As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows
of windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of
that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves
over the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge
rows and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern
gunnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and
could have blown to pieces an army corps.
This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart
Turnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had
said--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness
and unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face
and throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something
almost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for
a few seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in
all the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen
for weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,
with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes
that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly
to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged
in his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he
was talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the
magistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not
only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.
Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a
nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one
intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped
impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind
of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square face
behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and an austere stare.
It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw
the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand;
he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly
sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms
merely because they were true. “Confound it all!” cried Turnbull to
himself, “if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside.”
He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the more
so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
Beatrice with an air of fright.
Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven
by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The
Master was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a
great artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they
had never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even
then they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the
long emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like
the face of some infernal actor.
“This is indeed a cosy party,” he said, with glittering eyes.
The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity,
but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but
merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying
something like this:
“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome
and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures
and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social
contract is annulled.”
“It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master
was silent. “The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey
our orders, and so have you.”
“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat
irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.”
“Oh! I dare say,” said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
“A cosy party,” resumed the Master, scornfully, “and yet I believe some
of you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain
it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I
specially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific
mind.”
Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only
to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: “Mr. Turnbull will agree
with me,” he said, “when I say that we long felt in scientific circles
that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion.”
Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
The Master went on smoothly: “It was in vain for us to urge that the
incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand,
to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all.”
MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull
did not look up.
“This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,” continued the
speaker; “it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done
it with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now
within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as
Mr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a
fictitious life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to
fight for the Virgin.”
MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
his easy attitude or his flow of words. “Again we urged that this duel
was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were
ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged
Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means
of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on
the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the
health of a duellist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular
excitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on
our old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles,
the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform
you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There
never was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is a
melodramatic myth, like Calvary.”
Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
sense of a silent explosion.
“The whole story of the MacIan challenge,” went on the Master, beaming
at them all with a sinister benignity, “has been found to originate in
the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately
in our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of
Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the
disease called Vinculomania--the impression that one has been bound or
tied up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines
that he was chased by two men.”
The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started
out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
“One poor woman we have with us,” he said, in a compassionate voice,
“believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the
well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched
woman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel.
Madeleine Durand actually professes to have been the subject of the
fight between MacIan and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at
all, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We have
taken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing, and
proved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here.”
The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with
the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
“I hope we shall have no more trouble,” said Dr. Quayle pleasantly
enough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back
of a chair.
Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner.
MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing
on the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed
to capture the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull
went over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of
something quite fresh and frightful.
Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
“The place is on fire!” cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
“Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?”
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. “How did the French Revolution
happen?” he asked.
“Oh, how should I know!” wailed the other.
“Then I will tell you,” said Turnbull; “it happened because some people
fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.”
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
strict principles of the social contract.
But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and
terrible. “Now,” he cried, panting, “now is the judgement of the world.
The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place.
They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at
the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only
we may see them go.”
“How do you know we shall go?” asked Hutton, fiercely.
“You believe nothing,” said MacIan, simply, “and you are insupportably
afraid of death.”
“So this is suicide,” sneered the doctor; “a somewhat doubtful sign of
sanity.”
“Not at all--this is vengeance,” answered Turnbull, quite calmly; “a
thing which is completely healthy.”
“You think the doctors will go,” said Hutton, savagely.
“The keepers have gone already,” said Turnbull.
Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across
the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a
man or woman moved.
“We hate dying,” said Turnbull, with composure, “but we hate you even
more. This is a successful revolution.”
In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and
fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel
ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft
chin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. “Quayle,
Hutton,” he said, “you will escape with me.” And they went up the ladder
like automata of lead.
Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at
last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
“By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once
I mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
Very unfortunate--especially for him.” And nodding genially, he climbed
into his flying ship.
MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
Madeleine, and followed.
* * *
MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning
timber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was
impossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or
alive; not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light.
The site of the old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing
forest of fire--the flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their
incessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against an
orator. Yet through all that deafening density MacIan thought he heard
a small and separate sound. When he heard it he rushed forward as if to
plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
“Let me go!” cried Evan, in agony; “it's the poor old beggar's
voice--he's still alive, and shouting for help.”
“Listen!” said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
“Or else he is shrieking with pain,” protested MacIan. “I will not
endure it.”
“Listen!” repeated Turnbull, grimly. “Did you ever hear anyone shout for
help or shriek with pain in that voice?”
The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the
conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of
puzzled inquiry to his companion.
“He is singing,” said Turnbull, simply.
A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing
it was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about
playing in the golden hay.
“Good Lord!” cried Turnbull, bitterly, “there seem to be some advantages
in really being an idiot.” Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
called out on chance to the invisible singer: “Can you come out? Are you
cut off?”
“God help us all!” said MacIan, with a shudder; “he's laughing now.”
At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
come into his head.
“Fool, come out and save yourself!” shouted Turnbull.
“No, by Heaven! that is not the way,” cried Evan, suddenly. “Father,” he
shouted, “come out and save us all!”
The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the
whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames
shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some
infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden
of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost
flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden
dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive
smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London
fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,
the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding
rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of
fire.
“Father,” cried MacIan, once more, “come out of it and save us all!”
Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked
out like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant
heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must
have seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds
blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire
sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly
the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and
ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing
divided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for
those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As
the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,
the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back
in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as
two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this
trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down
this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were
alone in a wood in spring.
When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.
His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly
rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All
his life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain that
materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines
precisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on
her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little
old man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had
not looked at his face.
When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire
had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its
own monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and
right like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of
its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either
bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.
Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew
too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it
from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying
ship, and everyone knew whose.
As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
Lucifer had carried with him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and
clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
“They are gone!” screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. “O God! The are
lost!”
Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
“No, they are not lost,” he said. “They are saved. He has taken away no
souls with him, after all.”
He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.