THE LAND OF MIST
A. CONAN DOYLE
The Land of Mist
By A. CONAN DOYLE
AUTHOR OF
“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” “Danger, and
Other Stories,” “The Lost World,” “Memoirs of
Sherlock Holmes,” “Tales of Sherlock Holmes,”
“The Valley of Fear,” etc.
[Illustration: colophon]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with George H. Doran Company
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY A. CONAN DOYLE
THE LAND OF MIST
--Q--
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE
REVEREND GEORGE VALE OWEN
AS A TOKEN OF
SYMPATHY, ADMIRATION, AND FRIENDSHIP
JANUARY, 1926
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN WHICH OUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONERS
MAKE A START 11
II WHICH DESCRIBES AN EVENING IN STRANGE
COMPANY 21
III IN WHICH PROFESSOR CHALLENGER GIVES
HIS OPINION 40
IV WHICH DESCRIBES SOME STRANGE DOINGS IN
HAMMERSMITH 46
V WHERE OUR COMMISSIONERS HAVE A REMARKABLE
EXPERIENCE 77
VI IN WHICH THE READER IS SHOWN THE
HABITS OF A NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL 98
VII IN WHICH THE NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL GETS
WHAT THE BRITISH LAW CONSIDERS TO BE
HIS DESERTS 116
VIII IN WHICH THREE INVESTIGATORS COME
UPON A DARK SOUL 131
IX WHICH INTRODUCES SOME VERY PHYSICAL
PHENOMENA 155
X DE PROFUNDIS 166
XI WHERE SILAS LINDEN COMES INTO HIS OWN 184
XII THERE ARE HEIGHTS AND THERE ARE
DEPTHS 198
XIII IN WHICH PROFESSOR CHALLENGER GOES
FORTH TO BATTLE 212
XIV IN WHICH CHALLENGER MEETS A STRANGE
COLLEAGUE 230
XV IN WHICH TRAPS ARE LAID FOR A GREAT
QUARRY 243
XVI IN WHICH CHALLENGER HAS THE EXPERIENCE
OF HIS LIFETIME 257
XVII WHERE THE MISTS CLEAR AWAY 274
APPENDIX 280
THE LAND OF MIST
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH OUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONERS MAKE A START
The great Professor Challenger has been--very improperly and
imperfectly--used in fiction. A daring author placed him in impossible
and romantic situations in order to see how he would react to them. He
reacted to the extent of a libel action, an abortive appeal for
suppression, a riot in Sloane Street, two personal assaults, and the
loss of his position as lecturer upon Physiology at the London School of
Sub-Tropical Hygiene. Otherwise, the matter passed more peaceably than
might have been expected.
But he was losing something of his fire. Those huge shoulders were a
little bowed. The spade-shaped Assyrian beard showed tangles of grey
amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less aggressive, his smile less
self-complacent, his voice as monstrous as ever but less ready to roar
down all opposition. Yet he was dangerous, as all around him were
painfully aware. The volcano was not extinct, and constant rumblings
threatened some new explosion. Life had much yet to teach him, but he
was a little less intolerant in learning.
There was a definite date for the change which had been wrought in him.
It was the death of his wife. That little bird of a woman had made her
nest in the big man’s heart. He had all the tenderness and chivalry
which the strong can have for the weak. By yielding everything she had
won everything, as a sweet-natured, tactful woman can. And when she died
suddenly from virulent pneumonia following influenza, the man staggered
and went down. He came up again, smiling ruefully like the stricken
boxer, and ready to carry on for many a round with Fate. But he was not
the same man, and if it had not been for the help and comradeship of his
daughter Enid, he might never have rallied from the blow. She it was
who, with clever craft, lured him into every subject which would excite
his combative nature and infuriate his mind, until he lived once more in
the present and not the past. It was only when she saw him turbulent in
controversy, violent to pressmen, and generally offensive to those
around him, that she felt he was really in a fair way to recovery.
Enid Challenger was a remarkable girl and should have a paragraph to
herself. With the raven-black hair of her father, and the blue eyes and
fresh colour of her mother, she was striking, if not beautiful, in
appearance. She was quiet, but she was very strong. From her infancy she
had either to take her own part against her father, or else to consent
to be crushed and to become a mere automaton worked by his strong
fingers. She was strong enough to hold her own in a gentle, elastic
fashion, which bent to his moods and reasserted itself when they were
past. Lately she had felt the constant pressure too oppressive and she
had relieved it by feeling out for a career of her own. She did
occasional odd jobs for the London press, and did them in such fashion
that her name was beginning to be known in Fleet Street. In finding
this opening she had been greatly helped by an old friend of her
father--and possibly of the reader--Mr. Edward Malone of the _Daily
Gazette_.
Malone was still the same athletic Irishman who had once won his
international cap at Rugby, but life had toned him down also, and made
him a more subdued and thoughtful man. He had put away a good deal when
at last his football-boots had been packed away for good. His muscles
may have wilted and his joints stiffened, but his mind was deeper and
more active. The boy was dead and the man was born. In person he had
altered little, but his moustache was heavier, his back a little
rounded, and some lines of thought were tracing themselves upon his
brow. Post-war conditions and new world problems had left their mark.
For the rest he had made his name in journalism and even to a small
degree in literature. He was still a bachelor, though there were some
who thought that his hold on that condition was precarious, and that
Miss Enid Challenger’s little white fingers could disengage it.
Certainly they were very good chums.
It was a Sunday evening in October, and the lights were just beginning
to twinkle out through the fog which had shrouded London from early
morning. Professor Challenger’s flat at Victoria West Gardens was upon
the third floor, and the mist lay thick upon the windows, while the low
hum of the attenuated Sunday traffic rose up from an invisible highway
beneath, which was outlined only by scattered patches of dull radiance.
Professor Challenger sat with his thick, bandy legs outstretched to the
fire, and his hands thrust deeply into his trouser pockets. His dress
had a little of the eccentricity of genius, for he wore a
loose-collared shirt, a large knotted maroon-coloured silk tie, and a
black velvet smoking-jacket, which, with his flowing beard, gave him the
appearance of an elderly and Bohemian artist. On one side of him ready
for an excursion, with bowl hat, short-skirted dress of black, and all
the other fashionable devices with which women contrive to deform the
beauties of nature, there sat his daughter, while Malone, hat in hand,
waited by the window.
“I think we should get off, Enid. It is nearly seven,” said he.
They were writing joint articles upon the religious denominations of
London, and on each Sunday evening they sallied out together to sample
some new one and get copy for the next week’s issue of the _Gazette_.
“It’s not till eight, Ted. We have lots of time.”
“Sit down, sir! Sit down!” boomed Challenger, tugging at his beard as
was his habit if his temper was rising. “There is nothing annoys me more
than having anyone standing behind me. A relic of atavism and the fear
of a dagger, but still persistent. That’s right. For heaven’s sake put
your hat down! You have a perpetual air of catching a train.”
“That’s the journalistic life,” said Malone. “If we don’t catch the
perpetual train we get left. Even Enid is beginning to understand that.
But still, as you say, there is time enough.”
“How far have you got?” asked Challenger.
Enid consulted a business-like little reporter’s notebook.
“We have done seven. There was Westminster Abbey for the Church in its
most picturesque form, and Saint Agatha for the High Church, and Tudor
Place for the Low. Then there was the Westminster Cathedral for
Catholics, Endell Street for Presbyterians, and Gloucester Square for
Unitarians. But to-night we are trying to introduce some variety. We are
doing the Spiritualists.”
Challenger snorted like an angry buffalo.
“Next week the lunatic asylums, I presume,” said he. “You don’t mean to
tell me, Malone, that these ghost people have got churches of their
own.”
“I’ve been looking into that,” said Malone. “I always look up cold facts
and figures before I tackle a job. They have over four hundred
registered churches in Great Britain.”
Challenger’s snorts now sounded like a whole herd of buffaloes.
“There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and
credulity of the human race. _Homo sapiens! Homo idioticus!_ Whom do
they pray to--the ghosts?”
“Well, that’s what we want to find out. We should get some copy out of
them. I need not say that I share your view entirely, but I’ve seen
something of Atkinson of St. Mary’s Hospital lately. He is a rising
surgeon, you know.”
“I’ve heard of him--cerebro-spinal.”
“That’s the man. He is level-headed and is looked on as an authority on
psychic research, as they call the new science which deals with these
matters.”
“Science, indeed!”
“Well, that is what they call it. He seems to take these people
seriously. I consult him when I want a reference, for he has the
literature at his fingers’ end. ‘Pioneers of the Human Race’--that was
his description.”
“Pioneering them to Bedlam,” growled Challenger. “And literature! What
literature have they?”
“Well, that was another surprise. Atkinson has five hundred volumes, but
complains that his psychic library is very imperfect. You see, there is
French, German, Italian, as well as our own.”
“Well, thank God all the folly is not confined to poor old England.
Pestilential nonsense!”
“Have you read it up at all, Father?” asked Enid.
“Read it up! I, with all my interests and no time for one-half of them!
Enid, you are too absurd.”
“Sorry, Father. You spoke with such assurance, I thought you knew
something about it.”
Challenger’s huge head swung round and his lion’s glare rested upon his
daughter.
“Do you conceive that a logical brain, a brain of the first order, needs
to read and to study before it can detect a manifest absurdity? Am I to
study mathematics in order to confute the man who tells me that two and
two are five? Must I study physics once more and take down my
_Principia_ because some rogue or fool insists that a table can rise in
the air against the law of gravity? Does it take five hundred volumes to
inform us of a thing which is proved in every police-court when an
impostor is exposed? Enid, I am ashamed of you!”
His daughter laughed merrily.
“Well, Dad, you need not roar at me any more. I give in. In fact, I have
the same feeling that you have.”
“None the less,” said Malone, “some good men support them. I don’t see
that you can laugh at Lodge and Crookes and the others.”
“Don’t be absurd, Malone. Every great mind has its weaker side. It is a
sort of reaction against all the good sense. You come suddenly upon a
vein of positive nonsense. That is what is the matter with these
fellows. No, Enid, I haven’t read their reasons, and I don’t mean to,
either; some things are beyond the pale. If we re-open all the old
questions, how can we ever get ahead with the new ones? This matter is
settled by common sense, the law of England, and by the universal assent
of every sane European.”
“So that’s that!” said Enid.
“However,” he continued, “I can admit that there are occasional excuses
for misunderstandings upon the point.” He sank his voice, and his great
grey eyes looked sadly up into vacancy. “I have known cases where the
coldest intellect--even my own intellect--might, for a moment, have been
shaken.”
Malone scented copy.
“Yes, sir?”
Challenger hesitated. He seemed to be struggling with himself. He wished
to speak, and yet speech was painful. Then, with an abrupt, impatient
gesture, he plunged into his story:
“I never told you, Enid. It was too--too intimate. Perhaps too absurd. I
was ashamed to have been so shaken. But it shows how even the best
balanced may be caught unawares.”
“Yes, sir?”
“It was after my wife’s death. You knew her, Malone. You can guess what
it meant to me. It was the night after the cremation ... horrible,
Malone, horrible! I saw the dear little body slide down, down--and then
the glare of flame and the door clanged to.” His great body shook and he
passed his big, hairy hand over his eyes.
“I don’t know why I tell you this; the talk seemed to lead up to it. It
may be a warning to you. That night--the night after the cremation--I
sat up in the hall. She was there,” he nodded at Enid. “She had fallen
asleep in a chair, poor girl. You know the house at Rotherfield, Malone.
It was in the big hall. I sat by the fireplace, the room all draped in
shadow, and my mind draped in shadow also. I should have sent her to
bed, but she was lying back in her chair and I did not wish to wake her.
It may have been one in the morning--I remember the moon shining through
the stained-glass window. I sat and I brooded. Then suddenly there came
a noise.”
“Yes, sir?”
“It was low at first--just a ticking. Then it grew louder and more
distinct--it was a clear rat-tat-tat. Now comes the queer coincidence,
the sort of thing out of which legends grow when credulous folk have the
shaping of them. You must know that my wife had a peculiar way of
knocking at a door. It was really a little tune which she played with
her fingers. I got into the same way so that we could each know when the
other knocked. Well, it seemed to me--of course my mind was strained and
abnormal--that the taps shaped themselves into the well-known rhythm of
her knock. I couldn’t localise it. You can think how eagerly I tried. It
was above me, somewhere on the woodwork. I lost sense of time. I daresay
it was repeated a dozen times at least.”
“Oh, Dad, you never told me!”
“No, but I woke you up. I asked you to sit quiet with me for a little.”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well, we sat, but nothing happened. Not a sound more. Of course it was
a delusion. Some insect in the wood; the ivy on the outer wall. My own
brain furnished the rhythm. Thus do we make fools and children of
ourselves. But it gave me an insight. I saw how even a clever man could
be deceived by his own emotions.”
“But how do you know, sir, that it was _not_ your wife?”
“Absurd, Malone! Absurd, I say! I tell you I saw her in the flames. What
was there left?”
“Her soul, her spirit.”
Challenger shook his head sadly.
“When the dear body dissolved into its elements--when its gases went
into the air and its residue of solids sank into a grey dust--it was the
end. There was no more. She had played her part, played it beautifully,
nobly. It was done. Death ends all, Malone. This soul-talk is the
Animism of savages. It is a superstition, a myth. As a physiologist I
will undertake to produce crime or virtue by vascular control or
cerebral stimulation. I will turn a Jekyll into a Hyde by a surgical
operation. Another can do it by a psychological suggestion. Alcohol will
do it. Drugs will do it. Absurd, Malone, absurd! As the tree falls, so
does it lie. There is no next morning ... night--eternal night ... and
long rest for the weary worker.”
“Well, it’s a sad philosophy.”
“Better a sad than a false one.”
“Perhaps so. There is something virile and manly in facing the worst. I
would not contradict. My reason is with you.”
“But my instincts are against!” cried Enid. “No, no, never can I believe
it.” She threw her arms round the great bull neck. “Don’t tell me,
daddy, that you with all your complex brain and wonderful self are a
thing with no more life hereafter than a broken clock!”
“Four buckets of water and a bagful of salts,” said Challenger as he
smilingly detached his daughter’s grip. “That’s your daddy, my lass, and
you may as well reconcile your mind to it. Well, it’s twenty to eight.
Come back, if you can, Malone, and let me hear your adventures among the
insane.”