Read Ebook: The Honored Prophet by Bentley William E Finlay Virgil Illustrator

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Ebook has 1549 lines and 44376 words, and 31 pages

"Who invited you?" grunted Andrews. He put Simon's arm round his neck, and half carried him round to the side of the car, pushed him into the front seat.

"I'll be all right in a minute," said Simon.

"Yeah," said Andrews, and left him.

After a little while the trembling in his limbs began to subside, breathing became easier. He leaned forward and watched a strange battle. The Assassin was about seventy yards ahead, moving slowly nearer. Two men stood on the right hand side of the car, pumping bullets into the grey, indistinct mass. Andrews stood watching with his hands in his jacket pockets. Suddenly he said, "All right, let go. You're only wasting bullets."

Simon looked at him in alarm. "Hey, you're not just going to stand there. It doesn't like the light, but light can't kill it."

"Lie down on the floor," said Andrews dourly, without looking at him.

"Eh?"

Andrews ignored him, stepped two paces forward. The Assassin was about twenty yards away now, seeming to have to fight against the stream of light. Andrews took his hands from his pockets. Simon saw what he was holding, and dived for the floor. He clasped his hands over the back of his neck as the night exploded with a gigantic crash.

When his ears had stopped screaming he got up. Andrews, an elbow on the window ledge, was watching him expressionlessly.

"You might have left me something to dissect," complained Simon. "Somebody's got to, you know."

"I'll mop you up a sponge full," said Andrews.

"Oh, no, you won't. You and your men stay back here. It's probably crawling with alien bacteria."

Actually, quite a lot of the Assassin was left, but decomposition was very rapid. Simon did the best he could with a magnifying glass and a penknife. He found that the body was almost entirely composed of bone and flesh in a honey-comb like structure. The bone being highly flexible, and the cavities filled with grey flesh. Flesh which quickly liquified and drained away from the bone. There was no blood, and Simon could find no trace of internal organs.

While he worked two more cars drove up, and gave him a little more light, but soon he had to give up. As he walked slowly back a spotlight sprang suddenly to life, and a pleasant authoritative voice spoke.

"Will you stay where you are, please, Doctor Cartwright."

Simon obeyed. Hell, he thought wearily. Officialdom has arrived. He shaded his eyes against the light, but he could see nothing.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Commanding officer in charge of operations in this emergency. You've made an examination?"

"As far as I could. There's complete decomposition now."

"Oh, I see." A slight pause, then; "Perhaps I'd better put you in the picture. This is armed aggression, Doctor Cartwright. In any language it says war. Do you understand? We're at war, now.

"We found the vessel your friend came in several days ago. It was in the sea, twenty miles from here. Its discovery was kept secret because we weren't sure of its point of origin. Our people are engaged in finding the method of propulsion. They say it will give us the ability to travel in space. They also say that they can find the approximate position of its home planet. All that is top priority, of course, but in the meanwhile we must have an emergency line of defence against these things. We want to know how to find them and how to destroy them with the least possible expenditure of life and material. You understand?"

"Yes. I've got an idea about light waves. I fired a shot at it back there. The bone structure--"

"Don't tell me," interrupted the voice sharply. "Remember it. You realize, Doctor Cartwright, that you are just about the most important man alive. You know how fast it can move. You have fought it, you have examined it. So you can be sure that very good care will be taken of you."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm sorry, but you must see that you have to go into strict quarantine now. We dare not risk a plague. After quarantine you will go to work with our people. Now will you please get into the car at the extreme right, and follow the police."

"Where am I going?"

"Please hurry. There is a team of incendiaries waiting to clear the area."

"Oh, damnation," sighed The Most Important Man Alive, and walked towards the waiting car.

One thing alone was left to him. A choice. Without haste he began the preliminaries to thinking himself to death.

The chop and St. Est?phe, hauling him out of the slough of despond, told him this. It was a sure way of escape from losing his money. He had furiously rejected the idea at Oppenshaw's, but at Oppenshaw's his Property had not had time to talk fully to him, but in that awful journey from Harley Street to Verreys' he had walked arm-in-arm with his Property chattering on one side and dumb Bankruptcy on the other.

Restraint would have been almost as odious as bankruptcy to him, yet now, as a sure means of escape from the other, it seemed almost a pleasant prospect.

Sir Ralph and Simon were known one to the other and had much in common, including anti-socialism.

In armchairs, they talked of Lloyd George--at least, Sir Ralph did, Simon had other considerations on his mind. Leaning forward in his chair, he suddenly asked, apropos of nothing:

"Did you ever hear of a disease called Lethmann's disease?"

Now Sir Ralph was Chest and Heart, nothing else. He was also nettled at "shop" being suddenly thrust upon him by a damned attorney, for Simon was "Simon Pettigrew, quite a character, one of our old-fashioned, first-class English lawyers," when Sir Ralph was in a good temper and happened to consider Simon; nettled, Simon was a "damned attorney."

"Never," said Sir Ralph. "What disease did you say?"

"Lethmann's. It's a new disease, it seems."

Another horrid blunder, as though the lion and unicorn man were only acquainted with old diseases--out of date, in fact.

"Never," replied the other. "There's no such thing. Who told you about it?"

"I read about it," said Simon. He tried to give a picture of the symptoms and failed to convince, but he managed to irritate. The semi-royal one listened with a specious appearance of attention and even interest; then, the other having finished, he opened his batteries.

Simon left the Club with the feeling that he had been put upon the stand beside charlatans, quacks, and the purveyor of crank theories; also that he had been snubbed.

TIDD AND RENSHAW

Did he mind? Not a bit; he enjoyed it.

If Sir Ralph had kicked him out of the Athenaeum for airing false science there he would have enjoyed it. He would have enjoyed anything casting odium and discredit on the theory of double personality in the form of Lethmann's disease.

For now his hunted soul, that had taken momentary refuge in the thought of nursing homes and restraint, had left that burrow and was taking refuge in doubt.

He made one grave mistake--the mistake of reckoning Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a "silly sensational story."

Anyhow, he got comfort from what he considered fact, and at dinner that night he was so restored that he was able to grumble because the mutton "was done to rags."

He dined alone.

As he had not returned to the office in the afternoon, Brownlow had sent some papers relative to a law case then pending for his consideration. It often happened that Simon took business home with him, or, if he were not able to attend at the office, important papers would be sent to his house.

To-night, according to custom, he retired to his library, drank his coffee, spread open the documents, and, comfortably seated in a huge leathern armchair, plunged into work.

At ten o'clock Simon, suddenly laying the documents on the floor beside him, rose up, rang the bell, and stood on the hearthrug with his hands linked behind him.

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