OBERT NAPIER had wanted something of Sir John Elroy. He had not got it. But as he went home, it seemed to him that he walked in triumph. He was thirty-seven, and he loved for the first time. It was Margaret, Sir John's daughter who had wrought the miracle
He saw her later in the winter at a great reception where his scientific fame was apology for his shabbiness. After that he met her again and again, and she loved him as he loved her.
But he was almost starving. His own funds and his partner's had vanished in long research. Marriage with this girl seemed impossible. And then in his despair something happened, in the laboratory, and he knew and Jimmy Sewell knew that all the riches of the earth could be theirs at will. A terrible force of destruction had been revealed to them, and the nation who owned it would rule the world.
APIER did not know how long he had been out, until a clock above a jeweler's shop warned him. He did not know where he had been or where he was. He had walked steadily like a man in haste and with a fixed purpose, and he had reached nowhere. But he was aware suddenly that he was terribly tired. His very thoughts stumbled and could go no further. And yet there was no rest for them. Behind him, like uncertain trail of light, lay endless streets, some dark and empty, some racked with a fierce, tragic turmoil—unwholesome crowds eddying on the dirt pavements, seeking in the glare and noise some sort of escape—and then the great river, flowing blackly under the sodden sky, dividing east and west forever.
He had gone and on, apparently unseeing and unaware. But it was as though the men and women who jostled him were really closing in on him, pursuing him, clutching at him with soiled and piteous fingers, adjuring him that as he was their brother to whom great power had been given he should deal justly with them and all their kind throughout the world. They did not know their own appeal. Individually they might have demanded revenge and destruction against peoples whom they believed they hated. They spoke as they had been taught. But out of their deep unconsciousness rose another spirit. It seemed to brood over them, to speak for them, asking for a little peace, a little pity for all men.
Presently by mean and wretched streets he found his way back to the main thoroughfare with its gold chain of trams clanging gaily across the bridge. On the Embankment were the usual derelicts. They sat motionless and huddled, like people long since dead, until the heavy tread of a policeman on his rounds roused them and sent them scudding into the dark. They were so phantom-like that it was hard to believe that they would not vanish with the daylight. But to Napier they had a queer significance. They were impersonal, faceless people. They had no stake in the world. They were outside life, in their tragic way, free. And to them he was just another shadow. He sat down beside one of them. It was a woman, and she had something with her that seemed a child. He could not tell her age, for they were outside the lamplight, but because she sat upright with her chin lifted, he guessed that she was not so beaten as the rest.
She answered him civilly and with an air of grim patience. “Yes, it was late to have a kid out; but then Andy wasn't a kid exactly; he was near fifteen, but he'd never be no bigger, and, he was 'queer.' Born in an air raid. Couldn't expect 'im to be ordinary.”
She put her arm over the misshapen figure beside her and drew it close. “Him and me was just considering the river,” she said. “Life's a mess for most of us. It ain't no good to me, and it ain't no good to 'im, poor angel. And since the end's the same for us all—might as well get on with it.”
APIER nodded. “As a matter of fact, I've got a little scheme for blowing up the world,” he said casually. “Shall I use it?”
“Are you lucky enough to be drunk, mister?”
“Let's pretend I'm sober, anyway.”
“G'ar on with you! Who are you?”
“I'm what's called a scientist. I've discovered a new force. I could blow the world up, but actually I'm thinking of selling my discovery to the Government. I'd get an awful lot of money, and the Government could make a dust-heap of any country they didn't fancy. What do you think about it?”
He felt her looking at him. Certainly she thought him mad, but there was something in his proposition that touched her fancy. And he waited for her answer as though she were speaking for those others.
“You go and drop your old discovery into the river,” she said, “and yourself, too, if you don't know 'ow to 'old your tongue.”
“But if life is a mess—”