Slowly Derek edged the car down as far as Trafalgar Square, where more meetings were in progress. Whitehall had been closed so the Square was packed with humanity and the car was once more turned back by the police.
'We could get into Piccadilly via Leicester Square,' Derek suggested, 'then I think we'd better go home. After nightfall the streets will be more crowded than ever, and even if the police don't close them to traffic, I don't want to take the risk of running down a drunk.'
'Oh, don't let's go home yet,' Lavina cried. 'I want to see things.'
'I tell you,' exclaimed Roy, 'what about the cause of all the trouble—the old comet? Sunset should be in about an hour and it's only for a short spell after sundown that one can see it.'
'There's not much chance of our seeing anything of it from central London,' remarked Derek.
'What about running up to Hampstead Heath, though? We'd get a splendid view from there.'
'Yes, let's!' cried Lavina enthusiastically.
Derek had already turned the car round. Yard by yard they crawled up St. Martin's Lane, across Oxford Street and along Tottenham Court Road. It took them over half an hour to get as far as the Euston Road but once they had crossed it the drifting crowds no longer overflowed into the roadway. Derek was able to put on speed and another ten minutes brought them to the south-east corner of Hampstead Heath.
Here they parked the car and set out along the track past the ponds, up Parliament Hill. Quite a crowd of people were moving in the same direction and several thousand more were already massed up there on the highest spot overlooking London.
Mingling with the crowd, they managed to find a place well up the slope from which they could gaze across the million roof-tops of the mighty city. Right across the valley on another hill-top in the distant south-east, the two towers of the Crystal Palace were faintly discernible. More to the south the dome of St. Paul's and the tower of Big Ben stood out clearly; while to the south-west rose the twin chimneys of Battersea Power Station.
But no one was now interested in picking out these famous landmarks. They were all gazing westward into the setting sun. Most of them had smoked glasses or pieces of coloured mica to prevent the glare hurting their eyes and, apparently oblivious of the fact that they possibly had only three days to live, hawkers were moving among the crowd doing a brisk business in such wares.
Derek bought three pairs of cheap smoked glasses for Lavina, Roy and himself, then they settled down on the grass to watch the heavenly phenomenon which threatened the doom of the world.
The comet was only three degrees in elevation above the sun and a little to its left; so, even through smoked glasses, it was difficult to get any clear impression of it while daylight lasted. But the menace in the heavens at least appeared to have brought a spell of exceptionally fine weather. The sky was cloudless and the opportunity for getting a good view of the comet remarkable for London.
The sun sank like a great yellow ball behind the horizon and, normally, twilight would have followed, lasting about an hour, until darkness supervened and the stars came out. But now a dull yellow-orange light became slowly perceptible above the spot where the sun had gone down. The light grew in strength until it suffused the whole scene, changing it weirdly, and the multitude were able to gaze their fill upon the concentrated blotch in the heavens from which it came.
The comet was now far bigger than any star and had a dia* meter about one-fifth of that of the moon. But, unlike the moon, it had no clear-cut edge or cold brilliance.
Even seen through smoked glasses it had no regular outline but wobbled slightly, having the appearance of a large red nebula; a ball of fire that twinkled fiercely.
Daylight had gone, yet the Heath, the great crowd upon it, and the nearer portion of the city below were still clearly visible; but as an eerie landscape bathed in a strange, baleful, reddish light. The sight was most uncanny and the evil radiance seemed to affect the crowd on the hillside in an alarming manner.
A woman near Derek began to laugh hysterically. Another began to sob. The eyes of the men glinted strangely. A great wave of excitement suddenly seemed to surge right through the watching thousands. In a moment, from stillness the whole human mass began to pulse with a weird, unnatural life.
A great murmur went up. A mingling of shouts and wild laughter. Two men just in front of Lavina began to fight. Another suddenly thrust his way through the crush towards a pretty girl, seized her in his arms and, in spite of her struggles, began to kiss her avidly.
Derek felt an overpowering desire to do the same to Lavina. He was standing just behind her and his arms positively ached to reach out and draw her to him. He fought it down, but suddenly she swung right round and flung her arms about his neck,
For a good minute their mouths were locked together; then, with a little moan, she wrenched her head away and began to hammer on his shoulders with her fists.
Roy had pulled a large flask of whisky out of his hip-pocket and was gulping down its contents as though they were only water.
The baleful rays from the big splodge of reddish-yellow light near the western horizon seemed to have raised the basest passions of the whole multitude. Parliament Hill was now a scene of indescribable confusion. People were fighting, kissing, struggling, rolling on the ground either in the grip of uncontrollable hate or passionate desire.
The comet set twelve minutes after the sun. With its disappearance the shouting died. The red glow faded, giving place to a pink-twinged twilight sky.
People were now coming to their senses as quickly as they had lost them ten minutes earlier. They were apologising to each other on every side and helping their late antagonists up from the ground. Almost at once the great crowd began to disperse, moving down the hill's sides to the roads that led into London.
Derek took Lavina's arm. 'Come on,' he said gruffly, 'let's get back to the car. What happened to us all, God knows! For a few minutes we must have been out of our senses.'
Lavina put a hand over her eyes. 'Extraordinary, wasn't it. The thing seemed to exercise a malign influence on everybody. But we aren't responsible; we only behaved like all the rest.'
Roy followed them, lurching slightly. His breath was coming fast and his eyes were bulging a little from the amount of neat spirit he had consumed in gulp after gulp.
'That's all very well,' he muttered. 'But if it can do that sort of thing to us now, what effect is it going to have on us in a day or two's time, when it gets a bit nearer?'
'Eat, Drink and be Merry . .
Distinctly sobered by this strange experience they regained the car and drove back towards London. Derek took the quieter streets and as they were passing through St. John's Wood Lavina broke a long silence by saying:
'Where are you heading for now?'
'Back to St. James's Square,' Derek replied promptly. 'Surely you've seen enough for one night, haven't you?'
'Yes. But I was thinking of dinner. Where are we going to feed?'
'Oh, we'll knock up something.'
'Why should we, when the restaurants are still open? It's getting on for ten o'clock and I feel extraordinarily hungry. Let's stop on the way back and get something to eat somewhere.'
'All right,' he conceded, a trifle reluctantly. 'Where would you like to go?'
'Let's try the Dorchester. We can get there without going through the most crowded parts of the West End.'
'We'll have to cross Oxford Street.'
'We'd have to do that anyway, unless we go right round Hyde Park, via Notting Hill and Kensington.'
'That's true. And I can avoid Marble Arch by going down Park Street. The Dorchester let it be then.'
'That's O.K. by me,' Roy muttered from the back, 'as long as one of you has enough cash to pay for the feast. I'm stony.'