The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Page 9

  CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS

  WHEN Gabriel Syme found himself finally established in a chair, andopposite to him, fixed and final also, the lifted eyebrows andleaden eyelids of the Professor, his fears fully returned. Thisincomprehensible man from the fierce council, after all, had certainlypursued him. If the man had one character as a paralytic and anothercharacter as a pursuer, the antithesis might make him more interesting,but scarcely more soothing. It would be a very small comfort thathe could not find the Professor out, if by some serious accident theProfessor should find him out. He emptied a whole pewter pot of alebefore the professor had touched his milk.

  One possibility, however, kept him hopeful and yet helpless. It was justpossible that this escapade signified something other than even a slightsuspicion of him. Perhaps it was some regular form or sign. Perhaps thefoolish scamper was some sort of friendly signal that he ought to haveunderstood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps the new Thursday was alwayschased along Cheapside, as the new Lord Mayor is always escorted alongit. He was just selecting a tentative inquiry, when the old Professoropposite suddenly and simply cut him short. Before Syme could ask thefirst diplomatic question, the old anarchist had asked suddenly, withoutany sort of preparation--

  "Are you a policeman?"

  Whatever else Syme had expected, he had never expected anything sobrutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could onlymanage a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity.

  "A policeman?" he said, laughing vaguely. "Whatever made you think of apoliceman in connection with me?"

  "The process was simple enough," answered the Professor patiently. "Ithought you looked like a policeman. I think so now."

  "Did I take a policeman's hat by mistake out of the restaurant?" askedSyme, smiling wildly. "Have I by any chance got a number stuck on tome somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be apoliceman? Do, do let me be a postman."

  The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope, butSyme ran on with a feverish irony.

  "But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy.Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir,the ape fades so gradually into the policeman, that I myself can neverdetect the shade. The monkey is only the policeman that may be. Perhapsa maiden lady on Clapham Common is only the policeman that might havebeen. I don't mind being the policeman that might have been. I don'tmind being anything in German thought."

  "Are you in the police service?" said the old man, ignoring all Syme'simprovised and desperate raillery. "Are you a detective?"

  Syme's heart turned to stone, but his face never changed.

  "Your suggestion is ridiculous," he began. "Why on earth--"

  The old man struck his palsied hand passionately on the rickety table,nearly breaking it.

  "Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?" he shriekedin a high, crazy voice. "Are you, or are you not, a police detective?"

  "No!" answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman's drop.

  "You swear it," said the old man, leaning across to him, his dead facebecoming as it were loathsomely alive. "You swear it! You swear it! Ifyou swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devildances at your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on yourgrave? Will there really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are adynamiter! Above all, you are not in any sense a detective? You are notin the British police?"

  He leant his angular elbow far across the table, and put up his largeloose hand like a flap to his ear.

  "I am not in the British police," said Syme with insane calm.

  Professor de Worms fell back in his chair with a curious air of kindlycollapse.

  "That's a pity," he said, "because I am."

  Syme sprang up straight, sending back the bench behind him with a crash.

  "Because you are what?" he said thickly. "You are what?"

  "I am a policeman," said the Professor with his first broad smile,and beaming through his spectacles. "But as you think policeman onlya relative term, of course I have nothing to do with you. I am in theBritish police force; but as you tell me you are not in the Britishpolice force, I can only say that I met you in a dynamiters' club. Isuppose I ought to arrest you." And with these words he laid on thetable before Syme an exact facsimile of the blue card which Syme had inhis own waistcoat pocket, the symbol of his power from the police.

  Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactlyupside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all starswere under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For thelast twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but nowthe capsized universe had come right side up again. This devil from whomhe had been fleeing all day was only an elder brother of his own house,who on the other side of the table lay back and laughed at him. He didnot for the moment ask any questions of detail; he only knew thehappy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with anintolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend tryingto catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a freeman. For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certainhealthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions whenonly three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride,secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard to thefirst course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the third.Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat pocket, hetossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until his spikeof yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted with abarbaric laughter.

  Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives,plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, therewas something Homeric in Syme's mirth which made many half-drunken menlook round.

  "What yer laughing at, guv'nor?" asked one wondering labourer from thedocks.

  "At myself," answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of hisecstatic reaction.

  "Pull yourself together," said the Professor, "or you'll get hysterical.Have some more beer. I'll join you."

  "You haven't drunk your milk," said Syme.

  "My milk!" said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomablecontempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff whenI'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in thisroom, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd,"not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I'll finish itright enough!" and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making a crashof glass and a splash of silver fluid.

  Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity.

  "I understand now," he cried; "of course, you're not an old man at all."

  "I can't take my face off here," replied Professor de Worms. "It'srather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I'm an old man, that's notfor me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday."

  "Yes, but I mean," said Syme impatiently, "there's nothing the matterwith you."

  "Yes," answered the other dispassionately. "I am subject to colds."

  Syme's laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief.He laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a youngactor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he wouldhave laughed as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over.

  The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard.

  "Did you know," he asked, "that that man Gogol was one of us?"

  "I? No, I didn't know it," answered Syme in some surprise. "But didn'tyou?"

  "I knew no more than the dead," replied the man who called himself deWorms. "I thought the President was talking about me, and I rattled inmy boots."

  "And I thought he was talking about me," said Syme, with his ratherreckless laughter. "I had my hand on my revolver all the time."

  "So had I," said the Professor grimly; "so had Gogol evidently."

  Syme struck the table with an exclamation.

&nbs
p; "Why, there were three of us there!" he cried. "Three out of seven is afighting number. If we had only known that we were three!"

  The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up.

  "We were three," he said. "If we had been three hundred we could stillhave done nothing."

  "Not if we were three hundred against four?" asked Syme, jeering ratherboisterously.

  "No," said the Professor with sobriety, "not if we were three hundredagainst Sunday."

  And the mere name struck Syme cold and serious; his laughter had died inhis heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the unforgettablePresident sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured photograph,and he remarked this difference between Sunday and all his satellites,that their faces, however fierce or sinister, became gradually blurredby memory like other human faces, whereas Sunday's seemed almost to growmore actual during absence, as if a man's painted portrait should slowlycome alive.

  They were both silent for a measure of moments, and then Syme's speechcame with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne.

  "Professor," he cried, "it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this man?"

  The Professor lifted his heavy lids, and gazed at Syme with large,wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty.

  "Yes, I am," he said mildly. "So are you."

  Syme was dumb for an instant. Then he rose to his feet erect, like aninsulted man, and thrust the chair away from him.

  "Yes," he said in a voice indescribable, "you are right. I am afraid ofhim. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fearuntil I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throneand the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down."

  "How?" asked the staring Professor. "Why?"

  "Because I am afraid of him," said Syme; "and no man should leave in theuniverse anything of which he is afraid."

  De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder. He made an effortto speak, but Syme went on in a low voice, but with an undercurrent ofinhuman exaltation--

  "Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does notfear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any commonprizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a tree? Fight thething that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergymanwho gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on hisdeath-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I cangive you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strikeupwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars."

  The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose.

  "Sunday is a fixed star," he said.

  "You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat.

  The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet.

  "Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent bewilderment,"exactly where you are going?"

  "Yes," replied Syme shortly, "I am going to prevent this bomb beingthrown in Paris."

  "Have you any conception how?" inquired the other.

  "No," said Syme with equal decision.

  "You remember, of course," resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pullinghis beard and looking out of the window, "that when we broke up ratherhurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in theprivate hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this timeprobably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he willdo it is doubtful whether even the President knows; certainly we don'tknow. The only man who does know is Dr. Bull."

  "Confound it!" cried Syme. "And we don't know where he is."

  "Yes," said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, "I know wherehe is myself."

  "Will you tell me?" asked Syme with eager eyes.

  "I will take you there," said the Professor, and took down his own hatfrom a peg.

  Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement.

  "What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "Will you join me? Will you takethe risk?"

  "Young man," said the Professor pleasantly, "I am amused to observe thatyou think I am a coward. As to that I will say only one word, and thatshall be entirely in the manner of your own philosophical rhetoric. Youthink that it is possible to pull down the President. I know that itis impossible, and I am going to try it," and opening the tavern door,which let in a blast of bitter air, they went out together into the darkstreets by the docks.

  Most of the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and there aclot of it still showed grey rather than white in the gloom. The smallstreets were sloppy and full of pools, which reflected the flaming lampsirregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some other and fallenworld. Syme felt almost dazed as he stepped through this growingconfusion of lights and shadows; but his companion walked on with acertain briskness, towards where, at the end of the street, an inch ortwo of the lamplit river looked like a bar of flame.

  "Where are you going?" Syme inquired.

  "Just now," answered the Professor, "I am going just round the cornerto see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retiresearly."

  "Dr. Bull!" exclaimed Syme. "Does he live round the corner?"

  "No," answered his friend. "As a matter of fact he lives some way off,on the other side of the river, but we can tell from here whether he hasgone to bed."

  Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing the dim river, flecked withflame, he pointed with his stick to the other bank. On the Surrey sideat this point there ran out into the Thames, seeming almost to overhangit, a bulk and cluster of those tall tenements, dotted with lightedwindows, and rising like factory chimneys to an almost insane height.Their special poise and position made one block of buildings especiallylook like a Tower of Babel with a hundred eyes. Syme had never seen anyof the sky-scraping buildings in America, so he could only think of thebuildings in a dream.

  Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turretabruptly went out, as if this black Argus had winked at him with one ofhis innumerable eyes.

  Professor de Worms swung round on his heel, and struck his stick againsthis boot.

  "We are too late," he said, "the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed."

  "What do you mean?" asked Syme. "Does he live over there, then?"

  "Yes," said de Worms, "behind that particular window which you can'tsee. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him tomorrowmorning."

  Without further parley, he led the way through several by-ways untilthey came out into the flare and clamour of the East India Dock Road.The Professor, who seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood,proceeded to a place where the line of lighted shops fell back into asort of abrupt twilight and quiet, in which an old white inn, all out ofrepair, stood back some twenty feet from the road.

  "You can find good English inns left by accident everywhere, likefossils," explained the Professor. "I once found a decent place in theWest End."

  "I suppose," said Syme, smiling, "that this is the corresponding decentplace in the East End?"

  "It is," said the Professor reverently, and went in.

  In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans andbacon, which these unaccountable people cooked well, the astonishingemergence of Burgundy from their cellars, crowned Syme's sense of a newcomradeship and comfort. Through all this ordeal his root horror hadbeen isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss betweenisolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematiciansthat four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousandtimes one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the worldwill always return to monogamy.

  Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his outrageoustale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little tavern bythe river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue, as aman speaks with very old friends. On his side, also, the man who hadimpersonated Professor de Worms was not less communicative. His ownstory was almost
as silly as Syme's.

  "That's a good get-up of yours," said Syme, draining a glass of Macon;"a lot better than old Gogol's. Even at the start I thought he was a bittoo hairy."

  "A difference of artistic theory," replied the Professor pensively."Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal ofan anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed,to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am aportrait."

  "I don't understand you," said Syme.

  "I am a portrait," repeated the Professor. "I am a portrait of thecelebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples."

  "You mean you are made up like him," said Syme. "But doesn't he knowthat you are taking his nose in vain?"

  "He knows it right enough," replied his friend cheerfully.

  "Then why doesn't he denounce you?"

  "I have denounced him," answered the Professor.

  "Do explain yourself," said Syme.

  "With pleasure, if you don't mind hearing my story," replied the eminentforeign philosopher. "I am by profession an actor, and my name isWilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian andblackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimesthe riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee.In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great GermanNihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much abouthim beyond his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which Istudied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructiveprinciple in the universe was God; hence he insisted on the need for afurious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, hesaid, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic.When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so muchthat I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would havedrawn a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature.I made myself up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of theold Professor's dirty old self. When I went into the room full of hissupporters I expected to be received with a roar of laughter, or (ifthey were too far gone) with a roar of indignation at the insult. Icannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance was received witha respectful silence, followed (when I had first opened my lips) witha murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist had fallen uponme. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. They thought I reallywas the great Nihilist Professor. I was a healthy-minded young manat the time, and I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fullyrecover, however, two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiatingindignation, and told me that a public insult had been put upon me inthe next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinentfellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I haddrunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly Idecided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet theglare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing eyes thatthe real Professor came into the room.

  "I need hardly say there was a collision. The pessimists all round melooked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to see whichwas really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, likemy rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as ayoung actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis,and working within this definite limitation, he couldn't be so jollyparalytic as I was. Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. Icountered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something thatnobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I couldnot even understand myself. 'I don't fancy,' he said, 'that you couldhave worked out the principle that evolution is only negation, sincethere inheres in it the introduction of lacuna, which are an essentialof differentiation.' I replied quite scornfully, 'You read all that upin Pinckwerts; the notion that involution functioned eugenically wasexposed long ago by Glumpe.' It is unnecessary for me to say that therenever were such people as Pinckwerts and Glumpe. But the people allround (rather to my surprise) seemed to remember them quite well, andthe Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left himrather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fellback upon a more popular form of wit. 'I see,' he sneered, 'you prevaillike the false pig in Aesop.' 'And you fail,' I answered, smiling, 'likethe hedgehog in Montaigne.' Need I say that there is no hedgehog inMontaigne? 'Your claptrap comes off,' he said; 'so would your beard.'I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and ratherwitty. But I laughed heartily, answered, 'Like the Pantheist's boots,'at random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. Thereal Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though oneman tried very patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I believe,received everywhere in Europe as a delightful impostor. His apparentearnestness and anger, you see, make him all the more entertaining."

  "Well," said Syme, "I can understand your putting on his dirty old beardfor a night's practical joke, but I don't understand your never takingit off again."

  "That is the rest of the story," said the impersonator. "When I myselfleft the company, followed by reverent applause, I went limping down thedark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be ableto walk like a human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning thecorner, I felt a touch on the shoulder, and turning, found myself underthe shadow of an enormous policeman. He told me I was wanted. I strucka sort of paralytic attitude, and cried in a high German accent, 'Yes,I am wanted--by the oppressed of the world. You are arresting me on thecharge of being the great anarchist, Professor de Worms.' The policemanimpassively consulted a paper in his hand, 'No, sir,' he said civilly,'at least, not exactly, sir. I am arresting you on the charge of notbeing the celebrated anarchist, Professor de Worms.' This charge, if itwas criminal at all, was certainly the lighter of the two, and I wentalong with the man, doubtful, but not greatly dismayed. I was shown intoa number of rooms, and eventually into the presence of a police officer,who explained that a serious campaign had been opened against thecentres of anarchy, and that this, my successful masquerade, might be ofconsiderable value to the public safety. He offered me a good salary andthis little blue card. Though our conversation was short, he struck meas a man of very massive common sense and humour; but I cannot tell youmuch about him personally, because--"

  Syme laid down his knife and fork.

  "I know," he said, "because you talked to him in a dark room."

  Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass.