 CHAPTER 17 The Idiot Evan McKeehan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute silence. He had not the moral courage to ask McKeehan if there had been anything astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did McKeehan seem to have any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men came slowly towards each other and found the same expression on each other's faces. Then for the first time in all their acquaintance they shook hands. Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr. Quail bounding out of a door and running across the lawn. Oh, there you are! he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. Will you come inside, please? I want to speak to you both. They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning record was capped. Dr. Quail sat down on a swivel chair and swung round to face them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared. I will be plain with you, gentlemen, he said abruptly. You know quite well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under special consideration, and the master himself has decided that you ought to be treated specially and under somewhat simpler conditions. You mean treated worse, I suppose, said Turnbull roughly. The doctor did not reply, and McKeehan said, I expected this. His eyes had begun to glow. The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with the key. Well, in certain cases that give anxiety it is often better. Give anxiety, said Turnbull fiercely, confound your impudence. What do you mean? You imprisoned two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because you have made up a long word. They take it in good temper. Walk and talk in your garden like monks who have found a vocation, or civil even to you you damned druggist's hack. Behave not only more sanely than any of your patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you have the soul stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety. The head of the asylum has settled it all, said Dr. Quail, still looking down. McKeehan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor with flaming eyes. If the head has settled it, let the head announce it, he said. I won't take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let us see the head of the asylum. See the head of the asylum, repeated Dr. Quail, certainly not. Fatal Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with fatherly interest. You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as a lunatic, he said. I could kill you with my left hand before such a rat as you could so much as squeak, and I wouldn't be hanged for it. I certainly agree with Mr. McKeehan, said Turnbull, with sobriety and perfect respectfulness, that you had better let us see the head of the institution. Dr. Quail got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy presence of mind. Oh, certainly, he said, with a weak laugh, you can see the head of the asylum if you particularly want to. He almost ran out of the room, and the two followed swiftly on his flying coattails. He knocked at an ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, Come in, McKeehan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest. Turnbull was more impetuous and opened the door. It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black frock coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamp light fell on his glittering spectacles and long, clean-shaven face, a face which would have been simply like an aristocrats but that a certain lion-poise of the head and long cleft in the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for a flash that his face was thus lifted, then he bent his silver head over his notes once more and said, without looking up again, I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C. Turnbull and McKeehan looked at each other and said more than they could ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that to that particular head of the institution it was a waste of time to appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room. The instant they stepped out into the corridor, four sturdy figures stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the galleries. They might very likely have thrown their captors right and left had they been inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason they were more inclined to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish curiosity made them feel quite inclined to see what next twist would be taken by their embecile luck. They were dragged down countless cold avenues lined with glazed tiles, different only in being of different lengths and set at different angles. They were so many and so monotonous that to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing from the Hampton Court maze. Only the fact that windows grew fewer, coming at longer intervals, and the fact that when the windows did come they seemed shadowed and led in less light showed that they were winding into the core or belly of some enormous building. After a little time the glazed corridors began to be lit by electricity. At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron doors painted white, on which were written, respectively, in neat black capitals B and C. You go in here, sir, said the leader of the officials quite respectfully, and you in here. But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, McKeon had been able to say to Turnbull, with a strange drawl of significance, I wonder who A is. Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be thrown into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter, and was still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least five minutes after the echo of the clanging door had died away. Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two-and-a-half hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh should fall off his bones. He was dead and the world had won. His cell was of an oblong shape but very long in comparison with its width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended with the dumbbells which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It was, however, long enough for a man to walk one-thirty-fifth part of a mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle, a row of fixed holes quite close together led into those cells by pipes what was alleged to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers insisted that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They provided a walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough to give him oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly ceased. It seemed never to have occurred to them that the benefit of exercise belongs partly to the benefit of liberty. They had not entertained the suggestion that the open air is only one of the advantages of the open sky. They administered air in secret but in sufficient doses as if it were a medicine. They suggested walking as if no man had ever felt inclined to walk. Above all, the asylum authorities insisted on their own extraordinary cleanliness. Every morning while Turnbull was still half asleep on his iron bedstead which was lifted halfway up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul surged up against the sickening daily salinity. I am buried alive, he cried bitterly. They have hidden me under mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter to them whether I am dirty or clean? Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell and a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked lentils and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he was under-exercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample air, ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had nothing to walk towards, nothing to feast about and no reason whatever for drawing the breath of life. Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long, narrow parallelogram which had a flat wall at one end and ought to have had a flat wall at the other, but that end was broken by a wedge or angle of space like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and cocoa this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened him to think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After the fifth day he was reckless and poked his head into the corner. After twenty-five days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became quite cool and stupid again and began to examine it like a sort of Robinson Crusoe. Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets and he found himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which led in the air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these air holes were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which doubtless carried air from some remote watering place near Margate. One evening while he was engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed something like twilight in one of these dumb mouths as compared with the darkness of the others. Thrusting his finger in as far as it would go he found a hole and flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and instantly saw a light behind. It was at least certain that he had struck some other cell. It is a characteristic of all things now called efficient which means mechanical and calculated that if they go wrong at all they go entirely wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat as in simpler and more living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant but a wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian monarchy in the eighteenth century or now can make a strong army merely by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent possibility that the men may someday be more afraid of their enemies than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it is quite solid means a general safety but if there is one leak it means concentrated poison. An explosion of deathly germs like dynamite a spirit of stink. Thus indeed all that excellent machinery which is the swiftest thing on earth in saving human labor is also the slowest thing on earth in resisting human interference. It may be easier to get chocolate for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine but if you did manage to steal the chocolate the automatic machine would be much less likely to run after you. Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connection with the cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken by many spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head foremost into that private cell which was to be his private room till death. He had felt a high fit of pride in poetry which had ebbed away and left him deadly cold. He had known a period of mere scientific curiosity in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and size but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end and also about an iron peg or a spike that stood out from the wall the object of which he does not know to this day. When he had a period of mere madness not to be written of by decent men but only by those few dirty novelists hallowed on by the infernal huntsmen to hunt down and humiliate human nature. This also passed but left behind it a feverish distaste for many of the mere objects around him. Long after he had returned to sanity and such hopeless cheerfulness as a man might have on a desert island, he disliked the regular squares of the pattern of wall and floor and the triangle that terminated his corridor. Above all, he had a hatred deep as the hell he did not believe in for the objectless iron peg in the wall. But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he never really doubted this, that the machine held him as light and as hopelessly as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of his own creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of our scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson crew's so moods he thought kindly of McKee and as of some school fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell when he died a rigid record of his opinions and when he began to write them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket he was startled to discover how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beecham Tower and tried to write his blazing skepticism on the wall and discovered that it was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either drawn or carved. Then for an instant there hung and broke above him like a high wave the whole horror of scientific imprisonment which manages to deny a man not only liberty but every accidental comfort of bondage. In the old filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in the rock. Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle straight out of a hole. Here the unpiercable walls were washed every morning by an automatic slewis. There was no natural corruption and no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness of the society in which he lived and saw the hatefulness of something else also which he told himself again and again was not the cosmos in which he believed. But all the time he had never once doubted that the five sides of his cell were for him the wall of the world hence forward and it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover the faint light through the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had forgotten how close efficiency has to pack everything together and how easily therefore a pipe here or there may leak. Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture and at last managed to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up from beyond was very faint and apparently indirect. It seemed to fall from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer at this gray and greasy twilight, he was astonished to see another human finger very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe and hook it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly blackened and blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something human spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear. Who is that? asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and quite resolved not to spoil any chance. After a few indistinct sounds, the voice came down with a strong Argel Shire accent. I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we? Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety, I vote we talk a little first. I don't want to murder the first man I have met for 10 million years. I know what you mean, answered the other. It has been awful. For a mortal month I have been alone with God. Turnbull started and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer, alone with God, then you do not know what loneliness is. But he answered after all in his old defiant style, alone with God were you, and I suppose you found his majesty's society rather monotonous? Oh, no, said McKeehan and his voice shuttered. It was a great deal too exciting. After a very long silence, the voice of McKeehan said, What do you really hate most in your place? You'd think I was really mad if I told you, answered Turnbull bitterly. Then I expected it's the same as mine, said the other voice. I am sure it's not the same as anybody's, said Turnbull, for it has no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell? Not now, replied McKeehan with serenity. I've pulled it out. His fellow prisoner could only repeat the words. I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head, continued the tranquil Highland voice. It looked so unnecessary. You must be ghastly strong, said Turnbull. One is when one is mad, was the careless reply, and it had worn a little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out, I can't discover what it was for. But I found out something along sight funnier. What do you mean? asked Turnbull. I have found out where A is, said the other. Three weeks afterwards, McKeehan had managed to open up communications which made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully discovered and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern machinery to which we have already referred. The very fact that they were isolated from all companions meant that they were free from all spies. And as there are no jailers to be bribed, so there were none to be baffled. Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells. That machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient violence conducted day after day amid constant mutual suggestion opened an irregular hole in the wall, large enough to let in a small man in the exact place where there had been before the tiny ventilation holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into McKeehan's apartment, and his first glance found out that the iron spike was indeed plucked from its socket, and left, moreover, another ragged hole into some hollow place behind. But for this McKeehan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbulls, a long oblong ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles. The small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that short oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbulls. That individual looked at it with a puzzled face. What is in there? he asked. McKeehan answered briefly, another cell. But where can the door of it be? asked his companion, even more puzzled. The doors of our cells are at the other end. It has no door, said Evan. In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of the doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity which one has when something horrible is half understood. James Turnbull, said McKeehan in a low and shaken voice, these people hate us more than nero-hated Christians and fear us more than any man feared nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order to capture us and wipe us out, in order to kill us. And they have killed us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though this hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte and more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet it is not we whom the people of this place hate most. A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine. He had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it was not a pretty sort of superstition either. There is another man more fearful and hateful, went on McKeehan in his low monotone voice, and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how they did it, for he was led in by neither door nor window, nor lowered through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate have been part of some damp machinery for walling him up. He is there. I have looked through the hole at him, but I cannot stand looking at him long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move. All Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room. It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two, except that it was doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black A, like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was not painted outside, because this prison had no outside. On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had Madden Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head was ringed with hair of a frosty gray. The figure was draped, both insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a brown flannel dressing gown. An emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor beside it, and the creature had his big gray head cocked at a particular angle of inquiry or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and mystery struck one as comic, if not cock sure. After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called out to the dwarvish thing, in what words heaven knows. The thing got up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge gray and white beard, not unlike the plumage of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to his feet, not that that was very far, and perhaps it was well that it did, proportions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off whenever he moved. One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but this old man's face was so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded with hieroglyphics. The lines of his face were so deep and complex that one could see five or ten different faces besides the real one, as one can see them in an elaborate wallpaper. And yet while his face seemed like a scripture older than the gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue, and startled like those of a baby. They looked as if they had only an instant before been fitted into his head. Everything depended so obviously on whether this buried monster spoke that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He said something or nothing, and then he waited for this dwarvish voice that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did speak and spoke in English with a foreign accent that was neither Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty forefinger and cried in a voice of clear recognition like a child's. That's a hole! He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then he cried with a crow of laughter, and that's a head come through it. The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so much cheerful decision with a body without a brain. Why did they put you in such a place? He asked at last with embarrassment. Good place, yes, said the old man, nodding a great many times and beaming like a flattered landlord. Good shape, long and narrow with a point, like this, and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room in the air. But that's not the best, he added confidentially. Square's very good. I have a nice long holiday and can count them, but that's not the best. What is the best? asked Turnbull in great distress. Spike is the best, said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing. It sticks out. The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. Can't we do anything for you? he said. I am very happy, said the other alphabetically. You are a good man. Can I help you? No, I don't think you can, sir, said Turnbull with rough pathos. I am glad you are contented, at least. The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with a stare extraordinarily severe. You are quite sure, he said. I cannot help you? Quite sure, thank you, said Turnbull with broken brevity. Good day. Then he turned to McKee-in, who was standing close behind him, and whose face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard the whole of the strange dialogue. Curse those cruel beasts, cried Turnbull. They've turned him into an embosil just by burying him alive, his brain's like a pinpoint now. You are sure he is a lunatic, said Evan slowly? Not a lunatic, said Turnbull, an idiot. He just points to things and says that they stick out. He had a notion that he could help us, said McKee-in moodily, and began to pace towards the other end of his cell. Yes, it was a bit pathetic, assented Turnbull, such a thing offering help, and besides, hello, hello, what's the matter? God Almighty guide us all, said McKee-in. He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring quietly at the door, which for thirty days had sealed them up from the sun. Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise, and then he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing about an inch and a half open. He said, began Evan in a trembling voice, he offered, Come along, you fool, shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious energy. I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the world. You pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and it somehow altered the machinery and opened all the doors. Seizing McKee-in by the elbow, he bundled him bodily out into the open corridor, and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened window. All the same, said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary conversation. He did ask you whether he could help you. All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even know what hour of the day it was, and when, turning a corner, they saw the bare tunnel of the corridor and abruptly in a shining square of garden, the grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished gold rather than green. The abrupt opening onto the earth seemed like a hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice in life is it permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside, and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun. As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth, they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babies unborn, of being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth. They were looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden. Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden with an earth-sperning leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. McKee-en, who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent flower colors and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in that cool and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door the black-clad gentleman with the clove and chin smilingly regarding them, and his chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled. McKee-en stood two other doctors, one the familiar doctor quail of the blinking eyes and bleeding voice, the other a more common place but much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short, well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the escape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but their superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack of his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of pursuit. Let them be, he cried, in a voice that cut like a blade of ice, and not only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water. I want no devoted champions, said the cutting voice, even the folly of one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more medieval mummary of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master. Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea. I am there. Wither shall they go from my presence, and wither shall they flee from my spirit. Courage, Dr. Quayle, do not be downhearted. The real days of tyranny are only beginning on this earth. And with that the master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if his laugh was a bad thing for people to see. Might I speak to you a moment, said Turnbull, stepping forward with a respectful resolution, but the shoulders of the master only seemed to take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away. Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the two other doctors and said harshly, What in snakes does he mean, and who are you? My name is Hutton, said the short stout man, and I am, well, one of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment. My name is Turnbull, said the other. I am one of those whose business it is to tear it to the ground. The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady him. But I don't want to talk about that, he said calmly. I only want to know what the master of this asylum really means. Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the suspicion of a shake in it. I suppose you think that quite a simple question, he said. I think it a plain question, said Turnbull, and one that deserves a plain answer. Why did the master lock us up in a couple of cupboards like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk free in the garden again? I understand, said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, that your complaint is that you are now free to walk in the garden. My complaint is, said Turnbull stubbornly, that if I am fit to walk freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined me, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because he has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements? The young man with the round face looked down for a while and smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing nervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted again and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them. Well, I don't see that I can do any harm to tell you no, he said. You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that the master was bringing up his big scheme. He was getting his bill through Parliament and organizing a new medical police. But, of course, you haven't heard of all that. In fact, you weren't meant to. Heard of all what? asked the impatient inquirer. There's a new law and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even if you did escape now, any policemen would take you up in the next town if you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us. Well, continued Dr. Hutton, the master described before both houses of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake is in supposing insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all human beings. And for practical purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint. We have, therefore, reversed the existing method and people now have to prove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the village constable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel of your coat the small pewter S, which is now necessary to anyone who walks about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours. You mean to say, said Turnbull, that this was what the master of the asylum urged before the House of Commons? Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity. And you mean to say, cried Turnbull with a vibrant snort, that that proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic? The doctor showed his whole row of teeth and a smile. Oh, the assembly calls itself socialist now, he said, but we explained to them that this was a question for men of science. Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together and resumed. But why should your infernal head-medicine man lock us up in separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not the Prime Minister, we're not the House of Lords. He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister, replied Dr. Hutton. He isn't afraid of the House of Lords, but... Well, inquired Turnbull, stamping again. He is afraid of you, said Hutton simply. Why didn't you know? McKeon, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with shaking limbs and shining eyes. He was afraid, began Evan thickly. You mean to say that we... I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over, said Hutton calmly. Most certainly you two were the only people he ever was afraid of. Then he added, in a low but not inaudible voice, except one whom he feared worse and was very deeper. Come away, cried McKeon. This has to be thought about. Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he vanished turned and spoke again to the doctors. But what has got hold of people, he asked abruptly. Why should all England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottingness? Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. As to that also, he replied, I don't want to make you vain. Turnbull swung round without a word and he and his companion were lost in the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special about the scene except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever in the deepening sunset and that there seemed to be many more people, whether patients or attendants, walking about in it. From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn, another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them, having also grizzled hair and an open-flapping crock coat. Both his decisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medical man, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the latter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the man somewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certain that it was someone at whom he had at some time or other looked steadily. It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy. It aroused neither irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reason been of great importance in his life. Turning and returning and making detours about the garden, he managed to study the man's face again and again. A mustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort of face that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull could not remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence. Was the man a long lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had sat opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the man knocked down his own eyeglass with a gesture of annoyance. Turnbull remembered the gesture and the truth sprang up solid in front of him. The man with the mustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police magistrate before whom he and McKeon had once stood on their trial. The magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties, to something connected with the inspection of asylums. Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half-hope. As a magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense, so long as it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin. He went straight up to the magistrate and said, Good evening, Mr. Vane, I doubt if you'll remember me. Cumberland Vane screwed the eyeglass into his scowling face for an instant and then said curtly, but not uncivilly. Yes, I remember you, sir, assault or battery, wasn't it? A fellow broke your window, a tall fellow mixed something, case made rather a noise afterwards. McKeon is the name, sir, said Turnbull respectfully. I have him here with me. A, said Vane very sharply, confound him. Has he got anything to do with this game? Mr. Vane, said Turnbull pacifically, I will not pretend that either he or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient with us and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might, so I am sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were criminals, we were not lunatics in any legal or medical sense, whatever. I am sure you will use your influence for us. My influence, repeated the magistrate with a slight start, I don't quite understand you. I don't know in what capacity you are here, continued Turnbull gravely, but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be here in an important one, whether you are visiting and inspecting the place or attached to it as some kind of permanent legal advisor, your opinion must still— Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of o's. His face was transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not seem specially angry with Turnbull. But Lord bless us and save us, he gasped at length. I am not here as an official at all, I am here as a patient. The cursed pack of rat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits. You, cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis, you lost your wits. In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality, Turnbull almost added, why you haven't got any to lose, but he fortunately remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy. This can't go on, he said positively. Men like McKeehan and I may suffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence. There is only one man who has any influence in England now, said Vane, and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude. Who do you mean? asked Turnbull. I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin, said the other. Is it really true, asked Turnbull, that he has been allowed to buy up and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state? Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. What put the country into such a state? he asked. Why you did, when you were fully enough to agree to fight McKeehan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of England might paint itself pink with white spots. I don't understand, replied Turnbull. Why should you be surprised at my fighting? I hope I have always fought. Well, said Cumberland Vane eerily, you didn't believe in religion you see, so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in your language than most of us wanted to go, no good in just hurting one's mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were right, and really we relied on you. Did you, said the editor of the atheist with a bursting heart, I am sorry you did not tell me so at the time. He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic. The garden of the Madhouse was so perfectly planned and answered so exquisitely to every hour of daylight that one could almost fancy that the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise men of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if this ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset, while the rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours. There was one evening, or late afternoon in particular, which Evan McKeehan will remember in the last moments of death. It was what artists call a daffodil sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to a daffodil. It was of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard of orange, though it might turn quite unconsciously into green. Against it the tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipped and ordered trees were outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints the tops of lavender. A white early moon was hardly traceable upon that delicate yellow. McKeehan, I say, will remember this tender and transparent evening, partly because of its virgin golden silver, and partly because he passed beneath it through a most horrible instant of his life. Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed the oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by seeing McKeehan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with an action he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience of the eccentric humors of this cult. McKeehan fell on the bench, shaking it so that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in dreadful pain of body. That particular run in tumble is typical only of a man who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten by a viper or condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white face of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the Western Highlander troubled by as many tempests as his own West Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the star had gone out, and there was only misery. Yet McKeehan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken by surprise, had not the strength to ask it. They are right, they are right, he cried. Oh, my God, they are right, Turnbull, I ought to be here. He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to choose or check his speech. I suppose I ought to have guessed long ago, all my big dreams and schemes, and everyone being against us, but I was stuck up, you know. Do tell me about it really, cried the atheist, and faced with the furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the affection of a father. I am mad, Turnbull, said Evan, with dead clearness of speech, and leaned back against the garden seat. Nonsense, said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent brutality. This is one of your silly moods. McKeon shook his head. I know enough about myself, he said, to allow for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things, to see them walking solid in the sun, things that can't be there, real mystics never do that, Turnbull. What things? asked the other incredulously. McKeon lowered his voice. I saw her, he said, three minutes ago, walking here in this hell-yard. Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in a monotonous sincerity. I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold, as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them, and opened them again, and she was still there. That is, of course, she wasn't. She still had a little fur around her neck, but her dress was a shade brighter than when I really saw her. My dear fellow, cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, the fancies have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for her. Mistook some other, said McKeon, and words failed him altogether. They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden, a silence that was stifling for the skeptic, but utterly empty and final for the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words, Well, anyhow, if I am mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that. Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to collect his thoughts. The next instant he had all his nerves engaged in the mere effort to sit still. Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky, which was left by the gap in the islex trees, there passed a slim dark figure, a profile and the poise of a dark head, like a bird's, which really pinned him to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got to his feet, and said with a voice of effected insouciance, By George McKeon, she is uncommonly like What? cried McKeon, with the leap of eagerness that was heartbreaking. Do you see her too? And the blaze came back into the center of his eyes. Turnbull's brawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. McKeon sat rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted. He saw the man of flesh approach the beautiful phantom, saw their gestures of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands. He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the corner, and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking with a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled his midnight with frightfully vivid, or desperately half-forgotten features. She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her hand. The moment that he touched it, he knew that he was sane, even if the solar system was crazy. She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing about women. They refuse to be emotional at emotional moments upon some such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But McKeon was in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one, being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events. Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but he vividly remembers that she answered and every line or fluctuation of her face as she said it. Oh, don't you know? She said smiling and suddenly lifting her level-brown eyebrows. Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic. Then she added after a short pause and with a sort of pride, I've got a certificate. Her manner by the matchless social stoicism of her sex was entirely suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of such a standard as he only said, What the devil in hell does all this nonsense mean? Really, said the young lady and laughed. I beg your pardon, said the unhappy young man rather wildly, but what I mean is why are you here in an asylum? The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features and replied with equal dignity. Well, if it comes to that, why are you? The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the other world or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this one. But though they too were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a pretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigor of her badenage. I am locked up in the madhouse, said Evan with a sort of stiff pride, because I tried to keep my promise to you. Quite so, answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly blazing smile, and I am locked up because it was to me you promised. It is outrageous, cried Evan. It is impossible. Oh, you can see my certificate if you like, she replied with some hot toer. Mickey and stared at her and then at his boots and then at the sky and then at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad and the fact rather added to his perplexity. Then he drew nearer to her and said in a dry and dreadful voice. Oh, don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really locked up here as a patient because you helped us to escape? Yes, she said still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it. Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears. The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees. The moon began to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his botanical researches into the structure of the rhododendron, but the lady did not move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again. And when he did, he saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only his face that was wet. Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a pleasure to him. But after three quarters of an hour or so, even the apostle of science began to find rhododendrons a bore and was somewhat relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him to transfer his researches to the equally interesting subject of Holly Hawks, which grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The ostensible cause of his removal was the unexpected reappearance of his two other acquaintances walking and talking laboriously along the way, with the black head bent close to the brown one. Even Holly Hawks detained Turnbull but a short time. Having rapidly absorbed all the important principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he jumped over a flower bed and walked back into the building. The other two came up along the slow course of the path talking and talking. No one but God knows what they said, for they certainly have forgotten. And if I remembered it, I would not repeat it. When they parted at the end of the walk, she put out her hand again in the same well-bred way, though it trembled. He seemed to restrain a gesture as he let it fall. If it is really always to be like this, he said thickly, it would not matter if we were here forever. You tried to kill yourself four times for me, she said unsteadily, and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that after that— Yes, I know, said Evan in a low voice, looking down. After that we belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other until the stars fall. Then he looked out suddenly and said, By the way, what is your name? My name is Beatrice Drake, she replied with complete gravity. You can see it on my certificate of lunacy. CHAPTER 19 The Last Parley Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man left over it, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to embrace him. Don't you know me? almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest spirits. Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do with my yacht? Take your arms off my neck, said Turnbull irritably. Are you mad? The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of laughter. No, that's just the fun of it. I'm not mad, he replied. They've shut me up in this place and I'm not mad. And he went off again into mirth as innocent as wedding bells. Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round gray eyes and said, Mr. Wilkinson, I think, because he could not think of anything else to say. The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity and said, quite at your service, not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland, and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see, they've locked me up here in this garden, and a yacht would be a sort of occupation for an unmarried man. I am really horribly sorry, began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated bewilderment and exasperation. But really, oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment, said Mr. Wilkinson, with much intellectual magnanimity. Well, the fact is, began Turnbull again, and then the phrase was frozen in his mouth, for round the corner came the goat-like face and gleaming eyeglasses of Dr. Quail. Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson, said the doctor, as if delighted at a coincidence. And Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr. Turnbull. Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than of ascent, and the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front teeth. I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment, and with flying frot coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path. My dear sir, he said, in a quite affectionate manner, I do not mind telling you, you are such a very hopeful case, you understand so well the scientific point of view, and I don't like to see you bothered by the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of pure idea fixe that we have. It's very sad, and I am afraid utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody, and the doctor lowered his voice confidentially. He tells everybody that two people have taken his yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent. Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path and called out, oh, I can't stand this, really. I know, I know, said the psychologist mournfully. It is a most melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under a heading by itself. Perdina Vititis, mental inflammation creating the impression that one has lost a ship. Really, he said with a kind of half embarrassed guilt, it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered the only existing case of Perdina Vititis. But this won't do, doctor, said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair. This really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, I took his ship. Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat rustled and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried amiability, why, of course, you did, quite so, quite so. And with courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first labyrinthum tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil and notebook wrote down feverishly. Singular development in the Elantheromaniac Turnbull, sudden manifestation of Rapina Vititis, the delusion that one has stolen a ship, first case ever recorded. Turnbull stood for an instant, staggered into stillness. Then he ran raging round the garden to find McKeeon, just as a husband, even a bad husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious query. He found McKeeon stalking modally about the half-lit garden after his extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy. He did not think. He did not even very definitely desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories, words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist. Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull. McKeeon stepped back a little and the soul in his eyes came very slowly to its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point planted upon his breast, he was in far less danger. For three pulsating seconds after the interruption, McKeeon was in a mood to have murdered his father. And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like bullets. All the fire and fragrance, even of young and honorable love, faded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation. Are you hurt, Turnbull? He asked anxiously. I am dying, answered the other, quite calmly. I am in the quite literal sense of the words, dying to know something. I want to know what all this can possibly mean. McKeeon did not answer, and he continued with osparity. You are still thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible. She is not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, who's yacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when you broke my window. What can it mean meeting all these old people again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream. Then, after a silence, he cried with a rending sincerity. Are you really there, Evan? Have you ever really been there? Am I simply dreaming? Evan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life. No, you good atheist, he cried. No, you clean, courteous, reverent, pious, old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming. You are waking up. What do you mean? There are two states where one meets so many old friends, said McKeeon. One is a dream, the other is the end of the world. And you say, I say this is not a dream, said Evan in a ringing voice. You really mean to suggest, began Turnbull. Be silent, or I shall say it all wrong, said McKeeon, breathing hard. It's hard to explain anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the world, but it's something like that. It's the end of something. All the people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point. What is the point? asked Turnbull. I can't see it, said Evan. It is too large and plain. Then after a silence he said, I can't see it and yet I will try to describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel was not right after all. Three days ago, repeated Turnbull, when and why did this illumination occur? I knew I was not quite right, answered Evan. The moment I saw the round eyes of that old man in the cell. Old man in the cell, repeated his wondering companion. Do you mean the poor old idiot who liked spikes to stick out? Yes, said McKeeon after a slight pause. I mean the poor old idiot who liked spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill you. It would have been a venial sin. I am much obliged, said Turnbull gruffly. You must give me time, said McKeeon quite patiently, for I am trying to tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know. So you see, I confess, he went on with laborious distinctness. I confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way. I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane in his eyeglass. I would confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about love. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad. He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy labor. Then he went on. I am a little mad, but after all it is only a little madness. When hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the elbow, or the ace of spades, the whole world may not have gone wild over my one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves between then and now, but all England has gone into captivity in order to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might positively be called sane. He stopped again and went on with the same air of travelling with the truth. When I saw that, I saw everything. I saw the church and the world. The church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things, tortures and bleeding visions, and blasts of extermination. The church has had her madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. I am the inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad, but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is wicked, even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a provocation. Tortures should be violently stopped, though the church is doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be violently stopped, whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most mad, the church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted tyranny, or the Prussian Sophist who admired it? Which is madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test. The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago, you and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God, I believe we are the sanest. That is the only real question, whether the church is really madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let us see where they end. If the world has some healthy balance other than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world loose, he cried with a savage gesture. Does the world stand on its own end? Does it stand, or does it stagger? Turnbull remained silent, and McKeein said to him, looking once more at the earth, It staggers Turnbull, it cannot stand by itself. You know it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfillment. This garden is the world gone mad. Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time. Yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening seriously. The world has gone mad, said McKeein, and it has gone mad about us. The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little mistake made by the church. That is why they have turned ten counties into a madhouse. That is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this filthy melting pot. Now is the judgment of this world. The prince of this world is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging. There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and the cross. Turnbull for the first time started. The ball end, he repeated. What is the matter with you? asked McKeein. I had a dream, said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, in which I saw the cross struck crooked and the ball secure. I had a dream, said McKeein, in which I saw the cross erect and the ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful difference, that the round world will not consent even to continue round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball. We cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lopsided, and only the cross will stand upright. There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said hesitatingly, has it occurred to you that since those two dreams or whatever they were? Well, murmured McKeein, since then went on Turnbull in the same low voice, since then we have never even looked for our swords. You are right, answered McKeein almost inaudibly. We have found something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I think I know its name. Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. It does not much matter what you call it, he said, so long as you keep out of its way. The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting chin, a chin of which the shape showed clearly even in its shadow upon the path. You see it is not so easy, said McKeein between his teeth. They looked up into the eyes of the master, but looked only for a moment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly heartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony. There was no more sarcasm in it than there was in an iron club. You will be inside the building in three minutes, he said, with pulverizing precision, or you will be fired on by the artillery at all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden. We intend to close it. You will be accommodated indoors. Ah, said McKeein with a long and satisfied sigh, then I was right. And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building. Turnbull seemed to canvas for a few minutes the notion of knocking the master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision. They advanced towards the asylum, they looked up at its rows on rows of windows, and understood the master's material threat. By means of that complex but concealed machinery, which ran like a network of nerves over the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window ledge rows and rows of polished steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern gonnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole countryside, and could have blown to pieces in Army Corps. This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As McKeein and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the patients had already gathered there, as well as the staff of doctors and the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed too and locked behind them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart Turnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as McKeein had said, either the day of judgment or a dream. Within a few feet of him, at one corner of the square of standing people, stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeline Durand. She looked straight at him with a steady smile, which lit up the scene of darkness and unreason, like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face and throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something almost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for a few seconds saw her only. Then the outer edge of his eyesight took in all the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen for weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger Flannel, with the yellow beard that went backward, and the foolish nose and eyes that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shotkeeper whom they had once gagged in his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hurtfordshire rustic. He was talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the Magistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane the Magistrate. There was not only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur. Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind of wild humility. As he did so, he caught sight of another square face behind Madeleine's, a face with long gray whiskers and an austere stare. It was old Durand, the girl's father, and when Turnbull saw him, he saw the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand. He remembered his monotonous everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms merely because they were true. Confound it all, cried Turnbull to himself. If he is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside. He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully, and all the more so because she still smiled at him. McKeehan had already gone across to Beatrice with an air of fright. Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The master was standing in the middle of the room, surveying the scene like a great artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they had never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face, and even then they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the long emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like the face of some infernal actor. This is indeed a cozy party, he said with glittering eyes. The master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything, Monsieur Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking. He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been sent off at a gala. He was saying something like this. You refuse me my half-bottle of May Doc, the drink the most wholesome and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my daughter, which nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretense that it is a fast of the church. You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social contract. If the citizen finds himself dispoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract is annulled. It's no good chattering away, Monsieur, said Hutton, for the master was silent. The place is covered with machine guns. We've got to obey our orders, and so have you. The machinery is of the most perfect, assented Duran, somewhat irrelevantly. Worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory. Oh, I dare say, said Hutton. Duran'd bowed quite civilly and withdrew. A cozy party, resumed the master scornfully, and yet I believe some of you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain it, ladies and gentlemen. I will explain everything. To whom shall I specially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific mind. Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The master seemed only to cough out of pure collightness and proceeded. Mr. Turnbull will agree with me, he said, when I say that we long felt in scientific circles that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the crucifixion. Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent. The master went on smoothly. It was in vain for us to urge that the incident was irrelevant, that there were many such fanatics, many such executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others, we were happy in being able to announce that this alleged crucifixion never occurred at all. Mickey and lifted his head and looked at the master steadily, but Turnbull did not look up. This we found was the only way with all superstitions, continued the speaker. It was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done it with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened, as Mr. Turnbull would say, to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a fictitious light, the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to fight for the virgin. McKeon, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter his easy attitude or his flow of words. Again we urged that this duel was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who bedded on the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the health of a dualist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular excitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on our old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles, the story of McKeon's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There never was any challenge. There never was any man named McKeon. It is a melodramatic myth like Calvary. Not a soul moved saved Turnbull, who lifted his head. Yet there was the sense of a silent explosion. The whole story of the McKeon challenge went on the master, beaming at them all with a sinister benignity, has been found to originate in the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately in our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is the victim of a disease called vinculomania, the impression that one has been bound or tied up. We have also a case of fugacity, Mr. Wimpy, who imagines that he was chased by two men. The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalene Dome started out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued. One poor woman we have with us, he said in a compassionate voice, believes she was in a motor car with two such men. This is the well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched woman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel. Medalline Durand actually professes to have been the subject of the fight between McKeon and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at all, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We have taken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing and proved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here. The master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quail and Hutton, were left standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers. I hope we shall have no more trouble, said Dr. Quail pleasantly enough and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back of a chair. Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and scented at the inquiring doctor with an awful crash, which sent one of its wooden legs loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner. McKee and gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair leg, and rushing on the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed to capture the rebels. McKee and flung back three of them, and Turnbull went over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of something quite fresh and frightful. Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue smoke. Another instant, and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees. The place is on fire, cried Quail, with a scream of indecent terror. Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened? A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. How did the French Revolution happen? He asked. Oh, how should I know, wailed the other. Then I will tell you, said Turnbull. It happened because some people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked. Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the strict principles of the social contract. But McKee and had taken a stride forward, and stood there shaken and terrible. Now, he cried panting, now is the judgment of the world. The doctors will leave this place. The keepers will leave this place. They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine guns at the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only we may see them go. How do you know we shall go? asked Hutton fiercely. You believe nothing, said McKee and simply, and you are insupportably afraid of death. So this is suicide, sneered the doctor, a somewhat doubtful sign of sanity. Not at all. This is vengeance, answered Turnbull quite calmly, a thing which is completely healthy. You think the doctors will go, said Hutton savagely. The keepers have gone already, said Turnbull. Even as they spoke, the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic, and all the officers in subordinates of the asylum rushed away across the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs, not a man or woman moved. We hate dying, said Turnbull with composure, but we hate you even more. This is a successful revolution. In the roof above their heads, a panel shot back, showing a strip of starlit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and fins of a fish swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment, a steel ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft chin of the mysterious master was thrust into the opening. Quail, Hutton, he said, you will escape with me. And they went up the ladder, like automata of lead. Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at last he said in a silken voice, and with a smile of final satisfaction, By the way, I fear I am very absent-minded. There is one man specially whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once I mislaid him on the cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me! And now I've forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning. Very unfortunate, especially for him. And, nodding genially, he climbed into his flying ship. Mickey and stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at Madeleine and followed. Mickey and, with singed hair, smoking garments and smarting hands and face, had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning timber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was impossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or alive. Not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light. The sight of the old half-wit cell was now the heart of a standing forest of fire. The flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their incessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against an orator. Yet through all that deafening density Mickey and thought he heard a small and separate sound. When he heard it, he rushed forward as if to plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow. Let me go! cried Evan in agony. It is the poor old beggar's voice. He's still alive and shouting for help. Listen, said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand. Or else he is shrieking with pain, protested Mickey, and I will not endure it. Listen, repeated Turnbull grimly. Did you ever hear anyone shout for help or shriek with pain in that voice? The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and Mickey and turned a face of puzzled inquiry to his companion. He is singing, said Turnbull simply. A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart of that white hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about playing in the golden hay. Good Lord! cried Turnbull bitterly. There seemed to be some advantages in really being an idiot. Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he called out on chance to the invisible singer. Can you come out? Are you cut off? God help us all, said Mickey, and with a shudder. He's laughing now. At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself. He was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he listened, Mickey's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had come into his head. Fool, come out and save yourself, shouted Turnbull. No, by heaven, that is not the way, cried Evan suddenly. Father, he shouted, come out and save us all. The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night, the topmost flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene, the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of fire. Father, cried Mickey and once more, come out of it and save us all. Turnbull was staring at him as he cried. The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up the long sides of white ships, far out in the German ocean, and picked out, like piercing rubies, the windows in the villages on the distant heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it, they must have seen a strange sight as Mickey and cried out for the third time. That forest of fire wavered and was cloven in the center, and then the whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had sprung up and driven the great fire a slant. Its smoke was no longer sent up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after county like one dreadful banner of defeat. But it was not the wind. Or if it was the wind, it was two winds blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea, so that earth and ocean could be holed, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing divided like a V, a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless, as two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the center of this trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down this little path was walking a little old man, singing as if he were alone in a wood at spring. When James Turnbull saw this, he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he put his other hand on the shoulder of Mackean. His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many skeptical papers and magazines afterwards, he was sadly or sternly rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All his life up to that moment, he had been most honestly certain that materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines precisely in this, that he preferred a fact even to materialism. As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed. Then Madeleine fell on her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little old man went past them, singing down that corridor of flames. They had not looked at his face. When he had passed, they looked up. While the first light of the fire had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with firelight, or striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck upward. For there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its own monstrous-colored smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and right, like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird. Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space, something was flying swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying ship, and everyone knew whose. As they stared upward, the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted, and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up anymore. For the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in the firelight, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor Lucifer had carried with him, the weak and sneering quail, the cold and clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire. They are gone! screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. Oh God, they are lost! Evan put his arm about her and remembered his own vision. No, they are not lost, he said. They are saved! He has taken away no souls with him after all. He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire. His sword and turnbulls fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross. End of chapter 20, recording by Tricia G. End of The Ball in the Cross by G. K. Chesterton