The Germ Growers: An Australian story of adventure and mystery by Robert Potter (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

>You see I have a stock verse or two to quote at a pinch. But although I don’t see as far, perhaps, into the game as you, it may be that just for that reason I [136] see the near points a little more clearly. Now sit down again and tell me what you think of it all.”

We didn’t sit but kept walking up and down. “I don’t know what to think,” I said; “I was nearly sure yesterday that I was either mad or dreaming, but I have given over thinking that. I suppose there is a desperate and widely spread conspiracy against civilised society, and that these men are in it. You talk about fee-faw-fum, but I remembered some things yesterday while we were in that car that made me feel as if the whole world were nothing but what you call fee-faw-fum.”

“What were they, Bob?”

I told him all that I have written in the first two chapters of this book. He listened most attentively, and made me repeat two or three times over parts of the conversation between the two doctors. But when I wound up my story by telling him that I had recognised James Redpath among the men on the platform, he stopped suddenly, turned right round and looked at me. “Good heavens!” he said. And then after a pause, “Do you think that you saw him carried away that morning from your Welsh village?”

“I didn’t see him, but I have little doubt that I saw the shadow of the car in which he was carried away.”

[137] “Do you think that we have stumbled on your friend Dr. Leopold’s non-human intelligence? and that there is a manufactory of black death or plague somewhere in the neighbourhood?”

“I have hardly a doubt of these men’s malignity, but there is one thing I am surer of. Now that I am here I want to know all about the matter—and I mean to. Mr. Leopold may have stumbled upon half a truth.”

“Well, my position is just the reverse of yours. I am curious enough about the matter, but I am so sure of these men’s desperate malignity that my first wish is that we should make our escape from this place. And mind,” he went on to say, “if you want to burst them up that is the way to do it. If you and I get back to civilisation others will soon be on our track. And once there is a settlement of English colonists near here these men will be played out, and they know it. Don’t you remember what the fellow himself said? He said that they could keep the blacks at a distance, but that it does not suit them to carry on their work—whatever it is—in the presence of civilised men!”

“I remember,” said I; “but if you are right, depend upon it they have made up their minds that you and I will never leave this place alive.”

[138] “Not quite that,” said he, “or they would have murdered us before now.”

“Well, they were going to do so twice.”

“Yes, but Signor Niccolo restrained them. You see Signor Niccolo has a design upon you; he wants to make you one of his men. He doesn’t care much about me, but he is willing to throw me into the bargain. Now if you and I refuse to join him our lives will be the forfeit.”

“And if we don’t refuse?”

“Why then,” said he, “more than our lives.”

“Well then,” said I, “what in the name of common sense do you think they are?”

“Well,” he replied, “I don’t altogether agree with Dr. Leopold. I can’t quite believe in the ‘non-human’ business; these men are flesh and blood safe enough; though I confess I am startled to see so much applied science, so much in advance of ours, in the possession of men of such malignity as these are.” He paused for a moment and then proceeded. “What you said just now is most likely right. They belong most likely to some brotherhood of conspirators, some advanced guard of Nihilists, or the like, who propose to make war upon civilised society.”

“What do you advise?”

[139] “For all reasons the sooner we get away the better. My proposition is that we fill our pockets with these cakes of theirs and make a bolt of it the very first opportunity.”

“Do you think we shall find an opportunity?”

“Well, the event will show. We may have to start in the dark and for a while to travel by night. But you see these cakes of theirs are meat and drink, and we can make a bee-line for the wire.”

“Don’t you think they will track us?”

“I doubt if they will be able. Their intelligence is very high, and their modes of procedure are very artificial; and the best trackers are men of mere instinct. Still I wish we could get hold of one of their cars; if we could, a few hours’ start would save us.”

“Look to the right,” I said, “we are watched and followed now.”

By this time the sun had risen a little way, the sky was clear, and here and there, slowly moving along the face of the cliff below us, were several shadows of the sort I have already more than once described. These plainly indicated the presence of several of the cars at no great distance from the ground, and at a lower level than the cliff on which we stood. Whether there were any or how many at a higher level no one could [140] say just yet, and on the left everything lay still in shadow. We walked in the same direction, quickening our steps a little, the cliff all the while sloping downward slowly. Presently the sun was at a higher level than the ground we walked on, and the number of the shadows greatly increased, and there were very many now on all sides of us. Just then it seemed as if a cloud were passing over us quite near. We looked upward quickly, but there was no cloud, only a great shadow cast, as it would seem, by nothing. In a few seconds it was gone, and presently after we heard the swish—sh—sh right over us of the wing-like paddles, and we could even detect the small regular rattle of the machinery. It was evident that we were being closely guarded, and perhaps we were overheard.

Silently but with one impulse we turned and walked slowly back to the rooms that had been assigned to us.

We refreshed ourselves with food and we had an hour’s rest before it was time to keep our appointment with our host. We agreed meanwhile to observe everything very closely and to compare notes at night.

“But,” said I, “is it safe for us to separate?”

“Nothing, of course,” Jack answered, “is altogether safe, but for a little while I think that we are not in any more danger apart than together.”

[141] “But you know, Jack, you said that you thought he had some special design on me and that he didn’t want you. So he may have you quietly put out of the way if you go alone.”

“He is bad enough for anything,” was the answer, “but he knows that to put me out of the way would so disturb you as to baffle his designs upon you. Your attention would be entirely diverted from the matters in which you are now taking so deep an interest, and by means of which he hopes to secure you. He would have to put you out of the way too, and he doesn’t want to do that. So he is going, as I have said, to throw me into the bargain.”

“What course do you suggest then, when we are next left to ourselves?”

“You try to get an interview with—what’s his name?—your old Welsh friend?”

“James Redpath.”

“Just so, and I will try to pick up some information about the navigation of the cars.”

At the appointed hour, which was rather early in the afternoon, we went together to the square, and we had hardly reached it when Signor Davelli arrived there too. His appearance was decidedly changed: his robe was ampler and longer, and this as well as his hat and [142] sandals were apparently made of richer and lighter stuff than those which he had worn before, also there were various mottoes and devices wrought upon them. The devices were all of the sort I have before told you of, and the mottoes, or what I deemed such, were in a variety of characters, most of them altogether unknown to me. A few of them, however, were in languages that I knew. There was only one in English, and strange to say, I cannot remember what it was. On the front of the hat was an inscription in Hebrew characters, but so oddly formed that I did not at first recognise them. I am not much skilled in Hebrew but I have no doubt that the inscription was כאלהים[Footnote 4] written, however, in a character closely resembling that of the Palmyra inscriptions. As I came slowly to recognise the meaning of this inscription, it came to me much more forcibly (and with another sort of force), than if I had at once recognised it for what it was. And I would have at once recognised it if it had been in the ordinary square characters as I have written it here.

Signor Davelli’s manner was, as I thought, very stately and even majestic, and yet at the same time [143] quite easy and affable. Once or twice only I observed an air of effort, and even that seemed as of an effort graciously undertaken even if painful. Once or twice also a sort of spasm crossed his face as of self-repression of some sort. And once it seemed as if he were about to spring forward but checked himself, and his face then reminded me of the faces of his men yesterday in this very square when they first recognised our presence.

He bade us be seated, and he took a seat himself and began to talk to us. Our seats faced his and there was a pathway like a garden walk between us. I remember noticing as he began to speak that the same strange flowers and shrubs which I had seen outside grew in great abundance along this pathway.

Signor Davelli led the conversation quickly, but not at all with violence, to themes of an abstract character, and he presently settled down to the discussion of no less a subject than free will.

You would not thank me if I were to give you (supposing I could do so) a full account of all that he said. I will, therefore, not make any such attempt. I will only say that his remarks were bold and interesting, although he presented no aspect of the question which was absolutely new to me, and that he spoke apparently with strong feeling and fervour, and even sometimes [144] with a bitter air of desperation. Then he looked at me with an air of inquiry.

After a long pause I said,

“I see, Signor Davelli, that you are not a materialist.”

“Materialist?” he said, with a very unpleasant mixture of smile and sneer. “No; materialism is very well for a beginning; but one must face the facts at last if one is to deal with them at all successfully.”

“But,” said I, “some teach that matter is the very ultimate of all fact.”

“It is perhaps well,” he said, with a renewal of the same sneer and smile, “that they should teach so, but you and I know better; matter is evidence of the fact, but not the fact itself.”

“And free will in your view is real?”

“Yes, it is real, doubtless, although so given as to make it for all but the very boldest practically unreal.”

“So given, you say; it is a gift then?”

“Yes, it is a gift, if you call that ‘given’ which you use at your peril.”

“And who gives it?” said I.

“Never mind that,” he said, with a bitter scowl, which recalled for the moment his malignant expression of the day but one before. “Call Him the Giver: [145] a cursed way of giving is His. You know that you can use His gift if you dare, and you know that if you dare use it as you please He will scald you with what His bond-slaves call ‘the vials of His wrath’; that I think is the phrase.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “the scalding is one’s own doing: power to use the gift is power to use it rightly or wrongly: if one choose to use it wrongly one takes the consequences.”

“Right and wrong,” he