When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

Tony had his arm about her; he felt her suddenly trembling. He swept her up and held her against him; and kissing her, he met on her lips, a new, impetuous passion which exalted and amazed him. Then some one came out and he released her.

“I—I didn’t mean that, Tony,” she whispered.

“You must have.”

“I didn’t! Not all of it, Tony. It was just for that moment.”

“We’ll have a thousand more like it—thousands—thousands!”

They both were whispering; and now, though he had let her go, his hand was over hers, and he could feel her quivering again. “You don’t know, Tony. Nobody really knows yet. Come, help me send them all away.”

He helped her; and when the guests had gone, he met, at last, the man who had come from South Africa. They shook hands, and for a few moments the three of them—Eve Hendron and Tony Drake and Ransdell, the mail-flyer from under the Southern Cross—stood and chatted together.

There must be presentiments; otherwise, how could the three of them always have carried, thereafter, a photographic memory of that moment of their meeting? Yet no one of the three—and least of all Eve, who on that night knew most of what was to come—could possibly have suspected the strange relation in which each was to stand to the others. None of them could have suspected, because such a relationship was, at that moment, inconceivable to them—a relationship between civilized men and women for which there then existed, indeed, no word in the language.

CHAPTER 2—THE LEAGUE OF THE LAST DAYS

THE lobby of Tony’s favorite club was carpeted in red. Beyond the red carpet was a vast room paneled in oak. It usually was filled with leisurely men playing backgammon or bridge or chess, smoking and reading newspapers. Behind it, thick with gloom, was a library; and in a wing on the left, the dining-room where uniformed waiters moved swiftly between rows of small tables.

As Tony entered the club, however, he felt that it had emerged from its slumbers, its routine, its dull masculine quietude. There were only two games in progress. Few men were idling over their cigars, studying their newspapers; many were gathered around the bar.

The lights seemed brighter. Voices were staccato. Men stood in groups and talked; a few even gesticulated. The surface of snobbish solitude had been dissipated.

Tony knew at once why the club was alive. The rumors, spreading on the streets, had eddied in through these doors too.

Some one hailed him. “Hi! Tony!”

“Hello, Jack! What’s up?”

“You tell us!”

“How could I tell you?”

“Don’t you know Hendron? Haven’t you seen him?”

Jack Little—a young man whose name was misleading—stepped away from a cluster of friends, who, however, soon followed him; and Tony found himself surrounded. One of the men had been one of the guests whom Tony, half an hour before, had helped clear from the Hendrons’; and so he could not deny having seen Hendron, even if he had wanted to.

“What in hell have the scientists under their hats, Tony?”

“I don’t know. Honest,” Tony denied.

“Then what the devil is the League of the Last Days?”

/> “What?”

“The League of the Last Days—an organization of all the leading scientists in the world, as far as I can make out,” Little informed him.

“Never heard of it,” said Tony.

“I just did,” Little confessed; “but it appears to have been in existence some time. Several months, that is. They began to organize it suddenly, all over the world, in the winter.”

“All over the world?” asked Tony.

“In strictest and absolutely the highest scientific circles. They’ve been organized and communicating for half a year; and it’s just leaking out.”

“The League of the Last Days?” repeated Tony.

“That’s it.”