The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction)

by Eden Phillpotts

  “Try not to keep him there,” she begged.

  CHAPTER V

  LATER in the morning, after Dr. Winton had called and talked with Faraday, they spent half an hour together beside Sir Hector, who agreed to keep his room, but insisted on rising and attending to his affairs. After he had accepted Faraday’s sympathy and received assurances of his son’s sorrow, the iron-master spoke.

  “One must not suffer this appalling circumstance to loosen my grip,” he said. “It has crushed me, naturally, and will age the bodily machine and shorten my life. No light can be thrown on such darkness and dismay as this, and no course of action alter it. But there remains the present and my duty. We are drifting into another war and history is repeating itself under my eyes. I cannot play the part I played in the Great War, because my professional interests are now limited, but those who fill my place are prone to seek my knowledge still and ready to take my advice when I am called to give it. The Government have already approached me and assure me that I can continue to be of service to the country. I am going to work, Faraday, and pray God that in work I shall be able to distract my mind from its present utter and useless confusion.”

  His son praised his determination.

  “Like you, Father,” he said, “and very wise. I know little of politics, but everything of hard work, and have found that better than medicine in many cases. To you work was second nature in the old days. But you must be moderate.”

  The family doctor likewise urged moderation.

  “You must cut your coat according to your cloth, Sir Hector,” he urged. “Work, but not overwork. You have suffered a very terrible blow and those who knew dear Alfred share it with you and are able to realize the extent of it; but your own well-being is precious to more than your friends and you must keep well for your country’s sake if not your own.”

  The stricken sufferer promised to obey and they left him together presently; but he remembered Ernest Trensham before they were gone.

  “He’ll be going to-day no doubt and I have no wish to see him again at present,” he said to his son. “Bid him ‘good-bye’ from me, Faraday, and tell him that I shall hope we may meet at some future time. Alfred was fond of him and I think well of him, too. He’s a worker and a sensible and gifted young fellow.”

  Dr. Winton left Cliff, satisfied that all was well, and Faraday presently spent another hour alone with his father.

  The conversation wholly concerned their loss and Sir Hector declared great impatience to learn all particulars.

  “The expedition will, of course, come to an end after this terrible happening,” said Faraday, “and some member of the party visit you when they get home; but meantime you will hear more through the post — probably very soon.”

  He left his father with unopened letters in companionship of Roger Horn and presently met Greta and Ernest Trensham out of doors.

  “Winton considers the governor has stood up to it very well,” he said, “but the anticlimax remains to be watched. Father has been badly shaken and must be looked after. He’s turning to work, which I hope will help him through the worst of it. But one must watch him and distract his mind without appearing to do so. That’s your part, Greta. Don’t worry him, just be there and drop ideas into his head. He is deeply concerned to learn particulars of the death.”

  “You’ll stop a few days, won’t you?” she asked.

  “I’ll see how he gets on. He won’t want me too much in evidence because I create trains of thought which are bound to be painful. I’ll stop anyway until after to-morrow and see the nerve storm subside a bit.”

  “You said that deep emotions effect chemical changes, Professor,” remarked Ernest. “That was a new idea to a layman.”

  They were sitting outside the gazebo in early spring sunshine and, as he filled his pipe, the chemist answered.

  “The whole business of metabolism calls for much deeper study at present.”

  “What is metabolism, Faraday?” asked Greta and her brother chose to become learned.

  “It is a process concerned with the building up and destruction of protoplasm — the chemical changes for ever proceeding in the living cells of which you and I are composed, Greta: their creation and construction and wear and tear. Metabolism may be building up, or pulling down — either the transformation of nutritive material — food — into living protoplasm, which is called anabolism, or the ruin and destruction and decomposition of living protoplasm, which we call katabolism. The two operations go on together and fight it out, katabolism always winning the last battle.”

  “As death always wins over life,” suggested Ernest.

  “That’s the banal conclusion,” agreed Faraday: “but an absorbing subject for chemist and physician, because it includes both body and mind. The fact that we live longer than we used to do is thanks to the attention that science has paid the matter, but a vast field remains to be explored and I urge my pupils to devote their brains to it, when they happen to have any. My own preoccupations just now have some bearing on these problems. Prodigious radioactive forces will probably be within our control ere long that may make a rubbish heap of therapeutics as we practise them; but whether the atomic age is going to better our lot, or put a finish to our deplorable story remains to be seen.”

  “Tremendous possibilities challenge us, Professor,” suggested Ernest.

  “Yes — all of us,” agreed the other. “In your case you may find your business mean hunting and capture of greater scoundrels than any police force has yet been called to tackle. Big opportunities always beget big rascals to profit by them.”

  “I hope you will have retired on a good pension, Detective-Inspector, before you are called to such a terrible task as that,” murmured Greta.

  “War is brooding,” said her brother. “The old conditions reappear and as yet we know no means and can find no manner of settling them without carnage of our fellow-man. The old story: hungry, lean nations making war; never the fat, comfortable people. Japan has fallen upon China and the butchers of Europe — the Germans — will probably attack Russia and Poland before long. That means war for us. We don’t want to fight, having all we need of the earth’s surface; but fight we must, being committed to the supporting of the weak.”

  “A question of populations,” declared Ernest. “You hear the cry of dwindling populations, as though it were an unmixed evil; but if there were fewer of us, the demand for more room would cease.”

  “The ‘have nots’ are not short of room, but short of power — that’s what they really want,” explained Faraday. “Being at present backward nations, they won’t get it. Since she became united, Germany has become the pest and bane of Europe — her real eminence gone for ever. The Japanese followed Germany’s example and suffered our Western civilization to ruin her own. At present the British Empire and France outnumber the Germans to the West, as Russia must to the East, but, against that, you need to remember Germany will have every male, capable of bearing them, under arms in a year or two and be ready to make war again, while Japan’s trained hordes will find no armies to oppose them in China, any more than they did in Manchuria.”

  “You picture a chaotic future for the human race — both white and yellow,” said Ernest.

  “I do,” admitted the other, “and I also picture the possibility of a new and supreme power bringing order yet out of chaos if firmly planted in the hands of those best gifted to employ it: ourselves.”

  “Will there be time to weld that supreme power into an all-conquering weapon?” asked the detective.

  “Probably not,” answered Faraday. “It is largely a question of which nation is prepared with the millions of money necessary to secure that supreme power. To turn your butter into guns is easy enough under the herd instinct of the Teuton; but to deny yourself butter while you seek what has never yet been attained and may prove unattainable — what government is yet possessed of vision and courage to do that? Human reason, however, will score a hit some day and, having no
w learned that the power exists, reach it. If our rulers could only understand that to control atomic energy would be to control the world and banish war off the earth, then they might claim to have served humanity to some purpose.”

  “Perhaps you are a prophet,” replied Trensham.

  “To prophesy to deaf ears is an exciting but not a profitable occupation I’m afraid,” answered the scientist. “A man before his time seldom wins more than contempt, perhaps actual execration. We physicists don’t aspire to prophesy; we seek to prove.”

  They strolled back to the house and, after luncheon, when Faraday had returned to his father, Greta asked Ernest what he thought of her brother.

  “An outstanding sort of man obviously,” he said. “You feel that. A curious, rather noble face — impassive and stern. His eyes are set unusually far apart, as in some pictures of the old masters. That creates nobility. A tremendous will-power in the mouth and chin and not much sympathy or patience for common minds, or commonplace people. Tremendously interesting and makes one feel rather small beside him; but I was conscious in a way that he and I are after the same business of detection and getting at truth. Of course, he wants to detect things enormously more difficult to deal with than crime and running evil-doers to earth. He’s like Prometheus and wants to find an elixir for all mankind that will make the human race better and cleaner. He even dreams of destroying war and he wouldn’t much mind if he destroyed much else in the process. Rather a terrible chap, Greta.”

  “I never feel him in the least terrible,” she answered. “I feel he’s unknowable and I agree that he’s got any amount of will-power. A great scientist, but — well, if anybody’s unknowable, you can’t feel much admiration for them, not if you’re a woman anyway. He is the direct opposite of what dear Alfred was.”

  “Yet he spoke tenderly and respectfully about this infernal accident.”

  “Conventionally. He only saw the pleasure-loving, play-boy side of Alfred, not the generous, kindly, human spirit that made everybody love him. Nobody ever loved, or could love, Faraday. Nobody ever racks their brains to give him pleasure. With a nature like his, he gets instant obedience from those who have to obey him, but never wakens a spark of longing to go one better and give him pleasure.”

  “Because none can tell what may, or may not, give him pleasure,” suggested Ernest. “There are plenty of men like that, who never manifest either pleasure or annoyance: ‘unknowable’ as you say, darling. But such men don’t get the best out of other men. If he wants millions of money for his dreams of some new world, he’ll never be the sort of man to coax it out of the Government.”

  “Or coax it out of anybody else,” she said. “He has badgered father again and again for this ideal of his; but father’s far-sighted and he doubts that, even if such a power exists, it was ever designed we should discover it. His mind moves on a much higher plane than Faraday’s.”

  “Scientists are contented with the search for new facts. They hunt truth and, having caught it, care not what inferior minds do with it,” so the detective explained.

  He left Cliff during the afternoon and, when he was gone, Greta invited Faraday’s opinion of him. They had carefully concealed their regard for each other and Faraday, ignorant that he had met a future brother-in-law, replied with indifference.

  “An intelligent chap apparently and no doubt a very good policeman. A new sort of type is entering the Force nowadays to cope with the educated criminal, who laughs at the old guardians of the law. Many commit crime for the same reason that Alfred went to shoot big game. They want excitement accompanied by danger. The young, energetic policeman no doubt enlists for the same reason — an exciting way of earning his living and showing his skill.”

  “Did you admire him?”

  “Not much. His eyes are a little too close together. He might be crafty and calculating under his charming manners. That sort of character would probably go with his business.”

  Greta restrained her indignation with a laugh.

  “Funny you should say that,” she replied, thinking upon Ernest’s recent criticism.

  Her brother remained another day with his father, by which time he felt satisfied that Sir Hector was making physical recovery. He promised to come back again shortly and then returned to his work.

  The elder praised him to Greta when he had gone.

  “I feel that your brother has come out of this terrible ordeal creditably,” said Sir Hector. “The more that people are interested in themselves, the less interesting I generally find them, and that has been the case with Faraday until now. Nobody’s affairs other than his own ever occupied his mind at any time. But now I hope the case is altered. No egotism has appeared and nothing but genuine sorrow for me and our dear one has marked him. He said things that comforted me.”

  “I am sure Faraday feels this as much as I do,” she answered, “and he very well knows what it means to you. He was anxious for you and I hope you will do what he advises, Father, and not work too hard. He is coming down again after we have heard from Africa.”

  Time passed and heavy gloom hung over Cliff when the bad news circulated. A further cause for sympathy, where the loss was very bitter to one young heart, appeared in Alfred’s betrothed. Greta broke it to Nancy Stephenson tenderly enough, yet felt her woe would not be very lasting at her age and with her nature.

  A fortnight had passed when fuller information reached the dead man’s father and furnished particulars of his end. An unaccountable accident was responsible and the catastrophe itself swept away any means by which explanation could have come. The leader of the hunting party himself wrote fully enough.

  “Alfred Heron carried his heavy rifle on a day when we were working in the hills where gorilla harbour; but, in a gulley under rising ground, he came upon a rhino and got within range. No white man saw what happened but a black with him — a trustworthy man — told us. Heron fired and a terrific explosion took place which blew both him and his rifle to pieces. The bearer himself was wounded, but not too badly to give a call and summon others of us from some quarter of a mile distant. We had heard the explosion and agreed that it sounded queer and unlike the usual cordite cartridge for anything big. We got there quickly to find our poor friend terribly mangled and see that death must have been instantaneous. That is all that matters now. The rifle itself had simply disappeared and it was clear had been smashed to atoms and the fragments hurled in every direction. The heavy stock had fallen to the ground; the rest of the gun must have dissolved into small pieces of which we found some after a protracted hunt, but nothing large enough was left to explain what had happened. The only conclusion it is possible to come to has been that something utterly different from cordite and infinitely more explosive must have got into the cartridge, because, if weakness in the rifle had developed when last he fired it, the result could hardly have been of such a shattering nature. He was always a most careful man and would himself overhaul every weapon very thoroughly after its use. We examined his box of cartridges on going back to camp and there was apparently nothing wrong with them. Experts at Nairobi can offer no suggestions and the death of a most valued and accomplished friend remains, I fear, largely a mystery. We had to bury him on the spot where he died and took very careful note of his grave and the region and how to reach it again. Then we journeyed back to Nairobi, which occupied seven days. Of course, the hunt was abandoned and we scattered, some staying in Africa for the present, others, including myself, returning home as soon as possible. I shall follow this letter soon and will come to visit you and bring all Alfred’s effects with me. But his valuable watch, I am sorry to say, he was wearing at the time of his death and we have only been able to collect a few links of the gold chain.”

  Sir Hector accepted these melancholy facts with resignation.

  “His death was instantaneous,” he said, “and no man can wish a better. But he had not himself to thank for the manner of it, as I well knew. I shall erect a cenotaph in our church, Greta, and hold
a service to his precious memory when it is unveiled. A monument shall also be erected upon his grave out there.”

  “Did Alfred ever make a will?” asked Greta, and her father was able to say that he had not.

  “I urged him to do so,” he said, “but he laughed and alluded to a local superstition. The folk tell you that any man, or woman, who writes a will must be dead in twelve months. ‘I’ll write one when I come home and marry,’ he promised.”

  Several weeks later Faraday returned, but made no haste to do so as reports of his father’s health were good. When he came, he brought some information.

  “I have seen Samuel Balmane, the leader of the expedition,” he told them, “and he is anxious to come down and bring Alfred’s things at any time convenient to yourself, Father. He has some trophies which I don’t suppose you will want, but Balmane thought a lot of them. He couldn’t tell me much more than we know already, but described the extraordinary accident more fully. No white man actually saw it: only the native who was with Alfred. The results, however, he could describe and a burst gun is hardly enough to account for them in my opinion. The cartridges were examined by the makers, when Balmane got back, but none contained anything save the usual cordite charge.”

  “Did the explosion reach the rhinoceros at which Alfred was firing?” asked Sir Hector.

  “Evidently not. They studied that question. The creature had bolted and examination of the ground convinced them it was unhurt. He couldn’t have missed at that range, so it is clear the bullet did not find its mark.”

  “He had loaded the rifle himself, of course?”

  “I asked Balmane the same question and he assured me positively he always did so.

  “The problem as I see it,” added Faraday, “is to know what caused such a terrific and peculiar explosion when the weapon was fired. One can only assume something must have been in that particular cartridge to cause it; but, first, there is the difficulty to know how, in the ordinary course of cartridge-filling at the factory, such a substance could have been introduced. Any crime of that kind, if it was a crime, must have been motiveless. The filler can have possessed no knowledge as to who would fire the cartridge; while a still greater difficulty remains as to what the explosive can have been. Chemistry knows nothing to produce such an effect as they describe. Certainly nothing that could have been put into a rifle cartridge.”