“What did I care about? I didn’t care about catching the train; I cared about whether the train caught me, and now, by God! it has caught me.”
“I regret to inform you,” said Syme with restraint, “that your remarks convey no impression to my mind. Perhaps if you were to remove the remains of your original forehead and some portion of what was once your chin, your meaning would become clearer. Mental lucidity fulfils itself in many ways. What do you mean by saying that the train has caught you? It may be my literary fancy, but somehow I feel that it ought to mean something.”
“It means everything,” said the other, “and the end of everything. Sunday has us now in the hollow of his hand.”
“Us!” repeated the Professor, as if stupefied. “What do you mean by ‘us’?”
“The police, of course!” said the Marquis, and tore off his scalp and half his face.
The head which emerged was the blonde, well brushed, smooth-haired head which is common in the English constabulary, but the face was terribly pale.
“I am Inspector Ratcliffe,” he said, with a sort of haste that verged on harshness. “My name is pretty well known to the police, and I can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt about my position, I have a card ” and he began to pull a blue card from his pocket.
The Professor gave a tired gesture.
“Oh, don’t show it us,” he said wearily; “we’ve got enough of them to equip a paper-chase.”
The little man named Bull, had, like many men who seem to be of a mere vivacious vulgarity, sudden movements of good taste. Here he certainly saved the situation. In the midst of this staggering transformation scene he stepped forward with all the gravity and responsibility of a second, and addressed the two seconds of the Marquis.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all owe you a serious apology; but I assure you that you have not been made the victims of such a low joke as you imagine, or indeed of anything undignified in a man of honour. You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy. A secret society of anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and powerful and fanatical church, a church of eastern pessimism, which holds it holy to destroy mankind like vermin. How hard they hunt us you can gather from the fact that we are driven to such disguises as those for which I apologise, and to such pranks as this one by which you suffer. ”
The younger second of the Marquis, a short man with a black moustache, bowed politely, and said
“Of course, I accept the apology; but you will in your turn forgive me if I decline to follow you further into your difficulties, and permit myself to say good morning! The sight of an acquaintance and distinguished fellow-townsman coming to pieces in the open air is unusual, and, upon the whole, sufficient for one day. Colonel Ducroix, I would in no way influence your actions, but if you feel with me that our present society is a little abnormal, I am now going to walk back to the town.”
Colonel Ducroix moved mechanically, but then tugged abruptly at his white moustache and broke out
“No, by George! I won’t. If these gentlemen are really in a mess with a lot of low wreckers like that, I’ll see them through it. I have fought for France, and it is hard if I can’t fight for civilization.”
Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public meeting.
“Don’t make too much noise,” said Inspector Ratcliffe, “Sunday may hear you.”
“Sunday!” cried Bull, and dropped his hat.
“Yes,” retorted Ratcliffe, “he may be with them.”
“With whom?” asked Syme.
“With the people out of that train,” said the other.
“What you say seems utterly wild,” began Syme. “Why, as a matter of fact But, my God,” he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an explosion a long way off, “by God! if this is true the whole bally lot of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man was a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can it mean?”
“Mean!” said the new policeman with incredible violence. “It means that we are struck dead! Don’t you know Sunday? Don’t you know that his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has captured every cable, he has control of every railway line especially of that railway line!” and he pointed a shaking finger towards the small wayside station. “The whole movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to rise for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have resisted him . . . and the old devil put them on the Supreme Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots that we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the Professor would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would fight me in France. And he was combining great masses of capital, and seizing great lines of telegraphy, while we five idiots were running after each other like a lot of confounded babies playing blind man’s buff.”
“Well?” asked Syme with a sort of steadiness.
“Well,” replied the other with sudden serenity, “he has found us playing blind man’s buff to-day in a field of great rustic beauty and extreme solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains to him to capture this field and all the fools in it. And since you really want to know what was my objection to the arrival of that train, I will tell you. My objection was that Sunday or his Secretary has just this moment got out of it.”
Syme uttered an involuntary cry, and they all turned their eyes towards the far-off station. It was quite true that a considerable bulk of people seemed to be moving in their direction. But they were too distant to be distinguished in any way.
“It was a habit of the late Marquis de St. Eustache,” said the new policeman, producing a leather case, “always to carry a pair of opera glasses. Either the President or the Secretary is coming after us with that mob. They have caught us in a nice quiet place where we are under no temptations to break our oaths by calling the police. Dr. Bull, I have a suspicion that you will see better through these than through your own highly decorative spectacles.”
He handed the field-glasses to the Doctor, who immediately took off his spectacles and put the apparatus to his eyes.
“It cannot be as bad as you say,” said the Professor, somewhat shaken. “There are a good number of them certainly, but they may easily be ordinary tourists.”
“Do ordinary tourists,” asked Bull, with the fieldglasses to his eyes, “wear black masks half-way down the face?”
Syme almost tore the glasses out of his hand, and looked through them. Most men in the advancing mob really looked ordinary enough; but it was quite true that two or three of the leaders in front wore black half-masks almost down to their mouths. This disguise is very complete, especially at such a distance, and Syme found it impossible to conclude anything from the clean-shaven jaws and chins of the men talking in the front. But presently as they talked they all smiled and one of them smiled on one side.
CHAPTER XI
THE CRIMINALS CHASE THE POLICE
SYME put the field-glasses from his eyes with an almost ghastly relief.
“The President is not with them, anyhow,” he said, and wiped his forehead.
“But surely they are right away on the horizon,” said the bewildered Colonel, blinking and but half recovered from Bull’s hasty though polite explanation. “Could you possibly know your President among all those people?”