimate men like us to be in relatively small numbers—can do more good to our cause if they avoid being captured and eaten. Holmes, your friend looks quite pale. Suppose I pour him some of this excellent claret."
"I have already had quite enough wine, thank you," I stammered, looking at the bottle. Just then its contents seemed to have the color of blood.
"Then a glass for you, Holmes," invited Challenger, tilting the bottle. "It is now time for us to consider and accomplish the necessary logistics of our counter-offensive."
He spoke exactly as though the campaign to defeat our enemies had been mounted and was in full swing. I looked questioningly at Holmes.
"Watson is the military veteran among us," said Holmes. "Quite likely he will endorse my own suggestion that we might begin by doing as they do; capture a prisoner and make a profitable study of him."
"Precisely the recommendation I was on the point of making," nodded Challenger. "With certain resources that we can muster here, I venture to trust that we may soon come within reach of one of these creatures."
"And I venture to trust that we may not," I protested stoutly. "When they come racing after men in their machines, all a man can hope to do is get away the best he can. I count myself fortunate in that I was able to stay out of their sight on all occasions. To be approached, even, by a Martian is to be lost."
"Not inevitably," said Holmes, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "Two days ago I was at a shop looking for some things to eat, and a machine burst in at the front and all but stepped on me."
"And you escaped!" I cried.
He smiled and shook his head with an air of friendly sarcasm.
"No, Watson," he mocked me. "I did not escape. The invader captured me and devoured me to the last crumb."
"His presence here demonstrates that he escaped," Challenger boomed at me disdainfully. "The most minor rationality, Doctor, should assure you of that."
"I was able to run back through the shop," Holmes related. "He was groping in at the front of it, but I had dived down into the cellar. At the rear was a coal bin, and I climbed out through the trap into the alley behind. Then on I went through the back door of a house behind, onto the next street, and so safe back here. Nor did I lose the provisions for which I had been foraging. We may be glad to have them in the coming days."
"My dear Holmes, you must have shown great presence of mind," I said.
"Say rather that I showed considerable agility," he said smiling the compliment away. "It was something of a tight squeeze, getting out through the trap there above the coal bin, but the rest was no great problem."
"You were fortunate in doing so," remarked Challenger, his blue eyes studying Holmes's gaunt, sinewy frame. "Your feat might well have been all but impossible to one of more solid, though more impressive, physical proportions. But it strikes me that all three of us have been successful in avoiding capture by the invaders, as Holmes has already pointed out. We have ranged for miles through the very streets of London which they apparently feel that they are in command of."
"At least my adventure demonstrates that we have the advantage of fighting them on familiar ground, ground we know better than they," said Holmes. "But you, Challenger, say that you, too, have avoided capture."
"I did, and brilliantly," Challenger swelled with self-appreciation. "Twice their machines came directly to my house. Both times I slipped away—very cunningly, I may add—while they were reaching in with their tentacles at the front windows. But they did not do any great destruction, fortunately. No heat-ray."
"Possibly they sought an article of value there," Holmes suggested.
"Which I take as a compliment," smiled Challenger, bowing his great, shaggy head. "Although, as you are aware, self-assertion is foreign to my character, I think it obvious that their high intelligence recognizes my own particular important position among minds of the human race."
"How would they be able to arrive at that opinion?" I asked.
"By being face to face with me," he replied. "Many times I have looked into the crystal at them, and they have looked at me."
"It was of the crystal I was thinking when I spoke of their searching your house," said Holmes. "You have been observing these Martians with it, then. Have you seen them without their machines?"
"I have, and plainly," Challenger told him. "Here, let me try to sketch one."
21
He rummaged in his breast pocket for an envelope and a stylographic pencil. Swiftly he drew an oval body, set at one end with round eyes and a V-shaped mouth, between two fringes of whiplike tentacles.
"It is like an octopus," I suggested.
"Somewhat, in its external appearance," granted Challenger. "But this curious body structure is for the most part, more or less a gigantic brain-case, as I think. I discerned the rhythmic movement of what I take to be the operation of lungs. Here at the back," and he shaded a circular area, "is what may well be an eardrum, though perhaps it is not very effective in the dense atmosphere of our planet."
"They do use extremely loud siren blasts to signal each other," commented Holmes, studying the sketch. "Now, Challenger, I suggest that this anatomical specialization—very little indeed beyond the huge brain and two sets of nimble fingers—argues a far greater evolutionary advance beyond terrestrial man than would be ours beyond, say, those baboons I have mentioned."
"You seem to think that they have developed from an earlier form somewhat like man," said Challenger gruffly, almost as though he made an a
ccusation.
"More or less that, yes. Their machines suggest that they have accomplished some artificial approximation of what they once had naturally, in the way of legs, a torso, tentacle-arms, and a head."
"Those machines have three legs," pointed out Challenger. "Do you think that the primitive race from which the invaders evolved was tripodal?"
"It is not an impossibility. A kangaroo, for instance, uses its tail somewhat as a third supporting limb."
"As did the great saurians of the Mesozoic," added Challenger. "The herbivorous Iguanodon, and the appropriately named Tyrannosaurus Rex, which must have been the most terrible creature in our whole story of life on earth until these invaders came." He beamed condescendingly upon Holmes. "You may well have the right of it on your side. Again I say, it is really too bad that you did not specialize in the abstract sciences. But if these invaders are so far advanced and specialized, it must follow that the process took whole eons of time."
"Might they not be the result of a highly organized and controlled eugenic specialization?" I said suddenly. "Stock-breeding has developed some swift strides toward various desired physical forms."
"Now, that is an acceptable analogy, Doctor," approved Challenger, striking his palms together. "The contribution of it by you is useful and, I take leave to add, somewhat surprising. I begin to join Holmes in rejoicing that you were spared to become one of our committee of resistance. But Holmes has indicated that the invaders sought the crystal at my home."
"That crystal was somehow sent to earth in advance of the invasion, for observation of our planet by way of a similar device that once was on Mars and must now be here," said Holmes. "One crystal, Watson, can make events visible when they occur in the vicinity of its mate. There is a definite rapport that transmits images from one of them to the other."
I must have looked stupid, for Holmes smiled.
"Perhaps somewhat as the telegraph transmits written messages, or the telephone spoken ones," he amplified.
Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds Page 15
