a tale of london in peril.
i.
the sky was as brass from the glowing east upwards, a stifling heat radiated from stone and wood and iron—a close, reeking heat that drove one back from the very mention of food. the five million odd people that go to make up london, even in the cream of the holiday season, panted and gasped and prayed for the rain that never came. for the first three weeks in august the furnace fires of the sun poured down till every building became a vapour bath with no suspicion of a breeze to temper the fierceness of it. even the cheap press had given up sunstroke statistics. the heat seemed to have wilted up the journalists and their superlatives.
more or less the drought had lasted since april. tales came up from the provinces of stagnant rivers and quick, fell spurts of zymotic diseases. for a long time past the london water companies had restricted their supplies. still, there was no suggestion of alarm, nothing as yet looked like a water famine. the heat was almost unbearable but, people said, the wave must break soon, and the metropolis would breathe again.
professor owen darbyshire shook his head as he looked at the brassy, star-powdered sky. he crawled homewards towards harley street with his hat in his hand, and his grey frock coat showing a wide expanse of white shirt below. there was a buzz of electric fans in the hall of no. 411, a murmur of them overhead. and yet the atmosphere was hot and heavy. there was one solitary light in the dining-room—a room all sombre oak and dull red walls as befitted a man of science—and a visiting card glistened on the table. darbyshire read the card with a gesture of annoyance:
james p. chase
morning telephone
"i'll have to see him," the professor groaned, "i'll have to see the man if only to put him off. is it possible these confounded pressmen have got hold of the story already?"
with just a suggestion of anxiety on his strong clean-shaven face, the professor parted the velvet curtains leading to a kind of study-laboratory, the sort of place you would expect to find in the house of a man whose speciality is the fighting of disease in bulk. darbyshire was the one man who could grapple with an epidemic, the one man always sent for.
the constant pestering of newspaper men was no new thing. doubtless chase aforesaid was merely plunging around after sensations—journalistic curry for the hot weather. still, the pushing little american might have stumbled on the truth. darbyshire took down his telephone and churned the handle.
"are you there? yes, give me 30795, kensington.... that you, longdale? yes, it's darbyshire. step round here at once, will you? yes, i know it's hot, and i wouldn't ask you to come if it wasn't a matter of the last importance."
a small thin voice promised as desired and darbyshire hung up his receiver. he then lighted a cigarette, and proceeded to con over some notes that he had taken from his pocket. these he elaborated in pencil in a small but marvellously clear handwriting. as he lay back in his chair he did not look much like the general whose army is absolutely surrounded, but he was. and that square, lean head held a secret that would have set london almost mad at a whisper.
darbyshire laid the sheets down and fell into a reverie. he was roused presently by the hall bell and dr longdale entered. the professor brightened.
"that's right," he said. "good to see somebody, longdale. i've had an awful day. verity, if mr. chase comes again ask him in here."
"mr. chase said he would return in an hour, sir," the large butler replied. "and i'm to show him in here? yes, sir."
but already darbyshire had hustled his colleague beyond the velvet curtains. longdale's small clear figure was quivering with excitement. his dark eyes fairly blazed behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.
"well," he gasped, "i suppose it's come at last?"
"of course it has," darbyshire replied, "sooner or later it was an absolute certainty. day by day for a month i have watched the sky and wondered where the black hand would show. and when these things do come they strike where you most dread them. still, in this case, the thames——"
"absolutely pregnant," longdale exclaimed. "roughly speaking, four-fifths of london's water supply comes from the thames. how many towns, villages drain into the river before it reaches sunbury or thereabouts where most of the water companies have their intake? why, scores of them. and for the best part of a month the thames has been little better than a ditch stagnating under a brazen sunshine. will our people ever learn anything, darbyshire? is london and its six million people always to groan under the tyranny of a monopoly? say there's an outbreak of typhoid somewhere up the river between here and oxford. it gets a grip before the thing is properly handled, the village system of drainage is a mere matter of percolation. in eight-and-forty hours the thames is one floating tank of deadly poison. and, mind you, this thing is bound to happen sooner or later."
"it has happened," darbyshire said quietly, "and in a worse form than you think. just listen to this extract from an eastern counties provincial paper:
"'strange affair at aldenburgh
"'a day or two ago the barque santa anna came ashore at spur, near aldenburgh, and quickly became a total wreck. the vessel was piled high on the spur, and, the strong tide acting upon the worn-out hull, quickly beat it to pieces. the crew of eight men presumably took to their boats, for nothing has been seen of them since. how the santa anna came to be wrecked on a clear, calm night remains a mystery for the present. the barque was presumedly inbound for some foreign port and laden with oranges, thousands of which have been picked up at aldenburgh lately. the coastguards presume the barque to be a portuguese.'
"naturally you want to know what this has to do with the thames," darbyshire observed. "i'm going to tell you. the santa anna was deliberately wrecked for a purpose which you will see later. the crew for the most part landed not far away and, for reasons of their own, sank their boat. it isn't far from aldenburgh to london: in a short time the portuguese were in the metropolis. two or three of them remained there, and five of them proceeded to tramp to ashchurch, which is on the river, and not far from oxford. being short of money, their idea was to tramp across to cardiff and get a ship there. being equally short of our language, they get out of their way to ashchurch. then three of them are taken ill, and two of them die. the local practitioner sends for the medical officer of health. the latter gets frightened and sends for me. i have just got back. look here."
darbyshire produced a phial of cloudy fluid, some of which he proceeded to lay on the glass of a powerful microscope. longdale fairly staggered back from the eyepiece. "bubonic! the water reeks with the bacillus! i haven't seen it so strongly marked since we were in new orleans together. darbyshire, you don't mean to say that this sample came from——"
"the thames? but i do. ashchurch drains directly into the river. and for some few days those sailors have been suffering from a gross form of bubonic fever. now you see why they ran the santa anna ashore and deserted her. one of the crew died of plague, and the rest abandoned her. we won't go into the hideous selfishness of it; it was a case of the devil take the hindmost."
"it's an awful thing," longdale groaned.
"frightful," darbyshire murmured. he was vaguely experimenting with some white precipitate on a little water taken from the phial. he placed a small electric battery on the table. "the great bulk of the london water supply comes from the thames. speaking from memory, only the new river and one other company draw their supply from the lea. if the supply were cut off, places like hoxton and haggerstone and battersea, in fact all the dense centres of population where disease is held in on the slenderest of threads, would suffer fearfully. and there is that deadly poison spreading and spreading, hourly drawing nearer to the metropolis into which presently it will be ladled by the million gallons. people will wash in it, drink it. mayfair will take its chance with whitechapel."
"at any hazard the supply must be cut off!" longdale cried.
"and deprive four-fifths of london of water altogether!" darbyshire said grimly. "and london grilling like a furnace! no flushing of sewers, no watering of roads, not even a drop to drink. in two days london would be a reeking, seething hell—try and picture it, longdale."
"i have, often," longdale said gloomily. "sooner or later it had to come. now is your chance, darbyshire—that process of sterilisation of yours."
darbyshire smiled. he moved in the direction of the velvet curtains. he wanted those notes of his; he wanted to prove a startling new discovery to his colleague. the notes were there, but they seemed to have been disturbed. on the floor lay a torn sheet from a notebook with shorthand cypher; thereon darbyshire flew to the bell and rang it violently.
"verity," he exclaimed, "has that infernal—i mean, has mr chase been here again?"
"well, he have, sir," verity said slowly, "he come just after mr longdale. so i asked him to wait, which he did, then he come out again after a bit, saying as you seemed to be busily engaged he would call again."
"um! did he seem to be excited, verity?"
"well, he did, sir; white and very shiny about the eyes, and——"
"that will do. go and call me a hansom, at once," darbyshire cried, as he dashed back into the inner room. "here's a pretty thing; that confounded american journalist, chase—you know him—has heard all we said and has helped himself to my notes; the whole thing will be blazing in the telephone to-morrow, and perhaps half-a-dozen papers besides. those fellows would wreck the empire for what they call a 'scoop.'"
"awful!" longdale groaned. "what are you going to do?"
derbyshire responded that he was going to convince the editor of the telephone that no alarmist article was to appear on the morrow.
he would be back again in an hour and longdale was to wait. the situation was not quite so hopeless as it seemed on the face of it. there was a rattle of wheels outside and darbyshire plunged hatless into the night.
"offices of the telephone," he cried. "a sovereign if i'm there in twenty minutes."
the cab plunged on headlong. the driver was going to earn that sovereign or know the reason why. he drove furiously into trafalgar square, a motor car crossed him recklessly, and a moment later darbyshire was shot out on to his head from the cab. he lay there with no interest in mundane things. a languid crowd gathered, a doctor in evening dress appeared.
"concussion of the brain," he said in a cool matter of fact tone. "by jove, it's dr. derbyshire. here, police; hurry up with the ambulance; he must be removed to charing cross at once."
