‘Me?’ said Mary with elaborate sarcasm. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t count. Go if you like.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dr. Pethwick. ‘I’ll be back to tea, I expect.’
Dr. Pethwick went up to London in his shabby everyday clothes, but no sooner had he slipped into his office and locked the door behind him than he proceeded to change into the fine flannel suit, and the silk underclothes and all, taking them out with care from the cupboard into which he had locked them the night before. Donning those clothes had become like a priestly rite to him; he could not now contemplate action taken without that suit and those underclothes; they were like a priest’s vestments or a knight’s armour to him now. Properly dressed, and his old clothes locked away in the cupboard, he proceeded to take the decisive steps. He felt no excitement about it; no additional tension. Decisive though the moment was, it was only one stage in the series of actions he had planned. Dr. Pethwick had the type of mind which will not draw back from an enterprise once begun, nor even contemplate retirement. From the moment when he had entered the Regent Street shop to buy his fine clothes it was as certain as anything can be on earth that he would proceed onwards to this moment and beyond.
The preliminaries took very little time. He unrolled a sheet of drawing-paper and pinned it on the office table. With a compass and a large-scale map of London he made a few simple measurements which resulted in the ruling of a line diagonally across the sheet—very strict accuracy was not essential, for he had a margin of possible error of at least ten per cent at his disposition. The table stood against the wall and to the wall Pethwick pinned another sheet of paper. He produced a crude form of sextant—a protractor and a pendulum made of thread with a weight attached. A further brief calculation resulted in his drawing a sloping line on the vertical paper.
That done, he began to set out on the table the electromagnetic apparatus which he took from the second suitcase in the cupboard. With his long steady fingers he proceeded to make the electrical connections. He took the electric lamp out of its socket, and replaced it with the two-way plug. When finally the connections were complete he began to set the emitter carefully, first for horizontal direction along the pencil line on the table, and then for elevation along the line upon the wall. He ran his mild grey eyes over the apparatus, saw that everything was ready, and then with unhesitating fingers he pressed the switch.
At once the make-and-break began its cheerful chatter; Pethwick carefully turned the adjusting screw until the chatter died away into the merest, tiniest murmur.
The thing was done. The great demonstration was begun. All that Pethwick need do now was to sit down quietly and let history work itself out. Indeed, he tried to do so. He sat in the swivel chair which Mr. Freeman had sold him and tried to compose himself to while away the next six hours. But it was more than even Dr. Pethwick’s nerves could stand. After no more than five minutes he found himself getting up from his chair and pacing about; and two minutes after that he took the smart grey hat and the snappy yellow gloves and went out of his office, leaving his apparatus still at work. He locked the door very carefully behind him.
Chapter Thirteen
Mr. Henry Prodgers was a lorry driver. At the time when Dr. Pethwick was engaged in putting his apparatus in running order at the Hammer Court office, Mr. Prodgers was engaged in driving his lorry containing two tons of cement in sacks to where the new offices were being erected in Finsbury Pavement. The traffic in the City had reached its morning peak. Buses, motor-cars, lorries, were jammed wheel to wheel in the streets. Progress was slow and difficult, and Mr. Prodgers, wrestling with his heavy wheel, had to carry in his mind a very clear mental picture of the length and width of the ponderous vehicle behind him as he wound his way through the press. At one moment, although he found time to snarl at a driver who was taking a chance ‘’Ow long ’ave you ’ad your licence, sonny? Two days?’ he had no leisure to listen to the reply. There was a horse-drawn wagon in front of him, and Mr. Prodgers was keyed up awaiting an opportunity of overhauling this anachronism and gaining a little elbow-room—keeping his four tons of lorry and cargo crawling at one and a half miles an hour was a strain even upon the experienced Mr. Prodgers.
But he was unlucky. As they reached the corner of King William Street and Cheapside, where all the traffic of the City converges, the policeman’s white-sleeved arm went up almost under the horses’ noses. The driver threw himself back upon the reins, and the horses stopped, slipping and plunging upon the glassy surface, while Mr. Prodgers behind him fell forward on clutch and brake and stopped his lorry neatly with the tip of the bonnet six inches behind the tail-board. Philosophically, Mr. Prodgers resigned himself to a long wait while the cross traffic was let through. He took the extinguished half cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and filled his lungs comfortably with smoke, while all round him, beside him, and behind him the checked stream of vehicles piled up against this check to its progress. Mr. Prodgers smoked very much at his ease, surveying the rush and bustle of London life from his high perch in the lorry’s cab. Then suddenly all his ease departed, for a sudden cessation of vibration told him that his engine had stopped, and this unbelievable fact was confirmed by a glance at the oil-pressure gauge.
‘’Ell!’ said Mr. Prodgers.
He pressed his foot on the self-starter button. There was no response whatever.
‘’Ell!’ said Mr. Prodgers again. He opened his door, flung himself down to the ground, and jumped to the starting handle. If he was not ready to move on the instant the policeman dropped his arm he would be in trouble, and he knew it. He flung all his brawny weight upon the starting handle. He wound away with desperation, turning the heavy engine over as if it had been a baby car’s, such was his panic. In this stifling heat the sweat poured in rivers down his face, but there was no response from the engine. As he wound at the handle he heard the clatter of hoofs. The cart in front was on the move—traffic was being let through.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Mr. Prodgers. ‘Bloody, bloody ’ell.’
He had half a minute left in which to get started, if he wanted to avoid prosecution for obstruction. In one last despairing effort he flung himself again at the starting handle, but unavailingly. There was no more life in that engine than there is in a sheep’s carcass in a butcher’s shop. He slowly straightened his back to await philosophically the arrival of the policeman.
But when he stood upright and was at last able to take stock of his surroundings his eyes were rejoiced with a most unusual spectacle. In front of all the motor vehicles which had halted round him in King William Street there were men winding away wildly at the starting handles. Mr. Prodgers momentarily experienced the pleasure which comes of the discovery that one’s misfortunes are shared by others; but the pleasure was immediately forgotten in surprise at the coincidence that a dozen motor vehicles in one place should strike work together. Even as Mr. Prodgers began to marvel at this, realisation came simultaneously to all those others winding starting handles. Everybody straightened themselves up and stared sheepishly at each other. Then some of them even laughed, but the laughter died away as the inevitable policeman came up.
‘Nar then,’ said the constable. ‘Wot d’you think you’re up to? Get a move on quick, or you’ll be on the peg.’
At that one or two of the fainter hearts, or those with bad traffic records, applied themselves—uselessly once more—to the starting handles. But Mr. Prodgers was of sterner stuff; and he understood that lorry of his far better than he understood his wife, for instance. He knew that if it refused to move it must be for some substantial reason.
‘Nothing doing,’ he said, stoically. ‘Tike me nime and me number, and then call the brikedown van.’
By the usual constabulary legerdemain pencil and notebook appeared like magic in the policeman’s hands. Name and number were in process of being jotted down when the policeman’s attention was diverted.
‘Officer,’ said an indignant voice. ‘Officer. Something must
have happened.’
The policeman looked round and found at his elbow an indignant figure in the short-coated and high-hatted uniform of the Stock Exchange.
‘Officer,’ said this individual, hurriedly doing his best to minimise the absurdity of his first obvious remark. ‘All these cars wouldn’t stop like this all together if something hadn’t happened. My car wouldn’t break down.’
A gesture of the stockbroker’s hand indicated a long glittering black saloon a little further back in the press, with a liveried chauffeur standing by the bonnet.
There were murmurs of agreement here and there among the other drivers. The policeman held his pencil suspended over his notebook for a moment, and then put them slowly away into his pocket.
‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got to get you out of the way quick, or there’ll be hell to pay.’
As if to accentuate his words there came, from far down King William Street, a despairing hooting as other drivers broke the law of the land in calling attention to the fact that they were being kept waiting. The policeman looked round him. In Cornhill and Cheapside and Queen Victoria Street and Moorgate Street there was a wild tangle of traffic. Everything—motor-cars, buses, and all—was held up by the traffic waiting to enter or emerge from King William Street. The policeman knew by long experience that the results of even the slightest check to the rush hour traffic were likely to persist for a long time into the day. He foresaw himself being officially hauled over the coals for this business. The inevitable crowd was forming on the pavements; in the City of London the production of a policeman’s notebook summons more men from the earth than ever did the dragon’s teeth. He turned to the drivers:
‘Get yourselves out of this if you can, for Cry’s sake. Push yourselves out by ’and, can’t you? Get over beyond the Bank. I’ll fix it up with the officer on point duty.’
From that moment the traffic arrangements of the City of London collapsed into chaos. All round the Bank of England people were pushing motor-cars. Despite the fact that the usual hundreds of people with nothing obvious to do all fell to and lent willing hands to help, the holding up of the cross traffic to let the crawling vehicles by crammed the streets for half a mile in every direction.
Mr. Prodgers, naturally, could not contemplate the pushing of four tons of lorry and cement by hand. He stood and marvelled instead, while he waited for the van the police had sent for to come and tow him away. But there was more and more to marvel at. When fifty broken-down motor-cars had been laboriously pushed by hand out of the Bank end of King William Street there came pouring up a flood of vehicles which had been waiting down at the London Bridge end. Mr. Prodgers saw a light delivery van, the first of the stream, approaching from behind his lorry. Twenty yards back he suddenly saw it falter in its progress. Mr. Prodgers even noticed the change of expression on the driver’s face. The van rolled forward, ever more slowly, until it came to a complete stop close to the lorry. Mr. Prodgers found a sardonic enjoyment in watching the driver do exactly what he himself had done, and two score other drivers as well—stretch out his foot for the self-starter button, and then, finding the self-starter out of action, hurriedly climb down and apply himself to the starting handle. Other vans and buses came rolling up, and one and all stopped as they neared the end of King William Street. In fact, one minute after the street had been cleared, save for Mr. Prodger’s lorry, King William Street was tightly jammed again with helpless vehicles.
Mr. Prodgers sauntered across to the light van.
‘It’s no go, mate,’ he said to the still-winding driver.
‘What d’you mean?’ answered the driver, looking up at him.
‘Look there,’ said Mr. Prodgers, dramatically, and the driver, following his gesture with his gaze, saw in that instant six other drivers pressing self-starter buttons or winding handles.
‘Coo!’ said the driver.
But the conversation was interrupted, because Mr. Prodgers saw the van which the police had sent for approaching from Cheapside, and he had to hurry away to welcome it. The driver of the breakdown van, escorted by a couple of policemen who held up the traffic, turned his bonnet towards the Bank of England, and then, getting into reverse, proceeded to back into King William Street into a position to tow Mr. Prodgers’ lorry out. Mr. Prodgers saw the back of the van approaching him; he saw the face of the driver peering backwards round the side. Then the breakdown van suddenly lurched and stopped. The driver withdrew his head abruptly, and Mr. Prodgers guessed he was pressing his self-starter. A second or two later Mr. Prodgers saw him emerge and jump round to the front of the van, and Mr. Prodgers instantly guessed that he must be turning his starting handle.
‘It’s something in the hair,’ said Mr. Prodgers to himself, half aloud. ‘It must be something in the hair.’
Chaos ruled again. There were fifty policemen now assembled round the end of King William Street. There were two thousand spectators lining the pavement. Mr. Prodgers conferred with a police inspector and with the team of the breakdown lorry. Mr. Prodgers proudly enunciated his new theory of an atmospheric disturbance.
‘Maybe so,’ said the inspector. ‘One of those cars which wouldn’t go here went all right when they pushed it over into Cheapside. Didn’t seem nothing wrong with it there. What do you think about it?’
This question was addressed to the driver of the light delivery van, who had been displaying prodigies of activity. He had whipped open his bonnet, had ascertained that the petrol was flowing properly, that the jet was not choked, that the carburettor was functioning, and had then turned his attention to the ignition. Shading his eyes with his hat from the strong sunlight he had peered at the points of a sparking plug while his van boy turned the engine over.
‘Not a glimmer. Nothing doing. Mag.’s gone scatty,’ said the van driver.
The experts from the breakdown van concurred.
‘Mag. or no bloody mag.,’ said the inspector, Napoleonically. ‘I’ve got to get this bloody street clear. It’ll take all the bloody day to get the bloody traffic running properly after this. This bloody jam’—he indicated the packed waiting vehicles in King William Street—‘stretches from here over the bloody bridge all the way to St. George’s bloody church.’
The inspector turned away from the little group, his mind made up for him by this burst of eloquence.
‘Here, Marvell,’ he said.
A sweating police sergeant turned towards him.
‘Get down to the Monument,’ said the inspector. ‘Take six—no, ten—men with you. Divert everything there. Nothing more’s to come up King William Street until further orders. Stuff going west’ll have to go up Cannon Street. Send everything else up Gracechurch Street. Get on with it.’
Sergeant Marvell departed, the string of constables with him shouldering their way through the packed crowds.
‘Anyway,’ continued the inspector to himself. ‘Horses haven’t got mags. Where’s a telephone?’
It was by the aid of four horses sent up by a wondering police headquarters that in the end Mr. Prodgers’ lorry was towed away.
Meanwhile, of course, an exasperated clerk of the works on duty at the place where the new offices were in the course of erection in Finsbury Pavement was cursing madly to himself at the non-arrival of the two tons of cement which Mr. Prodgers was supposed to bring up.
The suspension of the building on Finsbury Pavement was only one of the results of Dr. Pethwick’s activities. Those results spread far and wide—the only satisfactory metaphor which can be employed is the old one of the ripples caused by throwing a stone into a pond. Because of what Dr. Pethwick had done, some hundreds of City men were late for their appointments, and even City men’s appointments are of some value. Some hundreds of City messenger boys who stopped to see the fun were late in delivering their messages and those messages were presumably of some value, too. Goods which were urgently expected arrived late. There was delay and muddle and exasperation throughout the City.
&nb
sp; And not only in the City, either. Far out in the suburbs, in Brixton and Homerton, wherever a motor-bus route penetrated after passing through the City, housewives waited in vain for the buses to arrive which would carry them home from their shopping expeditions, while the buses themselves were either being laboriously towed to the company’s repair depots or, jammed wheel to wheel in a never-ending queue, were crawling at the pace of a snail through the over-congested streets into which they had been diverted. In hotels travellers with a train to catch waited in vain for their laundry. In restaurants cooks waited in vain for their chops and steaks. In magazine offices the printers waited in vain for the arrival of the advertisers’ blocks. The City police worked overtime; City clerks whose windows overlooked the tumult did not work at all.
The whole activity of London—of England, in fact—was deranged by Dr. Pethwick’s interference with the traffic. He had chosen his weapon well. Just as a slight pressure on the carotid artery will make a human being dizzy, so did Dr. Pethwick’s pressure on an artery of the City cause equivalent trouble.
Chapter Fourteen
Dr. Pethwick had as a rule little taste for crowds. He was rarely moved by vulgar curiosity; he never dreamt of stopping to join the idle onlookers round a fallen horse or watching men working pneumatic drills. But on that August morning he joined the crowds who seethed round the end of King William Street. His tall lean figure in its elegant suit was to be seen there, making slow progress through the mob. Mr. Prodgers saw him, and the police inspector, but they naturally did not think their troubles were due to this harmless-looking individual who bore all the hallmarks of prosperity and neutrality.
Dr. Pethwick saw a good deal. He saw the breakdown van which had come to tow away Mr. Prodgers’ lorry cease work when it came under the influence of the Klein–Pethwick Effect. He saw the stockbroker’s car—which had coil ignition—start up again in response to a despairing trial by the chauffeur when it had been pushed beyond that influence into Cheapside. For with coil ignition the Klein–Pethwick Effect could only operate while the vehicle was actually in its range. Once the car was removed, the soft iron core of the coil could once more be magnetised by the current from the accumulator circulating round it; a spark could once more pass, and the car could proceed as if nothing had happened. It was only those vehicles with magneto ignition which suffered permanent damage. In these cases the spark had to be produced by the rotation of a coil of wire in a magnetic field due to a permanent magnet, and when the permanent magnet had lost its magnetism the only way to get the vehicles into running order again was to take out the magneto and either re-magnetise the magnet or—what was no dearer—replace the whole instrument with a new one. That was hard luck on the owners of motor vehicles with magneto ignition which came under the influence of the Klein–Pethwick Effect, but Dr. Pethwick felt no concern—at present, anyway—for cases of individual hardship.