When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“What does it mean?”

“That’s what I thought you might tell us. Hendron’s a member, of course.”

“The head of it, I hear,” somebody else put in.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Tony protested, and tried to move away. Actually, he did not know; but this talk fitted in too well with what Eve had told him. Her father had been chosen by the scientists of the world to make some extraordinary announcement. But—the League of the Last Days! She had not mentioned that to him.

League of the Last Days! It sent a strange tingle under his skin.

“How did you hear about it?” Tony now demanded of Jack Little.

“From him,” said Jack, jerking toward the man who had heard that Cole Hendron headed the League.

“I got it this afternoon,” this fellow said importantly. “I know the city editor of the Standard. He had a reporter—a smart kid named Davis—on it. I was there when the kid came back. It seems that some months ago, the scientists—the top men like Hendron—stumbled on something big. So big that it seems to have scared them. They’ve been having meetings about it for months.

“Nobody thought much about the meetings at first. Scientists are always barging around visiting each other and having conventions. But these were different. Very few men—and all big ones; and no real reports coming out. Only camouflage stuff—like about progress in smashing the atom. But the real business that was exciting them wasn’t given out.

“Nobody knows yet what it is; but we do know there is something mighty big and mighty secret. It’s so big and so secret that they only refer to it, when writing to each other, by a code.

“That’s one thing definitely known. They write to each other and cable to each other about it in a code that’s so damned good that the newspapers, which have got hold of some of the messages, can’t break the cipher and figure it out.”

“What’s the League of the Last Days got to do with that?” Tony asked.

“It’s the League of the Last Days that’s doing it all. It’s the League of the Last Days that communicates with its members by the code.”

That was all any one knew; and soon Tony left the circle. He did not want to talk to men who knew even less than himself. He wanted to return to Eve; and that being impossible, he wanted to be alone. “I need,” he said to nobody in particular, “a shower and a drink.” And he pushed out of the club and started home.

His cab lurched through traffic. When the vehicle stopped for a red light, he was roused from his abstractions by the hawking of an extra. He leaned out and bought one from the bawling newsboy. The headline disappointed him.

SCIENTISTS FORM SECRET

“LEAGUE OF THE LAST DAYS.”

A second paper—a tabloid—told no more.

SENSATIONAL SECRET DISCOVERY

World Scientists Communicating in Code.

When he reached his apartment, he thrust the papers under his arm. The doorman and the elevator boy spoke to him, and he did not answer. His Jap servant smiled at him. He surrendered his derby, threw himself in a deep chair, had a telephone brought, and called Eve.

The telephone-company informed him that service on that number had been discontinued for the night.

“Bring me a highball, Kyto,” Tony said. “And hand me that damn’ newspaper.” And Tony read:

“A secret discovery of startling importance is exciting the whole world of science.

“Though denied both by American and foreign scientists, the Standard has come into possession of copies of more than a score of cablegrams in code exchanged between various physicists and astronomers in America, and Professor Ernest Heim of Heidelberg, Germany.

“This newspaper has sought out the American senders or receivers of the mysterious code messages, who include Professor Yerksen Leeming at Yale, Doctor K. Belditz of Columbit, Cole Hendron of the Universal Electric and Power Corp., and Professor Eugene Taylor at Princeton. Some of these scientists at first denied that a secret code communication was being carried on; but others, confronted with copies of messages, admitted it, but claimed that they referred to a purely scientific investigation which was being conducted by several groups in cooperation. They denied that the subjects under investigation were of public importance.

“Challenged to describe, even in general terms, the nature of the secret, each man refused.

“But matters are coming to a head. To-day it was discovered that a special courier from South Africa, sent by Lord Rhondin and Professor Bronson of Capetown, had flown the length of the Dark Continent with a mysterious black box; at Cherbourg he took the first ship for New York and upon his arrival, was taken off at quarantine and hurried to Cole Hendron’s apartment.

“Dr. Cole Hendron, chief consultant of the Universal Electric and Power Corp., only to-day returned to New York from Pasadena, where he has been working with the scientists of the observatory on Mt. Wilson.…

“To add to the disturbing and spectacular features of this strange scientific mystery, it is learned that the scientists associated in this secret and yet world-spanning investigation are in a group which is called the League of the Last Days. What this may mean…”