/> gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the

world. "Here, at any rate," said I, "I shall find peace and a chance to

work!"



And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all

the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I

had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now

surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in

admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my

disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are

directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business

operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth

among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for

affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to

me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have

brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.



It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that

landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions

there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things

there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me

finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of

everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you

have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only

felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing

for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a

clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to

make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to

my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had

an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I

believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do

outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent

possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed,

got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient

little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set

to work.



I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had

supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a

pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself

lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years'

agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in

hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And

yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs,

and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon--such was

the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but

simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an

eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each

day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have had worse

times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man

indeed, but even for him I hoped.



Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the

clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff

and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet

weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times

the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with

boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine

it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that make up the

present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the

clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if

the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things

gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus

Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are

boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street,

still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand

on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and

officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the

swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now

just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two--and I.

And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round

in a broad curve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree

clumps and the church towers of old medical towns that are following

Lemanis now towards extinction.



That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever

seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on

the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting

sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and

low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And

all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and

canals.



The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it

was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was

struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work

of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.



The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and

against that he came out black--the oddest little figure.



He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality

in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a

cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he

did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It

was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He

gesticulated with his hands and arms, and jerked his head about and

buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing.

And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most extraordinary noise.



There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the

extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun

he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of convulsive

gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no

longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that showed the

relatively large size of his feet--they were, I remember, grotesquely

exaggerated in size by adhesive clay--to the best possible advantage.



This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my play-writing energy

was at its height and I regarded the incident simply as an annoying

distraction--the waste of five minutes. I returned to my scenario. But

when next evening the apparition was repeated with remarkable precision,

and again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not

falling, concentration upon the scenario became a considerable effort.

"Confound the man," I said, "one would think he was learning to be a

marionette!" and for several evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. Then

my annoyance gave way to amazement and curiosity. Why on earth should a

man do this thing? On the fourteenth evening I could stand it no longer,

and so soon as he appeared I opened the french window, crossed the

verandah, and directed myself to the point where he invariably stopped.



He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face

with reddish brown eyes--previously I had seen him only against the

light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment,"

he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is

not asking too much--your moment is up--would it trouble you to

accompany me?"



"Not in the least," said I, placing myself beside him.



"My habits are regular. My time for intercourse--limited."



"This, I presume, is your time for exercise?"



"It is. I come here to enjoy the sunset."



"You don't."



"Sir?"



"You never look at it."



"Never look at it?"



"No. I've watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked at the

sunset--not once."



He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem.



"Well, I enjoy the sunlight--the atmosphere--I go along this path,

through that gate"--he jerked his head over his shoulder--"and round--"



"You don't. You never have been. It's all nonsense. There isn't a way.

To-night for instance--"



"Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I had

already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour, decided

there was not time to go round, turned--"



"You always do."



He looked at me--reflected. "Perhaps I do, now I come to think of it. But

what was it you wanted to speak to me about?"



"Why, this!"



"This?"



"Yes. Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise--"



"Making a noise?"



"Like this." I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me, and it was

evident the buzzing awakened distaste. "Do I do that?" he asked.



"Every blessed evening."



"I had no idea."



He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. "Can it be," he said, "that I

have formed a Habit?"



"Well, it looks like it. Doesn't it?"



He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a

puddle at his feet.



"My mind is much occupied," he said. "And you want to know why! Well, sir,

I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do these things, but I

did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is just as you say;

I never have been beyond that field.... And these things annoy you?"



For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. "Not annoy,"

I said. "But--imagine yourself writing a play!"



"I couldn't."



"Well, anything that needs concentration."



"Ah!" he said, "of course," and meditated. His expression became so

eloquent of distress, that I relented still more. After all, there is a

touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don't know why he hums on

a public footpath.



"You see," he said weakly, "it's a habit."



"Oh, I recognise that."



"I must stop it."



"But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no business--it's something

of a liberty."



"Not at all, sir," he said, "not at all. I am greatly indebted to you. I

should guard myself against these things. In future I will. Could I

trouble you--once again? That noise?"



"Something like this," I said. "Zuzzoo, zuzzoo. But really, you know--"



"I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdly

absent-minded. You are quite justified, sir--perfectly justified. Indeed,

I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I have already

brought you farther than I should have done."



"I do hope my impertinence--"



"Not at all, sir, not at all."



We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a good

evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways.



At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had changed

remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former

gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I

watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had kept to my own

business, I returned to my bungalow and my play.



The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much

in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic

character he might serve a useful purpose in the development of my plot.

The third day he called upon me.



For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made

indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came to

business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow.



"You see," he said, "I don't blame you in the least, but you've

destroyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I've walked past here for

years--years. No doubt I've hummed.... You've made all that impossible!"



I suggested he might try some other direction.



"No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I've inquired.

And now--every afternoon at four--I come to a dead wall."



"But, my dear sir, if the thing is so important to you--"



"It's vital. You see, I'm--I'm an investigator--I am engaged in a

scientific research. I live--" he paused and seemed to think. "Just over

there," he said, and pointed suddenly dangerously near my eye. "The house

with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And my circumstances are

abnormal--abnormal. I am on the point of completing one of the most

important--demonstrations--I can assure you one of the most important

demonstrations that have ever been made. It requires constant thought,

constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon was my brightest

time!--effervescing with new ideas--new points of view."



"But why not come by still?"



"It would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should think of

you at your play--watching me irritated--instead of thinking of my work.

No! I must have the bungalow."



I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughly

before anything decisive was said. I was generally ready enough for

business in those days, and selling always attracted me; but in the first

place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a good price

I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner

got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, well--undischarged.

It was clearly a business that required delicate handling. Moreover,

the possibility of his being in pursuit of some valuable invention also

interested me. It occurred to me that I would like to know more of this

research, not with any dishonest intention, but simply with an idea

that to know what it was would be a relief from play-writing. I threw

out feelers.



He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly

under way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man long

pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. He talked for

nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of

listening. But through it all there was the undertone of satisfaction one

feels when one is neglecting work one has set oneself. During that first

interview I gathered very little of the drift of his work. Half his words

were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he illustrated one or two

points with what he was pleased to call elementary mathematics, computing

on an envelope with a copying-ink pencil, in a manner that made it hard

even to seem to understand. "Yes," I said, "yes. Go on!" Nevertheless I

made out enough to convince me that he was no mere crank playing at

discoveries. In spite of his crank-like appearance there was a force about

him that made that impossible. Whatever it was, it was a thing with

mechanical possibilities. He told me of a work-shed he had, and of three

assistants--originally jobbing carpenters--whom he had trained. Now,

from the work-shed to the patent office is clearly only one step. He

invited me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took care, by a

remark or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalow

remained very conveniently in suspense.



At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call.

Talking over his work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. It

was not often he found such an intelligent listener as myself, he mingled

very little with professional scientific men.



"So much pettiness," he explained; "so much intrigue! And really, when one

has an idea--a novel, fertilising idea--I don't want to be uncharitable,

but--"



I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash

proposition. But you must remember, that I had been alone, play-writing in

Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction for his ruined walk still

hung about me. "Why not," said I, "make this your new habit? In the place

of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the bungalow.

What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have always

done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that's over--you can't get

things back as they were. But why not come and talk about your work to me;

use me as a sort of wall against which you may throw your thoughts and

catch them again? It's certain I don't know enough to steal your ideas

myself--and I know no scientific men--"



I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing, attracted him. "But

I'm afraid I should bore you," he said.



"You think I'm too dull?"



"Oh, no; but technicalities--"



"Anyhow, you've interested me immensely this afternoon."



"Of course it would be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one's ideas

so much as explaining them. Hitherto--"



"My dear sir, say no more."



"But really can you spare the time?"



"There is no rest like change of occupation," I said, with profound

conviction.



The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. "I am already greatly

indebted to you," he said.



I made an interrogative noise.



"You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming," he

explained.



I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned away.



Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must

have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former fashion.

The faint echo of "zuzzoo" came back to me on the breeze....



Well, after all, that was not my affair....



He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered

two lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an

air of being extremely lucid about the "ether" and "tubes of force," and

"gravitational potential," and things like that, and I sat in my other

folding-chair and said, "Yes," "Go on," "I follow you," to keep him

going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think he ever

suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments when I

doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was resting from

that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me clearly for a

space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of them. Sometimes my

attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and stare at

him, wondering whether, after all, it would not be better to use him as a

central figure in a good farce and let all this other stuff slide. And

then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit.



At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large and

carelessly furnished; there were no servants other than his three

assistants, and his dietary and private life were characterised by a

philosophical simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vegetarian, and all

those logical disciplinary things. But the sight of his equipment settled

many doubts. It looked like business from cellar to attic--an amazing

little place to find in an out-of-the-way village. The ground-floor rooms

contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouse and scullery boiler had

developed into respectable furnaces, dynamos occupied the cellar, and

there was a gasometer in the garden. He showed it to me with all the

confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. His seclusion

was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to

be the recipient.



The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of "handy-men"

from which they came. Conscientious if unintelligent, strong, civil, and

willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and all the metal work, had

been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an

ex-jobbing gardener, and now general assistant. They were the merest

labourers. All the intelligent work was done by Cavor. Theirs was the

darkest ignorance compared even with my muddled impression.



And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes a

grave difficulty. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attempt to

set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which

his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader

but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would

bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of mathematical

physics in the country. The best thing I can do therefore is, I think to

give my impressions in my own inexact language, without any attempt to

wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim.



The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a substance that should be

"opaque"--he used some other word I have forgotten, but "opaque" conveys

the idea--to "all forms of radiant energy." "Radiant energy," he made me

understand, was anything like light or heat, or those Rontgen Rays there

was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi,

or gravitation. All these things, he said, radiate out from centres, and

act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term "radiant energy." Now

almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy.

Glass, for example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so

that it is useful as a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light, but

blocks heat completely. A solution of iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the

other hand, completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. It

will hide a fire from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals

are not only opaque to light and heat, but also to electrical energy,

which passes through both iodine solution and glass almost as though they

were not interposed. And so on.



Now all known substances are "transparent" to gravitation. You can use

screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical

influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can

screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut

off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational

attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say.

Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I

could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He

showed me by calculations on paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or

Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of those great

scientific people might have understood, but which simply reduced me to a

hopeless muddle, that not only was such a substance possible, but that it

must satisfy certain conditions. It was an amazing piece of reasoning.

Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be impossible to

reproduce it here. "Yes," I said to it all, "yes; go on!" Suffice it for

this story that he believed he might be able to manufacture this possible

substance opaque to gravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and

something new--a new element, I fancy--called, I believe, helium, which

was sent to him from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown

upon this detail, but I am almost certain it was helium he had sent him

in sealed stone jars. It was certainly something very gaseous and thin.

If only I had taken notes...



But then, how was I to foresee the necessity of taking notes?



Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the

extraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise a

little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the haze

of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a

play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I had

interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questions that

would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstanding into

which he dropped his daily exposition. But no one reading the story of it

here will sympathise fully, because from my barren narrative it will be

impossible to gather the strength of my conviction that this astonishing

substance was positively going to be made.



I do not recall that I gave my play an hour's consecutive work at any time

after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things to do. There

seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff; whichever way I tried I

came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one wanted to lift a

weight, however enormous, one had only to get a sheet of this substance

beneath it, and one might lift it with a straw. My first natural impulse

was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and all the material

and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every

conceivable form of human industry. The chance that had brought me into

the very birth-chamber of this new time--it was an epoch, no less--was

one of those chances that come once in a thousand years. The thing

unrolled, it expanded and expanded. Among other things I saw in it my

redemption as a business man. I saw a parent company, and daughter

companies, applications to right of us, applications to left, rings and

trusts, privileges, and concessions spreading and spreading, until one

vast, stupendous Cavorite company ran and ruled the world.



And I was in it!



I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I

jumped there and then.



"We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I

said, and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this,

you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your fourth

labourer to-morrow."



He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile.

Rather, he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. "But do you

really think--?" he said. "And your play! How about that play?"



"It's vanished!" I cried. "My dear sir, don't you see what you've got?

Don't you see what you're going to do?"



That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn't. At first I

could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inkling of an

idea. This astonishing little man had been working on purely theoretical

grounds the whole time! When he said it was "the most important" research

the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories,

settled so much that was in doubt; he had troubled no more about the

application of the stuff he was going to turn out than if he had been a

machine that makes guns. This was a possible substance, and he was going

to make it! V'la tout, as the Frenchman says.



Beyond that, he was childish! If he made it, it would go down to posterity

as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait

given away as a scientific worthy with Nature, and things like that. And

that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world

as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened

that I had come along. And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one

or two other little things these scientific people have lit and dropped

about us.





When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said, "Go

on!" I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty.

I tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in the

matter--our duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assured him we

might make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied,

we might own and order the whole world. I told him of companies and

patents, and the case for secret processes. All these things seemed to

take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A look of perplexity came

into his ruddy little face. He stammered something about indifference to

wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no

good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort of man I was, and

that I had had very considerable business experience. I did not tell him

I was an undischarged bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary,

but I think I reconciled my evident poverty with my financial claims. And

quite insensibly, in the way such projects grow, the understanding of a

Cavorite monopoly grew up between us. He was to make the stuff, and I was

to make the boom.



I stuck like a leech to the "we"--"you" and "I" didn't exist for me.



His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but

that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. "That's all right,"

I shouted, "that's all right." The great point, as I insisted, was to get

the thing done.



"Here is a substance," I cried, "no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship

can dare to be without--more universally applicable even than a patent

medicine. There isn't a solitary aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand

possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of

avarice!"



"No!" he said. "I begin to see. It's extraordinary how one gets new points

of view by talking over things!"



"And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!"



"I suppose no one," he said, "is absolutely averse to enormous wealth.

Of course there is one thing--"



He paused. I stood still.



"It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after

all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but

a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be some little

hitch!"



"We'll tackle the hitch when it comes." said I.