A city of the blind! Six millions of people suddenly deprived of sight!
The disaster sounds impossible--a nightmare, the wild vapourings of a
diseased imagination--and yet why not? Given a favourable atmospheric
condition, something colossal in the way of a fire, and there it is.
And there, somewhere folded away in the book of Nature, is the simple
remedy.
Such thoughts as these flashed through Hackness's mind as he stood
under the portico of the Lyceum Theatre, quite helpless and inert for
the moment.
But the darkness was thicker and blacker than anything he had ever
imagined. It was absolutely the darkness that could be felt. Hackness
could hear the faint scratching of matches all around him, but there
was no glimmer of light anywhere. And the atmosphere was thick,
stifling, greasy. Yet it was not quite as stifling as perfervid
imagination suggested. The very darkness suggested suffocation. Still,
there was air, a sultry light breeze that set the murk in motion, and
mercifully brought from some purer area the oxygen that made life
possible. There was always air, thank God, to the end of the Four Days'
Night.
Nobody spoke for a time. Not a sound of any kind could be heard. It was
odd to think that a few miles away the country might be sleeping under
the clear stars. It was terrible to think that hundreds of thousands of
people must be standing lost in the streets and yet near to home.
A little way off a dog whined, a child in a sweet refined voice cried
that she was lost. An anxious mother called in reply. The little one
had been forgotten in the first flood of that awful darkness. By sheer
good luck Hackness was enabled to locate the child. He could feel that
her wraps were rich and costly, though the same fatty slime was upon
them. He caught the child up in his arms and yelled that he had got
her. The mother was close by, yet full five minutes elapsed before
Hackness blundered upon her. Something was whining and fawning about
his feet.
He called upon Grimfern, and the latter answered in his ear. Cynthia
was crying pitifully and helplessly. Some women there were past that.
"For Heaven's sake tell us what we are to do," Grimfern gasped. "I
flatter myself that I know London well, but I couldn't find my way home
in this."
Something was licking Hackness's hand. It was the dog Kim. There was
just a chance here. He tore his handkerchief in strips and knotted it
together. One end he fastened to the little dog's collar.
"It's Kim," he explained. "Tell the dog 'home.' There's just a chance
that he may lead you home. We're very wonderful creatures, but one
sensible dog is worth a million of us to-night. Try it."
"And where are you going?" Cynthia asked. She spoke high, for a babel
of voices had broken out. "What will become of you?"
"Oh, I am all right," Hackness said with an affected cheerfulness.
"You see, I was fairly sure that this would happen sooner or later.
So I pigeon-holed a way of dealing with the difficulty. Scotland Yard
listened, but thought me a bore all the same. This is the situation
where I come in."
Grimfern touched the dog and urged him forward.
Kim gave a little bark and a whine. His muscular little body strained
at the leash.
"It's all right," Grimfern cried. "Kim understands. That queer little
pill-box of a brain of his is worth the finest intellect in England
to-night."
Cynthia whispered a faint good-night, and Hackness was alone. As he
stood there in the blackness the sense of suffocation was overwhelming.
He essayed to smoke a cigarette, but he hadn't the remotest idea
whether the thing was alight or not. It had no taste or flavour.
But it was idle to stand there. He must fight his way along to Scotland
Yard to persuade the authorities to listen to his ideas. There was not
the slightest danger of belated traffic, no sane man would have driven
a horse in such dense night. Hackness blundered along without the
faintest idea to which point of the compass he was facing.
If he could only get his bearings he felt that he should be all right.
He found his way into the Strand at length; he fumbled up against
someone and asked where he was. A hoarse voice responded that the owner
fancied it was somewhere in Piccadilly. There were scores of people
in the streets standing about talking desperately, absolute strangers
clinging to one another for sheer craving for company to keep the
frayed senses together. The most fastidious clubman there would have
chummed with the toughest Hooligan rather than have his own thoughts
for company.
Hackness pushed his way along. If he got out of his bearings he adopted
the simple experiment of knocking at the first door he came to and
asking where he was. His reception was not invariably enthusiastic, but
it was no time for nice distinctions. And a deadly fear bore everybody
down.
At last he came to Scotland Yard, as the clocks proclaimed that it
was half-past one. Ghostly official voices told Hackness the way to
Inspector Williamson's office, stern officials grasped him by the arm
and piloted him up flights of stairs. He blundered over a chair and sat
down. Out of the black cavern of space Inspector Williamson spoke.
"I am thankful you have come. You are just the man I most wanted to
see. I want my memory refreshed over that scheme of yours," he said. "I
didn't pay very much attention to it at the time."
"Of course you didn't. Did you ever know an original prophet who wasn't
laughed at? Still, I don't mind confessing that I hardly anticipated
anything quite so awful as this. The very density of it makes some
parts of my scheme impossible. We shall have to shut our teeth and
endure it. Nothing really practical can be done so long as this fog
lasts."
"But, man alive, how long _will_ it last?"
"Perhaps an hour or perhaps a week. Do you grasp what an awful calamity
faces us?"
Williamson had no reply. So long as the fog lasted, London was in a
state of siege, and, not only this, but every house in it was a fort,
each depending upon itself for supplies. No bread could be baked, no
meal could be carried round, no milk or vegetables delivered so long as
the fog remained. Given a day or two of this and thousands of families
would be on the verge of starvation. It was not a pretty picture that
Hackness drew, but Williamson was bound to agree with every word of it.
These two men sat in the darkness till what should have been the dawn,
whilst scores of subordinates were setting some sort of machinery in
motion to preserve order.
Hackness stumbled home to his rooms about nine o'clock in the morning,
without having succeeded in persuading the officials to grant him
permission to experiment. Mechanically he felt for his watch to see the
time. The watch was gone. Hackness smiled grimly. The predatory classes
had not been quite blind to the advantages of the situation.
There was no breakfast for Hackness for the simple reason that it had
been found impossible to light the kitchen fire. But there was a loaf
of bread, some cheese, and a knife. Hackness fumbled for his bottled
beer and a glass. There were many worse breakfasts in London that
morning.
He woke presently, conscious that a clock was striking nine. After some
elaborate thought and the asking of a question or two from another
inmate of the house, Hackness found to his horror that he had slept
the clock round nearly twice. It was nine o'clock in the morning,
twenty-three hours since he had fallen asleep! And, so far as Hackness
could judge, there were no signs of the fog's abatement.
He changed his clothes and washed the greasy slime off him so far as
cold water and soap would allow. There were plenty of people in the
streets, hunting for food for the most part; there were tales of people
found dead in the gutters. Progression was slow, but the utter absence
of traffic rendered it safe and possible. Men spoke with bated breath,
the weight of the great calamity upon them.
News that came from a few miles outside the radius spoke of clear
skies and bright sunshine. There was a great deal of sickness, and the
doctors had more than they could manage, especially with the young and
the delicate.
And the calamity looked like getting worse. Six million people were
breathing what oxygen there was. Hackness returned to his chambers to
find Eldred awaiting him.
"This can't go on, you know," the latter said tersely.
"Of course it can't," Hackness replied. "All the air is getting
exhausted. Come with me down to Scotland Yard and help to try and
persuade Williamson to test my experiment."
"What! Do you mean to say he is still obstinate?"
"Well, perhaps he feels different to-day. Come along."
Williamson was in a chastened frame of mind. He had no optimistic words
when Hackness suggested that nothing less than a violent meteorological
disturbance would clear the deadly peril of the fog away. It was time
for drastic remedies, and if they failed things would be no worse than
before.
"But can you manage it?" Williamson asked.
"I fancy so," Hackness replied. "It's a risk, of course, but everything
has been ready for a long time. We could start after to-morrow
midnight, or any time for that matter."
"Very well," Williamson sighed with the air of a man who realises that
after all the tooth must come out. "If this produces a calamity I shall
be asked to send in my resignation. If I refuse----"
"If you refuse there is more than a chance that you won't want another
situation," Hackness said grimly. "Let's get the thing going, Eldred."
They crawled along through the black suffocating darkness, feeble,
languid, and sweating at every pore. There was a murky closeness in the
vitiated atmosphere that seemed to take all the strength and energy
away. At any other time the walk to Clarence Terrace would have been a
pleasure, now it was a penance. They found their objective after a deal
of patience and trouble. Hackness yelled in the doorway. There was a
sound of footsteps and Cynthia Grimfern spoke.
"Ah, what a relief it is to know that you are all right," she said. "I
pictured all sorts of horrors happening to you. Will this never end,
Martin?"
She cried softly in her distress. Hackness felt for her hand and
pressed it tenderly.
"We are going to try my great theory," he said. "Eldred is with me,
and we have got Williamson's permission to operate with the aerophane.
Where is Sir Edgar?"
Grimfern was in the big workshop in the garden. As best he could, he
was fumbling over some machinery for the increase of power in electric
lighting. Hackness took a queer-looking lamp with double reflectors
from his pocket.
"Shut off that dynamo," he said, "and give me the flex. I've got a
little idea here Bramley, the electrician, lent me. With that 1000-volt
generator of yours I can get a light equal to 40,000 candles. There."
Flick went the switch, and the others staggered back with their hands
to their eyes. The great volume of light, impossible to face under
ordinary circumstances, illuminated the workshop with a faint glow
like a winter's dawn. It was sufficient for all practical purpose, but
to eyes that had seen absolutely nothing for two days and nights very
painful.
[Illustration: The great volume of light, impossible to face under
ordinary circumstances, illuminated the workshop with a faint glow.]
Cynthia laughed hysterically. She saw the men grimed and dirty,
blackened and greasy, as if they were fresh from a stoker's hole in a
tropical sea. They saw a tall, graceful girl in the droll parody of a
kitchen-maid who had wiped a tearful face with a blacklead brush.
But they could _see_. Along the whole floor of the workshop lay a
queer, cigar-shaped instrument with grotesque wings and a tail like
that of a fish, but capable of being turned in any direction. It seemed
a problem to get this strange-looking monster out of the place, but as
the whole of the end of the workshop was constructed to pull out, the
difficulty was not great.
This was Sir Edgar Grimfern's aerophane, built under his own eyes and
with the assistance of Hackness and Eldred.
"It will be a bit of risk in the dark," Sir Edgar said thoughtfully.
"It will, sir, but I hope it will mean the saving of a great city,"
Hackness remarked. "We shall have no difficulty in getting up, and
as to the getting down, don't forget that the atmosphere a few miles
beyond the outskirts of London is quite clear. If only the explosives
are strong enough!"
"Don't theorise," Eldred snapped. "We've got a good day's work before
we start. And there is no time to be lost."
"Luncheon first," Sir Edgar suggested, "served in here. It will be
plain and cold; but, thank goodness, there is plenty of it. My word,
after that awful darkness what a blessed thing light is once more!"
* * * * *
Two hours after midnight the doors of the workshop were pulled away and
the aerophane was dragged on its carriage into the garden. The faint
glimmer of light only served to make the blackness all the thicker.
The three men waved their hands silently to Cynthia and jumped in.
A few seconds later and they were whirred and screwed away into the
suffocating fog.