скачать книгу бесплатно
– Guesswork is futile, Mr De Selby, Mick murmured, but could this plan of yours involve liquefying all the ice at the Poles and elsewhere and thus drowning everything, in the manner of the Flood in the Bible?
– No. The story of that Flood is just silly. We are told it was caused by a deluge of forty days and forty nights. All this water must have existed on earth before the rain started, for more can not come down than was taken up. Commonsense tells me that this is childish nonsense.
– That is merely a feeble rational quibble, Hackett cut in. He liked to show that he was alert.
– What then, sir, Mick asked in painful humility, is the secret, the supreme crucial secret?
De Selby gave a sort of grimace.
– It would be impossible for me, he explained, to give you gentlemen, who have no scientific training, even a glimpse into my studies and achievements in pneumatic chemistry. My work has taken up the best part of a life-time and, though assistance and co-operation were generously offered by men abroad, they could not master my fundamental postulate: namely, the annihilation of the atmosphere.
– You mean, abolish air? Hackett asked blankly.
– Only its biogenic and substantive ingredient, replied De Selby, which, of course, is oxygen.
– Thus, Mick interposed, if you extract all oxygen from the atmosphere or destroy it, all life will cease?
– Crudely put, perhaps, the scientist agreed, now again genial, but you may grasp the idea. There are certain possible complications but they need not trouble us now.
Hackett had quietly helped himself to another drink and showed active interest.
– I think I see it, he intoned. Exit automatically the oxygen and we have to carry on with what remains, which happens to be poison. Isn’t it murder though?
De Selby paid no attention.
– The atmosphere of the earth, meaning what in practice we breathe as distinct from rarefied atmosphere at great heights, is composed of roughly 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 oxygen, tiny quantities of argon and carbon dioxide, and microscopic quantities of other gases such as helium and ozone. Our preoccupation is with nitrogen, atomic weight 14.008, atomic number 7.
– Is there a smell off nitrogen? Hackett enquired.
– No. After extreme study and experiment I have produced a chemical compound which totally eliminates oxygen from any given atmosphere. A minute quantity of this hard substance, small enough to be invisible to the naked eye, would thus convert the interior of the greatest hall on earth into a dead world provided, of course, the hall were properly sealed. Let me show you.
He quietly knelt at one of the lower presses and opened the door to reveal a small safe of conventional aspect. This he opened with a key, revealing a circular container of dull metal of a size that would contain perhaps four gallons of liquid. Inscribed on its face were the letters DMP.
– Good Lord, Hackett cried, the DMP! The good old DMP! The grandfather was a member of that bunch.
De Selby turned his head, smiling bleakly.
– Yes – the DMP – the Dublin Metropolitan Police. My own father was a member. They are long-since abolished, of course.
– Well what’s the idea of putting that on your jar of chemicals?
De Selby had closed the safe and press door and gone back to his seat.
– Just a whim of mine, no more, he replied. The letters are in no sense a formula or even a mnemonic. But that container has in it the most priceless substance on earth.
– Mr De Selby, Mick said, rather frightened by these flamboyant proceedings, granted that your safe is a good one, is it not foolish to leave such dangerous stuff here for some burglar to knock it off?
– Me, for instance? Hackett interposed.
– No, gentlemen, there is no danger at all. Nobody would know what the substance was, its properties or how activated.
– But don’t we know? Hackett insisted.
– You know next to nothing, De Selby replied easily, but I intend to enlighten you even more.
– I assure you, Mick thought well to say, that any information entrusted to us will be treated in strict confidence.
– Oh, don’t bother about that, De Selby said politely, it’s not information I’ll supply but experience. A discovery I have made – and quite unexpectedly – is that a deoxygenated atmosphere cancels the apparently serial nature of time and confronts us with true time and simultaneously with all the things and creatures which time has ever contained or will contain, provided we evoke them. Do you follow? Let us be serious about this. The situation is momentous and scarcely of this world as we know it.
He stared at each of his two new friends in turn very gravely.
– I feel, he announced, that you are entitled to some personal explanation concerning myself. It would be quite wrong to regard me as a christophobe.
– Me too, Hackett chirped impudently.
– The early books of the Bible I accepted as myth, but durable myth contrived genuinely for man’s guidance. I also accepted as fact the story of the awesome encounter between God and the rebel Lucifer. But I was undecided for many years as to the outcome of that encounter. I had little to corroborate the revelation that God had triumphed and banished Lucifer to hell forever. For if – I repeat if – the decision had gone the other way and God had been vanquished, who but Lucifer would be certain to put about the other and opposite story?
– But why should he? Mick asked incredulously.
– The better to snare and damn mankind, De Selby answered.
– Well now, Hackett remarked, that secret would take some keeping.
– However, De Selby continued, perplexed, I was quite mistaken in that speculation. I’ve since found that things are as set forth in the Bible, at least to the extent that heaven is intact.
Hackett gave a low whistle, perhaps in derision.
– How could you be sure? he asked. You have not been temporarily out of this world, have you, Mr De Selby?
– Not exactly. But I have had a long talk with John the Baptist. A most understanding man, do you know, you’d swear he was a Jesuit.
– Good heavens! Mick cried, while Hackett hastily put his glass on the table with a click.
– Ah yes, most understanding. Perfect manners, of course, and a courteous appreciation of my own personal limitations. A very interesting man the same Baptist.
– Where did this happen? Hackett asked.
– Here in Dalkey, De Selby explained. Under the sea.
There was a small but absolute silence.
– While time stood still? Hackett persisted.
– I’ll bring both of you people to the same spot tomorrow. That is, if you wish it and provided you can swim, and for a short distance under water.
– We are both excellent swimmers, Hackett said cheerfully, except I’m by far the better of the pair.
– We’d be delighted, Mick interrupted with a sickly smile, on the understanding that we’ll get safely back.
– There is no danger whatever. Down at the headquarters of the Vico Swimming Club there is a peculiar chamber hidden in the rocks at the water’s edge. At low tide there is cavernous access from the water to this chamber. As the tide rises this hole is blocked and air sealed off in the chamber. The water provides a total seal.
– This could be a chamber of horrors, Hackett suggested.
– I have some masks of my own design, equipped with compressed air, normal air, and having an automatic feed-valve. The masks and tank are quite light, of aluminium.
– I think I grasp the idea, Mick said in a frown of concentration. We go under the water wearing these breathing gadgets, make our way through this rocky opening to the chamber, and there meet John the Baptist?
De Selby chuckled softly.
– Not necessarily and not quite. We get to the empty chamber as you say and I then release a minute quantity of DMP. We are then subsisting in timeless nitrogen but still able to breathe from the tanks on our backs.
– Does our physical weight change? Hackett asked.
– Yes, somewhat.
– And what happens then?
– We shall see what happens after you have met me at this swimming pool at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Are you going back by the Colza Hotel?
– Certainly.
– Well have a message sent to Teague McGettigan to call for me with his damned cab at 7.30. Those mask affairs are bothersome to horse about with.
Thus the appointment was made. De Selby affable as he led his visitors to his door and said goodbye.
3 (#ulink_46d55dd4-f8a8-5f8d-bea5-b27b06b3c79a)
Hackett was frowning a bit and taciturn as the two strolled down the Vico Road towards Dalkey. Mick felt preoccupied, his ideas in some disarray. Some light seemed to have been drained from the sunny evening.
– We don’t often have this sort of diversion, Hackett, he remarked.
– It certainly isn’t every day we’re offered miraculous whiskey, Hackett answered gloomily, and told at the same time we’re under sentence of death. Shouldn’t other people be warned? Our personal squaws, for instance?
– That would be what used to be called spreading despondency and disaffection, Mick warned pompously. What good would it do?
– They could go to confession, couldn’t they?
– So could you. But the people would only laugh at us. So far as you are concerned, they’d say you were drunk.
– That week-old gargle was marvellous stuff, he muttered reflectively after a pause. I feel all right but I’m still not certain that there wasn’t some sort of drug in it. Slow-acting hypnotic stuff, or something worse that goes straight to the brain. We might yet go berserk by the time we reach the Colza. Maybe we’ll be arrested by Sergeant Fottrell.
– Divil a fear of it.
– I certainly wouldn’t like to swear the truth of today in court.
– We have an appointment early tomorrow morning, Mick reminded him. I suggest we say nothing to anybody about today’s business.
– Do you intend to keep tomorrow’s date?
– I certainly do. But I’ll have to use the bike to get here from Booterstown at that hour.
They walked on, silent in thought.
It is not easy to give an account of the Colza Hotel, its owner Mrs Laverty, or its peculiar air. It had been formerly, though not in any recent time, an ordinary public house labelled ‘Constantine Kerr, Licensed Vintner’ and it was said that Mrs Laverty, a widow, had remodelled the bar, erased the obnoxious public house title and called the premises the Colza Hotel.
Why this strange name?
Mrs Laverty was a most religious woman and once had a talk with a neighbour about the red lamp suspended in the church before the high altar. When told it was sustained with colza oil, she piously assumed that this was a holy oil used for miraculous purposes by Saint Colza, VM
(#ulink_857164e2-63c1-5666-95ea-a16fdbbe0229), and decided to put her house under this banner.
Here is the layout of the bar in the days when Hackett and Shaughnessy were customers:
The area known as ‘The Slum’ was spacious with soft leather seating by the wall and other seats and small tables about the floor. Nobody took the hotel designation seriously, though Mrs Laverty stoutly held that there were ‘many good beds’ upstairs. A courageous stranger who demanded a meal would be given rashers and eggs in a desultory back kitchen. About the time now dealt with Mrs Laverty had been long saving towards a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Was she deaf? Nobody was sure. The doubt had arisen some years ago when Hackett openly addressed her as Mrs Lavatory, of which she never took any notice. Hard of hearing, perhaps, she may also have thought that Hackett had never been taught to speak properly.
When Hackett and Shaughnessy walked in after the De Selby visit, the ‘Slum’ or habitat of cronies was occupied by Dr Crewett, a very old and wizened and wise medical man who had seen much service in the RAMC but disdained to flaunt a military title. A strange young man was sitting near him and Mrs Laverty was seated behind the bar, knitting.
– Hello to all and thank God to be back in civilization, Hackett called. Mrs L, give me two glass skillets of your patent Irish malt, please.
She smiled perfunctorily in her large homely face and moved to obey. She did not like Hackett much.
– Where were ye? Dr Crewett asked.
– Walking, Mick said.
– You gents have been taking the intoxicating air, he observed. Your complexions do ye great credit.
– It has been a good day, doctor, Mick added civilly.
– We have been inhaling oxygen, theology and astral physics, Hackett said, accepting two glasses from Mrs Laverty.
– Ah, physics? I see, the young stranger said politely. He was slim, black-haired, callow, wore thick glasses and looked about nineteen.
– The Greek word kinesis should not be ignored, Hackett said learnedly but with an air of jeer.
– Hackett, Mick interjected in warning, I think it’s better for us to mind our own business.
– It happens that I’m doing medicine at Trinity, the stranger added. I’m out here looking for digs.
– Why come out to this wilderness, Hackett asked, and have yourself trailing in and out of town every day?
– This is a new friend of ours, Dr Crewett explained. May I introduce Mr Nemo Crabbe?
Nods were exchanged and Hackett raised his glass in salute.
– If you mean take rooms in Trinity, Crabbe replied, no, thanks. They are vile, ramshackle quarters, and a resident student there is expected to empty his own charley.
– In my days in Egypt we hadn’t even got such a thing. But there was limitless sand and wastes of scrub.
