The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction) Read online

  “The master went at half after three o’clock, Sir Faraday,” said old Horn, “and Sister Mason and me did the needful.”

  “The very last words Sir Hector spoke in his sleep, sounded like ‘my Greta,’ Miss Heron,” said the nurse.

  Faraday addressed them in an undertone.

  “I must go to London to-day,” he told Horn. “Let me have a car for Exeter in an hour, Roger. I’ll look after everything there.”

  Then he turned to Greta.

  “See to all down here,” he said. “Let Winton see him. The funeral next Tuesday and, on Monday I’ll come back for it.”

  He turned to the dead and for a moment clasped his father’s hand without speaking. Then he left them.

  CHAPTER VII

  WITH pomp and ceremony the dead man joined his wife in the mausoleum he had erected at a corner of Cliff churchyard on her decease. Despite the extent of his interests and the demands of an exceptional estate, no complications attended his passing; a portrait of Sir Hector and a long obituary notice in The Times appeared, together with subsequent anecdotes and testimonies to his goodwill and generosity; while the few who cared to know learned that he had been succeeded by his surviving son, Professor Faraday Heron, the distinguished physicist.

  The scientist went his way bringing to it all the energy, foresight and resource that he possessed. Within two months the laboratory of his hopes began to rise in the dell once pointed out to Greta as an ideal place for the purpose. Utmost dispatch distinguished these operations for no restriction on private enterprise existed to delay them and now poured into Cliff, not only a little army of skilled men but every local labourer in search of employment. While unconcerned with the fortunes of the parish and only anxious for the revenues that his inheritance had brought him, the new lord of the manor respected every injunction left by his father. Sir Hector’s will contained directions and expressions of desire. It left the mansion to Greta, should Faraday determine not to live in it, with an income sufficient for the purpose. The dead had felt sure his son would never abide in Devonshire, yet believed that his daughter might wish to stop in her life-long home. Here, however, he was mistaken, for now his successor desired nothing better than to vanish from the outer world and concentrate in secret on all that made existence of any worth to him.

  “By the time my lab. is finished and my small staff engaged,” he told his sister, “I shall have wound up my affairs in London and Cambridge and be a free man. I shall live here, within five minutes’ walk of my work, and you will look after Cliff for me until you marry. I want no more senseless state, powdered footmen and a horde of idle domestics: that sort of thing will happily have ceased to be possible in a year’s time. So you can pack most of the crowd away to find useful work, before conscription swallows the men for cannon fodder. One or two of the old ones can retire with pensions, but Roger Horn stops as butler.”

  Finding her brother in this couth and amiable mood, Greta presently advanced private ambitions on her own account, for her lover’s affairs were now uppermost in her mind. She had already discussed his future with him and learned as to whether her suggestions might meet his views. They came as a shock to Trensham, for they implied a complete overturn of his own life; but that he had already anticipated in any case and the scheme that Greta now proposed, teeming as it did with future possibilities, contented the young man. It remained, however, to see whether Greta’s brother would approve and, while Ernest doubted, she felt hope that he might welcome her plan as a solution to certain minor problems immediately confronting him.

  “While we are talking,” she said to him, “there’s something I should like to put before you, Faraday. I agree to all you suggest and shall be thankful to cut down here and live a simpler life. But I want to speak about Ernest for a moment and what happens when we marry presently. He is not wedded to Scotland Yard and he knows, of course, that now will be the time to take up a different life with advantage. And I feel that, too. I want him and I want you, Faraday, because it is quite certain that, until you marry yourself and establish somebody here capable of running Cliff and looking after you, you won’t be comfortable, or as free as you wish to be. So, for the present at least, I don’t leave you.”

  “Nothing would suit me better than that you stop,” he said. “But will that suit Trensham? No doubt he can find a more promising job of work than the police force; but not here.”

  “That is just what he could do if I put it to him,” she explained. “The problem in my mind was how to stop here myself — at any rate, for a certain time after I am married. For my sake and for yours, too, he would do it I believe, because he loves me and he respects and admires you tremendously. At any rate, for a time — until the political situation is clearer — he would do it I feel sure.”

  “Do what?” asked Faraday.

  “Take control under you,” she answered. “The one tiresome problem confronting you for the moment is a new estate agent. Andrews has never satisfied Father and he meant to make a change when he fell ill. And he does not satisfy me either. Rubs everybody up the wrong way. But with Ernest, you have an exceptional man of tremendous ability and tact and understanding, who would grasp the demands upon him in a month and save you an immense amount of tiresome and troublesome detail you don’t want to waste your time and thought upon. He knows a great deal about Cliff already and, if he consented to undertake the work — say, definitely for three years — I believe it would prove a very great convenience to you and save you oceans of needless trouble. He knows the bailiff, too, and likes him.”

  “Somebody equal to the work I must have, and soon,” he admitted, “but I can’t imagine a man with Trensham’s peculiar gifts caring for such an appointment.”

  “I believe he would for a specific time, Faraday. I think he would for me, because he knows I should much dislike to leave you at present. His only feeling would be that you might find him a nuisance in the house.”

  “I shall not be in the house much — more would he. No, he’d be no nuisance to me, quite the contrary if he put his back into my interests. If he’ll consent to come for three years, I’ll engage him and trust you to see he holds down the job. A year or two will find us at war and he may be called up, but, looking ahead, he ought to be able to identify himself with national work and make himself more useful at home than at the front.”

  Greta was gratified.

  “Good of you and I think wise of you, Faraday,” she said. “I’ll write to him and, if he agrees to burn his boats and retire from the police service, no doubt he’ll come down and see you.”

  A few days later she told her brother that Trensham could visit them for a week-end and the detective duly arrived, to receive a friendly welcome. Ernest had made up his mind. He knew his future wife to be a rich woman and, while ambitious and without any intention to live upon her, felt that to join his fortunes with her brother as well as Greta should open the road to adventure on his own account in that extensive field. He, too, was aware of the impending cloud and guessed that war might offer an opening worthy of his own gifts. He dreamed of the Secret Service and a career; while meantime it would be in his power to learn more of Faraday, perhaps identify himself with the scientist’s work, and presently prove of far greater value to him than in the modest capacity suggested.

  They came to terms easily enough.

  “It’s in a nutshell,” said his new employer, when they drank tea with Greta on the evening of Ernest’s arrival. “I want my sister and she wants you. I also want a capable and energetic and far-sighted land agent here, and she thinks you are the man for my money. With your brains there can be no doubt as to that. But you have to decide whether, with. Greta thrown in, it is good enough. You’d have to live here, because she is anxious to go on living here, at any rate for the present, as our father wished her to do. However, in this barracks of a house, there is plenty of room for you and all the privacy you may need. If you came I should wish you to give me an undertaking to stop for th
ree years. That’s fair I think, subject to no intervention of war. Given peace, three years’ work should see me in sight of a very stupendous goal and then we can review the situation. Meantime you share our home, join forces with Greta and get fifteen hundred a year. That’s how we should stand. Any conditions to make?”

  Ernest, gratified by the suggested salary, declared that he had none.

  “Nothing could be clearer, or more generous, Professor,” he began and was cut short.

  “Drop all that,” said Faraday. “I shall be your brother-in-law and my given name is all that you need use. You will go your way and I shall go mine. Research is an idle term unless the searcher is engaged on definite objects and aware of what he seeks. Side issues may confront him and surprises — pleasant or painful — await him, but in my case nothing will deviate me. Oceans of hard work await me and I am used to burning midnight oil. The oil is now forthcoming and my hours incalculable. You will have your own plan of action and come and go as your work demands.”

  “And I am to be thought of, too,” put in Greta. “Cliff means something you know. Plenty for me to do, Faraday. At meals at least I shall usually expect you both. That’s part of the bargain. And there must be holidays for everybody. London in the spring for me and Ernest — a whole month. And your idea of holidays — meetings and lectures and scientifics in one shape or another.”

  “Nothing is certain except that Germany will concentrate on trying to bomb Great Britain out of the sea,” replied her brother. “Life for us turns on her success or failure. When do you two propose to be married?”

  “When do you intend to be married, Greta?” inquired her lover.

  “Things have happened so strangely,” she answered. “I still can hardly believe dear father never knew about it. I feel sometimes that we betrothed ourselves behind his back.”

  “Which was the usual procedure where parents are concerned,” suggested Ernest. “But remember he was to have heard the very day when that evil news came and eclipsed you and me.”

  “One has a sort of innate instinct about it: that we ought not to be married so quickly after his death,” said Greta. “But, of course, that is nonsense now. You’ll want to get to work as soon as you leave the service. When will they let you go?”

  “Next January.”

  “Let it be then,” she agreed. “Faraday will allow us our honeymoon and we can go south for a few weeks — to Egypt I think — then come back and set to work for him.”

  During Trensham’s brief visit, her brother continued to gratify Greta by unusual display or urbanity. On one occasion, he even gave glimpse of his future purposes, though whether all he told them was true she felt some doubt. A change had appeared in his customary attitude to fellow-creatures since his father’s death and he became somewhat more gracious and certainly more patient than of old. He spent much time at the growing laboratory, but, though insistent that work should continue at high pressure, attained the needful celerity with friendly words rather than impersonal orders.

  It was on the occasion of a visit with his sister and her betrothed to the growing buildings that Ernest asked a question which induced the scientist to talk at some length as they returned to the house afterwards.

  “Why are two main walls going up so fast and the other two still only at ground level?” he inquired.

  “For the reason that some big and tremendously heavy machinery has yet to be brought here,” answered Faraday. “Certain huge things weighing a great many tons are being constructed and have yet to be installed. They must stand on their foundations before we can build them in and lift the walls around them. Some are actually higher than the ultimate roof is going to be. A system of self-destruction is also involved. If the Germans ever landed here, it is I, not they, who would blow up my work.”

  He broke off and proceeded to throw light.

  “You have to remember that the first steps only are as yet taken upon untrodden paths and my laboratory, along with others already famous, are no more than the crude pioneers of those to come. You may liken them to the flying machine, which first fluttered across the Channel, as compared with a four-engined, modern aeroplane. Science creeps from foothold to foothold in the domains of proven knowledge and you can only move safely in that fashion. Wishful doing would be worse than wishful thinking in this business and experiment demands safeguarding at every step. These monster machines that atomic research at present demands are in the line of evolution. They stand as links. They are what the dinosaur and other fantastic dragons were to creatures to come; and they will disappear in their turn after they have served evolution’s need. Security demands that we should create them — as we create steel cages for captured wild beasts. But, in my view, such cumbrous paraphernalia will be on the scrap-heap in half a century and our requirements met in other ways.”

  “You feel yourself on the confines of a new kingdom, Faraday?” said Greta.

  “Exactly. Atomic research is just an example of evolution at work — a logical result of the old alchemy — a becoming from those beginnings. The ideal would be that medicine is advanced before all else.”

  “War will be the first becoming,” declared Trensham. “Rather typical of humanity that it should welcome this tremendous potential force as a new weapon of destruction.”

  “Quite typical, but science takes a higher flight already,” declared the other. “Radioactive energy is already busy with health. War would be a pitiful welcome. Rather hope that human reason, being capable of such a discovery, will also prove equal to its control, direction and application.”

  “What a field of research!” said Greta.

  “There is no other theatre of human activity to compare with it,” answered Faraday, “and, as a physician, one already sees its probable contribution to therapeutics and welfare of our bodies. A man gifted with imagination, which I lack, gave me a glimpse of what may be well within our reach. He conceived of our physical strength doubled in actual horse-power, of human life lengthened, of wits strengthened, of immunity from pernicious disease assured. Its application to our food he did not doubt and felt confident of better agriculture, treble harvest yield, quickened growth of timber and multiplied mettle of the pasture. Even an arid man of science like myself could find no quarrel with these dreams.”

  “May you be privileged to advance such prospects,” suggested Ernest.

  “There remain a thousand problems to be solved and the work proceeds,” replied Faraday. “Men approach it from different angles and should, ethically, pool their discoveries; but if the passing ideal be destruction, no doubt war will vitiate any pure advance. To apply nuclear energy to warlike purposes is the easiest way to prostitute our find. It will need only limited intelligence to make atomic bombs and drop them from the air. One can imagine no defence against them. But to engage the force for peaceful purposes entails scientific research of the highest order. Anything may happen and new discoveries simplify the coming task. An optimist would assert that the new force may be a vital feature of industry and commerce in ten years; a pessimist has equal right to doubt if in ten years we shall be here to profit by it.”

  “Dear father was always against any attempt to seek it. He thought that, if such a thing existed, the Almighty might feel no desire to reveal it to mankind,” said Greta; but her brother shook his head.

  “Physicists, chemists, engineers, men of war and men of peace cannot be denied their just occasions,” he told her.

  “Probably every nation is devoting what resources it can spare to such a cause,” suggested Ernest. “And most likely nobody is looking farther than how to make bombs. One sees its enormous significance in engineering. We can lift the face of Mother Earth herself now if she stands in need of it, and remove ourselves from her face at the same time, no doubt. What particular line are you going to follow, Faraday? But perhaps it’s impertinent to ask.”

  “A line, which, if successful, may reorient the problem and bring solution nearer,” he replied. “A
t present the range of known radioactive substance is very limited and I propose to devote forthcoming years to that aspect of the mystery, because I feel confident that many more elements than yet we imagine possess radioactive qualities. Those as yet proven are rare; my ambition is to find some combination or synthesis of familiar materials that shall furnish an agent as abundant as coal, or iron. My life would not be ill spent in that event. If it is to compete with our present sources of power, the energy of the atom must be, not only within our reach, but capable of production at a reasonable cost and in infinite amount. That is a far cry, but time will answer the challenge though I may not live to do so. Nothing quickens the wit of man like the promise of great profits in hard cash.”

  “At least you are in a position to make the attempt now, Faraday,” said Greta. “I only hope you won’t kill yourself trying.”

  “I began at the beginning a long time ago,” he said, “and am well advanced upon the road. But it may prove a mighty long road. Science may yet be persecuted by new powers of evil. In Germany one sees astounding reversals of old, accepted truisms. They were counted the most scientific nation in Europe, but have fallen from their old estate and become a backward, soldier-ridden and brutal kingdom. Imagine any responsible government casting out Einstein, stealing his property and treating him like a criminal because he happens to be a Jew! Conceive a whole people content to applaud and abet the Nazis at their work.”

  “Science may have its revenge and wipe this generation of Germans off the map,” suggested Trensham. “They deserve it.”

  “Defeat should carry its own punishment, no doubt,” agreed the scientist, “but they may not be defeated, in which case we know what to expect. They hate us more than they hate the Jews and would rejoice to make a charnel heap of this country.”

  Next morning the detective returned to London and Faraday travelled with him. His preparations demanded much material and before his father’s death he had worked out the project of the laboratory in detail and only waited for the event to launch it. Now the enterprise proceeded smoothly and he calculated that in less than another year it would be possible to begin work. Two young men he engaged — pupils of exceptional promise — but did not propose to initiate them concerning his own vital projects. What he designed to accomplish if in his power would remain a secret until orbicular, perfected and complete. Looking backward afterwards, he somewhat regretted the extent of his admissions to Ernest and Greta; but guessed the matter was unlikely to remain in their minds. He had reached firm ground in certain directions and made a minor discovery of extraordinary importance but was content for the present to harbour his secrets and pursue their demand for research single-handed. At this time he contributed numerous papers to the journals, and made the acquaintance of certain eminent physicists who were following his career with very deep interest. There presently arose a national demand for his services: history was to repeat itself and, as his father had served the State in the past, so a time drew near when Faraday found himself summoned to do the like in a yet more onerous capacity. That, however, was a surprise for him yet hidden. He concentrated now upon his growing workshop, restrained impatience at delay, grudged nothing from his great resources for the perfection of the laboratory and troubled not at the inroads upon capital it demanded. Death duties had already exacted a vast sum, but these considerations troubled the scientist not at all. Cliff and the preservation of Cliff as a whole meant no obligation to him and he knew that, should the future require far greater expenditure, sale of valuable land could always be counted upon to meet it.