The Poison Belt | Page 5

as one which can be
disregarded, but one who like myself is possessed of the deeper
intelligence of the true philosopher will understand that the possibilities
of the universe are incalculable and that the wisest man is he who holds
himself ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious example, who
would undertake to say that the mysterious and universal outbreak of
illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as having broken
out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no connection with
some cosmic change to which they may respond more quickly than the
more complex peoples of Europe? I throw out the idea for what it is
worth. To assert it is, in the present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it,

but it is an unimaginative numskull who is too dense to perceive that it
is well within the bounds of scientific possibility.
"Yours faithfully, "GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.
"THE BRIARS, ROTHERFIELD."
"It's a fine, steemulating letter," said McArdle thoughtfully, fitting a
cigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a holder. "What's
your opeenion of it, Mr. Malone?"
I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the subject at
issue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had just
been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the office,
and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured spectral bands
which bear a general resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and
ambitious cricket club. He pointed out to me that there were certain
black lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant colours
extending from the red at one end through gradations of orange, yellow,
green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other.
"Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines," said he. "The colours are
just light itself. Every light, if you can split it up with a prism, gives the
same colours. They tell us nothing. It is the lines that count, because
they vary according to what it may be that produces the light. It is these
lines that have been blurred instead of clear this last week, and all the
astronomers have been quarreling over the reason. Here's a photograph
of the blurred lines for our issue to-morrow. The public have taken no
interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of Challenger's in the
Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking."
"And this about Sumatra?"
"Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a sick nigger
in Sumatra. And yet the chiel has shown us once before that he knows
what he's talking about. There is some queer illness down yonder, that's
beyond all doubt, and to-day there's a cable just come in from
Singapore that the lighthouses are out of action in the Straits of Sundan,

and two ships on the beach in consequence. Anyhow, it's good enough
for you to interview Challenger upon. If you get anything definite, let
us have a column by Monday."
I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my new
mission in my mind, when I heard my name called from the
waiting-room below. It was a telegraph-boy with a wire which had
been forwarded from my lodgings at Streatham. The message was from
the very man we had been discussing, and ran thus:--
Malone, 17, Hill Street, Streatham.--Bring oxygen.--Challenger.
"Bring oxygen!" The Professor, as I remembered him, had an
elephantine sense of humour capable of the most clumsy and unwieldly
gambollings. Was this one of those jokes which used to reduce him to
uproarious laughter, when his eyes would disappear and he was all
gaping mouth and wagging beard, supremely indifferent to the gravity
of all around him? I turned the words over, but could make nothing
even remotely jocose out of them. Then surely it was a concise
order--though a very strange one. He was the last man in the world
whose deliberate command I should care to disobey. Possibly some
chemical experiment was afoot; possibly----Well, it was no business of
mine to speculate upon why he wanted it. I must get it. There was
nearly an hour before I should catch the train at Victoria. I took a taxi,
and having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made for
the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in Oxford Street.
As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths emerged
from the door of the establishment carrying an iron cylinder, which,
with some trouble, they hoisted into a waiting motor-car. An elderly
man was at their heels scolding and directing in a creaky, sardonic
voice. He turned towards me. There was no mistaking those austere
features and that goatee beard. It was my old cross-grained companion,
Professor Summerlee.
"What!" he