Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

“What was it again?” asked Hooker, thoughtfully. And when the question and answer were repeated to him, he went over them slowly. “You know, that’s a very odd thing to say. I don’t suppose it means anything, but still-it’s very odd.”

“It ties up with all that gloomy Revelations stuff they handed out at the meeting,” Edlin remarked. “I told you. They were a gloomy lot. I took a great dislike to ’em myself. So would you have done. There was a very nice little widow there, sitting near me, and she hated ’em on sight-like a sensible woman.”

Forgetting for the moment that there might possibly be some connection between his mysterious Andrea and these ferocious fanatics, Malcolm remarked: “But I don’t really see why you don’t report the whole thing to the police, and have done with it.”

Edlin chuckled. “That’s the English touch all right. Send for the police.”

Hooker smiled at this, though he might have been remembering his own encounter with the English police.

“Well, why not?” Malcolm persisted.

“It wouldn’t work. If I knew somebody in the police here, and could get a good man put quietly on the job, really collecting evidence against them, then it might work. But I don’t, and what would happen if I complained would be that this Brotherhood of the Judgment would prove it was a nice respectable organisation, with all its members paying taxes and living with their own wives, and Father John would turn out to be a nice old gentleman with a long beard and sandals, first cousin to a senator or a federal judge, and Mr. Jimmy Edlin would be given a sour look and would be asked to go away and not make a nuisance of himself, and I’d be farther away from knowing anything worth knowing than I was before.”

Hooker considered this carefully. “You’re right, I guess, Mr. Edlin. You’d have to know a lot more before you could bring the police in. But I still don’t begin to understand why these people, however silly they may be about their beliefs, should be ready to risk murder.”

“And I don’t. That’s just the point. But there must be something they’re up to, and, if you ask me, it’s not there in Los Angeles. This is the real end, though where, what or how-I don’t know. But then I don’t even know yet how you boys come to be in it.”

Malcolm did not reply because he happened to glance across at Hooker, who was looking very thoughtful and clearly was about to speak. So Malcolm waited; and Edlin looked across at Hooker too. The latter stretched his long legs out at full length, appeared to examine his socks, which were wrinkled round the tops of his dusty shoes, and then observed slowly: “The queer thing is-that if the MacMichaels are really in this-they worked, or tried to work, the very same trick on me. I’ve thought it over a good deal, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only possible reason why they should have tried that ridiculous frame-up was to keep me out of the way and keep me busy defending myself because they thought I was too curious.” And having made this maddening statement, which tantalised both his hearers because they did not understand what he meant by his “frame-up,” Hooker sighed hard and stared again at his wrinkled socks.

“Now, Mr. Hooker,” Jimmy Edlin began.

“It’s Dr. Hooker really, if you must talk like that-”

“I didn’t know you were a medical man.”

“I’m not-thank God-just a doctor of science-mainly physics-but just call me Hooker-”

“Fine! It looks as if we’re all in this thing together, though I don’t understand why yet-but then that’s what you’re going to tell me, both of you. But before you start, I must have a drink. I don’t know how you boys feel, but I need a drink badly, and as it happens I put a bottle of Scotch in my bag.”

“But isn’t your bag in that car?” said Hooker.

“No, I got in just as I was. Lucky too! Anyhow, I’ll get that Scotch and bring a couple of glasses from my room. It’s just round the corner. Back in half a minute.”

But he was not back in half a minute. Malcolm and Hooker waited in silence for several minutes, as people so often do when one party in an important conversation has just left them but has promised to return very soon. Each went over in his mind what had recently been said, and they had plenty to think about.

Malcolm finally broke the silence. “Taking his time, isn’t he? He seems all right-rather a likeable chap, I think-but I don’t know what to make of this yarn of his.”

“No,” said Hooker slowly, “but he didn’t invent those shots we heard. If it wasn’t for them, I’d think he was imagining things, just because his brother had been killed and nobody knew who’d done it. But what happened to him to-night-and we were witnesses-proves that he isn’t imagining things. There is a John MacMichael too. I found that out when I came home and began making enquiries about the MacMichaels.”

“Tell me about them,” said Malcolm eagerly. “I couldn’t find out much.”

“Old Thomas MacMichael, that’s their father, was one of the old Western copper men, and he made a pile. Henry, who was the eldest son, went into Wall Street and made a whole lot more-still has most of it, I guess. The next son, Paul, became a scientist, and didn’t use his last name, perhaps because he didn’t want people to think he was getting by because of the old man’s money. John’s the other, and I couldn’t find out anything about him. Perhaps he’s off his head. They’re a queer lot. I never liked Paul-the one I knew-though he’s a swell physicist.”

There was a long pause. Finally, Malcolm said: “Look here, I think you’d better tell me now, while we’re waiting, what happened to you. I’m dying to know-and Edlin seems to be enjoying most of that whisky by himself.”

So Hooker described his search for the missing Engelfield, the discovery of him in London, and then his adventures at the Old Farm and the fair at Ewsbury. It was a long recital.

“It didn’t make a lot of sense,” Hooker concluded, “but all I can think is this. Paul found himself on the track of something really big in his own field, which is roughly the same as mine, research in atomic structure, and especially experiments in the transmutation of elements-I don’t know if you understand what that’s all about,” he added, hopefully.

“No, I don’t,” said Malcolm hastily, “and if you don’t mind, just now I’d rather not try. Some other time.”

Hooker grinned. “Whenever you say. But, as I said, I think he saw something big ahead of him, so cleared out and dropped his old name. He’s money of his own and, besides, probably he has his brother Henry backing him. And whatever he’s doing, he wants to keep it to himself, which doesn’t surprise me, knowing him.”

“You mean, you think his discovery may be valuable from a commercial point of view?” Malcolm was not clear as to the drift of Hooker’s remarks. “So it has to be a secret.”

“No. I’ll bet, after I said ‘transmutation,’ you began thinking about alchemy, gold from lead and all the rest of it, didn’t you? Thought so.” Hooker’s grin was sardonic, but friendly. “No, that’s not it. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a commercial angle to this thing, though it’s always just possible that a man experimenting in that field might discover a new cheap form of energy. You’ve heard the line of talk? The Queen Mary driven across the Atlantic with the energy from a bit of coal about as big as a walnut. Sounds fine. Only they don’t tell you how much it would cost, even if you could do it, to get the energy out of that bit of coal. No, what he’s probably working on is something simply of value to science, but he’s an arrogant and solitary and anti-social devil-all wrong for a scientist, of course-and he doesn’t want to share anything or be criticised or risk being laughed at, so he’s keeping under cover until it’s all perfect and he can come out and say, ‘Now look what I’ve done, you boobs!’ That’s Paul Engelfield MacMichael. I could see by the look in his eye, when he said a few things to me that time in the Savoy Hotel, that he was tackling something very big and was pleased with himself. Now if it had been you, say, who walked in on him, he wouldn’t have minded. The trouble was that it was me , George Hooker. I don’t want to boost myself, but after all it is a fact that I’m one of the few fellows who’ve been working in the same field, and of course he knew it because we’d had arguments before. So, not like a decent scientist, which he ought to be, but-” and here Hooker suddenly lost his deliberate calm and raised his voice excitedly “-just like a copper king’s son and a Wall Street shyster’s brother, he plays a God-damned dirty trick on me. And he hasn’t heard the last of it either.”