The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Page 8

  CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS

  "SIT down!" said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in hislife, a voice that made men drop drawn swords.

  The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal personhimself resumed his seat.

  "Well, my man," said the President briskly, addressing him as oneaddresses a total stranger, "will you oblige me by putting your hand inyour upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?"

  The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but heput two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled outa blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke upagain to the world outside him. For although the card lay at the otherextreme of the table, and he could read nothing of the inscription onit, it bore a startling resemblance to the blue card in his own pocket,the card which had been given to him when he joined the anti-anarchistconstabulary.

  "Pathetic Slav," said the President, "tragic child of Poland, are youprepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in thiscompany--shall we say de trop?"

  "Right oh!" said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear,commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest offoreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spokenwith a Scotch accent.

  "I gather that you fully understand your position," said Sunday.

  "You bet," answered the Pole. "I see it's a fair cop. All I say is, Idon't believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his."

  "I concede the point," said Sunday. "I believe your own accent to beinimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind leavingyour beard with your card?"

  "Not a bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the wholeof his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale,pert face. "It was hot," he added.

  "I will do you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort ofbrutal admiration, "that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. Nowlisten to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy mefor just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died intorments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul aboutus, I shall have that two and a half minutes of discomfort. On yourdiscomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the step."

  The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to hisfeet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfectnonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise that this easewas suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble outside the door,which showed that the departing detective had not minded the step.

  "Time is flying," said the President in his gayest manner, afterglancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed biggerthan it ought to be. "I must go off at once; I have to take the chair ata Humanitarian meeting."

  The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows.

  "Would it not be better," he said a little sharply, "to discuss furtherthe details of our project, now that the spy has left us?"

  "No, I think not," said the President with a yawn like an unobtrusiveearthquake. "Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off.Breakfast here next Sunday."

  But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of theSecretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime.

  "I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular," he said. "Itis a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated infull council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in theactual presence of a traitor--"

  "Secretary," said the President seriously, "if you'd take your head homeand boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might."

  The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger.

  "I really fail to understand--" he began in high offense.

  "That's it, that's it," said the President, nodding a great many times."That's where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, youdancing donkey," he roared, rising, "you didn't want to be overheard bya spy, didn't you? How do you know you aren't overheard now?"

  And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking withincomprehensible scorn.

  Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparentglimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and suchas it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the Presidentmeant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed unsuspected.They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol, he stillcould not trust him like the others.

  The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betookthemselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday.The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long afterthe rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had escaped athunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose and madehis way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, cold day hadgrown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the street hewas surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried thesword-stick and the rest of Gregory's portable luggage, he had thrownthe cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhapson the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight,he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under thedoorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser's shop, the front window ofwhich was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress.

  Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having foundone glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits,stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was considerablyastonished to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staringinto the window, a man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat ofFather Christmas, the white drift was rising round his boots and ankles;but it seemed as if nothing could tear him away from the contemplationof the colourless wax doll in dirty evening dress. That any human beingshould stand in such weather looking into such a shop was a matter ofsufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned suddenly intoa personal shock; for he realised that the man standing there was theparalytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for aperson of his years and infirmities.

  Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of thisdehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that theProfessor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He couldonly suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved somemomentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, tofeel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary,he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and hiselaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him andleave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clearof the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he couldcollect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whetherhe should or should not keep faith with Gregory.

  He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or threestreets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Sohorestaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and quaintcourses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black coffeeand a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his seat in the upperroom of the restaurant, which was full of the chink of knives and thechatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days he had imaginedthat all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He shuddered,remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the delightfulshame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar place, thefaces of natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as if theCouncil of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew itwas nevertheless an objective reality, it was at least a distant one.Tall houses and populous streets lay between him and his last sight ofthe shameful seven; he was free in free London, and drinking wine amongthe free. With a somewhat easier action, he took his hat and stick andstrolled down the s
tair into the shop below.

  When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to thespot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the whitestreet of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk,with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Symestood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as ofblind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing open the door andslamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow.

  "Can that old corpse be following me?" he asked himself, biting hisyellow moustache. "I stopped too long up in that room, so that evensuch leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little briskwalking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I toofanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such afool as to send a lame man?"

  He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in thedirection of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snowincreased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon beganto darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees.Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futilityto his already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at aswinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, andfinding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He orderedanother cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so,when Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down withdifficulty and ordered a glass of milk.

  Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, whichconfessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round.Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as arustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he hadheard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man hadcome on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme hadwalked like the wind. He started up and snatched his stick, half crazywith the contradiction in mere arithmetic, and swung out of the swingingdoors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank wentrattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of ahundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon thesplash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to thetop. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behindhim a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing.

  Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up theomnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and underthe shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders ofProfessor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic care,and wrapped himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug.

  Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, everyuncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyondquestion that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility ofthe body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gaspsof caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time andspace have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quiteunquestionable that he had run after the omnibus.

  Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at thewintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. Hehad repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side.

  Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of thelittle courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into ahole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-boxwas really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets hecould soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those crookedlanes, which were more like cracks than thoroughfares; and by the timethat he had completed about twenty alternate angles and described anunthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of pursuit. Therewas none; there could not in any case have been much, for the littlestreets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red LionCourt, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen hadcleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving thewet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passedit, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a fewhundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart stoodstill also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones the clinkingcrutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple.

  The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in adarkness and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On eachside of Syme the walls of the alley were blind and featureless; therewas no little window or any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to breakout of this hive of houses, and to get once more into the open andlamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time before hestruck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he struck it much fartherup than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the vast and voidof Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul's Cathedral sitting in the sky.

  At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if apestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that somedegree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm was evendangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the veryword Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like someindecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven thewhole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of greentwilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunsetbehind the dark dome of St. Paul's had in it smoky and sinistercolours--colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, that werejust bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow.But right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of thecathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash andgreat stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallenaccidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its verytopmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and thecross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made withhis sword-stick an involuntary salute.

  He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly orslowly behind him, and he did not care.

  It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies weredarkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might havecaptured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a newimpulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuingparalytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circushe turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer.

  Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alleybehind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp,irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in the nurseryrhymes, "the crooked man who went a crooked mile." He really looked asif he had been twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he hadbeen threading. He came nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on hislifted spectacles, his lifted, patient face. Syme waited for him as St.George waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a final explanationor for death. And the old Professor came right up to him and passed himlike a total stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids.

  There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that leftSyme in a final fury. The man's colourless face and manner seemedto assert that the whole following had been an accident. Syme wasgalvanised with an energy that was something between bitterness and aburst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture as if to knock the oldman's hat off, called out something like "Catch me if you can," and wentracing away across the white, open Circus. Concealment was impossiblenow; and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the black figureof the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like aman winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was stillpale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the bodyof a harlequin.

  This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill,round St. Paul's Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all thenightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river,and ended almost down by the docks. He
saw the yellow panes of a low,lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered beer. It was afoul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a place where opium mightbe smoked or knives drawn.

  A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down carefully,and asked for a glass of milk.