Power

by S. Fowler Wright

Jarrolds
1933

Please wait large data file loading.

Inside front cover:

ALTHOUGH this new novel by Mr. S. Fowler Wright will have a first-rate story of adventure running through it, we cannot stress too much the importance of the novel from another angle. It is a study of power in its different aspects and is notable for its creation of character, of bold imagination, originality and exciting incident.

        Supposing a young politician with strong, if unorthodox, convictions found himself in possession of such a powerful weapon that he could assume the rôle of Dictator in this country, and all members of the Government, the Army, the Navy and the man in the street were forced to bow to his rule; supposing one of his convictions was that what this country needed was not the continual passing of new laws but the wholesale sweeping aside of the majority of existing ones. All who know Mr. Wright's vigorous mind will anticipate in such a theme a literary work of the first magnitude.

POWER

CHAPTER I

A TALE, like a journey, should begin at one end, and conclude at the other. But it is sometimes advantageous to look well at a distant landmark, before commencing to reach it in a pedestrian way. In this spirit we listen to a conversation which is proceeding in Lady Crystal Maitland's own apartment, where she is entertaining Mr. Israel Goldstone, the editor of the Morning Standard, to dinner.

        There are two others at the small luxuriously-appointed table, Lord Rigby Stilton at her left hand, and her sister, Lady Jehane Norchester, opposite.

        Mr. Goldstone is getting a good dinner, which he likes, as many editors do. But he has not come here for a meal, nor for the attraction of Lady Crystal's really beautiful eyes. Neither has she invited him because of any personal intimacy.

        Socially, Lady Crystal recognises four strata of the race to which she belongs. There is her own exclusive and exalted circle: there is a large number of gentlepeople with whom she can consort without derogation, though it would be rather impudent for them to expect to consort with her: there is the large number of persons who are "Well, my dear, not quite. . ." and there is the general body of the proletariat who are dearly impossible.

        If she did not place Mr. Goldstone decisively in the third stratum, it was only because his fitness for the fourth was too obvious to be overlooked.

        Mr. Goldstone had no idea that she held this opinion concerning him, because, though each of them was much cleverer than they thought the other to be, neither was a very good judge of character.

        Mr. Goldstone looked upon her as an exceptionally fine young woman, who had made a conspicuous social success with the help of her birth, her dressmaker, and her physical attractions. She had married Stanley Maitland, rather to the surprise of her friends, as he had been unequal to herself both in birth and fortune, but he was recognised as a man who might go far both in the profession of the law and the political career that he had subsequently chosen, and her own ambitions were obviously in the latter direction. No-one, among her own circle, had discredited her with the assumption that she had allowed her affections to overrule her discretion.

        Mr. Goldstone, looking at the matter from the Fleet Street angle, which is shrewd but shallow, thought she had done well for herself; but he would have hesitated to congratulate Stanley Maitland upon the wife he had gained.

        She might be a gracious and clever woman, with an appearance gratifying to a connoisseur's eye, but he considered that other attributes in a wife are at least equally necessary. A woman's thoughts should be concentrated on her husband's comfort, and, next to that, on a filled and flourishing nursery. Those were the ideals which had maintained his race, even in scattered exile, for two millenniums. He doubted whether she considered her husband's comfort to be as important as her own, and he would have classified her as a shy breeder, in the language of the horticulture to which his leisure hours were devoted, and with the coarseness of the stratum to which he belonged.

        She had invited Mr. Goldstone with the express purpose of giving him the official view of the recent Nigerian troubles, as she had had them from her husband, the Colonial Under-Secretary, and with the promise that she could add some authentic details which he would be unlikely to obtain elsewhere. Actually she cared little for the Nigerian complication, nor was Stanley particularly concerned about the Press attitude thereto. She intended to use the occasion for a calculated indiscretion concerning the probable resignation of the President of the Board of Trade, which she would finally, and very reluctantly, permit him to use, on condition that its origin should not be divulged under any circumstances.

        Mr. Goldstone was not greatly interested in Nigeria, and would not have accepted the invitation but that he had a different objective. He hoped to learn something concerning the disappearance of that brilliant young scientist, Mr. William Feltham, which had taken place about three weeks earlier, and which had so far baffled both the police and the press.

        He knew that Maitland had been Feltham's closest friend. He had a strong opinion that he knew more about the matter than he had disclosed, even if he could not solve the mystery. But efforts to draw him out had proved abortive. To have a quiet talk with his wife, while he would be at the House, was an opportunity not to be missed, and it was an additional satisfaction when he found that Lady Jehane, who was said to have been particularly friendly with the missing man, was one of the party.

        But it had been no part of Lady Crystal's programme that Mr. Goldstone should occupy her younger sister's attention. She had invited Lord Stilton especially to fulfil that function. Rigby was known to be devoted to Jehane. He would be in every way a most suitable match. The sooner she forgot her unfortunate liking for the vanished scientist, the better it would be for herself and others. Lady Crystal's private hope was that Mr. Feltham had gone to a place from which he would not return; on which condition she was content to remain in ignorance of its address.

        It was an unsatisfactory dinner for all of them. Jehane resented the too-obvious purpose with which Rigby had been placed beside her, in which, indeed, her sister had shown less than her usual competence. She gave him no reason to enjoy the meal.

        Lady Crystal found that her indiscretion missed fire. Mr. Goldstone's only recognition of it being a casual remark which showed he knew more about the matter than she did herself; and Mr. Goldstone failed signally to obtain any information from either of the ladies concerning the disappearance of William Feltham, for the excellent reason that they had none to give.

        The only mutter of importance which transpired - and that was an importance which he did not recognise - resulted from Mr. Goldstone's efforts to keep the conversation upon the Feltham mystery, or upon such topics as would enable him to resume it without difficulty.

        This led him to mention the extraordinary quantity of letters which are received, in such cases, both by the police and press: letters containing theories which are often ingenious and sometimes fantastic, or giving dues which are almost always worthless.

        "The difficulty is," he went on, "that one in ten thousand may contain an important fact, or a real solution; and it is therefore never quite safe to ignore them."

        "I suppose," Lord Stilton suggested, having been baffled by the monosyllables of his left-hand neighbour, and being glad to open a more promising channel of conversation, "I suppose you can tell most of them are crazy without losing much time, even if you can't always spot the winners."

        "Yes, mostly," Mr. Goldstone agreed, "though it's not always as easy as you might think. Of course, some of them are just raving nonsense. I was handed one as a curiosity, just as I was leaving this evening. I looked at it in the car. It's from a man who's going to destroy London in a year's time. To prove that he can do it, he's going to destroy part of Kensington Gardens ten minutes before opening-time on Sunday next."

        "You don't take it seriously?" Rigby asked. "We've heard a good deal about death-rays, and heat-rays, and destructive gases, since chemists got on to those lines during the war. . . . I suppose the governments won't let them stop."

. . . "I shouldn't say it's altogether the governments," Mr. Goldstone answered, with his usual fairness, "they don't need any stopping. They go on of themselves. Very few scientists seem to have any moral sense. Very few chemists, anyhow.

        "I always thought that Feltham was rather of that kind" (with characteristic persistence he led the conversation back to the missing man); "even that last invention for seeing past days on the screen, - he just let it loose on the world without a thought as to what consequences it might have."

        "I don't think that's a very good illustration, Mr. Goldstone," Lady Jehane remarked coldly. "It was one of the most wonderful inventions of the age. Besides, what harm could it do?"

        "I don't say it does any," Mr. Goldstone answered cautiously. "I only say that he may not have regarded that question, one way or other. . . . Actually, there's no doubt it's being used politically, though the purpose isn't quite clear."

        "I saw it once," Lady Crystal informed him. "Stanley wanted me to go. I wouldn't say it does no harm, Jehane. It almost bored me to tears. I never did care much for bucolic scenery. But it wasn't that. It's the pace that kills." (She smiled slightly as she used the proverb to a reversed meaning.) "The whole afternoon was occupied by seven cows and a dairymaid. Ten minutes - cow turns round. Seventeen minutes - cow turns back. Sixty-four minutes - enter dairymaid (sensation). Even Hollywood's better than that."

        "I think it's fascinating," Jehane asserted. "It's knowing that it isn't faked, and's what actually happened and no one knowing what's coming next."

        "Anyway, you're sure the letter's a fake?" Lord Stilton persisted.

        "I'm not sure of anything. But if we published all that sort of thing that comes into our post-box, we should have two scares a day, and no readers left before the month ended. . . . You can see it, if you like. . . . The man seems able to type, and that's more than most of them do." As he spoke, Mr. Goldstone pulled out the letter, and with no more than the glance which was necessary to assure himself that he had got the right document, he handed it across the table. Rigby read it aloud.

Jan. 23rd, 1934.

THE NEWS EDITOR,

THE "MORNING STANDARD,"

FLEET ST.,

E.C.4

SIR,

        I do not suppose you will publish this letter when you receive it, though, if you do, you will find that you have pulled off the greatest scoop of the century.

        All I ask you to do is to keep it until the end of the week, in which case you will publish it on Monday morning without any further request from me.

        I am in possession of an invention which will absolutely destroy any part of the world to which it is directed. I am applying it in such a way that it will destroy the London area at midnight on Dec. 31st next, within three miles of Charing Cross, in all directions.

        My condition of withholding this sacrifice is that I be given absolute power of government from the 29th inst. until the end of the year. I require absolutely autocratic power, which will be used solely for the national good, as I am able to see it. On that condition, the destruction will not occur.

        Should I die, however, in the meantime, from whatever cause, I can only advise that the whole area should be vacated, with all valuable property of a portable character, prior to the date and within the area mentioned, as nothing could then avert the catastrophe.

        In evidence that this letter cannot be ignored with safety, I propose to destroy an acre of Kensington Gardens, as shown on the enclosed map, on Sunday morning next, ten minutes before the of opening.

        I will disclose my identity in due course.

Yours etc.,

ONE WHO WOULD RULE TO SAVE.

        "Whatever else he may be," Rigby remarked, at the conclusion of this letter, "he isn't a fraud. If he can't do what he says, he offers to commence by demonstrating his incapacity. Unless he's a lunatic, he must be either a genius or a jester.

        "They're mostly lunatics or jesters, about equally divided. The genius doesn't come our way," Mr. Goldstone replied unemotionally.

        "Then you won't do anything about it?"

        "I didn't say that. I shall probably send a copy of the letter to the L.C.C., or whoever's responsible for Kensington Gardens, about which I'm not clear without reference. It's just wasting a stamp."

        Rigby returned the letter, and as it passed through Jehane's hands, her eyes fell upon it, and she started visibly. The next moment she regained her self-control. "May I?" she said casually, as she opened the sheet. She looked at the well-spaced lines, and at the quality of the paper. "It's a good letter," she said, in the same casual way. "He must be an educated man."

        "May I see?" Her sister's voice was as casual as her own. Mr. Goldstone passed the letter across.

        Lady Crystal gave it no more than a moment's glance. "Yes," she said, "it's typed well enough. It's hard to understand an educated man wasting his time on such nonsense." Definitely, though without haste, she turned the conversation to other things.

        When her guests had gone, the sisters gazed at one another in a common doubt, though not with the same fear.

        "You are quite sure?" Crystal queried.

        "There's no doubt. It wouldn't be so certain if it were a vowel, because they get the most use, but a broken f. . . there wouldn't be two of those. . . He may be somewhere in the house now."

        "I don't think that follows. All we really know is that the letter was typed on Stanley's Underwood, which only you and he use as a rule. . . If Mr. Feltham did it, it means he's gone mad. But whether he's mad or not, I don't see how he could have been in the house for three weeks without being seen."

        She thought that Jehane was the only one, except Stanley, who could have given William Feltham access to that typewriter. Had she reacted to the letter in a different way it might have been a natural deduction that she had done so. Lady Crystal did not think that to be the explanation. At the back of her mind she had a more dreadful, but - no, it was an incredible fear.

CHAPTER II

THERE were two views of the way in which William Feltham took the sudden elevation to fame and fortune which resulted from the commercial success of the Pastographical process.

        The press commented with approbation upon the fact that he did not relax the severity of his scientific researches. What use is money to the true scientist, what value has it, except as it may facilitate him in the more rapid pursuit of knowledge? His life is not for himself, but for all humanity. It was suggested that William Feltham was engaged upon experiments the result of which might be so stupendous as to make his invention of the Pastographical receiver seem but the recreation of an idle hour.

        It was known that he had entrusted his financial interests entirely to the hands of his friend and lawyer, Stanley Maitland. It was said that the only personal use he had made of his sudden affluence had been to enlarge his laboratories, and to order delicate apparatus to be manufactured to his own designs, and without consideration of the expense involved.

        What other use could money have in the true scientist's hands?

"De Vaux of gold had never need

Save to purvey him arms and steed."

        In the pure scientific mind the ideals of a departed chivalry had come back to the world.

        Actually, it was not only the manufacturers of scientific apparatus who benefited from Mr. Feltham's fortune. His orders for rare and difficult drugs were placed with what seemed to be an almost reckless freedom, and if his wealth were used in any illicit way it was in overriding the regulations which restrain the traffic in these incalculable poisons.

        But his continued concentration upon his scientific researches was a fact beyond question. In the first weeks following the sale of his patent rights for a cash payment of half a million pounds, and royalties which might prove to be of much greater value, his attitude had been a puzzle even to Stanley Maitland, who has been described as his closest, and was actually his only friend. . .

        The invention of the Pastograph (to use the commercial name by which it afterwards became popular, rather than a more accurate scientific description) gave the world the benefit of one of those novelties which seem so wildly impossible before their demonstration, and so simple afterwards.

        It was already known in theory, though it may not have been demonstrated, that the vision of all earthly happenings must be carried outward into the wastes of space, as far as the reflected light of our planet may be able to penetrate, which, it is immensely probable, cannot be limited, except by the curvature of the light on which the vision is carried. Now a regular curvature, however slight, must have one certain result, that it will return to the place from which it began. And the extent and limit of the vision of all that has taken place on the earth since it became a solid planet may be determined by the gradual curve of the light-rays on which they are carried, which must bring them back, at however great an interval, to the place at which they began.

        That had been the theory which William Feltham had expounded to his friend's sympathetic but somewhat sceptical attention many times in the last three years. He had admitted that there were some mathematical complications. The heavenly bodies move, both relatively and absolutely. There are possibilities of light-rays being deflected from the exhibition of a perfect circle: or that they may return to, and be absorbed by the sun from which they came, before they would reach the earth again. But, in spite of these difficulties, William Feltham had convinced himself that light-rays were actually repassing the earth, bearing visions of that which had occurred upon it in remote periods, and that they could be seen by man, if an apparatus could be constructed which would filter them successfully on to a receptive screen.

        And in the end he had proved his point. It was useless to dispute his theories, or question his mathematics. The vision itself was there.

        And yet - amazing as its success, and great as its wonder had been - it had definite and exasperating limitations. The scenes which were recovered were much more recent than had been anticipated, being those of about three and a half centuries ago, and (as might have been anticipated) they could only be observed at the rate at which the actual events had occurred. There were great difficulties also in regulating the exact place which could be observed; and as to the period of observation there was no question of regulation at all. It simply could not be done. You had to take what the light-rays gave.

        The period which was borne upon the rays which were now returning to the earth, after their three hundred and fifty years of distant wandering in the wastes of space, was the later part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the scenes which were first given to the public were those of the early summer of 1588.

        By setting up sufficient receivers, a practically limitless number of different pictures might be obtained, each showing the incidents of field or street or village as they had occurred in that year, with a wealth of fascinating and often surprising details of the dress and occupation and habits of men and women, and of the animal and floral life, both wild and domestic, of that period.

        The exasperating limitations were that the pictures were soundless: that nothing could be seen of the interiors of the houses, but only the outdoor happenings: and that a change of scene could only be obtained by moving the very elaborate apparatus and receiving screen. The last difficulty was a very serious one. It appeared to be the normal natural law that the light-rays should return to the actual scene of the original portraiture, but some disturbance had caused a southerly deviation of about fifteen miles.

        If therefore, it should be desired to observe the main street of Stratford-on-Avon, it would be necessary to calculate a position about fifteen miles to the south, acquire the site, at whatever cost of compensation or demolition, erect the necessary apparatus in a suitable building, and then discover that the scene portrayed was no better than a meadow into which no-one might enter for a month of watching, or a river where no-one fished.

        Yet it was felt that, with all these limitations, the records obtained were of an incalculable value, both historical and social, as well as of an absorbing interest; and while the commercial interests which had secured control of the world patents were busy in experiments by which they hoped to quicken the pace of presentation and to increase the human interest, - in other words, to fake the records they were obtaining, - there were many who were content to sit hour by hour watching the slow unfolding of a past scene, with its unexpected moments, its infinitely varied possibilities. The screen which was recording for the first time (and which would be potentially eternalised by a simultaneous photography) had, to many, the fascination of a perpetual first-night. This was particularly the case in England, where the temperament which can watch a cricket match for a slow-moving hour in anticipation of a moment's crisis, found another gratification for its particular tempo. In Boston, it had a similar popularity. But the people of New York rejected it with decision. They might reconsider the matter when someone had injected a little more pep; but, as it now was, they said briefly that it bored them stiff. Why, they asked very reasonably, should you waste your day watching a New Jersey woodland for a Red Indian who never came, and perhaps miss the latest comic turn that Jimmy Walker was performing, as a very popular alternative to providing New York with a decent government?

        It may have been with a shrewd eye to this comparative slowness of the English character, or (as was rumoured) with some undisclosed political purpose, that a guarantee fund of £50,000 had been provided from a secret source to secure that rural scenes should be taken, and continuously exhibited in various parts of England. . . .

        It was about six months after the sale of William Feltham's patents had brought him the golden reward which so few inventors are ever destined to see, that he sat with Stanley Maitland one January evening in his own room, in a state of hardly-suppressed excitement, such as Stanley had never known him to exhibit before, even when he had announced the first successful experiment of his great discovery.

        He was a young man, still under thirty, with sandy hair that inclined to red, large, rather prominent grey eyes, high cheekbones, and a freshness of complexion which he owed primarily to an excellent constitution, complicated during recent years by the absorption of whisky in considerable quantities.

        He was not a man who was lightly confidential, but he and Stanley had been friends from college days, with one of those curious attractions that seem to be based rather on difference than similarity of character or interests. Though he might trust no-one else, he had good cause to trust Stanley Maitland. It was Maitland's money - not always easily spared - that had rendered possible the experiments of the last five years. It was Maitland's abilities as a lawyer and negotiator that had secured him the full value of his invention. With a generosity which he did not always show, and which even then may have been less than excessive when all the circumstances are considered, he had insisted on his friend accepting 10 per cent of the fortune that he had realised. - And then he had returned to work in his enlarged laboratory with a tireless, sleepless intensity, supported now by all the resources that had previously been no more than a useless, maddening dream.

        "I had Young on the phone this afternoon," Stanley said, "and I took the opportunity of asking him how the royalty account would be coming out for the first six months. He didn't think there'd be much to draw - the accounts have to be made up to next Saturday - as most of the period they were busy with preparatory work, but there'll be a good bit coming for the next half-year from contracts already made. He said he didn't suppose you needed the money, but if you did you could draw anything up to £50,000 against what's accruing due. I didn't say anything to that. There'd probably be some question of interest allowance when it came to signing the cheque, and I didn't suppose you'd want it before it falls due in six months' time."

        Feltham looked at him with vacant eyes. "Oh, yes. I expect there would," he answered vaguely. And then, after a pause, "It doesn't matter. I've got it all now."

        "All what?"

        "All the wealth in the world."

        Stanley said nothing. He looked doubtfully at the half-suppressed excitement of the speaker, and at the glass which he had seen filled up more than once already.

        "Oh, you don't believe me, of course! You didn't believe that little thing about the screen, not at first. Now I'll tell you just what you think." He was standing on the hearth-rug and he turned to Maitland, who was on a low chair at the side, in an almost menacing way. "You think I'm half-drunk and half-mad. But you'll find you're wrong for the second time! I'm not William Feltham now, I'm the world's king. I've been that for a week past, and I've only known it for three hours. Curse those damned maps!

        "What do you think I've been slaving here for, for the last six months? You didn't think T should do that. You know you didn't! You thought when I got that money I'd go on the burst. You thought it would be just drink and women, - the women I've never had!

        "But I meant something better than that. Something bigger than that, by a good way! It's what I've always meant from the first. Knowledge is power. That's the one true word in a world of lies. I've said that every morning when I've waked, and every night when I've gone to bed for the last five years, while I've been earning four-pound-five a week analysing those beastly electric dyes all day, and doing my own work for half the night.

        "And to-day I'm the world's king! I've meant to get the power, and the power's mine. . . . There'll be no need to say that, when they know where they stand in a week's time. . . . I've got to have one friend, so I'm going to tell you the lot. . . . You're the only one I can trust. . . . But God knows there's enough for both. . ."

        You know I've had a new lock put on that door . . ."

He stopped suddenly, as though, even now, he hesitated about making a confidant. . . . His eyes went to a newspaper portrait of a very beautiful woman, which was pinned over the mantelpiece.

        "You know who this is?" he asked abruptly.

        "Yes. It's the Countess of Blaire. You've told me that before." Feltham swung his arm round in a savage exultant gesture, pointing to the unmade bed which was in a corner of the untidy room. "I tell you in three weeks I'll have her in that bed."

        He took another gulp of whisky, and refilled the glass.

        Stanley wondered whether he believed himself to have surprised some scientific secret, such as that of the transmutation of metals, I which would enable him to create wealth at his own will. Well, perhaps it was excusable for him to be a little unbalanced at the first moment of such a discovery. And he knew that Feltham had always brooded fiercely over the carnal pleasures of life from which his poverty shut him off, as no higher obstacle would have done. But I he had never seen him like this. He felt that it was no time to argue. He said simply: "I don't think I'd be too sure of that. I don't think she's the sort of woman you could buy like that, even though she was on the stage."

        Feltham laughed shortly. "You don't understand yet. You won't talk like that when you do. I'll have what I like, and when. I tell you the world's mine. You think it's just money, and lots of people have got all they want already, and some care for other things more! It isn't money; it's life. What won't a man give for that?"

        He bent down toward his auditor, and said in a tense whisper, as though it were a secret too great to be spoken aloud, even in the privacy of that room: "Suppose they knew that London could be destroyed in a night? I don't mean gassed or bombed. I mean just gone. Just some fine ash. . . . I know it sounds too great to be true. But it was sure to come. It would have been someone else, if it hadn't been me."

        He was erect again by now, speaking aloud, and refilling a just-emptied glass.

        Stanley wondered whether over-study had crazed his brain. He said: "You can't expect me to understand till you tell me a bit more."

        "I'm telling you just as fast as I can. See this bottle?" He held up a little phial which had been standing on the mantelpiece filled with a substance rather like condensed milk. "I thought I'd done something when I found this out three months ago. I'll show you what you can do with that. With a single drop. But it's nothing now. . . . You just come into the next room."

        He took a bunch of curiously-shaped keys, and worked for half a minute at the mechanism that fastened the heavy door which he had fitted to the entrance of the laboratory rooms, to which the one in which he ate and slept was a mere vestibule.

        He swung the door open, and led the way into the room. It was of moderate size, and had the usual fittings and atmosphere of a chemist's laboratory. Stanley had been in it before that massive door had been fitted. He saw no change, except that two doors, of similar solidity, were in the opposite wall, where there had only been one before of a more ordinary pattern.

        "There's nothing here," Feltham said abruptly, as though answering his thought, "except I said I'd show you this."

        He pointed to something on the table. "What should you call that? Look at it, but don't touch. It's a bit brittle."

        Stanley looked at a repulsive object which it was not easy to classify. He said: "It looks like the mummy of a cat, only it's more wrinkled than mummies usually are. More shrivelled somehow. And, of course, it's too small. It's only about a quarter the size. Still, I should think that's what it is. The Egyptians did make mummies of cats, didn't they? It's not a thing I know much about."

        "You've not made a bad guess. But there's nothing Egypt there. See these scratches?" He showed the marks of a cat's claws along his wrist. "That was what made them yesterday. It was a black cat then. I gave it one drop from that little phial in the next room. You know we're almost all water? Well, when you get any of that in your body the water goes. I can't put it more simply than that. And in thirty seconds there's not much left. . . . But that doesn't matter now. I thought a lot of it till yesterday, but I couldn't see how to use it. I haven't got any rich uncles to dose. . . .But it doesn't matter now. . . . Just look here, and don't touch."

        He crossed over to the left-hand door, and opened it with manipulations more elaborate than those which had effected his previous entrance.

        He pulled it open to show nothing more than a black ebonised wall less than three feet away. The door opened into a tiny black cabin, the opposite wall of which had a number of switches and discs and dials, and there was a seat before it, a mere stool fixed to the floor, on which one might sit while operating the keyboard before him. As the door opened, an electric bulb glowed from the roof.

        "Well," Feltham exclaimed, with an exultation that seemed excessive for what he showed, "what do you make of that? I'll tell you these controls have cost me more thought, ten times over, than the thing itself. . . . That was simple when I'd once got the formula right. That was only a matter of putting two things together, both of which every chemist knows, but no-one's thought of them in combination, and then electrical direction, which isn't difficult, and the thing's done."

        Stanley looked at the indicators and switches which faced him. He saw a disc bearing the numbers 432113. There were Studs below by which the numbers could be changed at will. He raised his hand carelessly toward them as he said, "I suppose these studs change the numbers, but what it's all about's a bit more than . . ."

        The sentence broke off as his hand was struck roughly down. "Didn't I tell you not to touch anything?" Feltham asked savagely

        "I wasn't going to touch anything."

        "Well, I thought you were. . . . Sorry, of course. . . . Wonder if you can guess what those figures mean."

        Stanley studied them for some time. He observed that there was no figure above a four, and he felt that there must be significance in that fact. He saw that there were four switches connected with a row of dials below them.

        "Yes," he said, "I think I can guess. It's the order in which these three switches have to be manipulated."

        Feltham looked pleased. He said: "No, it's not that at all. But it's what anyone might guess. It's a date reversed. December 31st, 1934.

        "That controls the time that it acts. This left-hand switch gives the centre from which it radiates. It's set for Charing Cross. It might be a hundred yards wrong. The maps are dreadful. A hundred yards, but not more. . . . The second switch controls the radius. It operates for anything up to five miles. It's set at three. The third switch can be set to electrocute anyone who enters the next room. It's a bit complicated to explain how that has to be used to get the current on or off. I'd be sorry for anyone who tried it without knowing.

        " He drew back from the black chamber, and closed it again. He pointed to the other door. "That's where the real show is, but we won't look at that now. It's not good to breathe it too much."

        They went back to the fireside again, in-the untidy living-room. Stanley said: "I wish you'd tell me just what you reckon that thing does?"

        "You'll see that," Feltham answered, "if you'll go down to Ditching Green. I adjusted it to deal with an acre of the common there one night a few days ago, using the best large-scale maps from the last ordnance survey, and I went down in the morning, and nothing had happened, and I thought the whole thing must be a dud, though I couldn't see how. And then I thought, suppose those maps aren't quite right, and I went again today, and made a thorough search. There's a little wood - perhaps five or six acres - on the south side of the common, and I found that it acted there. It's on the east side, but not close enough to show till you get among the trees. Somebody'll have a surprise.

        "You mean you've destroyed trees at Ditching by an apparatus in these rooms?"

        "That's the word. I don't know exactly what there was on that acre, but you can form a pretty good idea by what's all round it. There's nothing there now."

        "Suppose someone had been in the wood at the time?"

        "It wasn't likely at night. Besides, I hadn't meant it to be the wood. Anyway, it wouldn't matter. We still hang murderers, because it's an old habit we can't break, but we've dropped the silly idea that there's any value in human life. Look at the hundreds of thousands we kill and wound for the sake of speed. They simply don't count. It's the same with the breeding of children. Any excuse's good enough for avoiding that. The scientific mind doesn't accept the old superstitions. You ought to know that by now."

        "And you mean that that device in the next room could destroy London in the same way that you've destroyed an acre of Ditching Wood?"

        "Yes. Up to a radius of five miles from any set point. That's the extreme limit, with the apparatus I've made. Of course, it could be increased. It's just a question of the first expense. . . ."

        Feltham glanced at his friend as he said this, and caught something of doubt, even of horror, in the gaze that was fixed upon him. It was controlled in an instant, for Stanley was on his guard. His mind fluctuated between the belief that he was in the company of a super-criminal or a dangerous lunatic. Fortunately for himself, he had both coolness and courage to meet such an emergency, and the fact that he had known William Feltham from boyhood, and regarded him with the confidence of familiarity, may have helped him to control the situation.

        But he saw now that he had been incautious for one doubtful second. He saw the sudden light of suspicion in his companion's eyes. He was about to ask some casual disarming question, when Feltham advanced upon him, raising a clenched hand. "If I thought - - ," he began, and stopped, as though he could not articulate the sudden rage that possessed him.

        Stanley looked up quietly. "Thought what, Bill?" he asked casually, as though blind to the menace in his friend's attitude.

        Feltham's manner changed. He sat down. "I'm a bit excited tonight," he said apologetically. Then he chuckled to himself. "There's one thing I haven't told you. . . . I'll not only be the king of the world when it's known what's in that room, I'll be the safest man too. . . . If anyone tries to break into that room, the thing will go off at once. It's set for the end of the year, and if it's to be set forward till the day before that, or disconnected, I'm the only one who knows how. If I go, London goes too."

        He looked at his friend with a cunning which was no longer entirely sober. Stanley took it for a hint that suspicion had not entirely left his mind.

        He answered: "You seem to have planned it out well. The curious thing is that I've been thinking quite lately that something of this sort would be sure to happen: that it could only be a matter of time. . . .You see, I've been taking politics rather seriously since I found that I must go into them, or Crystal would give me no peace. Not that I was unwilling, but I'm not a popular orator, and I'd got enough to do with the legal practice I'd got. I began to think, and look round, and what I saw was a great civilisation drifting to destruction with no leaders at all. Of course, other civilisations have gone down before ours, though we don't always know how. I suppose they've been led into the abyss.

        "But the curious thing about ours is that it's not being led at all. It's just stumbling on in a blind leaderless self-slavery, and if anyone interferes to lead or guide it, it just shakes him off its back in a impatient irritated way. All the force comes from below. I entered political circles and I found that no-one dreams of governing in England today. They listen with their ears to the ground.

        "If any governing's done at all, it's in Whitehall, not Westminster. And you get the anomaly there that the men who govern are all controlled by the same fear, - the fear of a blind force, a system to which they are slaves, and which no-one dreams of defying.

        "Democracy's got the bit in its teeth, and it dashes on like a bolting horse, boasting of it's own speed, and proud of the fact that no-one can rein it now. It hasn't the faintest idea of where it's going, or why.

        "Look at some of the things you've mentioned yourself just now. Would any king worth the name have permitted the ghastly motor-slaughter that has stained all the roads of the world with blood? Would any king worth the name have permitted the open sale of the means of preventing life?

        "We are looking on at a civilisation without control, and without the freedom that control gives. We are a nation of slaves, and slaves to a tyrant that we cannot kill, being beyond our reach. Our new rulers are the aggregate folly and the aggregate weakness of mankind. Comfort and cowardice are the new gods.

        "I'm asked to go in for politics, but if I said that I don't feel fit to govern, people would think me mad. I'm not expected ever to govern anything. . . . You couldn't reasonably be expected to run a fried-fish shop successfully on such lines as that.

        "Well, I don't suppose you want to hear all this now," - he saw that Feltham was giving him a very divided attention, making restless movements, and half-articulate noises, as though finding it hard to control the excitement that possessed his mind, - "but it made me think of two things.

        "First, I wondered whether, if there were nothing but disaster ahead, there might not be a way back before it would be too late. I don't think there is. I don't think there could be. But I thought it might be good for people to see what life really was like a few centuries ago, before men mattered less than machines, and before freedom had left the world.

        "That was what made me finance the continuous screens that are giving us records of what country farms and villages were like, and a the lives of the people that . . ."

        "You mean it's you that have been doing that?"

        "Yes. I used the commission you paid me. I'd no better use for the money, and I didn't reckon I was throwing it away. I reckon there may be a good profit before I've done.

        "But that wasn't what I started to say. I said it made me think of two things. It's the second that's to the point now.

        "I thought it wasn't natural for our civilisation to continue without control, whether it were going uphill or down, and I looked round for any power that might be rising in the world that might prove irresistible. And I could see only one. I mean the power that comes from the secret knowledge of physical forces. What we call science.

        "In the Middle Ages, men held it down. They fought it with the gallows and the stake. They had the sense to be frightened. They couldn't stamp out every spark, but they kept the conflagration down. "In the nineteenth century, they forgot their fear. They warmed the snake to a more vigorous life, praising its wisdom, and admiring its skin.

        "Now they're afraid again, but it's too late.

        "That was how it seemed to me. I thought that sooner or later science would put a power into the hands of someone who would use it for his own ends. . . . I thought that, sooner or later, someone would hear what I have heard just now."

        Stanley paused at this point. What he said had been true enough. He had had these thoughts. But he had been talking against time. He was inclined to think that he was dealing with an insane man. He might also be dealing with an insane imagination, or it might be that Feltham was unbalanced by the magnitude of his discovery, and the

conceptions of power it gave. In either case, he must be discreet, both in words and actions.

        As he paused, Feltham said abruptly, "That's what I told you before. If it wasn't me, it would be someone else before long."

        "Yes," Stanley assented. "I expect it would."

        "And what I want to know's this. Are you coming in with me, or staying outside? I'm not afraid that you'll give me away. No-one could do that. You don't know anything that won't be public in a few days. But you've stood by me while I've been poor, and you're the one man I can trust. I don't want you to leave me now. . . And I only want the first pick, and after that the world's yours."

        "Yes," Stanley agreed, "there'd be plenty left. We shouldn't quarrel about that." He wondered what it was that Feltham wanted to pick. Physical pleasures, he supposed, of the baser kinds. He saw that a suppressed stratum of physical passion had risen with sudden violence at the prospect of gratification. It must always have been there. More or less, it had been exposed before, at unguarded moments, contrasting with the practical austerities of a hard-working life. There had always been the fondness for alcohol. Controlled, it was true. He had never known him to be drunk, - unless he were drunk now. But he had always drunk in a greedy way. So he had always taken any physical pleasure in which he indulged. It was as though he smacked his lips audibly. . . . Probably, he would still take his pleasures in a controlled and yet greedy spirit. . . When this first excitement had died down. . . . That is, if it were true.

        And Stanley was disposed to believe that it was. William Feltham had already shown himself to be a brilliant chemist. He had not claimed anything previously which had not proved to be true. That he believed it himself was beyond doubt. That he was taking the power it gave in an ignoble way, that he proposed to put it to shameful use, was no evidence against the fact or magnitude of his invention. That such discoveries will always be made by men of noble or selfless minds is a baseless assumption. Probability is in the other scale.

        "There's one question," Feltham went on, "that I can't decide. Whether it wouldn't be better to act first, and let people learn what it really means.

        "Suppose we just wipe up London tonight, and leave people to find it out. Just let the world wonder how it had happened for a few days, and then come forward and say another area is marked out, but we won't say where, and nothing will happen while we're both alive, and everyone does what they're told. Wouldn't the devils jump when we gave the word ! Suppose we said if anyone didn't please us with her behaviour, we'd wipe out her neighbours for half a mile round?

Wouldn't they bring her in at a run? . . . No, I don't know that it wouldn't be best to begin with showing what we can do. It might save a good deal of talk, and I dare say we shall have to do it in the end, to show we mean what we say."

        He jumped up as he spoke, and began to pace the room again in an excitement of indecision. Stanley saw that, if he were not mad, if the power he claimed was a genuine thing, it might depend upon his own coolness and discretion to avert one of the most appalling catastrophes that the world had known.

        He said: "I wonder you choose the middle of London. There's so much there that you couldn't replace, if it were once gone."

        "We needn't worry about that. There'd be plenty left. Besides, we want something spectacular. Something that will leave everybody a bit stunned."

        A whimsical thought came to Stanley's mind, at which he smiled, even then. Suppose they were themselves within a three-mile radius of Charing Cross? Suppose Feltham should destroy himself and his own apparatus in his demonstration? He did not know the exact distance which they were from that centre, but they must be very near the edge of the threatened locality, if they weren't within it. It was a quite possible oversight. It was just the sort of mistake that a madman makes.

        And if that should happen, they would have taken the secret to destruction with them. London would be dust, and that stupendous catastrophe would be inexplicable for ever.

        "I suppose you're quite sure," he said, "that we're not within the three-mile limit ourselves?"

        "Oh, yes. I'm quite sure of that. We're just on the edge. About a hundred yards clear. We should be as safe as though we were in Japan. And we should get a good view from the roof. I reckon we should just see the houses sink gently down. There wouldn't be any noise. They'd dissolve before they'd reach the ground. There'd be some fine dust. Not overmuch. Probably about two or three feet deep where the buildings are. Of course, there'd be nothing on the roads, except some little heaps of ash where the cars had been, - perhaps a bit stretched out if they'd been going fast at the time. It was my idea to have it somewhere where we could get a good view." Stanley saw that the raising of these objections had done no good. They had been brushed aside, and the discussion of them had fixed Feltham's mind more upon an immediate experiment than it had been previously; Well, it might not matter. Probably it was no more than a madman s dream.

        Still - if it weren't? He decided that he must seem to acquiesce, to agree. It would be the only chance. He was roused from these thoughts by Feltham's sharp question.

        "Well, are you in with me, or not? You haven't said that yet?"

        "Yes," he said steadily. "I'm in with you, if you're quite sure. I'd like to feel convinced that nothing can go wrong. You know I've got a good deal to lose. I don't want to end in Dartmoor, and, speaking as your lawyer, I don't want you to either."

        The last sentence was adroitly worded to contain an indirect reminder of Stanley's past services. It may have influenced the cordiality of William Feltham's reply. "Yes. That's only fair. You've always been straight with me. . . . I'll show you how the thing's done, and we shall start fair. I've said there's enough for both, and if you only take the same commission you did before, - well, 10 per cent of the world isn't a bad fee."

        He led the way back to the laboratories.

CHAPTER III

IT was nearly an hour later that Stanley re-entered the living-room. He was still in doubt as to the reality of the claims which his friend had made for the elaborate apparatus which he had inspected. But, if it were true, it was his secret also now.

        They had talked during the inspection, and he thought that he had persuaded Feltham to do nothing that night: nothing till they had had more time to think it over, and could agree on a common plan. So he thought, but he was less than sure. Had not Feltham said, at the last, "Well, perhaps we'd better think it out a bit more. But don't forget and go into the city to-night. I might change my mind." And now he was closing up the great doors, and in a moment he would be back in the room.

        Stanley's glance fell upon the little phial on the mantelpiece. After all, if these things were true, there was nothing which would not be justifiable. If they were no more than a madman's dreams, there could be no harm. That the merest drop from that phial would cause a cat to shrivel up to a little wrinkled mummy like that, - it wasn't a very probable thing!

        There was no more than a second in which a decision must be made. He picked up the phial. He looked at the whisky in the half-empty glass. There should be just time, if he were quick. If he were caught trying. . .!

        It was a near thing. The cork didn't come out readily, and the liquid was too stiff to pour. He had to pick up a spent match, push it into the bottle, and then stir it round in the whisky till it was clean of the globule of white viscid substance which had clung to it. And it was no more than a drop. It was absurd to think that it could do any real harm.

        And just as he withdrew the match, and put it down on the ash-tray, Feltham pushed open the door. It would have been impossible to put the phial back on the mantelpiece without being seen. It would come into Feltham's line of vision before the table beside which he stood. With a quick movement, he pushed the phial into his trouser pocket.

        Feltham saw that he was by the decanter. "Fill up," he said genially, "there's another glass there." He knew that his friend did not usually drink, but on an occasion such as this. . .!

        He had that curious delusion of most drinkers, that no-one can really dislike what is a pleasure to them, even though they may say so a hundred times. He added: "You needn't mind robbing me now. We've got all that the world holds."

        Stanley had a strong inclination to bolt. Suppose Feltham should notice that the phial was gone? Suppose it should change the colour of the whisky (but it didn't appear to be doing that), or alter its taste? What might not happen then? It would be past denial. The evidences would be too clear.

        But stronger than the instinct of flight was the determination to see it through. He said: "No, but I'll have another cigarette before I go."

        Feltham said: "Well, there are plenty there." The conversation had brought the whisky back to his mind. He picked up and drained the glass.

        "Damned queer whisky," he said irritably. He sat down opposite Feltham. "I'll have another glass to take the taste of that away," he added. And then: "No, I won't. I don't feel any too good. I reckon I've had enough now."

        Stanley watched him keenly. Any moment his eyes might be raised to the place where the phial should stand. I f they did, he would have to say he had seen him carry it to the next room. He might believe it in the half-drunk state he was in. And while he was in there he could slip away. . . .

        He sat for half a minute watching Feltham, who was opposite to him, his eyes moodily on the fire. He seemed to have gone quiet and dull, which was not surprising after all he had drunk, and all the excitement he had had, but otherwise there was no change.

        To Stanley, that half-minute seemed like an hour. Suppose the dose had no effect, which was the most probable thing, or produced some minor discomfort which would be less than death? How should he explain the fact that he had taken the phial? How should he put it back unobserved? He had been told nothing of the process by which the drug took effect. Suppose Feltham felt the first symptoms, and realised what had occurred, while still able to revenge himself upon the friend who had repaid his confidence in such a way?

        He felt he couldn't stand it any longer. "Well," he said, "I suppose I'd better be going." He got up, throwing the cigarette into the grate. He was surprised to notice that it had scarcely been burned at all.

        Feltham raised his head in a stiff way, as though his neck didn't work easily.

        "No," he said, "don't go. Give me another drink. I'm feeling queer, somehow." He spoke in a dry cracked voice, that squeaked on the last word. His face, as he raised it, looked strangely drawn and dry.

        Looking down upon him, Stanley knew that what he had heard that night was true, - true, at least, so far as it concerned the thick white liquid, and the shrivelled cat. William Feltham was drying up.

        It may have been the sudden horror of realisation in his own eyes

that told the truth to the dying man, or it may have been the effort of speech and movement that carried the fatal message to a weakening brain.

        Horror and bewilderment were in the lifted glaze that met the horror in Stanley's eyes. Then, with evident difficulty, the slow head turned toward the mantelpiece. The next moment, realisation came. A fierce flame of hate lit, for an instant, the hardening, glazing eyes.

The arms were half lifted towards his murderer with extended claws. But they fell impotently as Stanley stepped back, and realised that he had nothing to fear.

        The man was visibly shrinking. His clothes sagged.

        Vapour, having a faint, intolerable stench, steamed upward from his collar. The bones showed in his face. There was no expression now in the fixed stare of the dying eyes, which were contracting backwards within their sockets.

        It was a high straight-backed chair on which he had been seated, unlike the one from which Stanley had stretched his legs. Now, as though they ceased to contain a man, his clothes slipped emptily to the floor.

CHAPTER IV

STANLEY looked down thoughtfully at the heap of clothes on the hearth-rug, from one end of which projected the shrivelled mummy-like head which contained the brain of William Feltham: the brain which had contrived the horror by which it died.

        Reaction might come, emotion might overwhelm him later. He could not tell. But at present he felt quiet and cool. Actually, his strongest emotion was surprise that he felt no other.

        He was aware of the need for prompt action, but there was time enough. There was no need for haste or alarm.

        Feltham never encouraged visitors, except himself. He was sure to be undisturbed. He looked up at the clock. It was thirteen minutes past seven. He had told Crystal that he would be looking in at the theatre. He wanted to see The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Well, there was no reason to alter his plans. There would be time for that.

        He looked round for a newspaper, and found an old copy of the Sunday Express. He spread the sheets on the rug, around and under the heap of clothes below the chair. He did not want any mess. He thought that William Feltham would be brittle in his present condition. He began to unbutton the clothes.

        The newspaper proved to have been a useful precaution. The legs broke so much that it was necessary to hold the trousers over the paper, and shake them out. William Feltham was brittle, but he burnt well.

        It took longer than he had expected. There were the clothes to be put away in a natural manner. There was the little heap of articles which had been taken out of the-pockets to be disposed of in likely ways. There was the dried cat to be burnt. That may not have been necessary, but it seemed a wise thing to do. It had meant unlocking the door into the next room. That had been an anxious moment. If Feltham's confidence had been less complete than he professed, it might have been a"difficult thing.

        Stanley took nothing away with him except the little phial which was still in his pocket, and the keys which it was essential for him to have, including one of the outer door. There would be no concealment about having those. Already a plan was forming in his mind.

        It was three minutes past eight when he walked out, not caring by whom he might be seen, and stood in the street until he succeeded in gaining the attention of a passing taxi. No one would be able to suggest that, on the last occasion when he had called upon William Feltham, he had left in a furtive way.

CHAPTER V

WHEN Stanley arrived at the theatre, he telephoned Jehane, who, in addition to being his sister-in-law, acted as his private secretary, asking her to leave some data which she had been abstracting for him, on his own desk. Having dealt with the subject of his call, he went on to mention that he had just come over from Bill Feltham. He said that Bill had been rather queer in his manner. He thought he was suffering from overwork. How had he been queer? Well, he had been talking wildly about inventions that would revolutionise the world. He couldn't say more on the phone. Jehane said she would be up when he came back, and he could tell her then.

        She told Crystal that Stanley had been with Bill, and had thought he seemed queer, - no, just over-worked. She was staying up to see Stanley when he got back. Crystal was not surprised at that. It was understood that Jehane took a regrettable interest in William Feltham, and that that would account for her making excuses at times to accompany Stanley when he was meeting the inventor. Jehane did not admit it, of course. (In fact, she had never been as contradict the impression. Let people think as they would.

        Crystal said she had promised to look in at Lady Barford's. The car was ordered for twelve. Would Jehane say good night to Stanley for her, and tell him where she had gone? Jehane would.

        On the way home from the theatre, Stanley debated with himself how much he should tell Jehane. He did not think of Crystal quite in the same way, perhaps because she would be less likely to ask. But he was confidential with Jehane as a man naturally is with an attractive sister-in-law, who is also a very intelligent and reliable private secretary. He was not used to deceive her. In the end, he decided that what he told should be true, and of a kind to prepare her mind for other things that must surely follow. But he would use truth with economy. There were several things that might advantageously be left out.

        So when he found her in the library, as he had expected, and Crystal's message had been given, he said: "There's something queer about Bill Feltham. I've never seen him quite like he was tonight."

        "How was that?"

        "Well, for one thing he was making the wildest boasts as to some new discoveries he said he had made. Incredible boasts. For one thing he said that he'd destroyed an acre of ground at Ditching without going out of his laboratory. Done it quite casually by way of experiment in destroying the world. Just a matter of pulling a switch."

        Jehane laughed. "It sounds the sort of thing that might be awkward if it backfired. Had he been having rather more than usual?"

        "He did fill up once or twice."

        "So it sounds. Anything else?"

        "Oh, there was some wild talk about what he'd do when he possessed the world. Not particularly elevating. . . . Bill can be rather a pig, when he gets like that." (If it were true that Jehane had cared anything for Bill - which he was inclined to doubt - it might be no unkindness under present circumstances to show him as he really was.)

        "Yes," she said thoughtfully, "I should think he could be rather that way. . . But he's a clever pig, all the same."

        "Yes. . . . I think I'll go round to Ditching in the morning, and see whether there's any truth in the nonsense he was talking. I wonder whether you'd care to run me over in the two-seater, say about 9.30? I don't suppose Crystal'd care to come."

        "Oh, she might. But I don't suppose she'd be up at that hour." "Very well, if you will. And I'll go round and see him afterwards. He's given me a key, and told me to go in any time . . . It was all rather queer."

        "What Bill needs is a few weeks hoeing turnips. Not that there'd be much doing in that line just now. But you know what I mean."

        Jehane yawned, and went to bed.

CHAPTER VI

THE next morning they went to Ditching. Stanley found the destroyed acre, after a short search.

        Jehane stood at his side. They had parked the car at the edge of the wood, which was a dense thicket of nut-bushes, with briars and brambles, and straying ivy in some places, and yews and close groups of hollies. There were no more than a few oaks or other of the larger trees, but the undergrowth was so thick that the blackened acre could not be seen, even at this season of fallen leaves, till they were close at its edge.

        Jehane said: "What a fire there must have been! But perhaps there weren't any trees just about here?" She pushed the toe of her shoe down into two or three inches of blackened dust. She said: "It doesn't seem like a fire."

        Stanley agreed to that. The dust wasn't quite like ash, and its quantity was too great. It was as though whatever had been there had just disintegrated and collapsed on to the ground, turning darker as it did so, but that not uniformly, for in places there were patches of lighter dust.

        Jehane spoke again. "He must have seen this place, and made up that he'd done it himself." She spoke without conviction, for there was a strangeness about that dust, an abnormality which disturbed her mind.

        Stanley said: "Look at that tree." Her eyes followed his to a silver birch which was rooted outside the destroyed area, but must have leaned over it, growing with a slanting bole. Bole and branch and twig ended abruptly as though they had been sheared off with a giant knife. No fire could have done that. What on earth could? Perhaps earth was not the right word.

        Jehane had become very pale. She said: "What a terrible thing!" And then: "Do you think you ought to go there this morning? Do you think he's safe?"

        She seemed concerned rather for Stanley than for the man she was supposed to favour, but perhaps that was not surprising, after what she had seen.

        He answered: "Oh, yes. There's nothing to fear. But it seems a senseless thing to do, to destroy like that, even if you have found out how. . . . I'll look in as we go back, if you don't mind driving me round."

        "No, I don't mind. I think I'll come up with you."

        "Well, come as far as the door. You needn't come in."

        "Oh, I think I will, if you don't mind. I should like to hear Bill's account of that wood."

        "All right, if you'd rather."

        Stanley made no further objection. They ran back into the Bayswater Road, and when they came to Dawlish Mansions they went up the steps together.

CHAPTER VII

DAWLISH MANSIONS had been the property of Sir George Dawlish (it was no more than Dawlish House in those days) until he had been taxed out of financial existence by the competitive exactions of a succession of Labour and Conservative governments. That was (of course) largely his own fault. His taxation returns had always been accurately rendered (had a burglar demanded to know where he had placed his pocket-book during the night he would probably have answered with the same simple rectitude). His income was derived from tenants whom his ancestors had neglected to bleed when they could have done so quite easily. He himself had neglected to profiteer during the war. He deserves no sympathy.

        Dawlish House passed into the control, though not the ownership, of a speculative builder, who acquired the obligation of paying the rates and taxes upon it, which amounted to much more than its sane annual value; and he followed the prevailing fashion of his tribe, and complicated further the financial nightmare in which he lived, by converting it into a number of "mansion flats."

        The work had been nearing completion when William Feltham came on the scene, and had been in time to acquire the whole of the top floor, with some modification of the builder's plans, so that that roomy solitude had been adapted to his peculiar needs. Its isolation was increased by the fact that the lift which had been installed was only carried (owing to certain structural difficulties) to the floor below, the approach to his outer door being by a spiral staircase, the commencing breadth of which had shrunk to narrowness in the course of its ascent It was a position which was unlikely to be disturbed by uninvited visitors.

        "Mr. Feltham in?" Stanley asked casually of the lift attendant who was also the caretaker of the premises. "Well, sir, I can't rightly say. I haven't seen him go out. But Mrs. Harper knocked there for a good ten minutes this morning, and he wouldn't open, if he was. But that's happened once or twice before. I suppose he's busy inventing something, and doesn't hear, or won't come."

        "Well, I'll go up, anyway," Stanley answered. "I've got a key, and he didn't seem quite himself last night. . . You'd better come too, Jehane. We won't stop if he isn't in."

        Stanley knocked first, and then, after waiting a reasonable interval, inserted his key, and went in.

        He felt no surprise, and affected little, on finding that the living-room was empty. He knocked at the inner door, and received no response.

        Jehane looked round the untidy room with disfavour.

        "Thinking he needs a wife?" Stanley questioned lightly.

        "No, a keeper seems indicated," Jehane replied, with a slight asperity. She had never shown any sign of resentment when Crystal assumed that she took a feminine interest in William Feltham, but was curiously irritated if Stanley adopted the legend.

        "Well," he said, "it's no use staying here."

        "No," Jehane answered, "it's a smelly room." She led the way out.

        He glanced back as he followed her. He had been studying the disordered room with some attention. He remembered the popular theory that the criminal always overlooks the little detail by which he is hanged at last. He couldn't see that he'd overlooked anything, but probably they never did. The fireplace was certainly rather full, and what an analysis of its ashes might reveal was beyond knowing.

        "Lost anything?" Jehane asked.

        "I was just wondering whether he might have left a note on the mantelpiece. Having asked me to call, and giving me a key, and then going off like this - - ."

        "It does seem a bit dotty. But if he left a note he'd put somewhere where it could be seen without searching, wouldn't he?"

        "Yes. It's no use staying. I think I'll look in again tomorrow, and see if he's back. I shan't have time again today."

        They went out, and down the short flight of stairs, and Stanley rang for the lift.

        "He's out right enough," he told the man. "I should tell Mrs. Harper when she comes again."

        "She won't come till tomorrow, now, sir. Nine o'clock's her time."

        Stanley took no notice of the reply, nor did he allude to his friend's absence again on the way back. He did not wish to appear over-concerned.

        He had been pleased to see how naturally the man had taken it when he said he had a key, though he had anticipated that attitude. He was a frequent, almost an only caller on that top floor, and his business and personal relations with the inventor were general knowledge.

        His objects had been to make Feltham's absence known, and to lead up to the time when public enquiries would be natural, as promptly as possible; and he wished it to be in evidence that he had been the first to observe that disappearance, and had done so without concealment.

        He wondered whether criminals were usually able to plan so coolly, and why it was that he did not experience any of the emotions that murderers are supposed to feel.

        He did not even feel like a murderer. Not in the least. Perhaps that was because he felt he was so thoroughly justified in the decisive course which he had taken to arrest William Feltham's exceptional activities. Perhaps it was because he had done so little to secure that result. A mere drop of glutinous white matter, on the stick of a spent match! Perhaps it was because there was a poetic justice in the fact that Feltham had himself decocted the poison which was his end. Perhaps it was because those brittle ashes had been so easy to burn. He had read that murdering a man is a simple matter if compared with the private disposition of the resulting corpse. That is what causes murderers to grow grey at an early age. But he had had no such difficulty. He was tempted to wonder with a grim whimsicality how many scores of his fellows he might not be able to remove by the thorough method which had been placed in his hands, without it being possible to fix the guilt upon him. The very fact that Feltham had thought it worth his while to concentrate his efforts upon the production of a drug so deadly seemed a sufficient defence of his action in testing it on its inventor, as the Sicilian tyrant had once roasted its designer in the interior of his brazen bull.

        No. He was not disturbed in mind as to the moral aspects of the drastic course he had taken. He felt assured that, if all the circumstances were known, it would have the hearty approval of his fellow-men.

        Neither was he concerned as to any personal consequences of an unpleasant character. At the worst - at the very worst - he could say that he had found the dried shell of his friend's body, as the clothes that it no longer filled had slipped to the floor, with the fatal phial on the table beside him. Experiments with the drug would demonstrate its potency. What had he done but burn those dreadful ashes in an impulse of horror, or a foolish fear? No-one would suspect him of having distilled such a drug. It would be an evident case, either of suicide, or of the death of one who had miscalculated the effects of his own invention.

        No. He had little fear of the law.

        His diplomacy was directed by a further foresight. He aimed to make public the disappearance of the scientist in a natural way, while avoiding any dangerous investigation of the secrets of those inner rooms. Doubtless, a time would come when the Court would allow him to presume death. But that was really a minor consideration. It was true that he was the sole executor of the missing man. But he also had a power of attorney as his lawyer and business representative, which gave him an even easier and less restricted control of the situation.

        The real problem that possessed his mind was that of the use (if any) to which he should put the sinister power which had fallen into his hands.

        He knew, at least, that he should not use it as Feltham had proposed to. He was incapable of the coarse crudities of indulgence which ad appealed to the inventor's starved and sensual body. He was incapable even, of the less gross indulgences which come to the minds of many when they imagine the advantages which unlimited wealth confers. He was almost happily married. He was accustomed to find his pleasures in higher forms than Feltham would have easily understood. He had the imagination which is so frequently lacking in the man whose life is spent in the pursuit of chemical facts. But in all - or almost all - men, there is the desire for power, the belief that they could control the lives of their fellows better than is being done by the blind or conscious forces around them.

        What power (he pondered) did this knowledge really give? Could it be securely and potently used? And, if so, to what end? With these speculations working quietly to fruition in the back of his mind, he went on with the preliminary programme which he had planned, - that of eliminating Feltham from the expectations of men.

        He went again next morning to Dawlish Mansions, and was sufficiently surprised that his friend was still absent. By these visits he felt that he averted the possibility that the caretaker might have become alarmed, and broken into the flat, with unforeseeable consequences.

        On the fourth day he suggested to the man, in a casual conversation, that Feltham might have thought that he had told him that he should be away for a time, and have given him the key so that he might watch over his effects in his absence. Acting on this theory, he arranged for Mrs. Harper to come the following day and reduce the dirt and disorder of the living-room, while he remained on the premises. He had the satisfaction of seeing the somewhat ambiguous contents of the grate, including some calcined fragments of bone which had not entirely disintegrated, removed without any suspicion being aroused. He remarked on the quantity of ash which she was shovelling up, and received the satisfactory answer: "Lor, sir, that's nothing! These sciuntific gents! You should see what I sometimes finds." William Feltham went down in the bucket.

CHAPTER VIII

THE next day Stanley telephoned Scotland Yard, saying that he was not quite easy in his mind concerning his friend, Mr. William Feltham, who had been absent from his flat for some days in an unusual manner. Scotland Yard sent Inspector Combridge to interview him.

        The Inspector listened carefully to what he had to say, but did not appear greatly impressed. Had the absentee been a married man, the case would have been widely different. The fact that he had given Mr. Maitland a set of keys of his flat made it almost certain that he had planned to be away for some period.

        Stanley said he realised that. He should not be so uneasy but that there had been something a little strange in Mr. Feltham's manner on that last evening.

        The Inspector appreciated the point, but suggested that the object of his intended departure (whatever it might have been) might have occasioned some slight excitement. Might he not have contemplated private absence, and taken his friend into partial confidence just because he wished to prevent the possibility of any further enquiry baing aroused?

        Stanley said, of course, he might have been over-anxious, but he thought it was always best to let the police know if anything unusual should occur.

        Inspector Combridge approved this sentiment. Of course, if the absence of Mr. Feltham should be unduly prolonged. . . He shook hands, and parted.

        As he walked down the street he reflected that if his department were to follow up all the bachelors who leave their flats for a few days after the acquisition of sudden wealth, they would be even busier than they were then, but it was less sure that they would be occupying themselves in a very useful or popular manner.

        Seeing that it would be difficult to excite the police, Stanley mentioned William Feltham's disappearance in conversation at Sir George Donnington's dinner-table, in the presence of the editor of the West End Tatler, though without addressing that gentleman.

        The next day, the Tatler's chief reporter was smelling round Dawlish Mansions at 8.30 a.m. Before his paper went to press on the following Thursday, he had discovered one fact which caused Inspector Combridge, when it came to his knowledge, to give the case a little further consideration. The keys which were now in possession of Mr. Maitland were the only ones in existence. Mr. Feltham had attached great importance to these keys, which were specially made to locks of his own design. He had ordered no duplicates, and had stipulated that none should be in existence. Even the lock of the outer door had been of this order. In the light of this information the handing over of those keys, even to his lawyer and closest friend, acquired a graver significance.

        Inspector Combridge realised this, though he still thought it the simplest and most natural explanation that Feltham had been engaged on some adventure of the underworld in which he felt that it would be unsafe to carry keys to which he attached such importance. What could he do better than entrust them to his lawyer's keeping? Why was he not more explicit in doing so? Well, perhaps he was reticent as to the reason of his projected absence. Perhaps he feared criticism, or that efforts would be made to dissuade him. Inspector Combridge knew that the simplest explanation is most often the true one. But he assumed little, and it occurred to an acute mind that one point might need explanation. If Feltham handed over the only key of the outer door, and Stanley had left him there, how did he afterwards let himself out, and lock it behind him?

        Stanley had the same thought. For one brief second he wondered whether he had committed the oversight which the guilty are said to do so continually. Then he remembered that, however good the lock might be, it did not prevent it operating automatically when the door was shut. Inspector Combridge learnt the same thing in his own way, and put an absurd doubt out of his mind.

        This was about ten days after the night when William Feltham had poured his whisky for the last time. It was the same evening that Stanley found himself alone with his wife in a mutual interval of unusual leisure.

        Lady Crystal had started her adult life with the unusual advantage of knowing exactly what she wanted, and with clear plans as to how it should be obtained. She meant, both individually and through her husband, to be a power in the land. She had wealth, beauty, brains, and the prestige of a great name. She thought the emotions should be indulged in a controlled way. She chose her husband with care, and wooed him with such delicacy and charm that he had no doubt that the volition had been his. It was, indeed, a case of mutual attraction and Lady Crystal had found it a very pleasant thing to ride her emotions with a loose rein.

        Stanley could hardly doubt the sincerity or the strength of the love which surrendered itself to him, for it seemed that she had so much more to give than to take. He did not doubt this, even when he was to learn that that surrender was a somewhat qualified attitude.

        He had means, but they were relatively narrow, a good name, but it was comparatively unknown; good abilities, but they had still to prove themselves in the highest spheres.

        He gained a charming wife, whom many men, who seemed to have more to offer, had coveted but could not win.

        If she had ambitions for him which were somewhat larger than, somewhat different from, his own, could he deny that she had some

right to urge them upon him?

        Besides, he responded readily enough. It was his strength and weakness that he had been interested from childhood in so many things. He had taken up the study of the law with avidity. It offered a form of mental gymnastics which he enjoyed, and in which he could engage with conspicuous success. But so, also, would a score of other occupations of quite different kinds. He had the quality of imagination which would have found novelty and achieved distinction in the activities of a wholesale grocer, or a market-gardener.

        Lady Crystal's interest was in politics, which was a family tradition. Her ancestors had supported the Conservative party as long as that name had been invented, and for some centuries earlier under other symbols. She believed in the established order, and that the stability of the British Empire and the welfare of the Conservative party were synonymous. In the British Empire she believed as the greatest and noblest of the works of man, with some Divine assistance thrown in. It is possible to doubt whether this may be an absolute truth. It is also possible to have an ignobler faith.

        She had few ideas that were even tinged with originality; no habits or beliefs of unconventional kinds. She had the enormous advantage of treading well-beaten paths, and of convictions undisturbed by any contending doubt.

        When she proposed to Stanley that he should enter parliament, he had agreed very easily, though it had not been his own ambition. When a seat was offered to him at a bye-election which was safe enough, but not too safe for it to be felt that he had done the party good service when he proved a capable and popular candidate, and won it with an increased majority, he enjoyed the fight, and the sense of triumph which such a victory gives.

        When, two years later, there was some reshuffling of the political pack, and he was offered an Under-Secretaryship, he was not oblivious to the fact that Crystal had worked both hard and skilfully to obtain it for him, nor ungrateful to her. But he was also aware that Sir Bardsley Clinton, the Premier, was not the man to offer it, on whatever solicitation, had he not considered him adequate for the duties which it entailed.

        It had followed one of those intimate little dinners which Crystal was so expert to arrange and handle, after which he had found himself engaged in a political discussion with Sir Bardsley, which was apart from the hearing of others, and on which occasion, as he realised afterwards, he had expressed some of his private convictions with unusual freedom. He may have done less than justice to the adroitness with which Sir Bardsley had handled the conversation to draw them out.

        He had said, among other things, that he failed to see any vital distinction between the Conservative and Labour parties, as they were both communistic in their actual legislative enactments, however differently they might talk. - Perhaps, the principal distinction was that whereas the Labour party might threaten more loudly, the Conservatives could, and did, pass legislation of a greater stringency, owing to the fact that there was no opposition to face, and their own adherents were hypnotised into an astonished muteness. He suggested that a succession of Labour governments during the last twenty-five years would never have succeeded in increasing direct taxation to its present level; and, had such a government attempted to do so, the national outcry would have been too loud for it to endure: probably the House of Lords would have regained its popularity by finding some pretext on which to destroy it.

        Sir Bardsley did not, in his heart, dispute the truth of these propositions, but he was not sure that it was to the advantage of his party that one of the most promising of its younger members should observe them so clearly. Most of them honestly believed that the policy of the party which he had the honour to lead was unchanged since the days of Palmerston, and this simple faith was worth at least a million votes. To realise that the Labour party is no more or less communistic than its opponents is half-way to joining it on a sufficient provocation arising.

        He considered the advisability of restraining this too clear-sighted young man with the blinkers of office. And it would have been difficult for himself to say how far it was this consideration, or that of Stanley's admitted ability, or the influence of his charming hostess, or the cheque which he knew would be on its way to the nourishment of the party funds before the week closed, which led him to make the offer of the vacant Under-Secretaryship. Probably, with the second allowed, any one of the other three would have prevailed.

        However that may be, Lady Crystal drew a cheque for £l0,000 to the order of the chief Government Whip, which she looked at with some hesitation, and then consigned to the flames. She drew another for £7000, which she considered would do the trick. Liberal as she was in many ways, she hated waste with a characteristic fastidiousness, and she had not abandoned the previous cheque-stamp without a moment of irritation at the result of her indecision. But she felt that the difference in the amount was worth the sacrifice. She had not the type of mind that would readily recognise that a cheque-stamp has no intrinsic value.

        Mr. Goodwin Pemberton considered the cheque next morning with a contented mind. He had hoped for more, but he had feared that £5,000 might be all that he was destined to get. It might have been worse.

        Stanley did not know of this cheque. His wife did not offer her confidences as to her finances, and he did not ask it. Had he known, it might have annoyed him, which would have been unreasonable, for no one entered Sir Bardsley Clinton's government, even as an under-secretary, who did not deserve to do so. It might be too much to say that every one of equal merit met with a like reward.

        Sir Bardsley might be incapable of a conscious job, but he could not be insensible to the potential political importance of the man who was Lady Crystal's husband. Since the death of her father, the Duke of Norchester, she had inherited his vast wealth, and become the mistress of the somewhat gloomy magnificence of Norchester House, which had been one of the social strongholds of the Conservative party for generations, and in which it was her declared ambition to revive the political salon which had exercised so potent an influence both upon-English and Continental politics during earlier centuries.

        It was true that this form of political influence had been generally regarded as obsolescent, but Lady Crystal knew that while human nature remains unchanged, the influences of wit and beauty cannot cease, nor the effects of social exclusiveness fail.

        Now Stanley had been in office for about three months, and even is chief, the Colonial Secretary, Sir George Donnington, who was not a man of easy disposition, or quick to praise, had said frankly that he had never had a more discreet or intelligent helper. Stanley did his work, and kept his thoughts to himself. He spoke occasionally in the House on departmental matters, with an efficiency which was generally recognised, and he answered questions adroitly. Clearly, a coming man.

        Lady Crystal felt that she had no occasion to regret her choice of a life-partner, and was in a very friendly mood on the Sunday evening, ten days after the disappearance of William Feltham, when she sat facing her husband in the little private room to which he only was admitted in these hours of infrequent leisure.

        As she looked at him, she even had a regretful hesitation over her discreet decision that the production of an heir to the Maitland name and the Norchester traditions, which she had recognised from the first as an essential part of the programme of a successful marriage, such as she intended that hers should be, was to be an incident of the fourth year of her wedded life. But there were other things to be done first.

        The love that was in her heart, which was true enough of its kind, though it moved in a shackled mode, caused her also to have a feeling of compunction over a decision of the earlier day, about which she felt that Stanley would be annoyed, though he might be reluctant to show it.

        "Stan," she said, and he looked up in a momentary surprise at the abbreviation which she seldom used even at their rarer moments of emotional intimacy, "I hope you won't mind, but I've let Simpson have the Home Farm. You know we can't be down there more than three months of the year, except sometimes at weekends, and you'll still have the Big Meadow, and all the land that's behind the house. . . .I'd have asked you about it first, but Toller telephoned that we'd got to say yes or no, because Simpson'd got the offer of the Ringwood Farm, and was afraid he was going to fall between two stools, if we said no in the end."

        Stanley understood the position, and recognised that Crystal was right. Simpson was a good farmer. He had made a success of Two-Ash Farm, which was next to the Home Farm, and which had been unprofitable in other hands. He would be always on the spot. He would do better than they would do with a bailiff, and their own irregular visits. Crystal was right, though she knew his reluctance to part with the Home Farm. But the fact was that he had other things on his mind, and even this question had become a comparatively trivial thing.

        Very naturally, she misunderstood his slowness to answer. "You don't really mind?" she asked. She remembered that there would be questions of the sale of stock, in which Stanley took more interest than she was disposed to do. "I had to decide in a moment, and it seemed the wisest thing. Simpson's a good man."

        "No," he roused himself to say. "I don't mind. I think I'd be happier farming all the time, but it's no use trying to carry on anything you can't do properly. Simpson's the right man. . . Besides,

it s your matter."

        "But I don't want to look on it like that. You know I always consult you about the estate, Stanley. . . But you can't farm in Nor'ster, and be in office here, and with your law practice as well."

        "No," he said, a little wearily, "I see that."

        Crystal was always practical. She faced facts. To admit her values was to allow that she was seldom wrong. She knew - they both knew - that he was tempted to deviate toward a hundred conflicting interests and occupations. In the background of her mind, when Toller's message came through, had she not had the thought that this irrevocable decision to give up the farm would hold Stanley more closely to the political career on which she desired him to concentrate? Did it not explain the half-apologetic faintly-guilty feeling of which she was conscious now? Was he not conscious of it in the same way?

        Anyway, she wished he wouldn't look like that. It was unlike him to show annoyance, without saying straight out what he felt. She had expected him to smile, and say she had done rightly (as she new she had), even though he might feel disappointed; and she was prepared to be sorry and apologetic till his assurances that it was the right thing should have a satisfactory sincerity in their tone. She knew that it would be fatal for them to drift apart. When she had had her own way on any vital matter, she never left it at that. She did not feel that the incident was satisfactorily terminated till she was sure that she was forgiven, and the skies were clear.

        "Stan," she said. "You know Simpson's the best tenant we've got. I didn't like the idea that we'd half lose him, as we should if he began farming on Cecil's land."

        He roused himself to understand her mood, and respond.

        "You've done the right thing," he answered, more heartily than he had done before. "I should have said the same if you'd asked me first."

        That was more satisfactory. "I don't see that we need sell the Herefords," she suggested. "There ought to be land enough left for them." And then, when she saw that his attention had wandered again: "Stanley, is anything the matter? Aren't you well?"

        "Yes," he said vaguely, "I'm well enough. Only a bit tired."

        She did not see why anything should have tired him particularly, and these occasional Sunday evenings, which she planned that they should spend together, usually found him in more responsive moods. She would have liked to be kissed under the throat in a way he had which she approved, and which might lead to even more familiar intimacies. No one would disturb them here. But her pride seldom failed her. If he really felt like that. . . "I'm sorry," she said kindly. "You'd better get to bed early, and have a good night's rest." She was seldom too tired herself to control the punctual proprieties of her conduct; to suit it to the occasion, however exacting; but she could make allowances for others in a fundamentally generous mind. She felt that she needed that self-control, that equality to the situation, now. Otherwise, she might have shown annoyance or disappointment in an ill-bred way, of which she would have been more ashamed than of a score of more serious delinquencies. Not that she was of delinquent habits. Her conduct, like her manners, was of the highest, most select brand of conventionality.

        Stanley thought: "If I told her that her husband is a murderer, that I've sent Bill Feltham up the chimney, I wonder what she'd say? Under the circumstances, she might say I've done rightly, as long as it won't get found out. . . But suppose I told her about the invention that's in my hands? She wouldn't hear of using that as Feltham meant to do. Not for any purpose whatever. She'd say that such things aren't done. . . And yet, if I should do it, I suppose she'll have to know in the end.". . . He didn't like keeping it to himself. They had their reticences, but they were such as are allowed by a mutual confidence and respect. They were of allied interests, and neither would lightly question the loyalty of the other. . . He would have liked to tell Jehane also, feeling that she would take it in a different spirit. He had confirmed a previous suspicion that her reputed liking for Feltham had no basis of fact. He thought she would be adventurously excited rather than repelled by the possibilities of the position. But his loyalty to Crystal made it impossible to tell Jehane while he was silent to her.

        He felt the constraint of the moment. Was he becoming as unbalanced as Feltham had been, and from the same cause? Fortunately, he did not drink.

        He knew also that there was a wide distinction in the fact that if he could not dismiss the idea of using the power that was in his hands, it was from no such selfish carnality as had excited William Feltham's mind. However vainly, however foolishly, he thought of it as a beneficent potentiality, that might save the world from the aggregate folly of mankind, which was its captain now. Yet he asked himself whether he were not really actuated by a lust of power as fundamentally despicable as Feltham's physical appetites, and he found no assured answer.

        If he should rule the world, it would be certain that he would not use his power to possess the Countess of Blaire, but, should he do it to constrain his neighbours in other ways, would not his actions be on the moral level of that vulgarly projected ravishment?

        Well, there was the difference that he would be seeking the good of his fellows rather than a selfish pleasure.

        But perhaps the better answer was that he might rescue them from a lower and less tolerable tyranny, from which they could be released in no other way.

        They were ruled now by a counting of heads. Surely the wildest substitute for intelligent leadership which had afflicted mankind since it had developed gregarious habits! What was the phrase he had coined? The aggregate folly of mankind. That was exactly it. Or would the average be a juster adjective?

        But he saw one danger, the existence of which he must have constantly before his mind, if he were to keep his own soul alive, or to be the saviour of a civilisation that stumbled toward its doom.

        If he could gain the power he dreamed, the impulse to impose his own will upon his fellows would be a great, and might be an over-mastering temptation. He must remember always that the greatness of his opportunity would not be to substitute a personal for a collective tyranny, but to restore an almost forgotten freedom: the joys and perils and adventures of freedom, for thew comforts and cowardice of the present slavery which hung over England like a shadow of relentless doom, enervating its citizens till they felt it better that their race should end than that they should be trained in hardship for the conquest of the empty lands.

        He was roused from the labyrinth of these reflections to consciousness that Crystal was speaking to him again. She was looking at him with smiling eyes, and her languid voice had a half-laughing mockery, but there was a faint tone of asperity also, which he was quick to hear.

        "No," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm not very good company tonight. Yes, I'd better go."

        Crystal said: "I think I'll go too." She felt there would be no pleasure in sitting alone to reflect upon the fact that she had looked at Stanley with inviting eyes, and that he had looked back as though she were not there. Was he really ill? He had hardly seemed quite like that. She had a queer foreboding of some vague calamity, which her common sense should have put firmly aside, but found it hard to do. No doubt, Stanley would be himself tomorrow. There was no doubt, either, that he was very queer tonight.

CHAPTER IX

THE next morning Lady Crystal came down and joined Jehane at breakfast, which she usually had in her own room. This may have been because she had gone to bed unusually early, or because she was more worried about Stanley than she could see any logical reason to be.

        Jehane had a habit of retiring early. One of a score of differences of habit which kept the sisters from more than the casual intimacies of a real affection. Stanley had had breakfast, and left word that had gone out for a walk. The next night the House would resume its sittings, and his hours would be as irregular as those of his wife.

        "Hallo, Crystal! Had a flea in the bed?" Jehane exclaimed at this unexpected appearance. Jehane had an occasional freedom of speech which would have approached vulgarity in anyone of less patrician birth, but vulgarity in a Norchester is an impossibility. What they do or say becomes the right thing as the words are spoken, or the act performed.

        Crystal did not respond to the flippancy of her sister's mood. She said "Stanley didn't seem very well last night. Is he working too hard?"

        "No, I don't think so. But I think he's worrying about Mr. Feltham. I don't see why he need. He may come back any day."

        "I don't see that it's our affair whether he comes back or not."

        "No, I don't know that it is. Of course, Stanley knew him rather well. I should say he was about the only friend Mr. Feltham had; and he did all his business for him."

        "Do you know where Stanley is now?"

        "I believe he's gone round to Mr. F eltham's flat. He often does."

        "Not walking?"

        "Yes. He does walk there sometimes. He told me he wanted to be alone to think something out."

        Crystal looked at her sister in a thoughtful silence. She had no mind to suggest that there might be matters that Stanley was concealing from her, and which Jehane might know. Some things, of course, would come under Jehane's notice in her secretarial work. It was natural to ask whether Stanley was working too hard.

        But Jehane's answers had given an impression that she was saying less than she knew. Crystal felt annoyance which she would not show. She turned the conversation to other things.

        She was unjust in her thought, for Jehane had not been deliberately reticent. She could not readily explain matters which puzzled herself. She understood, to a point, that Stanley might feel a responsibility for Feltham's affairs during his inexplicable disappearance. She did not understand why they should require his daily attention, and cause him to be preoccupied continually. Actually, when she faced the question, she saw that it was no more than a presumption on her part that the evident worry that possessed his mind might not have a different cause. Yet she felt an instinctive certainty that it had no other. Besides, there was that acre of desolation in Ditching Wood. Had Stanley found something among the papers of the missing scientist which explained his conduct? Some sinister mystery which he was unable to solve?

        So she wondered, getting somewhat near to the truth. But it was surmise rather than knowledge. She would have explained it to Crystal in reply to a more explicit question: a larger measure of offered confidence. As it was, they both withdrew to their own thoughts. The effect of the conversation was to give them both an increased uneasiness. Each thought that the other knew more than she had been disposed to say.

        But two days later Stanley was more like his natural self. He appeared to be buoyant and confident, and though inclined to be pre-occupied, and to discuss routine matters which Jehane brought under his notice in a somewhat perfunctory way, his manner was no longer such as to suggest that any doubt or trouble was on his mind. Both his wife and her sister concluded that they had suffered from a too-active imagination, and were contented in this belief up to the evening of Thursday, the 25th, when Mr. Goldstone showed them the anonymous letter already narrated.

CHAPTER X

THERE are many of the oppositions of life which cannot be faced without fear, but the tremors of those who advance upon them are less than will be felt by others who attempt evasion or resort to flight.

        Stanley Maitland experienced the relief of this natural law when his resolution hardened to accept the responsibility which fate and his own action had placed in his half reluctant hands. He would take the power which Feltham's sinister invention gave, and use it, if he could, not for his own gain, nor for the enslaving of his fellow-men, but to restore such measure of freedom as those may endure who have been born to the security of a settled bondage, and in whom the slave mentality is already dominant.

        That he formed this resolution so definitely, and so soon, was primarily due to a remark by a County Court Judge in the East End of London, who certainly would not have uttered it, had he foreseen what consequences might follow.

        The old gentleman had had a poor woman before him, against whose husband her landlord was proceeding for arrears of rent. She said she had come in her husband's place so that he might not lose a day's work, and she asked for time to be given on the ground, among others, that she had a large family of children, and was expecting another.

        The judge had listened to her narration of hardships with sympathetic patience until she had mentioned the size of her family, when he had interrupted her sharply with the exclamation: "Then

you ought not have had them! You ought to know better than that. You ought to have been taught. . . And now, you see, you've had all these children, an you can't pay your rent!"

        The incident was still sufficiently rare in England to be "news" in the journalistic sense (though it might be a poor third to the fact that abortion had recently been condoned by a popular Bishop, and a High Court Judge), and it was widely reported.

        Stanley read it when in the smoking-room of the House of Commons, sitting opposite to the Hon. James Shackston, popularly know as Jimmy by his friends, to which his political opponents added the adjective Jumping, in disrespectful allusion to the fact that he had changed his political faith with exceptional frequency.

        Jumping Jimmy, a heavily-built man, with small twinkling eyes and a brain that moved more quickly than his ponderous body, was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Coalition government, of which Stanley Maitland was no more than a star of the third magnitude. He was a smoker of black cigars, which the caricaturist would always project enormously from his moon-like face. He pulled one from his mouth, to answer Stanley, who had passed the paper over to him with the query: "What do you think of that?"

        "The old boy seems to have dressed her down a bit rough," he replied in a casual way. He spat comfortably, and the cigar resumed its position.

        "He doesn't seem to have enquired as to the quality of the children," Stanley remarked, "nor worried himself particularly as to how they might be getting on in a home where the rent couldn't be paid."

        Jimmy looked across at the speaker with more attention than he had done previously. He regarded Maitland as a coming man, and he had found in the past that his judgments were rarely wrong. It is well to understand such men at an early stage of their careers. He did not follow Stanley's line of thought very clearly. He said: "Oh, I don't know. They don't always report all that's said. I dare say he gave her some rope on the rent. He'd mean what he said for others more than for her. She's made her blunders." He drew his cigar for a moment. And then, as Stanley said nothing further, he added, half to himself: "The bitch needs sterilising."

        Stanley deliberately controlled any outward sign of his reaction to his remark. He had been studying the men, his colleagues and superiors, who were the nominal rulers of the British Empire, during the last two days, in a way which he had never previously done. He was not concerned to urge his own opinions. He wanted to know what these men really thought of the vital problems which they must face or avoid.

        He said: "We can't learn much from a six-inch report like that. But suppose the woman's got a decent husband, and a healthy family, shouldn't you say they're more important than how the landlord gets his rent?"

        The Hon. James Shackston thought the question to be a singularly foolish one, and he answered it with a lazy politeness.

        "Well, you can't live rent-free in this country. . . It's more likely they're a scurvy lot." He was silent for a long moment. In imagination, he saw the possible circumstances of that slum-bred family in vivid and varied ways, which would have surprised Stanley had they been communicated to him. Jumping Jimmy had one of the best brains in England, and a gift of swift and sympathetic imagination which enabled him to use his sledge-hammer gift of oratory to the swaying of many thousands. But he did not allow his imagination to control a very shrewd and practical and selfish mind.

        He added: "The trouble is the way these people will breed in the slums. You know, Maitland, you wouldn't do it yourself. They're not wanted here, and they're not wanted anywhere else."

        "Australia isn't exactly full up."

        "They wouldn't take them there. Not at a gift. They're not the sort they need."

        "Isn't it rather a reflection on ourselves that we don't support our own children, and that they're not considered good enough for the empty lands?"

        "It's can't rather than don't. We're overpopulated already. You can't expect city children to go out ploughing, where they mayn't even get a wireless set. There's too much to give up."

        "Don't you think we could do a bit more to support them, if we felt it were worth while? Suppose we knocked £20,000,000 off our petrol imports, and bought food instead?"

        "Of course, you could argue that. But, what's the good? I'm practical politician."

        "And as a practical politician you think nothing can be done?"

        "I didn't quite say that. We need more clinics, to teach women while they're young. These things usually right themselves in the end. Get the population down by five or ten millions, and it'll simplify most of the problems that are worrying us now."

        "And Australia for the Asiatics, and South Africa for the Blacks?"

        "Well, we can't change the world."

        Mr. Shackston got up, and strolled away. He had a doubt as to whether he might not nave overestimated Maitland's abilities. You could never be quite sure of these youngsters. Still, he might outgrow it. He knew Donnington thought him a coming man.

        During the next twenty-four hours, Stanley made himself a nuisance to about a dozen members of His Majesty's Government. He showed each of them the same cutting, and endeavoured to obtain their opinions concerning the problems which it raised in his own mind. They reacted variously. Some of them sympathised with the woman, and thought the judge might have expressed himself rather differently. Others thought she deserved all she got, and a bit more. One thought that that sort of thing would never stop till it should be made a criminal offence to have more than three children. As to producing children for which you could not provide, it ought to be punished as heavily as are the other major forms of dishonesty.

        But on certain points they adopted a common attitude. None of them regarded children as national or parental assets. They were expensive nuisances, to be either partially or entirely avoided. None of them considered that there must be something radically rotten in a social organisation which produced such a position. None of them appeared to consider that the government had any responsibility. None of them appeared to consider the fact that a woman having the care of a large family might be in a state of constant anxiety as to the provision of their food and clothing to be an evil at least as great as that a landlord should be delayed in the receipt of his rent. They were sorry for the poor little brats (of course), but it was the woman's own fault. Such things ought to be stopped.

        They took the suggestion that, if there were a real shortage of food, we might import more, and reduce our petrol purchases, either as an impracticable folly, or a senseless jest. They all agreed in the assumption that children cannot be too few, nor machines too many.

        There was a time, Stanley reflected, when human life was held to have a supreme and eternal value. Perhaps man had exaggerated his own importance. Anyway, that time was not now. This was the machine age: the age of man had gone by.

        He found also that they were at one in regarding it as a natural thing that men should require of life that it should give them comfort and security, and should otherwise have the right to reject it, if not for themselves, for their children. Their ideal of life, or that which they complacently regarded as satisfactory to English citizens, was that of a pampered dog which will be painlessly poisoned when its mistress dies. And the result of this basic vulgarity was to leave them wondering whether life were worth while, even if it could give them the good time which was its essential necessity, its substitute for the old ideals of noble living which seemed to have left the world.

        What could be the fate of a nation, of a civilisation, so led, or so leaderless? If there were any warning in the records of history, any truth in the teachings of Christ, any wisdom in the world's philosophers, it could but stumble blindly toward an ignoble and disastrous end. It was a subordinate issue that he was annoyed more than once by the assumption that he himself would avoid or limit his own parenthood. It was not suggested offensively. It was said in the spirit in which a toper will assume that his neighbours drink. And Stanley was not sure that it was unjust. He would not have chosen to commence his married life with such a condition, but he had accepted it without emphatic protest from the lips of the woman he loved. It was a bargain "just for the first year or two" to which he had assented as a condition of immediate marriage, and he was not one lightly to challenge a bargain made.

        But in his present mood, seeking to stand aside and to look at things as they were, rather than as it was customary to represent them, it seemed to be a circumstance that unfitted him to criticise, and must make him impotent to lead. Could he remain in the old bondage, and call others to a freer habit of life?

        Still, it was not by his own volition that he was the partner of a barren marriage. There was Crystal's point of view to be considered, as well as his. He remembered that a High Court Judge had declared from the English bench, and there was an actual legal decision in the state of New York, that a husband had no property in his wife's body, and that she had a right to decide whether she would have children at all. Yet the law of both countries still provided that, though she should fail, against her husband's will, in the vital obligations of marriage, so long as she should refrain from other intimacies, he must continue to keep her. Why?

        Could the obligation remain, so illogically, so inequitably, when its foundations had been swept away? Might not women find at last that they had lost more than they had gained by this delusion of independence?

        In older time, when life had less of disciplined routines, and greater individuality, a man could not divorce his wife as easily as he

could today, but he could beat her into submission should she decline the obligations of marriage while she ate the fruits of his industry. To observe that, is not to suppose that such incidents were common to happy or normal marriage, but, should they occur, other men did not interfere with a domestic incident which they might be incompetent to decide. Was the woman whose chastisement was a preliminary to copulation really less happy, was she even less degraded than one who took her husband's money in a marriage bargain which she did not keep?

        Not that such a question had any personal application. His bargain with Crystal had been clear, and had been clearly kept. He had no doubt she would observe its later condition with a scrupulous and deliberate punctuality. Whether it had been an unholy bargain to make was a different matter, as to which he had an almost equal responsibility.

        So his thoughts had wandered, and when they came back to the question of the use, if any, to which he should put the power which Feltham's invention had placed in his hands, he found that his decision was made. For good or evil, for life or death (and he saw that his own death would be a very probable consequence), he would do what one man could, even by the menace of this dreadful weapon, to bring the spirit of freedom, of noble living, of daring, of adventure, back into the hearts of men. Life might be harder or more precarious but it must become valuable once again. More valuable than a machine. Not something to be yawned over, or despised, or dreaded. He believed in England with a great confidence and a great pride. No cost would be too great which would redeem it from decadence. No deprivation, no toil, no hardship, even to the ordeal of disastrous war.

CHAPTER XI

ON the night on which Lady Crystal entertained Mr. Goldstone to dinner, Stanley came back from the House shortly after midnight, and went straight up to his own room, where he was somewhat surprised to find that she was waiting for him. Crystal rarely came into his private apartment, though she knew that she was free to do so. Less often still did he invade hers, except by her own invitation, though it might sometimes be no more than the implicit one that a glance can give.

        He was in good spirits, as he had been each evening since he had made his decision. Doubts might come in the hours of darkness, or with the morning light, but courage rose as he thought and planned and worked in the laboratory which had become his own, and in which he dared to do no more than to observe, with a blind obedience, the instructions that William Feltham had given him, a few minutes before the brilliant brain had dried and shrivelled, and the bare soul returned to the Ultimate Responsibility from whence it came.

        This morning he had posted the letter which chance had brought back so promptly to his own house. This afternoon he had set the machinery of which he knew as little, - the machinery so impossibly intricate to understand, so dangerous to approach, and yet so simple to control by the devices which Feltham had designed and left ready to his hand, - he had set it to provide the demonstration in Kensington Gardens which was to proclaim his power. After that, at question-time, he had answered a foolish question on the Nigerian trouble in a manner which had startled a listless House. "In view of the unfortunate incidents which had occurred recently between the Buntu and Sunshu tribes in the Nigerian hinterland, and the evident inability of Sir Malcolm Robertson to control the situation, could assurance be given that he would be recalled and replaced by a stronger governor?" Such, in substance, had been the question, and when the House had expected listlessly that he would reply that the answer was in the negative, he had startled it with the blunt retort: "No, we re not such fools."

        The Honourable James Shackston, in a supinely sprawling attitude on the bench beside him, his eyes half-closed, and his mind idly alert, was confirmed in his suspicion that something was wrong with Maitland. Probably some woman at the bottom of it. Or had he gone mad with conceit at having won a wealthy wife and being appointed an Under-Secretary of State in his twenty-eighth year? It's astonishing how few men can stay the course. . . Or was it a calculated indiscretion? Was Maitland playing for publicity with some audacious project of forcing himself into a more influential position? Jumping Jimmy, who had watched and plotted for twenty years for the moment when he could seize the premiership, as patiently as a cat will sit at a mouse's hole, opened his eyes to regard Stanley, who had resumed his seat in apparent indifference to the sensation he had created, with speculative eyes. Was there another danger here to be watched and thwarted? Maitland didn't look like a troubled man. He had the look of assurance which is half the battle on the political arena, where men are assessed and feared at their own valuation, - if they can make it good.

        On the way home, Stanley had considered how and when he should tell Crystal. He felt that it was a position which would need careful presentation. He saw also that it was expedient in itself, and due to her, that she should learn it first from him, rather than from the event, or the talk of others. But he did not want her, because he did not want anyone, to know it prematurely. He owned to himself that he could not foresee how she would take it. She might prove a most useful ally. It seemed more probable that she would endeavour to dissuade him. He didn't want to spend the next two days in a fruitless controversy. He had too much of which to think. Suppose she should