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

by Eden Phillpotts

  Convinced that he stood on firm ground and unable to see the force of his wife’s argument, he left the house presently and went on his way through Cliff gardens to the hill-top above them. Familiar enough was the pathway that wound by hair-pin bends aloft. He turned up his coat collar and proceeded slowly, for he desired to be somewhat late and satisfy himself that his brother-in-law was at the belvedere before he arrived. He felt no shadow of alarm and dismissed Greta’s fears as sprung from ignorance of Faraday’s real attitude to the future. He was satisfied with his reading of human nature and, seeing that the scientist had behaved under his ordeal as he would have done himself in reversed circumstances, proceeded with a mind unclouded by any doubt and his thoughts merely concerned to use the right words and strike the right note when they met. Formalities were absurd and written exchange likewise futile for, if Heron failed to keep his promise, he would know the consequence. Before this massive certainty many other possibilities were overlooked by the triumphant man and he climbed, through darkness without and contentment within, to the rendezvous.

  The path turned off the cliff presently into a rough thicket, then over open ground where, amid boulders, grew the sea-pink and white rock rose. Here he delayed a moment, for the gazebo crowned this elevation perched on a red sandstone precipice with its face to the sea. No light shone from the window, however, and, five minutes after his time, Trensham believed he must be the first to arrive. He hesitated a moment, then stepped forward and, as he did so, his doubt was relieved, for the electric light within the little building flashed on and a sound came from it. The beam made it darker without and in a dozen strides, after shouting his approach, he entered the open door. Broad windows of plate glass which could be slid away in fine weather, opened to seaward, but now they were closed. A marine telescope stood on a tripod beside one of them and a table and easy-chairs occupied the chamber. As Ernest crossed the threshold, an object dropped from the ceiling on to the stone floor. He had just begun to express regret for his late arrival as this happened and, with the words on his lips, was turned to dust. In the fraction of a second there roared a blaze of flame and broke a bellow of thunder. Overpowering might thrust upward and downward. The little building rose like a feather into the air, to crash in marble rubble upon the waves beneath, and the conglomerate rock on which it stood was carved as by a giant knife, sliced from the solid earth and the whole cliff-side thrown into the sea. A glare to blind normal eyes accompanied the explosion and the volume of sound had surely deafened any ear at hand; but nothing with life might have survived. The region was blasted in a moment; from grass to tree all vanished and only a raw and gaping chasm remained streaked with red-hot stone and crumbling earth. The dazzle and din died slowly together; the fires went out; the earth-born thunder reverberated along the coast and was still; but for long the broken precipices continued to fall and their vibrations shook peak and pinnacle up and down the coast line. Masses of stone fell from aloft to sea and strand, and dawn was destined to show familiar land-marks had vanished for ever, the contours of the cliff-faces changed. Morning revealed a little corner of Devon’s shore remodelled, but the night hid all under curtains of falling rain, intensified by this convulsion.

  It was near midnight when the sleeping countryside awakened before a summons so tremendous and some minutes later a telephone at Cliff House throbbed shrilly. The great mansion had trembled with the earth that bore it and people already in bed there arisen to join and win support from each other. Old Roger Horn answered the telephone and cried ‘Thank God!’ when he heard it, for he believed from the first that this was no thunderstorm but signified the death of his master and the destruction of the laboratory. But the familiar tinkle came with hope for him and other domestics, who crowded to learn what news there might be.

  Faraday himself had rung to hear if all was well and let it be known that no harm had overtaken him or the laboratory. He spoke with Horn and then sent a message.

  “Let the Trenshams hear that I am all right,” he said. “What I believe to be a meteorite has fallen on the top of the hill and I am now going up with my home guard to see where. It sounded like a bomb, but can hardly have been that. A vast ærolite probably. Tell them I’ll be back in an hour or so and prepare some food for me. Then everybody go to bed.”

  Aware that Ernest was out-of-doors, Horn hastened with his message to her rooms and met Greta descending from them. The explosion had broken upon her reverie and the glare of the distant flame illuminated her where she sat in darkness counting the minutes before her husband should return. She leapt to the window and saw that a great light enveloped the precipice westward and crowned their summit. And that told her much, but not all. Her thoughts had travelled far since Ernest left her and, until this moment, their tendency, while diminishing personal alarm for him, increased great mental misery as to the future of them both. Now terror reawakened. What she had seen and heard meant death — of that she felt small doubt. But something inclined her to believe that both men might have perished. Then, through the murmur of voices below, there presently broke the sound of the telephone and she guessed the truth, which Horn confirmed a few minutes later.

  “ ’Twas Sir Faraday, Madam,” he said. “He’s rung up from the works to say he’s all right and to know if you are. I told him to my certain knowledge you was, but that Mr. Trensham had gone out three parts of an hour ago. ‘Gone out!’ he said. ‘Why the devil did he want to go out on a dirty night like this?’ But it’s not uncommon for Mr. Trensham to take the air after dinner. Then Sir Faraday said the rumpus looked to have burst out on top of the hill and he was going up to see if he could make anything of it. He thinks it was a thunder-stone fell from the sky. He bade me to say he ordained to be home in an hour or thereabout.”

  The old man went his way and Greta saw the immediate past unfold before her eyes and marked the fabric of the future with uncanny intuition. No difficulty any longer presented itself. The hope that her brother might have lost his life had vanished, but she knew now that her husband was dead.

  He had kept his appointment and fallen victim to his own false reading of Faraday. She faced her own position and realized her brother would swiftly return. He would dwell on the magnitude of the disaster and suggest all manner of possibilities but the true one; he would face the subsequent inquiry, declare his utter ignorance of the vanished man’s purpose, should he be found dead and hazard no suggestion concerning Ernest’s movements if no trace of him appeared. Greta was practical and grasped the situation. She knew that she could never meet Faraday again without revealing her knowledge, and also knew that, if that happened, her own thread would soon be cut. Her heart told her that life was worthless already since Ernest could share it no more, but she nerved herself for the task before her: her brother’s destruction. For a moment she contemplated killing him when he presently returned to tell his tale. But instead she concentrated on instant flight. She dressed for the road, descended to the garage, crept away in her own car and passed from her home into the darkness. She had bidden her maid retire and none marked her retreat, nor did the great, ceremonial gates of Cliff open for her, but a lesser entrance a mile distant, through which she usually chose to go and come. Before one o’clock Greta was on the road to East Devon, designing to ring up London friends at dawn and reach them as soon as she might. She carried little with her, but the vital documents in town she would hand with the rest of her story to those concerned to-morrow. Then it seemed that her brother faded from the foreground of the woman’s thoughts, becoming but an amorphous, malignant shadow no longer to be feared yet for ever hated as the supreme evil that life had brought upon her. Greta’s mind occupied itself with her husband and, while speeding through the night, she traced their united years of devotion. Since he brought his story to her, she perceived how their steadfast cadence had first begun to fall out of harmony and reveal a dissonance unheard and unguessed till then. Gradually, unknown to Ernest but recognized by her, the rift widened. It seemed d
isloyal and she had striven to explain it away, told herself it was inevitable that he should view the dreadful facts differently. He had long passed through the storm of rage and horror that still shook her and had brought patience and his wide experience of crime to the outrage. Murder had been his business for many years and he was too strong and restrained to suffer even deeds so atrocious to waken passion, or endanger his steadfast answer to their challenge. She strove thus to explain his pacific outlook upon Faraday’s value to humanity; but this attitude did not quench her own fiery hatred and could never again do so. She had done her best to turn him from his purpose and impress his danger upon him; but much was already mingled with the old love, ere their last parting: sorrow for his revealed weakness and a throb of something like indignation to find that he could hold her entreaties so lightly. Now all Greta’s fears were justified, for she knew that he had paid the penalty and was dead. No ray of hope lessened this conviction as she drove forward through the darkness.

  Meantime her brother returned to Cliff somewhat more than an hour after she had departed, and Horn awaited him.

  “A mighty catastrophe up aloft, Roger,” he said. “One can determine little to-night, but with torches we saw more than enough to show tremendous things. The gazebo is clean gone — hundreds of tons of white marble thrown down into the sea and thousands of tons of cliff swept off the shore. This is no natural landslide and I begin to fear enemy action. But what enemy? Where’s my sister?”

  “To bed, Sir Faraday.”

  “And Trensham? Did he get back all right? In that case I needn’t summon them till morning.”

  “No. He’s not back, Sir, and I lay the lady’s awake in trouble.”

  Faraday turned to the food and wine awaiting him.

  “Better let her know I’m home and tell her to come down and see me. I don’t like this, Roger. Why did he go out at all?”

  “For a breath of air — so he said, Master. He often will of a night.”

  “Nonsense! Perhaps she knows the reason. Tell her I want to see her.”

  Left alone he flung off his raincoat and turned to the meal. He had climbed with some of his laboratory guard as near the scene of the explosion as they might venture, to find the cliffs rent before them and a vast, smoking gap where the gazebo stood. Danger yawned on every side in the darkness and all soon returned to safety while he, for the benefit of his companions, uttered an imaginary theory of the facts.

  “Too soon to judge,” he said, “but I have a rather dreadful fear this is man’s work, though the war’s over. What I am doing and have already done is known throughout Europe and there may be plenty of Nazi scientists operating in secret. They know my work and have attempted more than once to get us during the last five years. I don’t say it is so, but I feel it possible that this was another attempt. And not a bad shot — only a mile and a half from the laboratory. We shall hear to-morrow if any planes were over us.”

  He elaborated the theme and spoke with pretended conviction.

  “If this had touched the works,” said one of the little group, “then there wouldn’t have been a whisker among the lot of us to tell the tale, Sir Faraday.”

  “Not a waistcoat button, or the link of a watch-chain, my friend. The blast from above would have been answered by a far greater from the laboratory itself. Not only my works and me, but Cliff House might have gone, and half the parish with us.”

  Now he was at home again, drinking his hot soup and considering what to say when Greta joined him. As Trensham had climbed the hill to his funeral pyre full of words about to be spoken, so now Faraday prepared to receive his sister and declare his concern and alarm, or display neither. She had never seen him in grave trouble for anybody and knew very well that he cared little for Ernest, so he decided not to associate his brother-in-law with the night’s work, but suggest that he had been cut off on his way home by the explosion and might be counted upon to return with daylight. Then came Horn, after some delay, to report that his sister was not to be found.

  “I called up her maiden when she didn’t reply to my knocking,” he said, “and Florence couldn’t get any response either and went in and discovered the mistress wasn’t there, Sir Faraday. She’s looked high and low and not a trace, and the sum total mounts up to be that Mrs. Trensham has gone forth, because her out-door clothes are missing.”

  The younger started from his chair.

  “Gone out! Where should she go to?” he asked and, to the old man’s surprise, showed excitement.

  “Only her Maker can say, Sir Faraday,” he answered. “Maybe to seek Mr. Ernest.”

  But a single question concerned Faraday now.

  “Ring up the garage and find if she has been there,” he ordered; then, as Horn hastened to obey, the other’s mind moved swiftly and truth rolled in a torrent where falsehood till now had misguided it. Here was one ever ready to welcome truth and acknowledge error; but now the stark thing faced him in awful and unexpected shape and the lie he had believed and acted upon shattered all security. In his hour of fancied triumph, truth had opened the door to an apocalypse of ruin, disgrace and possible death. He had committed Trensham’s own error and, while seducing the lesser man with a falsehood, had himself fallen victim to one. That Greta knew nothing had been accepted as an elementary truth and deceived him utterly. He was reconstructing the future when Horn returned; but the old man brought no surprise except his own and Faraday accepted Greta’s departure as inevitable, for he dealt now with reality. In the conviction that his secret would never reach her he had charted her reaction to Ernest’s death and was prepared with suggestions to explain it and words to declare his regret. He had taken Trensham into the laboratory that morning, where he was shown experimental atomic bombs of varied sizes, presently to be displayed to science, and Faraday proposed to pretend fear that the vanished man might have picked one up and subsequently come to grief with the thing; but now a far different sequel promised. Greta knew the truth and had doubtless known it before he returned to England. She was in her husband’s secrets and had played her part; she knew whither he had gone that night and why. She had heard everything concerning their bargaining and probably felt as much surprise as Faraday himself to find Trensham so easily fall to the bait. And now, with the knowledge that Ernest was dead, Greta had the start of him to some doubtful destination by little more than an hour.

  CHAPTER XIV

  FARADAY HERON ate and drank, then, weary enough yet forbidden sleep, retired to his room and considered his actions. During the dusk of that day before he returned to dinner he had made provision. At a time when the heights were deserted and no human foot would tread them before another morning, he had set his simple trap, stretching first a thread six inches above the ground across the path to the gazebo. Within fifteen yards of the little building he laid it and carried the end upwards until he reached his goal: the electric switch inside. He connected the string in such a manner that, before it was broken by any passerby, the electric light must be turned on. Thus, without feeling the thread as he snapped it, Trensham would assume Faraday was before him and had turned on the light at his approach. A length of fine wire he next laid across the threshold, making it fast a few inches above the entrance step and carrying the end behind the telescope to the ceiling. Mounting the table he suspended an object in shape and size resembling a big pine cone; then he went his way. The pressure of any incoming foot would not suffice to break this wire, but long before a visitor could become aware of its obstruction, the atomic bomb hanging above him must fall at his feet. His simple snare had answered its purpose; but now he occupied his mind with to-morrow and confronted circumstances far from simple. He abandoned any thought of seeking Greta for, even had he known her route, there was no chance of catching her now. Her car was light and very powerful, and she drove well. He guessed that with the night before her, she would proceed to London and he only calculated how long it must be until, reaching the authorities, he might expect their attention. He kne
w her and was aware she would not delay. It was certain that she had long since learned from Ernest the fitting action, if action ever proved needful, and he considered when she might be counted upon to reach Scotland Yard and the extent of the credence she could expect for her fantastic story. He judged himself safe until eleven o’clock at the earliest on the following morning.

  Faraday decided that two courses lay before him now, but dismissed the first — an effort to escape the country — as inadequate and unlikely to succeed in any case. The second offered a more grandiose and fruitful channel and, judging in the main of human nature from his knowledge of his own feelings, emotions and experience, he believed that a rational world would take his part. He considered the indictment with impartial mind and decided the murder of his father could not be disproved. They would try him for that and probably no other. Only circumstantial evidence of vague nature could link him with his brother’s death and no proof would exist that connected him with the disappearance of Trensham. The explosion, as he would contend, was caused by Ernest himself. Sir Hector’s murder must harden the heart of humanity against him without a doubt, and what had he to offer that condoned any act so evil? What terms was he prepared to suggest on which he might claim continued existence after an outrage such as that? The immensity of his motive was ample in his opinion and more than sufficient to overwhelm conventional justice, or passing outcry of public sentiment. Not the mob of humanity would decide upon his sentence but the universal voice of civilization itself. Thus he argued and, considering all that he was prepared to offer and the miracle awaiting to be disclosed, felt assured that no body of general opinion and no existing laws were capable of destroying him. To hold one or two insignificant lives of greater value than a new apotheosis and promise for all mankind appeared inconceivable from any scientific standpoint. Human prescience had reached firm ground on its tardy, upward struggle, and would welcome his evangel with thanksgiving. He believed that the only education of any worth must be scientific and that all practical tuition proceeded on those lines; but he erred in imagining his bent of mind to predominate, or assume all that he had to offer for permission to go on living must inevitably triumph over those forces likely to think otherwise. A doubt existed.