"Man, he's a wonder--a living wonder!" said McArdle, shaking his headreflectively. "He'd put up the feathers of a sucking-dove and set up ariot in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has made London too hot forhim. It's a peety, Mr. Malone, for it's a grand brain! We'll let's havethe analogy."
"We will suppose," I read, "that a small bundle of connected corks waslaunched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic. Thecorks drift slowly on from day to day with the same conditions all roundthem. If the corks were sentient we could imagine that they wouldconsider these conditions to be permanent and assured. But we, with oursuperior knowledge, know that many things might happen to surprise thecorks. They might possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale,or become entangled in seaweed. In any case, their voyage would probablyend by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador. But whatcould they know of all this while they drifted so gently day by day inwhat they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean?
"Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in thisparable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we drift andthat the bunch of corks represents the little and obscure planetarysystem to which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its rag tag andbobtail of insignificant satellites, we float under the same dailyconditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which willoverwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept overan etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see noroom here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent,Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with avery close and interested attention every indication of change in thosecosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate may depend."
"Man, he'd have made a grand meenister," said McArdle. "It just boomslike an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's troubling him."
"The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the spectrumpoint, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle andsingular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of thesun. Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra bothfrom planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the samechange. Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such anidea is inconceivable. What common change could simultaneously come uponthem all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but inthe highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, andchemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the thirdpossibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in thatinfinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades thewhole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow cu
rrent.Might that current not drift us into belts of ether which are novel andhave properties of which we have never conceived? There is a changesomewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may bea good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We donot know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as one which can bedisregarded, but one who like myself is possessed of the deeperintelligence of the true philosopher will understand that thepossibilities of the universe are incalculable and that the wisest man ishe who holds himself ready for the unexpected. To take an obviousexample, who would undertake to say that the mysterious and universaloutbreak of illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as havingbroken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no connection withsome cosmic change to which they may respond more quickly than the morecomplex peoples of Europe? I throw out the idea for what it is worth.To assert it is, in the present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, butit is an unimaginative numskull who is too dense to perceive that it iswell within the bounds of scientific possibility.
"Yours faithfully, "GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.
"THE BRIARS, ROTHERFIELD."
"It's a fine, steemulating letter," said McArdle thoughtfully, fitting acigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a holder. "What'syour opeenion of it, Mr. Malone?"
I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the subject atissue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had justbeen studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at theoffice, and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured spectralbands which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some youngand ambitious cricket club. He pointed out to me that there were certainblack lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant coloursextending from the red at one end through gradations of orange, yellow,green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other.
"Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines," said he. "The colours arejust light itself. Every light, if you can split it up with a prism,gives the same colours. They tell us nothing. It is the lines thatcount, because they vary according to what it may be that produces thelight. It is these lines that have been blurred instead of clear thislast week, and all the astronomers have been quarreling over the reason.Here's a photograph of the blurred lines for our issue to-morrow. Thepublic have taken no interest in the matter up to now, but this letter ofChallenger's in the Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking."
"And this about Sumatra?"
"Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a sick niggerin Sumatra. And yet the chiel has shown us once before that he knowswhat he's talking about. There is some queer illness down yonder, that'sbeyond all doubt, and to-day there's a cable just come in from Singaporethat the lighthouses are out of action in the Straits of Sundan, and twoships on the beach in consequence. Anyhow, it's good enough for you tointerview Challenger upon. If you get anything definite, let us have acolumn by Monday."
I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my new missionin my mind, when I heard my name called from the waiting-room below. Itwas a telegraph-boy with a wire which had been forwarded from my lodgingsat Streatham. The message was from the very man we had been discussing,and ran thus:--
Malone, 17, Hill Street, Streatham.--Bring oxygen.--Challenger.
"Bring oxygen!" The Professor, as I remembered him, had an elephantinesense of humour capable of the most clumsy and unwieldly gambollings.Was this one of those jokes which used to reduce him to uproariouslaughter, when his eyes would disappear and he was all gaping mouth andwagging beard, supremely indifferent to the gravity of all around him? Iturned the words over, but could make nothing even remotely jocose out ofthem. Then surely it was a concise order--though a very strange one. Hewas the last man in the world whose deliberate command I should care todisobey. Possibly some chemical experiment was afoot; possibly----Well,it was no business of mine to speculate upon why he wanted it. I mustget it. There was nearly an hour before I should catch the train atVictoria. I took a taxi, and having ascertained the address from thetelephone book, I made for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in OxfordStreet.
As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths emerged fromthe door of the establishment carrying an iron cylinder, which, with sometrouble, they hoisted into a waiting motor-car. An elderly man was attheir heels scolding and directing in a creaky, sardonic voice. Heturned towards me. There was no mistaking those austere features andthat goatee beard. It was my old cross-grained companion, ProfessorSummerlee.
"What!" he cried. "Don't tell me that _you_ have had one of thesepreposterous telegrams for oxygen?"
I exhibited it.
"Well, well! I have had one too, and, as you see, very much against thegrain, I have acted upon it. Our good friend is as impossible as ever.The need for oxygen could not have been so urgent that he must desert theusual means of supply and encroach upon the time of those who are reallybusier than himself. Why could he not order it direct?"
I could only suggest that he probably wanted it at once.
"Or thought he did, which is quite another matter. But it is superfluousnow for you to purchase any, since I have this considerable supply."
"Still, for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring oxygen too.It will be safer to do exactly what he tells me."
Accordingly, in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from Summerlee,I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with the other in hismotor-car, for he had offered me a lift to Victoria.
I turned away to pay off my taxi, the driver of which was verycantankerous and abusive over his fare. As I came back to ProfessorSummerlee, he was having a furious altercation with the men who hadcarried down the oxygen, his little white goat's beard jerking withindignation. One of the fellows called him, I remember, "a silly oldbleached cockatoo," which so enraged his chauffeur that he bounded out ofhis seat to take the part of his insulted master, and it was all we coulddo to prevent a riot in the street.
These little things may seem trivial to relate, and passed as mereincidents at the time. It is only now, as I look back, that I see theirrelation to the whole story which I have to unfold.
The chauffeur must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice or else havelost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove vilely on the way to thestation. Twice we nearly had collisions with other equally erraticvehicles, and I remember remarking to Summerlee that the standard ofdriving in London had very much declined. Once we brushed the very edgeof a great crowd which was watching a fight at the corner of the Mall.The people, who were much excited, raised cries of anger at the clumsydriving, and one fellow sprang upon the step and waved a stick above ourheads. I pushed him off, but we were glad when we had got clear of themand safe out of the park. These little events, coming one after theother, left me very jangled in my nerves, and I could see from mycompanion's petulant manner that his own patience had got to a low ebb.
But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Roxton waiting forus upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad in a yellow tweedshooting-suit. His keen face, with those unforgettable eyes, so fierceand yet so humorous, flushed with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddyhair was shot with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut alittle deeper by Time's chisel, but in all else he was the Lord John whohad been our good comrade in the past.
"Hullo, Herr Professor! Hullo, young fella!" he shouted as he cametoward us.
He roared with amusement when he saw the oxygen cylinders upon theporter's trolly behind us. "So you've got them too!" he cried. "Mine isin the van. Whatever can the old dear be after?"