The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
practical senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so
recklessly as almost to break his legs, he called another cab.
He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the
Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol
scrambled into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who was
pursuing the flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase towards the
north-west, his cabman, evidently under the influence of more than
common inducements, urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was
in no mood for delicacies, and he stood up in his own cab shouting,
“Stop thief!” until crowds ran along beside his cab, and policemen
began to stop and ask questions. All this had its influence upon the
President’s cabman, who began to look dubious, and to slow down to a
trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably to his fare, and in so
doing let the long whip droop over the front of the cab. Sunday leant
forward, seized it, and jerked it violently out of the man’s hand. Then
standing up in front of the cab himself, he lashed the horse and roared
aloud, so that they went down the streets like a flying storm. Through
street after street and square after square went whirling this
preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and the
driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after
it (if the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. Shops
and streets shot by like rattling arrows.
At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard
where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab,
with white hair whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his
pursuers, like some colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand
swiftly, he flung a ball of paper in Syme’s face and vanished. Syme
caught the thing while instinctively warding it off, and discovered
that it consisted of two crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself,
and the other to Dr. Bull, with a very long, and it is to be feared
partly ironical, string of letters after his name. Dr. Bull’s address
was, at any rate, considerably longer than his communication, for the
communication consisted entirely of the words:—
“What about Martin Tupper _now?_”
“What does the old maniac mean?” asked Bull, staring at the words.
“What does yours say, Syme?”
Syme’s message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:—
“No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the
Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the
last time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially
after what uncle said.”
The President’s cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his
horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the
Edgware Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a
providential stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or
left or stopping, for down the long road was coming the unmistakable
roar announcing the fire-engine, which in a few seconds went by like a
brazen thunderbolt. But quick as it went by, Sunday had bounded out of
his cab, sprung at the fire-engine, caught it, slung himself on to it,
and was seen as he disappeared in the noisy distance talking to the
astonished fireman with explanatory gestures.
“After him!” howled Syme. “He can’t go astray now. There’s no mistaking
a fire-engine.”
The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their
horses and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their
disappearing prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming
to the back of the car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and
finally flinging a neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector
Ratcliffe. When that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he
found it contained the words:—
“Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known.—A
FRIEND.”
The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region
that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings
shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat
relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though
whether through another whim or the increasing protest of his
entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, however, could
reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings like a huge grey
cat, tossed himself over, and vanished in a darkness of leaves.
Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang
also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his
friends were following, he turned a face on them which shone quite pale
in the shadow.
“What place can this be?” he asked. “Can it be the old devil’s house?
I’ve heard he has a house in North London.”
“All the better,” said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a
foothold, “we shall find him at home.”
“No, but it isn’t that,” said Syme, knitting his brows. “I hear the
most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and blowing
their devilish noses!”
“His dogs barking, of course,” said the Secretary.
“Why not say his black-beetles barking!” said Syme furiously, “snails
barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like that?”
He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling
roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh—a low
thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them.
“The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs,” said Gogol, and
shuddered.
Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening
impatiently.
“Well, listen to that,” he said, “is that a dog—anybody’s dog?”
There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting
and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what
sounded like a long nasal trumpet.
“Well, his house ought to be hell!” said the Secretary; “and if it is
hell, I’m going in!” and he sprang over the tall railings almost with
one swing.
The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs,
and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull
suddenly struck his hands together.
“Why, you asses,” he cried, “it’s the Zoo!”
As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a
keeper in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain
clothes.
“Has it come this way?” gasped the keeper.
“Has what?” asked Syme.
“The elephant!” cried the keeper. “An elephant has gone mad and run
away!”
“He has run away with an old gentleman,” said the other stranger
breathlessly, “a poor old gentleman with white hair!”
“What sort of old gentleman?” asked Syme, with great curiosity.
“A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes,” said the
keeper eagerly.
“Well,” said Syme, “if he’s that particular kind of old gentleman, if
you’re quite sure that he’s a large and fat old gentleman in grey
clothes, you may take my word for it that the elephant has not run away
with him. He has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not made
by God that could run away with him if he did not consent to the
elopement. And, by thunder, there he is!”
There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass,
about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering
vainly at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with
his trunk thrown out as rigid as a ship’s bowsprit, and trumpeting like
the trumpet of doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal
sat President Sunday with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading
the animal to a furious speed with some sharp object in his hand.
“Stop him!” screamed the populace. “He’ll be out of the gate!”
“Stop a landslide!” said the keeper. “He is out of the gate!”
And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that
the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological
Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort
of omnibus.
“Great Lord!” cried Bull, “I never knew an elephant could go so fast.
Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight.”
As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished,
Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which
they passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen
them so clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their
preposterous, pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the
symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity
to admire a pelican. He remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge
yellow beak with a small bird tied on behind it. The whole gave him a
sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was
always making quite mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them that they
would understand him when they had understood the stars. He wondered
whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.
The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the
elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of
the streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the
solid stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if
possible, more than his previous mockeries. Just before they came to
Baker Street, however, he was seen to throw something far up into the
air, as a boy does a ball meaning to catch it again. But at their rate
of racing it fell far behind, just by the cab containing Gogol; and in
faint hope of a clue or for some impulse unexplainable, he stopped his
cab so as to pick it up. It was addressed to himself, and was quite a
bulky parcel. On examination, however, its bulk was found to consist of
thirty-three pieces of paper of no value wrapped one round the other.
When the last covering was torn away it reduced itself to a small slip
of paper, on which was written:—
“The word, I fancy, should be ‘pink’.”
The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his
hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed
efforts.
Through street after street, through district after district, went the
prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and
driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane
publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be
regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a
circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened beyond
belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he thought that
he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even more fast and
free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, and
he finally headed towards that part of the sky-line where the enormous
Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and
larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars.
The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners,
and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition
they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous
crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and
shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the President had
disappeared.
“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground.
“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a
dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir.
Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.”
He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the
Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.”
The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:—
“When the herring runs a mile,