第 11 页

Holmes drew back, well inside the broken door. The man walked toward him with swift, heavy purpose. Holmes took several steps more, to the center of the barroom floor. When the man came in, Holmes recognized him at once.

"As I live, it is Morse Hudson," he said. "Years since, I was at your shop in Kennington Road, tracing the Six Napoleons. At that time, I told you aside that you had best shut up business and vanish, like your unhappy father. And again, last December, we met and I gave you another friendly warning. Where may you be lodging now?"

"Never you mind where I lodge," sniffed Hudson. His short, broad body was dressed in filthy clothes. His gray hair bristled untidily and his face flamed red. In one hand he poised his weapon, an old basket-hilted saber. He sneezed violently.

"Yes," he muttered rheumily, "I've been following you about, ever since I saw you come back to London. Earlier today someone was with you and I stayed out of sight. Now we are alone, face to face, and you're going to tell me where Martha is—Martha, my wife."

" 'Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes,' " quoted Holmes mockingly. "You have a very bad cold, Hudson. If Dr. Watson were here, he could prescribe for you. But as for Martha, I can tell you roundly that she wants never to see you or hear your name again. She is where you cannot follow or find her."

Hudson trembled all over, as with pent rage. "I'll make you tell me," he said, and took a shambling step forward. The saber rose threateningly. "No, Holmes, don't reach for a pocket."

"Oh, I am not armed. Reflect, Hudson; if you should kill me, you'd never find Martha."

"I'll find her." Hudson's breath rattled as he spoke. "She is my lawful wife, I say, and I love her—"

He broke off, his voice dying away. He took a deep breath.

"If you loved her, you demonstrated your love most strangely."

"I did love her, and I love her still. She loved me, too. She married me."

"Martha was only a trusting girl at Donnithorpe. And you left her, without one word of farewell." Holmes watched the saber in Hudson's hand, ready for any move to attack.

"My father begged me to come with him, to help him escape," Hudson burst out. "I didn't have any other choice."

"Yes." Holmes saw the saber make a quivering motion. "You fled with your father when he was unmasked as an extortionist and a former pirate. If the law should be consulted, those things would weigh against him and against you. You sacrificed Martha's love for you. You abrogated it, and she has nothing but contempt for you now."

"Words, words," mouthed Hudson. "Why do you speak of the law? There is no law any more. You and I shall settle this business alone!"

"Not quite alone, I suspect," said Holmes evenly. "Someone else is coming this way to join us—or something. Hark!"

Something clanked outside, clanked again. The noise grew louder as Holmes spoke.

"I daresay it is a Martian fighting-machine," said Holmes. "I was careful as I came along this street, but you were too intent on following me and making your threats. What if an invader has spied you and is coming after you?"

Clank, clank, just outside the building.

"That's nothing," cried Hudson wildly. "An awning, creaking in the wind. Your tricks can't make me afraid. Tell me where Martha is!"

He took another heavy step, the saber whipped up high. Holmes seized a bar stool. Hudson cut savagely at him, and the saber's edge bit deeply into the wooden seat of the stool as Holmes warded off the blow. At that moment, there was a sudden heavy crash outside.

The windows and the door drove violently inward in a clatter of fragments.

Dropping the stool, Holmes slid quickly backward toward a rear door that stood partially open. Hudson wheeled, just as a loud jangling crack and hum sounded through the barroom and the domed superstructure of a fighting-machine lowered itself into view among the wreckage of glass and broken wood.

Like a shadow, Holmes moved through that open rear door. He went down four or five dark stairs inside and turned again to look into the barroom.

Hudson shrieked a curse. A tentacle, gleaming darkly, came writhing toward him. He ran half a dozen paces across the floor and made a desperate slash with the saber. Its edge glanced from the tentacle with a metallic clang, and it fell from his hand to rattle upon the floor.

Hudson screamed. The tentacle had snapped two coils around his body, swift as thought, like a python seizing a prey. Hudson struggled and screamed again. His captor lifted him effortlessly and bore him away outside.

Holmes tiptoed down the rest of the stairs, his hand on the wall to support him. Small windows gave a faint wash of light in the cellar. From the barroom overhead came tappings, scrapings, a tinkling crash of glass or crockery. Having secured Hudson, the invader had reached back its tentacles to search for food, the sort of food mankind ate. Holmes stood like a statue. At last the heavy humming clank resumed, like the fall of mighty feet. The invader was departing.

Up the stairs he headed again, and to the smashed front of the shop. The gigantic enemy stood hardly a block away. Its cowl turned from side to side. It swung around and came rushing back to the shop. Holmes faintly glimpsed a steel basket on the monster's back, and a struggling figure inside—Hudson.

He raced back through the shop and down into the cellar. As he ran, he heard a heavy booming sound like an explosion, as though the whole front of the building had been driven in. The floor above him shook with the crash of broken lumber and masonry.

Then, silence again. If the monster had meant to capture him, too, it was defeated by the violence of its own attack on the building. The whole structure must have collapsed, trapping him in the cellar.

Moving silently, he explored the dark basement, by what light the window gave. This was a stone-flagged storage space. There were kegs of what seemed to be salt fish, and crates of dried vegetables; and, on a side shelf, some tinned and potted delicacies. He stuffed the great pockets of his coat with tins of lobster, sardines, tongue, liver pate. Now to get out again—but not the way he had come.

For that invader who had taken Hudson might still be in view of the smashed front door. Holmes moved as quietly as possible to a coal bin at the rear of the cellar. A square trap showed above it. He climbed upon the coal, shoved the trap upward, and climbed through. He found himself emerging upon a paved court, with a plank roof overhead and a narrow alleyway beyond.

He prowled across and through a fenced area opposite the back door of a haberdasher's. It was locked, but he produced a pick and expertly sprung the catch. On through he went, to the front. No sign of lurking menace in the street, nor anywhere all the way home.

12

In the morning he came out again to observe, first from the top of his own building, then from the parapet of Camden House, looking through powerful field glasses. For some hours he probed the distances of London, clear to see in all directions now with the smoke of industry blown away. Once or twice he heard remote siren voices, but he saw no movement of the enemy except miles away to the northeast. He considered, and this time discarded, a scouting adventure toward Primrose Hill.

Again that night he lighted no lamp, but he brought out his violin and played softly to himself to help his thoughts, the composition that Martha had remembered and liked. Then he made more notes to add to his sheaf, until it was too dark to see the page.

On Sunday morning he wakened to remind himself that the tenth and last of the cylinders from Mars must have found its landing place on earth overnight. But again, there were no menacing sounds of machines outside his windows. Holmes studied the case on the mantelpiece that for years had held his hypodermic needle, studied the bottles of cocaine and morphine, so long unused. But he felt no impulse to take any such stimulant now, not with a problem itself so stimulating, so energizing, that it brought out the best in him. He pondered the mental processes of the invaders. He had been wont to say, whimsically, that he himself was principally a brain, that the rest of his body was no more than an appendage. That brain of his might not be despicable in comparison with those of his adversaries.

After a while, he went out and down to steal along Baker Street, almost all the way to Regent's Park with its shadowing trees. Primrose Hill and enemy head-quarters lay beyond, no more than a mile or so. As he lounged within a doorway to estimate the situation, a prolonged cry rang out above the treetops of Regent's Park, and Sherlock Holmes listened.

That cry was not so strident, not so dominating, this time. It sounded like a true voice, not a metallic note, and it seemed pleading, even troubled. Holmes gazed at the trees of the park. Above and away from them hovered a thread of a paler green color, the vapor the invaders emitted from their mechanical devices. It hung there in place. Whatever gave it form did not move. Again rose the plaintive cry, almost as though it begged for compassion.

Holmes frowned over the mystery. After several more moments he headed back home again, as circumspectly as he had come forth. The cry sounded no more behind him.

In his sitting room, he glanced at his watch. It was nearly noon, and he would do well to eat something. As before, he boiled water to make tea, while he opened a box of cracknels and two tins of choice Italian sardines. He partook of these things sparingly, then sat down in his armchair, his knees drawn up and his fingertips together, to rationalize what had happened and what still would happen.

The invaders apparently patrolled London less freely. Their feet fell with heavy impact on the pavements, but their hold on the city seemed less arrogantly sure. That information he had sent to Birmingham—and by now Hopkins must have reached there—would help. So would later findings—if he could manage some way of sending them—help form new policies to help mankind deal with its danger.

The red weed had given him a clue. It offered evidence to replace conjecture. Overwhelmingly swift in its growth, yet it perished almost as swiftly, fell to pieces, and washed away in the water. It could not face the conditions earth imposed for survival. Might this analogy be applied to the masters of those machines with their heat-rays and black smoke?

Very likely.

Holmes reflected deeply on certain aspects of world history, in which this race or that had been assailed by deadly plagues. Stalwart Indian warriors, for instance, had caught measles from white frontiersmen in America and had died by whole tribes from what Europe considered a mild childhood disorder. On South Pacific islands, splendid physical specimens of native races had perished from nothing more deadly than the common cold. Their systems had not been conditioned to resist it, and it had destroyed them.

Morse Hudson had been sick with a cold when he was snatched away from before Holmes's very eyes by the tentacle of an invader. Whatever they did with Hudson, what would they do with, or against, his disease?

What could they do?

Flying from Mars, they had assembled here in conquered London. If a plague sprang up among them, none would escape it. Those fifty invaders would suffer and languish, would perish. Sherlock Holmes felt suddenly certain of that.

Outside the open window, a bird sang. Holmes's saturnine face relaxed as he listened. He wished he had a companion with whom to discuss these concepts. Not that he wished Martha here, he was grateful that she was a comparatively safe distance apart from London. But it was too bad that Moriarty had been a menace, to be killed in that grapple at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes had overcome him by Oriental wrestling, what his Oriental coach had called baritsu, or jiu-jitsu, or judo. It used an opponent's strength against him; let his fierce overconfident aggression channel itself into a headlong fall to disaster. The same thing might happen now, if man could be found to apply the baritsu principle and not collapse themselves in unreasoning panic.

Had Moriarty been an ally, he would have had the mind and courage to help. Challenger, if he had survived the invaders' assault, might yet join Holmes and help to plan a campaign. But the man Holmes wished for above all others was loyal, dependable Watson, wherever he might be.

The lean face smiled. How often Holmes had teased Watson about not understanding the science of deduction. As a joke, that was all very well, and Watson took it in good part. But Watson was a scientist himself, would grasp and help rationalize this proposition of earthly diseases striking the invaders. He would see that, even if the first battles had been lost, the war was not lost.

For this was not simply a war of humanity against strangers from beyond space, it was a true War of the Worlds. Mother Earth herself would prevail against these unbidden, unwanted intruders.

Watson? Was he still alive? Would he come home again?

Holmes took up his cherrywood pipe and bent down to fill it with tobacco from the Persian slipper beside his chair.

The door opened and Watson stumbled in.

III

GEORGE E. CHALLENGER VERSUS MARS

by Edward Dunn Malone

Friday's twilight was falling over West Kensington when Challenger came home to Enmore Park. He lumbered in, slamming the door so fiercely that the whole house vibrated. Little Mrs. Challenger hurried into the hall to meet him.

"Foolishness on every hand, arrant foolishness that brought disaster at Woking," he erupted before she could question him. "The Martians came out of their cylinder and struck down a whole crowd of people who came too close."

"Thank heaven you have escaped, George," his wife quavered.

"They would not listen to me," he went on angrily. "I came there with the one device that would have served, this crystal egg." From a side pocket of his tweed jacket he rummaged the thing, a blue light shining from it as he held it out. "I told Stent, the Astronomer Royal, and his stupid friend Ogilvy that it had power to communicate with those creatures—that I had seen them by its agency, and that they certainly must have seen me. I pleaded with the two fools, earnestly, eloquently!" His great voice rose to a roar. "And they? They brushed me aside, like a thing of no account, ignored my warnings of manifest danger, and formed a party under a white flag."