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man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes
objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being
governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the
barons' wars."
"As a lecture on English history for the little ones," said Syme, "this
is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application."
"Its application is," said his informant, "that most of old Sunday's
right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why he
has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last four
champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a wood like
rabbits."
"Millionaires I can understand," said Syme thoughtfully, "they are
nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with hobbies
is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is another. I would
bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that Sunday would stand
perfectly helpless before the task of converting any ordinary healthy person
anywhere."
"Well," said the other, "it rather depends what sort of person you
mean."
"Well, for instance," said Syme, "he could never convert that person,"
and he pointed straight in front of him.
They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to
Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this
forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that common sense in
an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with perspiration,
and grave with the bottomless gravity of small necessary toils, a heavy
French peasant was cutting wood with a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards
off, already half full of timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was,
like his master, valorous but not desperate; like his master, he was even
prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The man was a Norman, taller than the
average of the French and very angular; and his swarthy figure stood dark
against a square of sunlight, almost like some allegoric figure of labour
frescoed on a ground of gold.
"Mr. Syme is saying," called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, "that
this man, at least, will never be an anarchist."
"Mr. Syme is right enough there," answered Colonel Ducroix, laughing,
"if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to defend. But I
forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being wealthy."
"He looks poor," said Dr. Bull doubtfully.
"Quite so," said the Colonel; "that is why he is rich."
"I have an idea," called out Dr. Bull suddenly; "how much would he take
to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we could soon
leave them behind."
"Oh, give him anything! " said Syme eagerly. "I have piles of money on
me."
"That will never do," said the Colonel; "he will never have any respect
for you unless you drive a bargain."
"Oh, if he haggles!" began Bull impatiently.
"Erie haggles because he is a free man," said the other. "You do not
understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being
tipped."
And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange
pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French Colonel
talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely badinage and
bickering of market-day. At the end of the four minutes, however, they saw
that the Colonel was right, for the wood-cutter entered into their plans,
not with the vague servility of a tout too-well paid, but with the
seriousness of a solicitor who had been paid the proper fee. He told them
that the best thing they could do was to make their way down to the little
inn on the hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had
become devot in his latter years, would be certain to sympathise with them,
and even to take risks in their support. The whole company, therefore, piled
themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and went rocking in the rude cart
down the other and steeper side of the woodland. Heavy and ramshackle as was
the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they soon had the
exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, whoever they were,
who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the anarchists
had got all these followers was still unsolved. One man's presence had
sufficed for them; they had fled at the first sight of the deformed smile of
the Secretary. Syme every now and then looked back over his shoulder at the
army on their track.
As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could
see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was still
moving the square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the very strong
sunlight and with his own very strong eyes, which were almost telescopic,
Syme could see this mass of men quite plainly. He could see them as separate
human figures; but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they
moved as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats,
like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl
and trail by various lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary
mob. They moved with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a
staring army of automatons.
Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe.
"Yes," replied the policeman, "that's discipline. That's Sunday. He is
perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of them, like
the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and you bet your boots
that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking regularly. But the one
important thing for us is that they are disappearing regularly."
Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was
growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse.
The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on
the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, in a
way not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only difference was
that in Sussex the road would have been broken and angular like a little
brook, but here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a
waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart clattered at a considerable
angle, and in a few minutes, the road growing yet steeper, they saw below
them the little harbour of Lancy and a great blue arc of the sea. The
travelling cloud of their enemies had wholly disappeared from the horizon.
The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the
horse's nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting on
the benches outside the little cafe of "Le Soleil d'Or." The peasant grunted
an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also descended one by
one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary phrases of courtesy,
for it was quite evident from his expansive manner that he was the owner of
the little tavern.
He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey
moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may often be
found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. Everything about
him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an
ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up as they entered the
inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall.
The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly
into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. The
military decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to him, and he
took the opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his
curiosity.
"May I ask you, Colonel," he said in a low voice, "why we have come
here?"
Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache.
"For two reasons, sir," he said; "and I will give first, not the most
important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the only
place within twenty miles in which we can get horses."
"Horses!" repeated Syme, looking up quickly.
"Yes," replied the other; "if you people are really to distance your
enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you have bicycles
and motor-cars in your pocket."
"And where do you advise us to make for?" asked Syme doubtfully.
"Beyond question," replied the Colonel, "you had better make all haste
to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded under
somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much the
possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly maintain, I
suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes."
Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly--
"And your other reason for coming here?"
"My other reason for coming here," said Ducroix soberly, "is that it is
just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to death."
Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic
religious picture. Then he said--
"You are right," and then almost immediately afterwards, "Has anyone
seen about the horses?"
"Yes," answered Ducroix, "you may be quite certain that I gave orders
the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of hurry,
but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a well-trained army. I
had no idea that the anarchists had so much discipline. You have not a
moment to waste."
Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair
came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled
outside.
By Ducroix's advice the five others equipped themselves with some
portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as the
only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white road. The
two servants, who had carried the Marquis's luggage when he was a marquis,
were left behind to drink at the cafe by common consent, and not at all
against their own inclination.
By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays
Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller and
smaller, but still standing and looking after them quite silently, the
sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, left in
his mind by the chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps,
the last honest stranger whom he should ever see upon the earth.
He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere
grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the
steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the
innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching men. They
seemed to hang above the good man and his house like a black cloud of
locusts. The horses had been saddled none too soon.
URGING the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged
descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over the men
on the march, and at last the bulk of the first buildings of Lancy cut off
the sight of their pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and
by the time they reached the real town the west was warming with the colour
and quality of sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making finally for
the police station, they should make the effort, in passing, to attach to
themselves one more individual who might be useful.
"Four out of the five rich men in this town," he said, "are common
swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. The
fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even more
important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car."
"I am afraid," said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back
along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at any
moment, "I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls."
"Doctor Renard's house is only three minutes off," said the Colonel.
"Our danger," said Dr. Bull, "is not two minutes off."
"Yes," said Syme, "if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, for
they are on foot."
"He has a motor-car," said the Colonel.
"But we may not get it," said Bull.
"Yes, he is quite on your side."
"But he might be out."
"Hold your tongue," said Syme suddenly. "What is that noise?"
For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a
second-- for two or three or four seconds--heaven and earth seemed equally
still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the road
that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one thing--horses!
The Colonel's face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had
struck it, and yet left it scatheless.
"They have done us," he said, with brief military irony. "Prepare to
receive cavalry!"
"Where can they have got the horses?" asked Syme, as he mechanically
urged his steed to a canter.
The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice--
"I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the 'Soleil d'Or'
was the only place where one can get horses within twenty miles."
"No!" said Syme violently, "I don't believe he'd do it. Not with all
that white hair."
"He may have been forced," said the Colonel gently. "They must be at
least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my friend
Renard, who has a motor-car."
With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and
went down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, though
already well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the flying tail of
his horse.
Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep
street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once more
see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the white road across it,
standing up above all the roofs of the town. They breathed again to see that
the road as yet was clear, and they rang the bell.
Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that
silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved even more
perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to him he pooh-poohed
the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the solid French
scepticism, that there was no conceivable probability of a general anarchist
rising. "Anarchy," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "it is childishness! "
"Et ca," cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other's
shoulder, "and that is childishness, isn't it?"
They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping
over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they
rode, however, the whole rank still kept well together, and they could see
the black vizards of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. But
although the main black square was the same, though travelling faster, there
was now one sensational difference which they could see clearly upon the
slope of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were in
one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the column, and with frantic
movements of hand and heel urged his horse faster and faster, so that one
might have fancied that he was not the pursuer but the pursued. But even at
that great distance they could see something so fanatical, so unquestionable
in his figure, that they knew it was the Secretary himself. "I am sorry to
cut short a cultured discussion," said the Colonel, "but can you lend me
your motor-car now, in two minutes?"
"I have a suspicion that you are all mad," said Dr. Renard, smiling
sociably; "but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt
friendship. Let us go round to the garage."
Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like
the Musee de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he seemed
to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French middle class,
and when his impatient friends came to examine them, it took them some time
to assure themselves that one of them even could be made to work. This with
some difficulty they brought round into the street before the Doctor's
house. When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that
twilight had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the tropics.
Either they had been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual
canopy of cloud had gathered over the town. They looked down the steep
streets, and seemed to see a slight mist coming up from the sea.
"It is now or never," said Dr. Bull. "I hear horses."
"No," corrected the Professor, "a horse."
And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming
nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade but
that of the one horseman, who had left it far behind-- the insane Secretary.
Syme's family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once
owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into the
chauffeur's seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging at the
disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and then said quite
quietly--
"I am afraid it's no go."
As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing
horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that thrust
out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the stationary
car, into which its company had crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It
was the Secretary, and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of
triumph.
Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound
but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there came
quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt forward. It
plucked the Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife is whipped out of
its sheath, trailed him kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him
flung flat upon the road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car
took the corner of the street with a splendid curve, they could just see the
other anarchists filling the street and raising their fallen leader.
"I can't understand why it has grown so dark," said the Professor at
last in a low voice.
"Going to be a storm, I think," said Dr. Bull. "I say, it's a pity we
haven't got a light on this car, if only to see by."
"We have," said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up
a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. It was
obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had been in
some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a cross upon one
of its sides.
"Where on earth did you get that?" asked the Professor.
"I got it where I got the car," answered the Colonel, chuckling, "from
my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the steering wheel,
I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who was standing
in his own porch, you will remember. 'I suppose,' I said, 'there's no time
to get a lamp.' He looked up, blinking amiably at the beautiful arched
ceiling of his own front hall. From this was suspended, by chains of
exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the hundred treasures of his
treasure house. By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own ceiling,
shattering the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with his
violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was I
not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth knowing?"
"You were," said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the
front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast
between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto
they had passed through the quietest part of the town, meeting at most one
or two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of the peace or the
hostility of the place. Now, however, the windows in the houses began one by
one to be lit up, giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr.
Bull turned to the new detective who had led their flight, and permitted
himself one of his natural and friendly smiles.
"These lights make one feel more cheerful."
Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together.
"There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful," he said,
"and they are those lights of the police station which I can see beyond the
town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes."
Then all Bull's boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of
him.
"Oh, this is all raving nonsense!" he cried. "If you really think that
ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be madder than
an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the whole town
would fight for us."
"No," said the other with an immovable simplicity, "the whole town
would fight for them. We shall see.'
While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden
excitement.
"What is that noise?" he said.
"Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose," said the Colonel. "I thought we
had got clear of them."
"The horses behind us! No," said the Professor, "it is not horses, and
it is not behind us."
Almost as he spoke, across the end of the street before them two
shining and rattling shapes shot past. They were gone almost in a flash, but
everyone could see that they were motor-cars, and the Professor stood up
with a pale face and swore that they were the other two motor-cars from Dr.
Renard's garage.
"I tell you they were his," he repeated, with wild eyes, "and they were
full of men in masks!"
"Absurd!" said the Colonel angrily. "Dr. Renard would never give them
his cars."
"He may have been forced," said Ratcliffe quietly. "The whole town is
on their side."
"You still believe that," asked the Colonel incredulously.
"You will all believe it soon," said the other with a hopeless calm.
There was a puzzled pause for some little time, and then the Colonel
began again abruptly--
"No, I can't believe it. The thing is nonsense. The plain people of a
peaceable French town--"
He was cut short by a bang and a blaze of light, which seemed close to
his eyes. As the car sped on it left a floating patch of white smoke behind
it, and Syme had heard a shot shriek past his ear.
"My God!" said the Colonel, "someone has shot at us."
"It need not interrupt conversation," said the gloomy Ratcliffe. "Pray
resume your remarks, Colonel. You were talking, I think, about the plain
people of a peaceable French town."
The staring Colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes
all round the street.
"It is extraordinary," he said, "most extraordinary."
"A fastidious person," said Syme, "might even call it unpleasant.
However, I suppose those lights out in the field beyond this street are the
Gendarmerie. We shall soon get there."
"No," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "we shall never get there."
He had been standing up and looking keenly ahead of him. Now he sat
down and smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture.
"What do you mean?" asked Bull sharply.
"I mean that we shall never get there," said the pessimist placidly.
"They have two rows of armed men across the road already; I can see them
from here. The town is in arms, as I said it was.
I can only wallow in the exquisite comfort of my own exactitude."
And Ratcliffe sat down comfortably in the car and lit a cigarette, but
the others rose excitedly and stared down the road. Syme had slowed down the
car as their plans became doubtful, and he brought it finally to a
standstill just at the corner of a side street that ran down very steeply to
the sea.
The town was mostly in shadow, but the sun had not sunk; wherever its
level light could break through, it painted everything a burning gold. Up
this side street the last sunset light shone as sharp and narrow as the
shaft of artificial light at the theatre. It struck the car of the five
friends, and lit it like a burning chariot. But the rest of the street,
especially the two ends of it, was in the deepest twilight, and for some
seconds they could see nothing. Then Syme, whose eyes were the keenest,
broke into a little bitter whistle, and said
"It is quite true. There is a crowd or an army or some such thing
across the end of that street."
"Well, if there is," said Bull impatiently, "it must be something
else--a sham fight or the mayor's birthday or something. I cannot and will
not believe that plain, jolly people in a place like this walk about with
dynamite in their pockets. Get on a bit, Syme, and let us look at them."
The car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were all
startled by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter.
"Why, you silly mugs!" he cried, "what did I tell you. That crowd's as
law-abiding as a cow, and if it weren't, it's on our side."
"How do you know?" asked the professor, staring.
"You blind bat," cried Bull, "don't you see who is leading them?"
They peered again, and then the Colonel, with a catch in his voice,
cried out--
"Why, it's Renard!"
There was, indeed, a rank of dim figures running across the road, and
they could not be clearly seen; but far enough in front to catch the
accident of the evening light was stalking up and down the unmistakable Dr.
Renard, in a white hat, stroking his long brown beard, and holding a
revolver in his left hand.
"What a fool I've been! " exclaimed the Colonel. "Of course, the dear
old boy has turned out to help us."
Dr. Bull was bubbling over with laughter, swinging the sword in his
hand as carelessly as a cane. He jumped out of the car and ran across the
intervening space, calling out--
"Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!"
An instant after Syme thought his own eyes had gone mad in his head.
For the philanthropic Dr. Renard had deliberately raised his revolver and
fired twice at Bull, so that the shots rang down the road.
Almost at the same second as the puff of white cloud went up from this
atrocious explosion a long puff of white cloud went up also from the
cigarette of the cynical Ratcliffe. Like all the rest he turned a little
pale, but he smiled. Dr. Bull, at whom the bullets had been fired, just
missing his scalp, stood quite still in the middle of the road without a
sign of fear, and then turned very slowly and crawled back to the car, and
climbed in with two holes through his hat.
"Well," said the cigarette smoker slowly, "what do you think now?"
"I think," said Dr. Bull with precision, "that I am lying in bed at No.
217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon wake up with a jump; or, if
that's not it, I think that I am sitting in a small cushioned cell in
Hanwell, and that the doctor can't make much of my case. But if you want to
know what I don't think, I'll tell you. I don't think what you think. I
don't think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a
pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir, I'm a democrat, and I still don't
believe that Sunday could convert one average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I
may be mad, but humanity isn't."
Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he
did not commonly make clear.
"You are a very fine fellow," he said. "You can believe in a sanity
which is not merely your sanity. And you're right enough about humanity,
about peasants and people like that jolly old innkeeper. But you're not
right about Renard. I suspected him from the first. He's rationalistic, and,
what's worse, he's rich. When duty and religion are really destroyed, it
will be by the rich."
"They are really destroyed now," said the man with a cigarette, and
rose with his hands in his pockets. "The devils are coming on!"
The men in the motor-car looked anxiously in the direction of his
dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the road was
advancing upon them, Dr. Renard marching furiously in front, his beard
flying in the breeze.
The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.
"Gentlemen," he cried, "the thing is incredible. It must be a practical
joke. If you knew Renard as I do-- it's like calling Queen Victoria a
dynamiter. If you had got the man's character into your head--"
"Dr. Bull," said Syme sardonically, "has at least got it into his hat."
"I tell you it can't be!" cried the Colonel, stamping.
"Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me," and he strode
forward.
"Don't be in such a hurry," drawled the smoker. "He will very soon
explain it to all of us."
But the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards
the advancing enemy. The excited Dr. Renard lifted his pistol again, but
perceiving his opponent, hesitated, and the Colonel came face to face with
him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.
"It is no good," said Syme. "He will never get anything out of that old
heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets
went through Bull's hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill a tidy
number of them."
"I won't 'ave it," said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity
of his virtue. "The poor chaps may be making a mistake. Give the Colonel a
chance."
"Shall we go back, then?" asked the Professor.
"No," said Ratcliffe in a cold voice, "the street behind us is held
too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme."
Syme spun round smartly, and stared backwards at the track which they
had travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and galloping
towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle the silver gleam
of a sword, and then as it grew nearer the silver gleam of an old man's
hair. The next moment, with shattering violence, he had swung the motor
round and sent it dashing down the steep side street to the sea, like a man
that desired only to die.
"What the devil is up?" cried the Professor, seizing his arm.
"The morning star has fallen!" said Syme, as his own car went down the
darkness like a falling star.
The others did not understand his words, but when they looked back at
the street above they saw the hostile cavalry coming round the corner and
down the slopes after them; and foremost of all rode the good innkeeper,
flushed with the fiery innocence of the evening light.
"The world is insane!" said the Professor, and buried his face in his
hands.
"No," said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, "it is I."
"What are we going to do?" asked the Professor.
"At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we
are going to smash into a lamppost."
The next instant the automobile had come with a catastrophic jar
against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out from
under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood up straight
on the edge of the marine parade stood out, bent and twisted, like the
branch of a broken tree.
"Well, we smashed something," said the Professor, with a faint smile.
"That's some comfort."
"You're becoming an anarchist," said Syme, dusting his clothes with his
instinct of daintiness.
"Everyone is," said Ratcliffe.
As they spoke, the white-haired horseman and his followers came
thundering from above, and almost at the same moment a dark string of men
ran shouting along the sea-front. Syme snatched a sword, and took it in his
teeth; he stuck two others under his arm-pits, took a fourth in his left
hand and the lantern in his right, and leapt off the high parade on to the
beach below.
The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive
action, leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them.
"We have one more chance," said Syme, taking the steel out of his
mouth. "Whatever all this pandemonium means, I suppose the police station
will help us. We can't get there, for they hold the way. But there's a pier
or breakwater runs out into the sea just here, which we could defend longer
than anything else, like Horatius and his bridge. We must defend it till the
Gendarmerie turn out. Keep after me."
They followed him as he went crunching down the beach, and in a second
or two their boots broke not on the sea gravel, but on broad, flat stones.
They marched down a long, low jetty, running out in one arm into the dim,
boiling sea, and when they came to the end of it they felt that they had
come to the end of their story. They turned and faced the town.
That town was transfigured with uproar. All along the high parade from
which they had just descended was a dark and roaring stream of humanity,
with tossing arms and fiery faces, groping and glaring towards them. The
long dark line was dotted with torches and lanterns; but even where no flame
lit up a furious face, they could see in the farthest figure, in the most
shadowy gesture, an organised hate. It was clear that they were the accursed
of all men, and they knew not why.
Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the
edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing down
the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea at random.
The example was followed, and the whole black mass of men began to run and
drip over the edge like black treacle.
Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven
their cart. He splashed into the surf on a huge cart-horse, and shook his
axe at them.
"The peasant!" cried Syme. "They have not risen since the Middle Ages."
"Even if the police do come now," said the Professor mournfully, "they
can do nothing with this mob."
"Nonsence!" said Bull desperately; "there must be some people left in
the town who are human."
"No," said the hopeless Inspector, "the human being will soon be
extinct. We are the last of mankind."
"It may be," said the Professor absently. Then he added in his dreamy
voice, "What is all that at the end of the 'Dunciad'?
Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;
Light dies before thine uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all."'
"Stop!" cried Bull suddenly, "the gendarmes are out."
The low lights of the police station were indeed blotted and broken
with hurrying figures, and they heard through the darkness the clash and
jingle of a disciplined cavalry.
' They are charging the mob!" cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.
"No," said Syme, "they are formed along the parade."
"They have unslung their carbines," cried Bull dancing with excitement.
"Yes," said Ratcliffe, "and they are going to fire on us."
As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed
to hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.
'The gendarmes have joined them!" cried the Professor, and struck his
forehead.
"I am in the padded cell," said Bull solidly.
There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the
swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple--
"What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead
soon."
Syme turned to him and said--
"You are quite hopeless, then?"
Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly--
"No; oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little
hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet is
against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little hope
is hopeless yet."
"In what or whom is your hope?" asked Syme with curiosity.
"In a man I never saw," said the other, looking at the leaden sea.
"I know what you mean," said Syme in a low voice, "the man in the dark
room. But Sunday must have killed him by now."
"Perhaps," said the other steadily; "but if so, he was the only man
whom Sunday found it hard to kill."
"I heard what you said," said the Professor, with his back turned. "I
also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw."
All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective
thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep--
"Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!"
"The Colonel! Yes," cried Bull, "where on earth is the Colonel?"
"He went to speak to Renard," said the Professor.
"We cannot leave him among all those beasts," cried Syme. "Let us die
like gentlemen if--"
"Do not pity the Colonel," said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. "He is
extremely comfortable. He is--"
"No! no! no!" cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, "not the Colonel too! I
will never believe it!"
"Will you believe your eyes?" asked the other, and pointed to the
beach.
Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists,
but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three
figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and seemed to
be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance lantern lit up the
faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask, and under it the
mouth was twisting about in such a madness of nerves that the black tuft of
beard wriggled round and round like a restless, living thing. The other was
the red face and white moustache of Colonel Ducroix. They were in earnest
consultation.
"Yes, he is gone too," said the Professor, and sat down on a stone.
"Everything's gone. I'm gone! I can't trust my own bodily machinery. I feel
as if my own hand might fly up and strike me."
"When my hand flies up," said Syme, "it will strike somebody else," and
he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and the
lantern in the other.
As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him
coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme, but
struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and swung
the iron lantern above his head.
"Judas before Herod!" he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the
stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost
foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture,
that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.
"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see
the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did
not light it, Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted
the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street
you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this
lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make
nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy
the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you
shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the
wit to find it."
He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and
then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where
it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.
"Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face ; to the three behind
him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die."
His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme's sword was
broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him
down. In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob
and perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever since Syme's
speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if dazed; now he
suddenly pulled off his black mask.
The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as
astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority.
"There is some mistake," he said. "Mr. Syme, I hardly think you
understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law."
"Of the law?" said Syme, and dropped his stick.
"Certainly!" said the Secretary. "I am a detective from Scotland Yard,"
and he took a small blue card from his pocket.
"And what do you suppose we are?" asked the Professor, and threw up his
arms.
"You," said the Secretary stiffly, "are, as I know for a fact, members
of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I--"
Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea.
"There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council," he said. "We were all
a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice people
who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I knew
I couldn't be wrong about the mob," he said, beaming over the enormous
multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. "Vulgar
people are never mad. I'm vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore
to stand a drink to everybody here."
NEXT morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for
Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having
been first forced to fight for two factions that didn't exist, and then
knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman,
and being much relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite,
he saw them off on the pier with great geniality.
The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each
other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks
originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators;
Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a
civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be
explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not
explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what was
Sunday? If he had not seized the world, what on earth had he been up to?
Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this.
"I can't make head or tail of old Sunday's little game any more than
you can," he said. "But whatever else Sunday is, he isn't a blameless
citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?"
"I grant you," answered Syme, "that I have never been able to forget
it."
"Well," said the Secretary, "I suppose we can find out soon, for
to-morrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," he said,
with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well acquainted with my secretarial
duties."
"I suppose you are right," said the Professor reflectively. "I suppose
we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit afraid
of asking Sunday who he really is."
"Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?"
"No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me."
"Let us have some drinks," said Dr. Bull, after a silence.
Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly
convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had always
been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other four that
the whole company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was
over-ruled, and they went in a four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box,
singing. They finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as
to be close to the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet
even then the adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull,
discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the
hotel at about eleven to see and taste some of the beauties of London.
Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in
the hall. Syme, who tried at first to soothe him, was forced at last to
listen to his communication with quite new attention.
"I tell you I've seen him!" said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis.
"Whom?" asked Syme quickly. "Not the President?"
"Not so bad as that," said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, "not so
bad as that. I've got him here."
"Got whom here?" asked Syme impatiently.
"Hairy man," said the other lucidly, "man that used to be hairy
man--Gogol. Here he is," and he pulled forward by a reluctant elbow the
objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being
governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the
barons' wars."
"As a lecture on English history for the little ones," said Syme, "this
is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application."
"Its application is," said his informant, "that most of old Sunday's
right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why he
has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last four
champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a wood like
rabbits."
"Millionaires I can understand," said Syme thoughtfully, "they are
nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with hobbies
is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is another. I would
bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that Sunday would stand
perfectly helpless before the task of converting any ordinary healthy person
anywhere."
"Well," said the other, "it rather depends what sort of person you
mean."
"Well, for instance," said Syme, "he could never convert that person,"
and he pointed straight in front of him.
They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to
Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this
forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that common sense in
an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with perspiration,
and grave with the bottomless gravity of small necessary toils, a heavy
French peasant was cutting wood with a hatchet. His cart stood a few yards
off, already half full of timber; and the horse that cropped the grass was,
like his master, valorous but not desperate; like his master, he was even
prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The man was a Norman, taller than the
average of the French and very angular; and his swarthy figure stood dark
against a square of sunlight, almost like some allegoric figure of labour
frescoed on a ground of gold.
"Mr. Syme is saying," called out Ratcliffe to the French Colonel, "that
this man, at least, will never be an anarchist."
"Mr. Syme is right enough there," answered Colonel Ducroix, laughing,
"if only for the reason that he has plenty of property to defend. But I
forgot that in your country you are not used to peasants being wealthy."
"He looks poor," said Dr. Bull doubtfully.
"Quite so," said the Colonel; "that is why he is rich."
"I have an idea," called out Dr. Bull suddenly; "how much would he take
to give us a lift in his cart? Those dogs are all on foot, and we could soon
leave them behind."
"Oh, give him anything! " said Syme eagerly. "I have piles of money on
me."
"That will never do," said the Colonel; "he will never have any respect
for you unless you drive a bargain."
"Oh, if he haggles!" began Bull impatiently.
"Erie haggles because he is a free man," said the other. "You do not
understand; he would not see the meaning of generosity. He is not being
tipped."
And even while they seemed to hear the heavy feet of their strange
pursuers behind them, they had to stand and stamp while the French Colonel
talked to the French wood-cutter with all the leisurely badinage and
bickering of market-day. At the end of the four minutes, however, they saw
that the Colonel was right, for the wood-cutter entered into their plans,
not with the vague servility of a tout too-well paid, but with the
seriousness of a solicitor who had been paid the proper fee. He told them
that the best thing they could do was to make their way down to the little
inn on the hills above Lancy, where the innkeeper, an old soldier who had
become devot in his latter years, would be certain to sympathise with them,
and even to take risks in their support. The whole company, therefore, piled
themselves on top of the stacks of wood, and went rocking in the rude cart
down the other and steeper side of the woodland. Heavy and ramshackle as was
the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they soon had the
exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, whoever they were,
who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the anarchists
had got all these followers was still unsolved. One man's presence had
sufficed for them; they had fled at the first sight of the deformed smile of
the Secretary. Syme every now and then looked back over his shoulder at the
army on their track.
As the wood grew first thinner and then smaller with distance, he could
see the sunlit slopes beyond it and above it; and across these was still
moving the square black mob like one monstrous beetle. In the very strong
sunlight and with his own very strong eyes, which were almost telescopic,
Syme could see this mass of men quite plainly. He could see them as separate
human figures; but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they
moved as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats,
like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl
and trail by various lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary
mob. They moved with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a
staring army of automatons.
Syme pointed this out to Ratcliffe.
"Yes," replied the policeman, "that's discipline. That's Sunday. He is
perhaps five hundred miles off, but the fear of him is on all of them, like
the finger of God. Yes, they are walking regularly; and you bet your boots
that they are talking regularly, yes, and thinking regularly. But the one
important thing for us is that they are disappearing regularly."
Syme nodded. It was true that the black patch of the pursuing men was
growing smaller and smaller as the peasant belaboured his horse.
The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on
the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, in a
way not unlike the lower slopes of the Sussex downs. The only difference was
that in Sussex the road would have been broken and angular like a little
brook, but here the white French road fell sheer in front of them like a
waterfall. Down this direct descent the cart clattered at a considerable
angle, and in a few minutes, the road growing yet steeper, they saw below
them the little harbour of Lancy and a great blue arc of the sea. The
travelling cloud of their enemies had wholly disappeared from the horizon.
The horse and cart took a sharp turn round a clump of elms, and the
horse's nose nearly struck the face of an old gentleman who was sitting on
the benches outside the little cafe of "Le Soleil d'Or." The peasant grunted
an apology, and got down from his seat. The others also descended one by
one, and spoke to the old gentleman with fragmentary phrases of courtesy,
for it was quite evident from his expansive manner that he was the owner of
the little tavern.
He was a white-haired, apple-faced old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey
moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may often be
found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. Everything about
him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an
ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up as they entered the
inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon the wall.
The Colonel, who greeted the innkeeper as an old friend, passed rapidly
into the inn-parlour, and sat down ordering some ritual refreshment. The
military decision of his action interested Syme, who sat next to him, and he
took the opportunity when the old innkeeper had gone out of satisfying his
curiosity.
"May I ask you, Colonel," he said in a low voice, "why we have come
here?"
Colonel Ducroix smiled behind his bristly white moustache.
"For two reasons, sir," he said; "and I will give first, not the most
important, but the most utilitarian. We came here because this is the only
place within twenty miles in which we can get horses."
"Horses!" repeated Syme, looking up quickly.
"Yes," replied the other; "if you people are really to distance your
enemies it is horses or nothing for you, unless of course you have bicycles
and motor-cars in your pocket."
"And where do you advise us to make for?" asked Syme doubtfully.
"Beyond question," replied the Colonel, "you had better make all haste
to the police station beyond the town. My friend, whom I seconded under
somewhat deceptive circumstances, seems to me to exaggerate very much the
possibilities of a general rising; but even he would hardly maintain, I
suppose, that you were not safe with the gendarmes."
Syme nodded gravely; then he said abruptly--
"And your other reason for coming here?"
"My other reason for coming here," said Ducroix soberly, "is that it is
just as well to see a good man or two when one is possibly near to death."
Syme looked up at the wall, and saw a crudely-painted and pathetic
religious picture. Then he said--
"You are right," and then almost immediately afterwards, "Has anyone
seen about the horses?"
"Yes," answered Ducroix, "you may be quite certain that I gave orders
the moment I came in. Those enemies of yours gave no impression of hurry,
but they were really moving wonderfully fast, like a well-trained army. I
had no idea that the anarchists had so much discipline. You have not a
moment to waste."
Almost as he spoke, the old innkeeper with the blue eyes and white hair
came ambling into the room, and announced that six horses were saddled
outside.
By Ducroix's advice the five others equipped themselves with some
portable form of food and wine, and keeping their duelling swords as the
only weapons available, they clattered away down the steep, white road. The
two servants, who had carried the Marquis's luggage when he was a marquis,
were left behind to drink at the cafe by common consent, and not at all
against their own inclination.
By this time the afternoon sun was slanting westward, and by its rays
Syme could see the sturdy figure of the old innkeeper growing smaller and
smaller, but still standing and looking after them quite silently, the
sunshine in his silver hair. Syme had a fixed, superstitious fancy, left in
his mind by the chance phrase of the Colonel, that this was indeed, perhaps,
the last honest stranger whom he should ever see upon the earth.
He was still looking at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere
grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the
steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the
innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad and marching men. They
seemed to hang above the good man and his house like a black cloud of
locusts. The horses had been saddled none too soon.
URGING the horses to a gallop, without respect to the rather rugged
descent of the road, the horsemen soon regained their advantage over the men
on the march, and at last the bulk of the first buildings of Lancy cut off
the sight of their pursuers. Nevertheless, the ride had been a long one, and
by the time they reached the real town the west was warming with the colour
and quality of sunset. The Colonel suggested that, before making finally for
the police station, they should make the effort, in passing, to attach to
themselves one more individual who might be useful.
"Four out of the five rich men in this town," he said, "are common
swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world. The
fifth is a friend of mine, and a very fine fellow; and what is even more
important from our point of view, he owns a motor-car."
"I am afraid," said the Professor in his mirthful way, looking back
along the white road on which the black, crawling patch might appear at any
moment, "I am afraid we have hardly time for afternoon calls."
"Doctor Renard's house is only three minutes off," said the Colonel.
"Our danger," said Dr. Bull, "is not two minutes off."
"Yes," said Syme, "if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, for
they are on foot."
"He has a motor-car," said the Colonel.
"But we may not get it," said Bull.
"Yes, he is quite on your side."
"But he might be out."
"Hold your tongue," said Syme suddenly. "What is that noise?"
For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for a
second-- for two or three or four seconds--heaven and earth seemed equally
still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard along the road
that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one thing--horses!
The Colonel's face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had
struck it, and yet left it scatheless.
"They have done us," he said, with brief military irony. "Prepare to
receive cavalry!"
"Where can they have got the horses?" asked Syme, as he mechanically
urged his steed to a canter.
The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice--
"I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the 'Soleil d'Or'
was the only place where one can get horses within twenty miles."
"No!" said Syme violently, "I don't believe he'd do it. Not with all
that white hair."
"He may have been forced," said the Colonel gently. "They must be at
least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my friend
Renard, who has a motor-car."
With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and
went down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, though
already well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the flying tail of
his horse.
Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep
street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once more
see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the white road across it,
standing up above all the roofs of the town. They breathed again to see that
the road as yet was clear, and they rang the bell.
Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that
silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved even more
perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to him he pooh-poohed
the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the solid French
scepticism, that there was no conceivable probability of a general anarchist
rising. "Anarchy," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "it is childishness! "
"Et ca," cried out the Colonel suddenly, pointing over the other's
shoulder, "and that is childishness, isn't it?"
They all looked round, and saw a curve of black cavalry come sweeping
over the top of the hill with all the energy of Attila. Swiftly as they
rode, however, the whole rank still kept well together, and they could see
the black vizards of the first line as level as a line of uniforms. But
although the main black square was the same, though travelling faster, there
was now one sensational difference which they could see clearly upon the
slope of the hill, as if upon a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were in
one block; but one rider flew far ahead of the column, and with frantic
movements of hand and heel urged his horse faster and faster, so that one
might have fancied that he was not the pursuer but the pursued. But even at
that great distance they could see something so fanatical, so unquestionable
in his figure, that they knew it was the Secretary himself. "I am sorry to
cut short a cultured discussion," said the Colonel, "but can you lend me
your motor-car now, in two minutes?"
"I have a suspicion that you are all mad," said Dr. Renard, smiling
sociably; "but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt
friendship. Let us go round to the garage."
Dr. Renard was a mild man with monstrous wealth; his rooms were like
the Musee de Cluny, and he had three motor-cars. These, however, he seemed
to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes of the French middle class,
and when his impatient friends came to examine them, it took them some time
to assure themselves that one of them even could be made to work. This with
some difficulty they brought round into the street before the Doctor's
house. When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that
twilight had already fallen with the abruptness of night in the tropics.
Either they had been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual
canopy of cloud had gathered over the town. They looked down the steep
streets, and seemed to see a slight mist coming up from the sea.
"It is now or never," said Dr. Bull. "I hear horses."
"No," corrected the Professor, "a horse."
And as they listened, it was evident that the noise, rapidly coming
nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise of the whole cavalcade but
that of the one horseman, who had left it far behind-- the insane Secretary.
Syme's family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once
owned a motor, and he knew all about them. He had leapt at once into the
chauffeur's seat, and with flushed face was wrenching and tugging at the
disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and then said quite
quietly--
"I am afraid it's no go."
As he spoke, there swept round the corner a man rigid on his rushing
horse, with the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He had a smile that thrust
out his chin as if it were dislocated. He swept alongside of the stationary
car, into which its company had crowded, and laid his hand on the front. It
was the Secretary, and his mouth went quite straight in the solemnity of
triumph.
Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel, and there was no sound
but the rumble of the other pursuers riding into the town. Then there came
quite suddenly a scream of scraping iron, and the car leapt forward. It
plucked the Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife is whipped out of
its sheath, trailed him kicking terribly for twenty yards, and left him
flung flat upon the road far in front of his frightened horse. As the car
took the corner of the street with a splendid curve, they could just see the
other anarchists filling the street and raising their fallen leader.
"I can't understand why it has grown so dark," said the Professor at
last in a low voice.
"Going to be a storm, I think," said Dr. Bull. "I say, it's a pity we
haven't got a light on this car, if only to see by."
"We have," said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up
a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a light inside it. It was
obviously an antique, and it would seem as if its original use had been in
some way semi-religious, for there was a rude moulding of a cross upon one
of its sides.
"Where on earth did you get that?" asked the Professor.
"I got it where I got the car," answered the Colonel, chuckling, "from
my best friend. While our friend here was fighting with the steering wheel,
I ran up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who was standing
in his own porch, you will remember. 'I suppose,' I said, 'there's no time
to get a lamp.' He looked up, blinking amiably at the beautiful arched
ceiling of his own front hall. From this was suspended, by chains of
exquisite ironwork, this lantern, one of the hundred treasures of his
treasure house. By sheer force he tore the lamp out of his own ceiling,
shattering the painted panels, and bringing down two blue vases with his
violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was I
not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth knowing?"
"You were," said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the
front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast
between the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto
they had passed through the quietest part of the town, meeting at most one
or two pedestrians, who could give them no hint of the peace or the
hostility of the place. Now, however, the windows in the houses began one by
one to be lit up, giving a greater sense of habitation and humanity. Dr.
Bull turned to the new detective who had led their flight, and permitted
himself one of his natural and friendly smiles.
"These lights make one feel more cheerful."
Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together.
"There is only one set of lights that make me more cheerful," he said,
"and they are those lights of the police station which I can see beyond the
town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes."
Then all Bull's boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of
him.
"Oh, this is all raving nonsense!" he cried. "If you really think that
ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be madder than
an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the whole town
would fight for us."
"No," said the other with an immovable simplicity, "the whole town
would fight for them. We shall see.'
While they were speaking the Professor had leant forward with sudden
excitement.
"What is that noise?" he said.
"Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose," said the Colonel. "I thought we
had got clear of them."
"The horses behind us! No," said the Professor, "it is not horses, and
it is not behind us."
Almost as he spoke, across the end of the street before them two
shining and rattling shapes shot past. They were gone almost in a flash, but
everyone could see that they were motor-cars, and the Professor stood up
with a pale face and swore that they were the other two motor-cars from Dr.
Renard's garage.
"I tell you they were his," he repeated, with wild eyes, "and they were
full of men in masks!"
"Absurd!" said the Colonel angrily. "Dr. Renard would never give them
his cars."
"He may have been forced," said Ratcliffe quietly. "The whole town is
on their side."
"You still believe that," asked the Colonel incredulously.
"You will all believe it soon," said the other with a hopeless calm.
There was a puzzled pause for some little time, and then the Colonel
began again abruptly--
"No, I can't believe it. The thing is nonsense. The plain people of a
peaceable French town--"
He was cut short by a bang and a blaze of light, which seemed close to
his eyes. As the car sped on it left a floating patch of white smoke behind
it, and Syme had heard a shot shriek past his ear.
"My God!" said the Colonel, "someone has shot at us."
"It need not interrupt conversation," said the gloomy Ratcliffe. "Pray
resume your remarks, Colonel. You were talking, I think, about the plain
people of a peaceable French town."
The staring Colonel was long past minding satire. He rolled his eyes
all round the street.
"It is extraordinary," he said, "most extraordinary."
"A fastidious person," said Syme, "might even call it unpleasant.
However, I suppose those lights out in the field beyond this street are the
Gendarmerie. We shall soon get there."
"No," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "we shall never get there."
He had been standing up and looking keenly ahead of him. Now he sat
down and smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture.
"What do you mean?" asked Bull sharply.
"I mean that we shall never get there," said the pessimist placidly.
"They have two rows of armed men across the road already; I can see them
from here. The town is in arms, as I said it was.
I can only wallow in the exquisite comfort of my own exactitude."
And Ratcliffe sat down comfortably in the car and lit a cigarette, but
the others rose excitedly and stared down the road. Syme had slowed down the
car as their plans became doubtful, and he brought it finally to a
standstill just at the corner of a side street that ran down very steeply to
the sea.
The town was mostly in shadow, but the sun had not sunk; wherever its
level light could break through, it painted everything a burning gold. Up
this side street the last sunset light shone as sharp and narrow as the
shaft of artificial light at the theatre. It struck the car of the five
friends, and lit it like a burning chariot. But the rest of the street,
especially the two ends of it, was in the deepest twilight, and for some
seconds they could see nothing. Then Syme, whose eyes were the keenest,
broke into a little bitter whistle, and said
"It is quite true. There is a crowd or an army or some such thing
across the end of that street."
"Well, if there is," said Bull impatiently, "it must be something
else--a sham fight or the mayor's birthday or something. I cannot and will
not believe that plain, jolly people in a place like this walk about with
dynamite in their pockets. Get on a bit, Syme, and let us look at them."
The car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were all
startled by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter.
"Why, you silly mugs!" he cried, "what did I tell you. That crowd's as
law-abiding as a cow, and if it weren't, it's on our side."
"How do you know?" asked the professor, staring.
"You blind bat," cried Bull, "don't you see who is leading them?"
They peered again, and then the Colonel, with a catch in his voice,
cried out--
"Why, it's Renard!"
There was, indeed, a rank of dim figures running across the road, and
they could not be clearly seen; but far enough in front to catch the
accident of the evening light was stalking up and down the unmistakable Dr.
Renard, in a white hat, stroking his long brown beard, and holding a
revolver in his left hand.
"What a fool I've been! " exclaimed the Colonel. "Of course, the dear
old boy has turned out to help us."
Dr. Bull was bubbling over with laughter, swinging the sword in his
hand as carelessly as a cane. He jumped out of the car and ran across the
intervening space, calling out--
"Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!"
An instant after Syme thought his own eyes had gone mad in his head.
For the philanthropic Dr. Renard had deliberately raised his revolver and
fired twice at Bull, so that the shots rang down the road.
Almost at the same second as the puff of white cloud went up from this
atrocious explosion a long puff of white cloud went up also from the
cigarette of the cynical Ratcliffe. Like all the rest he turned a little
pale, but he smiled. Dr. Bull, at whom the bullets had been fired, just
missing his scalp, stood quite still in the middle of the road without a
sign of fear, and then turned very slowly and crawled back to the car, and
climbed in with two holes through his hat.
"Well," said the cigarette smoker slowly, "what do you think now?"
"I think," said Dr. Bull with precision, "that I am lying in bed at No.
217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon wake up with a jump; or, if
that's not it, I think that I am sitting in a small cushioned cell in
Hanwell, and that the doctor can't make much of my case. But if you want to
know what I don't think, I'll tell you. I don't think what you think. I
don't think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a
pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir, I'm a democrat, and I still don't
believe that Sunday could convert one average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I
may be mad, but humanity isn't."
Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he
did not commonly make clear.
"You are a very fine fellow," he said. "You can believe in a sanity
which is not merely your sanity. And you're right enough about humanity,
about peasants and people like that jolly old innkeeper. But you're not
right about Renard. I suspected him from the first. He's rationalistic, and,
what's worse, he's rich. When duty and religion are really destroyed, it
will be by the rich."
"They are really destroyed now," said the man with a cigarette, and
rose with his hands in his pockets. "The devils are coming on!"
The men in the motor-car looked anxiously in the direction of his
dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the road was
advancing upon them, Dr. Renard marching furiously in front, his beard
flying in the breeze.
The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.
"Gentlemen," he cried, "the thing is incredible. It must be a practical
joke. If you knew Renard as I do-- it's like calling Queen Victoria a
dynamiter. If you had got the man's character into your head--"
"Dr. Bull," said Syme sardonically, "has at least got it into his hat."
"I tell you it can't be!" cried the Colonel, stamping.
"Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me," and he strode
forward.
"Don't be in such a hurry," drawled the smoker. "He will very soon
explain it to all of us."
But the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards
the advancing enemy. The excited Dr. Renard lifted his pistol again, but
perceiving his opponent, hesitated, and the Colonel came face to face with
him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.
"It is no good," said Syme. "He will never get anything out of that old
heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets
went through Bull's hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill a tidy
number of them."
"I won't 'ave it," said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity
of his virtue. "The poor chaps may be making a mistake. Give the Colonel a
chance."
"Shall we go back, then?" asked the Professor.
"No," said Ratcliffe in a cold voice, "the street behind us is held
too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme."
Syme spun round smartly, and stared backwards at the track which they
had travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and galloping
towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle the silver gleam
of a sword, and then as it grew nearer the silver gleam of an old man's
hair. The next moment, with shattering violence, he had swung the motor
round and sent it dashing down the steep side street to the sea, like a man
that desired only to die.
"What the devil is up?" cried the Professor, seizing his arm.
"The morning star has fallen!" said Syme, as his own car went down the
darkness like a falling star.
The others did not understand his words, but when they looked back at
the street above they saw the hostile cavalry coming round the corner and
down the slopes after them; and foremost of all rode the good innkeeper,
flushed with the fiery innocence of the evening light.
"The world is insane!" said the Professor, and buried his face in his
hands.
"No," said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, "it is I."
"What are we going to do?" asked the Professor.
"At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we
are going to smash into a lamppost."
The next instant the automobile had come with a catastrophic jar
against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out from
under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood up straight
on the edge of the marine parade stood out, bent and twisted, like the
branch of a broken tree.
"Well, we smashed something," said the Professor, with a faint smile.
"That's some comfort."
"You're becoming an anarchist," said Syme, dusting his clothes with his
instinct of daintiness.
"Everyone is," said Ratcliffe.
As they spoke, the white-haired horseman and his followers came
thundering from above, and almost at the same moment a dark string of men
ran shouting along the sea-front. Syme snatched a sword, and took it in his
teeth; he stuck two others under his arm-pits, took a fourth in his left
hand and the lantern in his right, and leapt off the high parade on to the
beach below.
The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive
action, leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them.
"We have one more chance," said Syme, taking the steel out of his
mouth. "Whatever all this pandemonium means, I suppose the police station
will help us. We can't get there, for they hold the way. But there's a pier
or breakwater runs out into the sea just here, which we could defend longer
than anything else, like Horatius and his bridge. We must defend it till the
Gendarmerie turn out. Keep after me."
They followed him as he went crunching down the beach, and in a second
or two their boots broke not on the sea gravel, but on broad, flat stones.
They marched down a long, low jetty, running out in one arm into the dim,
boiling sea, and when they came to the end of it they felt that they had
come to the end of their story. They turned and faced the town.
That town was transfigured with uproar. All along the high parade from
which they had just descended was a dark and roaring stream of humanity,
with tossing arms and fiery faces, groping and glaring towards them. The
long dark line was dotted with torches and lanterns; but even where no flame
lit up a furious face, they could see in the farthest figure, in the most
shadowy gesture, an organised hate. It was clear that they were the accursed
of all men, and they knew not why.
Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the
edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing down
the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea at random.
The example was followed, and the whole black mass of men began to run and
drip over the edge like black treacle.
Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven
their cart. He splashed into the surf on a huge cart-horse, and shook his
axe at them.
"The peasant!" cried Syme. "They have not risen since the Middle Ages."
"Even if the police do come now," said the Professor mournfully, "they
can do nothing with this mob."
"Nonsence!" said Bull desperately; "there must be some people left in
the town who are human."
"No," said the hopeless Inspector, "the human being will soon be
extinct. We are the last of mankind."
"It may be," said the Professor absently. Then he added in his dreamy
voice, "What is all that at the end of the 'Dunciad'?
Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;
Light dies before thine uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all."'
"Stop!" cried Bull suddenly, "the gendarmes are out."
The low lights of the police station were indeed blotted and broken
with hurrying figures, and they heard through the darkness the clash and
jingle of a disciplined cavalry.
' They are charging the mob!" cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.
"No," said Syme, "they are formed along the parade."
"They have unslung their carbines," cried Bull dancing with excitement.
"Yes," said Ratcliffe, "and they are going to fire on us."
As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed
to hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.
'The gendarmes have joined them!" cried the Professor, and struck his
forehead.
"I am in the padded cell," said Bull solidly.
There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the
swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple--
"What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead
soon."
Syme turned to him and said--
"You are quite hopeless, then?"
Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly--
"No; oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little
hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet is
against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little hope
is hopeless yet."
"In what or whom is your hope?" asked Syme with curiosity.
"In a man I never saw," said the other, looking at the leaden sea.
"I know what you mean," said Syme in a low voice, "the man in the dark
room. But Sunday must have killed him by now."
"Perhaps," said the other steadily; "but if so, he was the only man
whom Sunday found it hard to kill."
"I heard what you said," said the Professor, with his back turned. "I
also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw."
All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective
thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep--
"Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!"
"The Colonel! Yes," cried Bull, "where on earth is the Colonel?"
"He went to speak to Renard," said the Professor.
"We cannot leave him among all those beasts," cried Syme. "Let us die
like gentlemen if--"
"Do not pity the Colonel," said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. "He is
extremely comfortable. He is--"
"No! no! no!" cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, "not the Colonel too! I
will never believe it!"
"Will you believe your eyes?" asked the other, and pointed to the
beach.
Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists,
but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three
figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and seemed to
be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance lantern lit up the
faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask, and under it the
mouth was twisting about in such a madness of nerves that the black tuft of
beard wriggled round and round like a restless, living thing. The other was
the red face and white moustache of Colonel Ducroix. They were in earnest
consultation.
"Yes, he is gone too," said the Professor, and sat down on a stone.
"Everything's gone. I'm gone! I can't trust my own bodily machinery. I feel
as if my own hand might fly up and strike me."
"When my hand flies up," said Syme, "it will strike somebody else," and
he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and the
lantern in the other.
As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him
coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme, but
struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and swung
the iron lantern above his head.
"Judas before Herod!" he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the
stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost
foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture,
that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.
"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see
the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did
not light it, Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted
the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street
you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this
lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make
nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy
the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you
shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the
wit to find it."
He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and
then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where
it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.
"Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face ; to the three behind
him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die."
His three companions came after him sword in hand. Syme's sword was
broken, but he rent a bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him
down. In a moment they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob
and perished, when an interruption came. The Secretary, ever since Syme's
speech, had stood with his hand to his stricken head as if dazed; now he
suddenly pulled off his black mask.
The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as
astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority.
"There is some mistake," he said. "Mr. Syme, I hardly think you
understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law."
"Of the law?" said Syme, and dropped his stick.
"Certainly!" said the Secretary. "I am a detective from Scotland Yard,"
and he took a small blue card from his pocket.
"And what do you suppose we are?" asked the Professor, and threw up his
arms.
"You," said the Secretary stiffly, "are, as I know for a fact, members
of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I--"
Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea.
"There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council," he said. "We were all
a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice people
who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I knew
I couldn't be wrong about the mob," he said, beaming over the enormous
multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. "Vulgar
people are never mad. I'm vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore
to stand a drink to everybody here."
NEXT morning five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for
Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having
been first forced to fight for two factions that didn't exist, and then
knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman,
and being much relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite,
he saw them off on the pier with great geniality.
The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each
other. The Secretary had to tell Syme how they had come to wear masks
originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators;
Syme had to explain how they had fled with such swiftness through a
civilised country. But above all these matters of detail which could be
explained, rose the central mountain of the matter that they could not
explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers, what was
Sunday? If he had not seized the world, what on earth had he been up to?
Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this.
"I can't make head or tail of old Sunday's little game any more than
you can," he said. "But whatever else Sunday is, he isn't a blameless
citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?"
"I grant you," answered Syme, "that I have never been able to forget
it."
"Well," said the Secretary, "I suppose we can find out soon, for
to-morrow we have our next general meeting. You will excuse me," he said,
with a rather ghastly smile, "for being well acquainted with my secretarial
duties."
"I suppose you are right," said the Professor reflectively. "I suppose
we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit afraid
of asking Sunday who he really is."
"Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?"
"No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me."
"Let us have some drinks," said Dr. Bull, after a silence.
Throughout their whole journey by boat and train they were highly
convivial, but they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull, who had always
been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other four that
the whole company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was
over-ruled, and they went in a four-wheeler, with Dr. Bull on the box,
singing. They finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as
to be close to the early breakfast next morning in Leicester Square. Yet
even then the adventures of the day were not entirely over. Dr. Bull,
discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the
hotel at about eleven to see and taste some of the beauties of London.
Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in
the hall. Syme, who tried at first to soothe him, was forced at last to
listen to his communication with quite new attention.
"I tell you I've seen him!" said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis.
"Whom?" asked Syme quickly. "Not the President?"
"Not so bad as that," said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, "not so
bad as that. I've got him here."
"Got whom here?" asked Syme impatiently.
"Hairy man," said the other lucidly, "man that used to be hairy
man--Gogol. Here he is," and he pulled forward by a reluctant elbow the