Two in a Train

by Warwick Deeping

  VII

  He was like a man possessed.

  The immensity of the thing intoxicated him. He seemed to shake with a cold rage; the urge to prove his power became a merciless and ordered frenzy. For a little while he stood observing through his glasses that minor catastrophe in the valley. He focused those agitated and active ants on that tarmac road. And then he observed in particular two figures—one that of a police constable, the other that of a chauffeur in a linen coat. They were standing together looking up at his white house. And one of them raised an arm and pointed. He was pointing out the white tower and the little figure poised there.

  They were pointing at him! How dared they point at him? Did these slaves suspect?

  Professor Pye stepped back behind the palmyrium tube. He rearranged the tripod and trained the gun on the road below. He released the diaphragm and switched on the current, and with an air of sardonic glee awaited the result.

  There was sudden stillness down yonder. The man in the dust-coat was lying on his back in the middle of the road. The police constable had crumpled into an inert blue heap.

  They had dared to point at him, had they, he—the great Professor Pye, god of the On-force, the greatest man alive!

  His self-exaltation was in full flood. Inevitably he was challenged to prove the extent of his new power. Men were no more than ninepins to be bowled over. Was it not possible for him to efface humanity or as much of it as he pleased, or perhaps to permit a remnant to crawl to him and hail him as god and master? The passion to prove his power became a frenzy. He must choose some particular ant-heap and reduce it to nothingness so far as man was concerned. He stood brooding in the September sunlight, while at Newlands Corner and on Leith Hill hikers and motorists and children played and made love and picnicked in ignorance of the menace.

  What ant-heap should he choose?

  London?

  No, London would be too immense, too large and luscious a fruit to begin with. He would prefer gradualness, a subtle crescendo.

  Brighton—Hands’s Brighton—flashed into his mind.

  Why not Brighton?

  And then he remembered Hands.

  Confound the fellow! He would have to get rid of Hands, and to that deaf and disfigured creature Professor Pye allowed his one moment of compassion. Hands had been a good creature. Should he keep the fellow here? But, no, that was impossible. He could permit no man to witness his humbling of humanity. Hands must go. He would give the fellow money and tell him to go—but where? Professor Pye’s pity shrugged its shoulders. After all—this was fate.

  And then he heard the voice of Hands, calling to his dog.

  “Jumbo—Jumbo—come on, old lad.”

  The dog had loitered, and Professor Pye, crossing to the back of the tower and looking over the parapet, saw Hands standing in the courtyard. The decision was made and taken. He would have to play the autocrat with Hands.

  He locked the door of the tower staircase and descended. Hands was just entering the house with the dog at his heels.

  “Hands, you must go for your holiday.”

  Hands stared.

  “When, sir?”

  “Now.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Yes, at once.”

  “But, sir——”

  “I’m going to London to-night in the car. I insist on your taking a holiday, Hands. I shall pay for your holiday.”

  The professor went into the laboratory and opened his safe. When he returned to the hall he had six five-pound notes in his hand. He thrust them at Hands.

  “Here’s the money. Pack a suit-case. Catch a bus to Guildford. No, better still—I’ll drive you to Guildford.”

  Hands looked bothered. He took the money, and stood hesitant.

  “I’ll go to Brighton, sir.”

  The professor’s face expressed exasperation. Damn the fellow! He couldn’t go to Brighton. By midnight there might be no Brighton in any human sense.

  “Don’t be a fool, Hands. Go and see something. Go to Scotland. Get some mountain air. Good for the dog, too.”

  “But where’ll I stay, sir?”

  “Stay? Why—at hotels—of course. Enjoy yourself, eat, drink and be merry.”

  It occurred to Hands that the professor would have to be humoured. He could allow the professor to drive him into Guildford and leave him at the station. He could take a train to London, and another train to Brighton. Scotland? No, he was not going to Scotland, and the professor need not know about it. Besides, he would be pretty welcome at Brighton, with thirty pounds in his pocket. He and Brother Jim could have a bit of a beano on thirty quid. He could buy the kids presents.

  The professor himself opened the door of the garage and backed the two-seater into the yard. Hands hurried in to pack. Years of intimate experience had taught him that when some bee buzzed in Professor Pye’s bonnet, it was necessary to let that bee buzz itself to death. Besides, thought Hands, as he tossed his belongings into an old fibre case, the Brighton idea with thirty quid to blow was a bit of all right. He could take Jumbo down to the beach and introduce the dog to the sea. Jumbo had never seen the sea.

  He hurried out to the waiting car. The professor, hatless, was sitting in the driving seat. It struck Hands that Professor Pye’s hair looked more turbulent and fierce than usual.

  “Do you want your hat, sir?”

  Professor Pye looked contemptuous. Need the world’s new god and master be reminded of the conventional hat?

  “Get in, Hands. Better nurse your dog.”

  Hands slung his suit-case into the dickey, and got in, holding Jumbo in his arms.

  The private lane struck the main road about a quarter of a mile from where the On-force had acted, but even here cars were strung out and people were standing talking. Professor Pye threaded his way through the crowd. He took the Merrow road, and on the long hill to Newlands Corner they met a couple of ambulances.

  Hands was interested.

  “Must have been an accident, sir.”

  “Probably, Hands, probably.”

  “A pretty bad smash, I should say, sir. Road blocked, and two ambulances.”

  “The roads are full of fools, Hands.”

  “Must have been a motor-coach, sir.”

  “Perhaps two motor-coaches, Hands.”

  The professor drove into Guildford, and in his state of mental exaltation he drove rather carelessly. He ignored or did not observe the signal of a policeman on point duty, and the constable whistled to him and came and said rude and sarcastic things to the professor. He was a tall and superior young man with thin lips and a Roman nose.

  “Careless driving—dangerous driving. Ignoring signals——”

  The professor went red.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “You were not looking, sir.”

  “I’ve something more important to do,” said Pye, “than look for fools in uniform.”

  That put the official back up. The professor had to produce his licence. The policeman took notes and told Mr. Alfred Pye that the case would be reported.

  The professor smiled a little sneering smile.

  “Think so, do you? Poor idiot!”

  The policeman waved him on.

  “You might watch your manners, sir.”

  Manners—indeed! The professor drove on to the station and deposited Hands, dog, and suit-case. He was abrupt with Hands.

  “Enjoy yourself. Go and see Loch Lomond.”

  Hands saluted the professor as he drove off. Gosh, but the old lad had put it across the bobby! Would he—Hands—be hauled up as a witness? Probably, but not till after he had completed a classic week at Brighton. He watched the two-seater disappear, and with Jumbo on the lead, he walked into the booking-office, and took a third-class ticket and a dog ticket for London.

  The professor left Guildford by the Shalford road. He had no desire to repass that insolent young officer, but so poor a thing was his philosophy that it pleased him to think that all such insolent and
obstructive fools would soon be effaced, with all courts and cross-roads. Alfred Pye’s return was without adventure. Certainly, he did pass a number of cars whose occupants had the serious and subdued faces of people who had seen some strange and rather terrible thing. In fact, by the Albury fork a scout signalled to the professor and shouted a warning to him.

  “Better go slow, sir—there’s been a bad accident along there.”

  Professor Pye, head in air, smiled at him.

  “Thank you. I will be exceedingly careful.”

  VIII

  Professor Pye left his car parked at the bottom of the lane and walked along the high road to observe in a proper scientific spirit the results of his experiment. There was still a considerable crowd here, and both the crowd and the traffic were being controlled by the police. Professor Pye wormed his way as far as the nearest policeman, but when he attempted to pass the officer he was ordered back. There were some twenty tenantless cars along that section of road. Police, ambulance men and volunteers had had to extract the dead motorists and lay them on the grass beside the road. Some of the bodies were still there.

  It was a shocked, sober, quiet crowd. The whole business was a mystery, and Professor Pye was able to savour the elements of the sensation he had produced. He was not shocked by the tragedy. He was immensely curious as to the lethal effects of the On-force on the human body.

  He listened to two men talking, educated men.

  “It couldn’t have been carbon monoxide. How could it have been?”

  “Well—what else? People just dead in their cars. The doctors tried artificial respiration.”

  “No use. Something extraordinarily sinister and strange. Apparently, there was no explosion of any kind, nothing to be seen or heard. Just as though poison gas had been released.”

  “Could there have been anything in one of those first cars?”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “I’m not a chemist, but supposing one of those cars had contained a carboy of some chemical that vaporized easily, and the gas was lethal?”

  “It’s possible—I suppose.”

  “People just collapsed where they sat or stood. Something very potent and deadly.”

  “Anyhow it’s pretty ghastly.”

  Someone was shouting in the field above the road, a farm hand who had come to collect those cows for milking, and had found them dead. The hedge happened to be a high one, and no one in the road had seen those dead beasts. The farm hand ran down to the hedge and shouted to one of the policeman.

  “Hi—come and look, all our cows dead!”

  People scrambled up the bank and tried to peer through the hedge. The driver of a van found a gate and climbed over it. The crowd followed him, and suddenly some premonition warned Professor Pye of possible complications. He hurried back to his car, drove it up and into the garage, and locking all doors, ascended to the top of the tower.

  He crouched and looked over the parapet. The lower field was stippled with human figures. He saw faces turned towards the house on the hill. Someone was pointing, and sweeping an arm as though to indicate the direction and drift of a gas cloud. People were arguing.

  “If you take that house on the hill, and these dead cows and the road—they line up, so to speak. What is that place up there?”

  Someone pointed to the live cows in the upper field.

  “What about those beasts? If your gas idea——”

  “I’m thinking of that affair in Belgium when people were gassed by the emanations from a factory.”

  “But that was foggy weather. Besides, who would emit a lethal gas on the top of the downs?”

  “Yes, but supposing someone was experimenting? A heavy gas would roll downhill on a still day like this.”

  “But, my dear sir—those other cows there are none the worse.”

  “That’s so. Anyway it’s a pretty ghastly puzzle.”

  “The autopsies on those poor devils ought to show something.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Professor Pye was thinking rapidly and logically, and for the first time his demonic egotism was tinged with fear. He had let death loose. He had stirred up the social hive, and these angry insects would be buzzing hither and thither seeking—what? No, the simile of the hive and the insect swarm did not apply. He and mankind were at war, and man was a creature of intelligence who could think, reflect and explore. His wits were at war with the wits of mankind.

  At any moment he might have that crowd pouring up the hill to investigate. His experiment went to prove that for some unexplained reason his On-force did not exert its effect until it had travelled four hundred yards. If those people advanced into the non-lethal zone he and his discovery would be at their mercy.

  His ruthlessness was reinforced by fear. After all—this was war, Alfred Pye contra Mundum. Was he—the new Jove—to flinch with the lightning in his hand? He stood up. He trained the atomic gun on the people in the field He opened the diaphragm and switched on the current. With a kind of cold and frozen glee he saw that death was there—painless, sudden death.

  For some minutes a kind of frenzy possessed him. The gun was mounted on a ball and socket joint and roller bearings and could be slewed in any direction. He swung it south, west, north, east, keeping the hypothetical range low. He would create about him a circle of silence and security. He would efface any near possible interference. He must have time to think, time to act.

  Was he aware of the silence that fell upon all that part of Surrey, such a silence as had not been known since the glaciers of the ice age piled up their deposits of gravel and sand? Motor-cars, suddenly released from control, ran on till they ended in hedges or ditches. Guildford High Street with its chaos of cars and of shoppers was a place where people seemed to have fallen asleep in cars and on pavements. At the foot of the steep hill runaway motors had piled themselves. Shop assistants lay dead behind their counters. There was not a sound to be heard, save perhaps the ticking of hundreds of clocks. Even the dogs and the cats and the birds were dead. At Newlands Corner the turf was covered with the figures of men, women and children who seemed to sleep. Spectral trains ran for a while past signal boxes and through stations where life had ceased. In a thicket a quarter-mile from the white house two lovers lay dead in each other’s arms.

  Professor Pye walked down to the field where the dead lay. There was no anguish here, no distortion, merely the semblance of sleep. It would appear that the On-force acted upon the central nervous system, producing shock and syncope. The human heart ceased beating.

  Professor Pye looked at the first dead in the war between a mad scientist and humanity. Almost, he felt kindly towards these victims. Had not they helped to prove his power?

  Moreover, might he not be regarded as a beneficent being? He could give peace and sudden painless oblivion to a world of disease, and futile little strivings, discontents, poverty, bitternesses. The class war, votes, the dole, demos stupid and arrogant, politicians orating, the sensational puerilities of the press! He could put an end to all this. He could cleanse the earth, efface all the fools and mental deficients, and leaving perhaps a hardy remnant in some corner of Canada or Japan, renew the human experiment on scientific lines. He, Professor Pye, would be its god, and dictator.

  Returning, he crossed the upper field where those live cows were still grazing. One of the beasts raised a head and stared at him with large, liquid eyes.

  Professor Pye raised a hand as though blessing the beast.

  “Behold your god, my dear. You shall be retained in his service.”

  His madness had reached its zenith. It transcended even a great man’s folly. It was egotism that forgot both the bull and the cowherd. Who would milk those beasts? Or—did Professor Pye propose to live in a desert on wild apples and honey? But even the bees were dead. The only survivals were the trees and the grasses and all green things, and certain low forms of life whose central nervous system was not sufficiently sensitive to be shocked by the On-force.
r />   IX

  But the alarm was being sounded. Professor Pye had silenced everything within a radius of fifteen miles, but into that reservation other humans were beginning to penetrate. Waterloo Station was all crowds and chaos. Telephone operators, tired of calling, “Hallo, Guildford,” and finding themselves repulsed by a most strange silence in all that part of Surrey, left their instruments and became part of a London that stood in the streets and listened to monstrous rumours. The bus depots were disorganized. Such and such a bus had never returned. Scared motorists who had passed through that zone of death, pulled up when they rediscovered people who were living, and with white faces spread the incredible news.

  “Half Surrey’s dead.”

  “Miles of derelict cars and buses.”

  “At Addlestone a train had stopped at the level crossing. Full of dead people. Signalman dead in his box. We couldn’t get through that way.”

  The thing seemed too ghastly and immense to be true.

  But already police cars and pressmen and adventurous motorists, and agonized city men were penetrating into that circle of death. The Prime Minister had called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet at No. 10, Downing Street. Scotland Yard was at work. The Press rushed out alarmist editions. Almost, they were fought for by the crowds in the streets. Press agencies were telephoning from all over the world.

  “What Has Happened in Surrey?”

  “Is it an Attack from Mars?”

  Police cars, returning from the dead area, had to force their way through scared and eager crowds. Rumour became actuality, and as the news spread a shocked and bewildered silence seemed to spread over London. People were inarticulate. The thing was too vast, too terrible, too astounding. It was said that the P.M. himself had hurried down into Surrey. Aldershot had been wiped out as well as Guildford and Godalming. Woking, Byfleet and the districts along the river were full of dead people. The Guards were being paraded. The whole of the available police were being mobilized.

  People rushed to their wireless sets. What had the B.B.C. to say?