War of the Worlds Page 7

  “Knighthood?” repeated Holmes, smiling and shaking his head. “Well, that is very handsome, but I must decline, with deep gratitude and respect to those who make the offer.”

  “But, my dear Holmes!” cried Sir Percy. “You deserve to be knighted. The title will be conferred upon you by His Majesty the King. Such a title would be gratifying to you and to your friends. It would cause you to emerge from your seclusion, come into high society, as your services and gifts so richly merit.”

  “That is exactly what motivates me to decline.” Holmes’ smile widened. “If I were knighted, people would have to call me Sir Sherlock. Can you think, offhand, of a worse tongue twister? Not at all easy to say, like Sir Percy. No, I say, I shall be better off, and so shall all my acquaintances, if I remain simply Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

  Nine

  When at last the train brought Holmes and Martha into Donnithorpe shortly before midnight, the village inn blazed with lights. Its main hall seemed charged with an excitement that reminded Holmes of that day years before when Hudson, the blackmailing butler, and his scapegrace son Morse had fled the home of Squire Trevor, leaving their master dying of a stroke. Martha’s aunt and uncle gave her a glad welcome, asked questions about the invasion, and blinked uncomprehendingly at Holmes’ guarded replies. Holmes slept well in the small room they gave him. At nine o’clock Monday morning, Martha brought in a tray with bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and tea. As they ate together she gave him more news.

  “The Squire has called a meeting here at the inn to discuss the situation and how to meet it,” she said.

  “Of course, that is my old university friend, Victor Trevor,” said Holmes. “We have not seen each other since he returned from the East Indies to his family estate. Probably I should attend that meeting.”

  He found half a dozen grave-faced men in the inn parlour. Victor Trevor greeted him and introduced him to the rector of the parish church, the postmaster, the sturdy, bearded blacksmith, and other community leaders. At Trevor’s request, Holmes told them what he knew about the Martians but omitted all mention of his government assignment.

  “I say, we must form a volunteer company of defence,” said Trevor when Holmes had finished. “Every able-bodied man in the place. Let each bring what weapon he may have — a sporting rifle, a fowling piece. We shall meet war with war if we must, even die if we must. Die fighting.”

  “Hear, hear!” applauded the blacksmith. “Every one of us is with you, Squire.”

  But Holmes held up his hand.

  “Gentlemen, the regular army has tried to fight and was hopelessly defeated,” he reminded them. “The invaders saw at once how we gave battle and brought that sort of resistance to less than nothing. Their heat-ray weapon wipes out whole crowds at a single flash. It destroys houses and guns like wisps of straw. There is also a rumour of some sort of vapour, called black smoke, that smothers any living thing it touches, like bees smoked from a hive. To try to draw up in ranks against them would be suicidal.”

  “How then would you have us deal with them?” asked Trevor. “Run like sheep before them, and be slaughtered like sheep by them?”

  “As of now I would favour scattering before them, which is not quite the same as running. But they are not here yet, nor near, and I hope for more useful information shortly. Meanwhile, I advocate the gathering of supplies in homes and keeping a close watch to southward.”

  Several looked dubious, but Trevor nodded agreement.

  “Thank you, Holmes, you give us something of a basis on which to plan,” he said. “Let us ponder all these matters, gentlemen, and meet here again at noon.”

  “Telegrams for Mr Holmes,” called a clerk from the door to the front hall.

  Holmes went out and took the messages. He saw at once that they were in a cipher Sir Percy had not given him, and he studied them for a moment to puzzle it out. Then he was aware of Trevor at his elbow, and with Trevor stood a stranger.

  “Holmes, this is Lord John Roxton,” said Trevor. “His name is familiar throughout the whole world of exploration and big-game hunting. He has adventured in every wild and dangerous land on Earth. I consider it fortunate that he is visiting me at Donnithorpe at this time of critical action.”

  Lord John Roxton was tall and lean, not unlike Holmes in figure. His strong features were deeply tanned, and he had gingery hair, a crisp moustache, and a pointed beard. Holmes judged him to be in his mid-thirties.

  “I say, I got here a thought late for your meetin’, and I was outside the door when you spoke, Mr Holmes,” he said without preliminaries. “I’ve heard of you, of course. You’re the big thinker of Scotland Yard.”

  “Not exactly,” said Holmes. “I have never served with the police, although on occasion I have been able to help a trifle.”

  “I see. Well, sir, I’m takin’ the liberty to say that I think action, not talk, is the best ticket here. I plump for that volunteer company of defence, don’t you know. I happen to have some fine long-range rifles — I only came up here for the trout fishin’ with Trevor, but I never travel anywhere without my guns. I could arm several good men who were worth lendin’ such things to.”

  “Your guns might serve against a rhinoceros,” said Holmes, “but the rhinoceros wouldn’t be using the heat-ray or the black smoke.”

  “Now, Mr Holmes,” said Lord John, a touch of irritation coming into his voice, “I agree with you that we’d be fools to meet these Martian devils in the open, try to make a standup fight of it. But we could shikar and stalk, set up ambushes, flankin’ movements and all that. I’ve had such things to do myself, here and there in Asia and Africa, and among man-eatin’ tribes in the South Pacific when they got pressin’ with their attentions. A cool hand and a sure eye are what we need to do the trick.

  That’s the English way, what?”

  “If you heard what I said of their methods when they are opened on with guns,” said Holmes, “you know that I consider any such muster against them as only asking for death.”

  Lord John’s eye glittered. “You seem to think that I’m afraid of death, Mr Holmes,” he said coldly.

  “I think nothing of the sort,” Holmes replied, “nor have you any right to think it of me. Dying in battle may be dramatic, but it does not always win. Surrey and the south of London are full of those who died in battle to no avail. If the Martians should come here, I say that I advocate a retreat before them, but a well-planned retreat that will draw them away from Donni-thorpe and other towns. A fight near any village means it will be destroyed in a flash of the heat-ray.”

  “Retreat,” said Lord John after him. “Retreat where, may I ask?”

  “Into the roughest country hereabouts, where there is cover and the protection of dunes and banks. Whatever the power of the invaders, just now they are few — far too few to occupy all England at present. That gives us some chance, some time to prepare. You, Lord John, will be useful in observing the country here and choosing proper lines for an ordered retirement such as I suggest. Meanwhile, they are not here yet. And they may not come at all.”

  “Pray heaven they do not,” said Trevor, as from a full heart.

  Lord John Roxton raked Holmes with his brilliant eyes.

  “You speak with some penetration, don’t you know,” he said at last. “You have it right. I venture to say that I was more or less going on instinct, had some idea of a last stand of the Scots Greys. But you’ve made me think twice, and thinkin’ twice never yet harmed a fightin’ man. Very well, Mr Holmes, I’ll do as you say — help form the company here, and look out lines of retreat.”

  And he gave Holmes his hard, brown hand.

  Alone in his room again, Holmes studied out the messages and solved the mystery of the code fairly quickly. The news from Sir Percy was of widespread, unreasoning panic throughout London as the invaders had come their terrible way up the Surrey side below the Thames. All organised military resistance in the area was at an end. Nobody could estimate the number of dead. A fourth cy
linder had fallen in Surrey. Chiefs of staff at Birmingham were pondering the chances of reaching it with high explosives to destroy it.

  Holmes sat with the telegrams in his hand, pondering this intelligence. The invaders seemed to be in a position of triumphant conquest in whatever part of England they ranged. Did they plan to exterminate all men? If not, why not? Using the cipher he had just decoded, he wrote out an answer:

  Available facts indicate enemy concentration in relatively small area. invader attention now fixed on London. Six more cylinders on way, doubtless to land on sites chosen by precise instruments on Mars. If arrivals continue to show close pattern in Surrey, localised occupation manifest. Full intentions of Martians may clarify, whether extermination of mankind or exploitation.

  At the village post office, the telegrapher stared at the coded message, but sent it. Holmes returned to the inn and found Martha waiting in the shadowed rose garden behind.

  “You were gone so long,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

  “Little enough of any real consequence, I fear. You haven’t lost faith in me, I hope.”

  “Never that,” said Martha. “Nor must our world lose faith in you.”

  It occurred to Holmes that Challenger would have puffed up importantly had those words been addressed to him.

  He went into the parlour and studied several morning papers. None had come from London, of course. The Norwich and Cambridge journals were crazily printed and gave disjointed accounts of the destruction in the London suburbs. The heat ray and the black smoke were mentioned, but with no explanatory details.

  Martha’s uncle said that train service to Donnithorpe had ceased. “Are any running southward through Langmere?” asked Holmes.

  “Southward, Mr Holmes?” echoed the innkeeper. “Bless you, sir, no train in all these parts even dares point its nose south. The last ones up from London came packed with people like salt herring in a Dutchman’s pail. Those I’ve spoken to, I can’t make aught of their stories. They seem fair stunned by what was going on in London. Nor can I blame them.”

  By evening the inn was crowded with pale, unstrung refugees, and the overflow paid high prices for beds and food in cottages throughout Donnithorpe. Out on the street, Holmes met Dr Fordham and remembered him at once from that visit long ago. Fordham was elderly and plump, with a daunted, sidewhiskered face.

  “I was in London myself, I had planned a pleasant weekend at the theaters,” he said moodily. “Then those. Martians tramped all through town, killing street after street with their black smoke — killing’s the only word for it — and came following on as everyone, myself included, took to running. I was lucky to get home here, jammed aboard a goods train last night.”

  “So far, I have heard only the scantiest reports of the black smoke,” said Holmes. “But if they came following through it, as you say, I daresay it moved at too low an elevation to do them any hurt in their tall machines.”

  “And you are right, Mr Holmes. “They use great blasts of steam to precipitate their gas into black grains, like soot, after it has done its deadly work.”

  “Thank you,” said Holmes. “You have given me some useful information. It shows, first, that the Martians are not really bent on exterminating us, since they nullify their deadly vapour when it has routed opposition; and, second, that steam is a counter-agent, something that perhaps men can use.”

  He sought the post office at once, to wire these observations to Sir Percy Phelps at Birmingham and to his brother Mycroft in Scotland. Back from Mycroft came congratulations for having escaped from London. Reading this reply, Holmes reflected that, if the Martians were occupying London as reported, the black smoke could hardly be rampant there any longer. He wired another promise to Sir Percy that he would make an effort to return and told Martha of that promise as they walked together among the flowers in the garden.

  She clasped his hand in both of hers. He could feel her trembling.

  “Please stay here,” she pleaded, a hint of tears in her blue eyes. “What could I do, alone here without you?”

  “You might pray, perhaps,” he said, speaking cheerfully to comfort her. “Prayer would seem indicated. My time here is not wholly wasted, my dear, but it is my sworn duty to observe the enemy at closer hand than Donnithorpe.”

  Tuesday found him busy interviewing refugees, assessing information and communicating it to Birmingham. Early on Wednesday morning, news arrived at the inn from Cambridge that not one but two cylinders had fallen overnight, one of them somewhere close to Wimbledon in Surrey, the other directly upon Primrose Hill in north-east London, making six arrivals in all. Holmes and Dr Fordham discussed these reports as they ate breakfast together in the inn parlour.

  “But how could two of them strike almost at once?” wondered Fordham, plaintive in his mystification. “We know now that there were ten cylinders shot from Mars, at twenty-four hour intervals. The thing’s downright incomprehensible, Mr Holmes.”

  “My dear Dr Fordham, you sound to me like another medical man, my old friend Dr John H. Watson,” said Holmes, buttering a muffin. “It is always a capital mistake to theorise before one has data, but I think it should be manifest by now that these cylinders are not launched from Mars by anything as simple as a giant gun. They are not mere bullets aimed at a target millions of miles away. The closeness of their earlier landings strongly suggests that they have deliberately concentrated their points of arrival. Undoubtedly they are able to control speed and direction of flight while in space.”

  “But if they have been making their landings in Surrey, why now in London?”

  “That, too, is susceptible of explanation, and helps us to understand their reasoning. The first landings were in relatively open country, where they could quickly estimate their situation and its possible hazards. But by now, with London in their possession, they can come down safely within its limits. Primrose Hill would be a logical point to establish a command post, rising as it does above all surrounding districts in town.”

  Fordham chewed and thought. “I am obliged to say, Mr Holmes, you make all these things sound simple. Simple, that is, after you have explained them to me.”

  “Again you remind me of Watson. I hope he is safe somewhere.” Holmes sipped coffee. “After witnessing only the heat-ray, I deduced a second weapon, which turns out to be the black smoke. What, I now ask myself, will their third device be?”

  “Their third?” Fordham almost squealed.

  “The heat-ray mechanism arrived in the very first cylinder. The black smoke of which you told me was also in use by Sunday, and seems a compact bit of freight, also a practical arrival in any cylinder. But by now, as we are aware, there are six cylinders on Earth. I take leave to wonder if something larger, more complex, might have been brought here in several shipments, to be assembled against us.”

  Fordham sank back in his chair, his sidewhiskers drooping. Trevor entered and came to sit at their table.

  “You look shocked, Dr Fordham,” he said. “Not bad news, I hope.”

  “It’s what Mr Holmes has been saying,” said Fordham. “Now I wait to hear what this terrible new weapon may be.”

  “I hesitate to go into speculation,” said Holmes, “but I would suggest something that flies.”

  Fordham moved so violently in his chair that the dishes clinked before him.

  “A flying-machine? My dear sir, that’s impossible.”

  “Not to the Martians,” said Holmes. “They have already flown through millions of miles, landing at their own time and place. If they can accomplish that, why not a machine that would course over the Earth, spying us out, striking us?”

  “You have seen such a thing?” asked Trevor.

  “Not as yet. I remind you, I said I was going into speculation.”

  Trevor shook his head. “But I came here with an answer to another of your questions, Holmes. A train is being made up, here in Norfolk, to approach London in hopes of gathering refugees. It will stop at Langmere.
Since you seem determined to go, I am ready to drive you there to board it.” He looked earnestly at Holmes. “You are acting with your usual recklessness, I think, but I tell myself that I can only trust your judgement. I learned to do that long ago, when we two were students together at the university.”

  “Thank you for that trust,” said Holmes, rising. “Let’s be off.”

  The refugee train was a long string of cars, but Holmes, wearing a soft hat and a checked cape, was the only one aboard other than the volunteer crew. They chugged down to Cambridge. Holmes heard from men at the station there that the Martians had taken complete possession of London and that some of their hurrying machines had pursued frightened crowds all the way to the sea. What use, he wondered, did these monsters have for men?

  As they trundled on, his thoughts were banished by a baleful shadow above the train. He leaned from the open window to look. Against the cloudless June sky soared a distant round object like a saucer in flight. It made a sweeping turn and glided above them again. The train speeded up and the flying-machine sailed out of sight beyond the horizon.

  Silently he congratulated himself. He had foreseen another weapon, and this could be a terrible one. But foreseeing it gave him new confidence in his reasoning powers.

  The train scraped to a halt at Ware. Its crew fairly sprang out upon the station platform. As Holmes, too, stepped down, several of the men came together, all talking excitedly. The engineer was there, sweaty-faced and wide-eyed, loudly proclaiming that the crew would approach London no closer, that the train would seek a siding, turn itself around and flee northward again.

  “What of your duty to find refugees and bring them back?” Holmes asked him.

  “There’s a plenty of refugees to take on, right here in Ware,” mouthed the engineer, “and I’ve got a wife and nippers at home. No more of that flying thing, sir, not for me. It hung over us like a bloody great hawk, ready to pounce on a poor running hare.”