When Worlds Collide Read online

  Yet Eve was not the sort who preferred “intellectual” men; intellectualism, as such, immensely bored her. She liked the outright and vigorous and “normal.” She liked Tony Drake; and Tony, knowing this, was more than baffled by her attitude to-night. An emotional net seemed to have been stretched between them, through which he could not quite reach her; what the substance of the net was, he could not determine; but it balked him when, as never before, he wanted nearness to her. He believed her when she told him that her tantalizing abstraction was not because of another man. Then, what was its cause?

  Tony was drawn from his reverie by the appearance of Douglas Balcom, senior partner of his firm. His presence here surprised Tony. No reason why old Balcom should not drop in, if he pleased; but the rest of the guests were much younger.

  Balcom, halting beside Tony, reflected the general discontent of the day by waving at the city and murmuring: “In the soup. Everything’s in the soup; and now nobody cares. Why does nobody care?”

  Tony disagreed, but he deferred to Balcom by saying: “It seems to me, a lot of people care.”

  “I mean nobody who’s in the know cares. I mean the four or five men who know what’s going on—underneath. I mean,” particularized old Balcom, “John Borgan doesn’t care. Did you see him to-day?”

  “Borgan? No.”

  “Did you hear of his buying anything?”

  “No.”

  “Selling anything?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it.” Balcom thought out loud for a while. Tony listened. “Borgan’s the fourth richest man in America; and normally the most active, personally. He’ll be the richest, if he keeps up. He wants to be the richest. Oil—mines—rails—steel—shipping—he’s in everything. He’s only fifty-one. To my way of thinking, he’s smarter than anyone else; and this looks like a market—superficially—which was made for Borgan. But for two weeks he’s gone dead. Won’t do a thing, either way; takes no position. Paralyzed. Why?”

  “He may be resting on his oars.”

  “You know damn’ well he isn’t. Not Borgan—now. There’s only one way I can explain; he knows something damned important that the rest of us don’t. There’s an undertone—don’t you feel it?—that’s different. I met Borgan to-day, face to face; we shook hands. I don’t like the look of him. I tell you he knows something he’s afraid of. He did a funny thing, by the way, Tony. He asked me: ‘How well do you know Cole Hendron?’

  “I said, ‘Pretty well.’ I said: ‘Tony Drake knows him damn’ well.’ He said: ‘You tell Hendron, or have Drake tell Hendron, he can trust me.’ That’s exactly what he said, Tony—tell Hendron that he can trust N. J. Borgan. Now, what the hell is that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tony, and almost added, in his feeling of the moment: “I don’t care.” For Eve was returning.

  She slipped away from her partner and signaled to Tony to see her alone. Together they sought the solitude of the end of the terrace.

  “Tony, can you start these people home?”

  “Gladly,” rejoiced Tony. “But I can stay?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve got to work.”

  “Now? To-night?”

  “As soon as I possibly can. Tony, I’ll tell you. The ship is in, and Ransdell was taken off at quarantine and brought here. He’s in Father’s study now.”

  “Who’s Ransdell?”

  “Nobody I know. I haven’t set eyes on him yet, Tony. He’s just the messenger from Africa. You see, Tony, some—some things were being sent rush, by airplane and by messenger, to Father from Africa. Well, they’ve arrived; and I do his measuring for him, you know.”

  “What measuring?”

  “The delicate measuring, like—like the position and amount of movement shown by stars and other bodies on astronomical plates. For weeks—for months, in fact, Tony—the astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere have been watching something.”

  “What sort of a something, Eve?”

  “Something of a sort never seen before, Tony. A sort of body that they knew existed by the millions, probably, all through the universe—something they were sure must be, but the general existence of which has never been actually proved. It—it may be the most sensational fact for us, from the beginning to the end of time. I can’t tell you more than that to-night, Tony; yet by to-morrow we may be telling it to all the world. Rumors are getting out; and so some scientist, who will be believed, must make an authoritative announcement. And the scientists of the world have selected Father to make it.

  “Now, help me, Tony. You clear these people out; and then you run along. For I’ve measurements to make and report to Father; and he has to check over calculations made by the best men in the southern half of the world. Then, by tomorrow, we may know, for certain, what is going to happen to us all.”

  Tony had his arm about her; he felt her suddenly trembling. He swept her up and held her against him; and kissing her, he met on her lips, a new, impetuous passion which exalted and amazed him. Then some one came out and he released her.

  “I—I didn’t mean that, Tony,” she whispered.

  “You must have.”

  “I didn’t! Not all of it, Tony. It was just for that moment.”

  “We’ll have a thousand more like it—thousands—thousands!”

  They both were whispering; and now, though he had let her go, his hand was over hers, and he could feel her quivering again. “You don’t know, Tony. Nobody really knows yet. Come, help me send them all away.”

  He helped her; and when the guests had gone, he met, at last, the man who had come from South Africa. They shook hands, and for a few moments the three of them—Eve Hendron and Tony Drake and Ransdell, the mail-flyer from under the Southern Cross—stood and chatted together.

  There must be presentiments; otherwise, how could the three of them always have carried, thereafter, a photographic memory of that moment of their meeting? Yet no one of the three—and least of all Eve, who on that night knew most of what was to come—could possibly have suspected the strange relation in which each was to stand to the others. None of them could have suspected, because such a relationship was, at that moment, inconceivable to them—a relationship between civilized men and women for which there then existed, indeed, no word in the language.

  CHAPTER 2—THE LEAGUE OF THE LAST DAYS

  THE lobby of Tony’s favorite club was carpeted in red. Beyond the red carpet was a vast room paneled in oak. It usually was filled with leisurely men playing backgammon or bridge or chess, smoking and reading newspapers. Behind it, thick with gloom, was a library; and in a wing on the left, the dining-room where uniformed waiters moved swiftly between rows of small tables.

  As Tony entered the club, however, he felt that it had emerged from its slumbers, its routine, its dull masculine quietude. There were only two games in progress. Few men were idling over their cigars, studying their newspapers; many were gathered around the bar.

  The lights seemed brighter. Voices were staccato. Men stood in groups and talked; a few even gesticulated. The surface of snobbish solitude had been dissipated.

  Tony knew at once why the club was alive. The rumors, spreading on the streets, had eddied in through these doors too.

  Some one hailed him. “Hi! Tony!”

  “Hello, Jack! What’s up?”

  “You tell us!”

  “How could I tell you?”

  “Don’t you know Hendron? Haven’t you seen him?”

  Jack Little—a young man whose name was misleading—stepped away from a cluster of friends, who, however, soon followed him; and Tony found himself surrounded. One of the men had been one of the guests whom Tony, half an hour before, had helped clear from the Hendrons’; and so he could not deny having seen Hendron, even if he had wanted to.

  “What in hell have the scientists under their hats, Tony?”

  “I don’t know. Honest,” Tony denied.

  “Then what the devil is the League of the Last Days?”

/>   “What?”

  “The League of the Last Days—an organization of all the leading scientists in the world, as far as I can make out,” Little informed him.

  “Never heard of it,” said Tony.

  “I just did,” Little confessed; “but it appears to have been in existence some time. Several months, that is. They began to organize it suddenly, all over the world, in the winter.”

  “All over the world?” asked Tony.

  “In strictest and absolutely the highest scientific circles. They’ve been organized and communicating for half a year; and it’s just leaking out.”

  “The League of the Last Days?” repeated Tony.

  “That’s it.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “That’s what I thought you might tell us. Hendron’s a member, of course.”

  “The head of it, I hear,” somebody else put in.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Tony protested, and tried to move away. Actually, he did not know; but this talk fitted in too well with what Eve had told him. Her father had been chosen by the scientists of the world to make some extraordinary announcement. But—the League of the Last Days! She had not mentioned that to him.

  League of the Last Days! It sent a strange tingle under his skin.

  “How did you hear about it?” Tony now demanded of Jack Little.

  “From him,” said Jack, jerking toward the man who had heard that Cole Hendron headed the League.

  “I got it this afternoon,” this fellow said importantly. “I know the city editor of the Standard. He had a reporter—a smart kid named Davis—on it. I was there when the kid came back. It seems that some months ago, the scientists—the top men like Hendron—stumbled on something big. So big that it seems to have scared them. They’ve been having meetings about it for months.

  “Nobody thought much about the meetings at first. Scientists are always barging around visiting each other and having conventions. But these were different. Very few men—and all big ones; and no real reports coming out. Only camouflage stuff—like about progress in smashing the atom. But the real business that was exciting them wasn’t given out.

  “Nobody knows yet what it is; but we do know there is something mighty big and mighty secret. It’s so big and so secret that they only refer to it, when writing to each other, by a code.

  “That’s one thing definitely known. They write to each other and cable to each other about it in a code that’s so damned good that the newspapers, which have got hold of some of the messages, can’t break the cipher and figure it out.”

  “What’s the League of the Last Days got to do with that?” Tony asked.

  “It’s the League of the Last Days that’s doing it all. It’s the League of the Last Days that communicates with its members by the code.”

  That was all any one knew; and soon Tony left the circle. He did not want to talk to men who knew even less than himself. He wanted to return to Eve; and that being impossible, he wanted to be alone. “I need,” he said to nobody in particular, “a shower and a drink.” And he pushed out of the club and started home.

  His cab lurched through traffic. When the vehicle stopped for a red light, he was roused from his abstractions by the hawking of an extra. He leaned out and bought one from the bawling newsboy. The headline disappointed him.

  SCIENTISTS FORM SECRET

  “LEAGUE OF THE LAST DAYS.”

  A second paper—a tabloid—told no more.

  SENSATIONAL SECRET DISCOVERY

  World Scientists Communicating in Code.

  When he reached his apartment, he thrust the papers under his arm. The doorman and the elevator boy spoke to him, and he did not answer. His Jap servant smiled at him. He surrendered his derby, threw himself in a deep chair, had a telephone brought, and called Eve.

  The telephone-company informed him that service on that number had been discontinued for the night.

  “Bring me a highball, Kyto,” Tony said. “And hand me that damn’ newspaper.” And Tony read:

  “A secret discovery of startling importance is exciting the whole world of science.

  “Though denied both by American and foreign scientists, the Standard has come into possession of copies of more than a score of cablegrams in code exchanged between various physicists and astronomers in America, and Professor Ernest Heim of Heidelberg, Germany.

  “This newspaper has sought out the American senders or receivers of the mysterious code messages, who include Professor Yerksen Leeming at Yale, Doctor K. Belditz of Columbit, Cole Hendron of the Universal Electric and Power Corp., and Professor Eugene Taylor at Princeton. Some of these scientists at first denied that a secret code communication was being carried on; but others, confronted with copies of messages, admitted it, but claimed that they referred to a purely scientific investigation which was being conducted by several groups in cooperation. They denied that the subjects under investigation were of public importance.

  “Challenged to describe, even in general terms, the nature of the secret, each man refused.

  “But matters are coming to a head. To-day it was discovered that a special courier from South Africa, sent by Lord Rhondin and Professor Bronson of Capetown, had flown the length of the Dark Continent with a mysterious black box; at Cherbourg he took the first ship for New York and upon his arrival, was taken off at quarantine and hurried to Cole Hendron’s apartment.

  “Dr. Cole Hendron, chief consultant of the Universal Electric and Power Corp., only to-day returned to New York from Pasadena, where he has been working with the scientists of the observatory on Mt. Wilson.…

  “To add to the disturbing and spectacular features of this strange scientific mystery, it is learned that the scientists associated in this secret and yet world-spanning investigation are in a group which is called the League of the Last Days. What this may mean…”

  There was nothing more but speculation and wild guesses. Tony tossed aside the newspapers and lay back in his chair; he could speculate for himself. The League of the Last Days! It might, of course, have been manufactured by one of the tabloids itself, and thus spread about the city. But Tony too vividly recollected Eve Hendron.

  Kyto appeared with his highball; and Tony sipped slowly and thoughtfully. If this which he had just read, and that which he previously had encountered to-day, had meaning, it must be that some amazing and unique menace threatened human society. And it was at a moment when, more than ever before in his life or in his dreams, Tony Drake wanted human society, with him in it—with him and Eve in it—to go on as it was. Or rather, as it would be, if things simply took their natural course.

  Eve in his arms; her lips on his again, as he had had them to-day! To possess her, to own her completely! He could dream of no human delight beyond her! And he would have her! Damn this League of the Last Days! What were the scientists hiding among themselves?

  Tony sat up vehemently. “A hell of a thing,” he said aloud. “The whole world is haywire. Haywire! By the way, Kyto, you aren’t a Japanese scientist, are you?”

  “How?”

  “Never mind. You don’t happen to send code messages to Einstein, do you?”

  “Cold messages?”

  “Let it pass. I’m going to bed. If my mother calls from the country, Kyto, tell her I’m being a good boy and still wearing woolen socks against a cold snap. I must have sleep, to be in shape for work to-morrow. Maybe I’ll sell five shares of stock in the morning, or possibly ten. It’s wearing me down. I can’t stand the strain.”

  He drained his glass and arose. Four hours later, after twice again having attempted to phone Eve Hendron, and twice again having been informed that service for the night was discontinued, Tony got to sleep.

  CHAPTER 3—THE STRANGERS FROM SPACE

  IT was no tabloid but the Times—the staid, accurate, ultra-responsible New York Times—which spread the sensation before him in the morning.

  The headines lay black upon the page:

  “SCIEN
TISTS SAY WORLDS FROM ANOTHER STAR APPROACH THE EARTH

  DR. COLE HENDRON MAKES ASTONISHING STATEMENT IN WHICH SIXTY OF THE GREATEST PHYSICISTS AND ASTRONOMERS CONCUR.”

  Tony was scarcely awake when Kyto had brought him the paper.

  Kyto himself, it was plain, had been puzzling over the news, and did not understand it. Kyto, however, had comprehended enough to know that something was very different to-day; so he had carried in the coffee and the newspaper a bit earlier than customary; and he delayed, busying himself with the black, clear coffee, while Tony started up and stared.

  “Dr. Cole Hendron, generally acknowledged to be the leading astro-physicist of America,” Tony read, “early this morning gave to the press the following statement, on behalf of the sixty scientists named in an accompanying column.”

  Tony’s eyes flashed to the column which carried the list of distinguished names, English, German, French, Italian, Swiss, American, South African, Australian and Japanese.

  “Similar statements are being given to the press of all peoples at this same time.

  “‘In order to allay alarms likely to rise from the increase of rumors based upon incorrect or misunderstood reports of the discovery made by Professor Bronson, of Capetown, South Africa, and in order to acquaint all people with the actual situation, as it is now viewed, we offer these facts.

  “‘Eleven months ago, when examining a photographic plate of the region 15 (Eridanus) in the southern skies, Professor Bronson noticed the presence of two bodies then near the star Achernar, which had not been observed before.

  “‘Both were exceedingly faint, and lying in the constellation Eridanus, which is one of the largest constellations in the sky, they were at first put down as probably long-period variable stars which had recently increased in brightness after having been too faint to affect the photographic plate.