"Machines!" returned the plotter bitterly. "Machines indeed! I blush to be their author. Alas!" he said, burying his face in his hands, "that I should live to say it!"
"Madman!" cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm. "What am I to understand? Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?"
""Hoist with his own petard?"" returned the plotter musingly. "One more quotation: strange! But indeed my brain is struck with numbness. Yes, dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in motion. The one on which you are sitting, I have timed for half an hour. Yon other-"
"Half an hour!-" echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation. "Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?"
"Dear fellow, why so much excitement?" inquired Zero. "My dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him to play with. You see this brick?" he continued, lifting a cake of the infernal compound from the laboratory-table. "At a touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the square with ruins. Well now, behold! I dash it on the floor."
Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy of terror, wrested the brick from his possession. "Heavens!" he cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of the apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side, dispiritedly watching him.
"It was entirely harmless," he sighed. "They describe it as burning like tobacco."
"In the name of fortune," cried Somerset, "what have I done to you, or what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane behaviour? If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from this doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart to leave you; and then, if you will take my advice, and if your determination be sincere, you will instantly quit this city, where no further occupation can detain you."
"Such, dear fellow, was my own design," replied the plotter. "I have, as you observe, no further business here; and once I have packed a little bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to the station, and see the last of a broken-hearted man. And yet," he added, looking on the boxes with a lingering regret, "I should have liked to make quite certain. I cannot but suspect my underlings of some mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I cherish that idea: it may be the weakness of a man of science, but yet," he cried, rising into some energy, "I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite has had fair usage!"
"Five minutes!" said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece.
"If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you."
"A few necessaries," returned Zero, "only a few necessaries, dear Somerset, and you behold me ready."
He pa.s.sed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to draw out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing in his hand an open Gladstone bag. His movements were still horribly deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he moved to and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles.
Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.
"Put that down!" cried Somerset. "If what you say be true, you have no call to load yourself with that unG.o.dly contraband."
"Merely a curiosity, dear boy," he said persuasively, and slipped the brick into his bag; "merely a memento of the past-ah, happy past, bright past! You will not take a touch of spirits? no? I find you very abstemious. Well," he added, "if you have really no curiosity to await the event-"
"I!" cried Somerset. "My blood boils to get away."
"Well, then," said Zero, "I am ready; I would I could say, willing; but thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours-"
Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion; and still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the square in the Oxford Street direction. They had not yet pa.s.sed the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a shattering _fracas_. Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its cellars. At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground. His first glance was towards Zero. The plotter had but reeled against the garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his heart, his whole face radiant with relief and grat.i.tude; and the young man heard him murmur to himself: "_Nunc dimittis_, _nunc dimittis_!"
The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole of Golden Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors.
And under favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering plotter.
"It was grand," he continued to murmur: "it was indescribably grand. Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh, my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!"
Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.
"Good G.o.d!" he cried, "how mortifying! seven minutes too early! The dynamite surpa.s.sed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?"
"Incomparable a.s.s!" said Somerset, "what have you done? Blown up the house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly property of the only person who is fool enough to befriend you!"
"You do not understand these matters," replied Zero, with an air of great dignity. "This will shake England to the heart. Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge. And now that my dynamite is proved effective-"
"Heavens, you remind me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Somerset. "That brick in your bag must be instantly disposed of. But how? If we could throw it in the river-"
"A torpedo," cried Zero, brightening, "a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch."
"True!" returned Somerset. "It cannot so be done; and there is no help but you must carry it away with you. Come on, then, and let me at once consign you to a train."
"Nay, nay, dear boy," protested Zero. "There is now no call for me to leave. My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden Square Atrocity."
"My young friend," returned the other, "I give you your choice. I will either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol."
"Somerset, this is unlike you!" said the chymist. "You surprise me, Somerset."
"I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,"
returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage. "For on one point my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine in prison."
"You have perhaps neglected one point," returned the unoffended Zero: "for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ to force me. The will, my dear fellow-"
"Now, see here," interrupted Somerset. "You are ignorant of anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand and voice-here in this street-and the mob-"
"Good G.o.d in heaven, Somerset," cried Zero, turning deadly white and stopping in his walk, "great G.o.d in heaven, what words are these? Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used! The brutal mob, the savage pa.s.sions . . . Somerset, for G.o.d"s sake, a public-house!"
Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity. "This is very interesting," said he. "You recoil from such a death?"
"Who would not?" asked the plotter.
"And to be blown up by dynamite," inquired the young man, "doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?"
"Pardon me," returned Zero: "I own, and since I have braved it daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind of man."
"One more question," said Somerset: "you object to Lynch Law? why?"
"It is a.s.sa.s.sination," said the plotter calmly, but with eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the question.
"Shake hands with me," cried Somerset. "Thank G.o.d, I have now no ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly a.s.sist at your departure."
"I do not very clearly take your meaning," said Zero, "but I am sure you mean kindly. As to my departure, there is another point to be considered. I have neglected to supply myself with funds; my little all has perished in what history will love to relate under the name of the Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is coa.r.s.ely if vigorously called stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to pa.s.s the ocean."
"For me," said Somerset, "you have now ceased to be a man. You have no more claim upon me than a door sc.r.a.per; but the touching confusion of your mind disarms me from extremities. Until to-day, I always thought stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your idiot face, laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood. What should this portend? I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in scepticism. Is it possible," he cried, in a kind of horror of himself-"is it conceivable that I believe in right and wrong? Already I have found myself, with incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.
And must this change proceed? Have you robbed me of my youth? Must I fall, at my time of life, into the Common Banker? But why should I address that head of wood? Let this suffice. I dare not let you stay among women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any means I may avoid it; you have no money: well then, take mine, and go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day will be your last."
"Under the circ.u.mstances," replied Zero, "I scarce see my way to refuse your offer. Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am aware our point of view requires a little training, a little moral hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points that has always charmed me in your character is this delightful frankness. As for the small advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia."
"It shall not," said Somerset.
"Dear fellow, you do not understand," returned the plotter. "I shall now be received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my experiments will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse."
"What I am now about, sir, is a crime," replied Somerset; "and were you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be reimbursed of money I had so scandalously misapplied. Take it, and keep it. By George, sir, three days of you have transformed me to an ancient Roman."
With these words, Somerset hailed a pa.s.sing hansom; and the pair were driven rapidly to the railway terminus. There, an oath having been exacted, the money changed hands.