It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan
professional enthusiasm, his sportsmanlike eagerness to win in a game of Therapeutics against Death? He felt a little ashamed of having thought more than once that the miserable victim of vice would be "best out of the way." Out of the way!... where? And then, how did he know that this consensus of all mortals to try and save even the most worthless lives may not be an unconscious tribute to the underlying sense of immortality throughout mankind? Would an honest belief in extinction fight to preserve a life that is a pain to itself and a curse to its neighbours? So thinking, he turned with his companion into Tallack Street. "Last house on the right, isn't it?" said the doctor.
What was that policeman doing in front of the last house on the right? Looking about on the snow as though in search for something, and then stooping forward over the low railing to examine the window-fastenings. It was all secure there when Athelstan Taylor came away. He quickened his pace, and the doctor did so too.
"Anything wrong, officer?" Both ask the question at once.
"Couldn't say, Sir. Be so good as not to tread on these footmarks. I want 'em kept till my relief comes. He'll be here in a few minutes.... No—the window's not been tampered with, so far as I see. That's where it's so queer."
All three stand silent a moment. Then both gentlemen exclaim at once that they see. The queerness is clear enough to both. The footsteps on the snow all point away from the window, and a glance shows that there is no corresponding track of an approach to it.
None of the three seem to think the mystery soluble, for the moment, and mere speculation is useless. The policeman supplies an additional fact, but does not claim importance for it. The hasp of the window is visibly unclosed through the glass. But—so the officer testifies—they don't shut 'em to, as often as not.
"You can open it from outside," says the parson-gentleman to the policeman. "All right! I was coming to the house. I know the people."
"All right, officer!" says the doctor-gentleman. "You know me. Dr. Ferris, Cazenove Street." And thus encouraged the constable easily throws up the window from without. A touch on the shutters, and they open inwards. They reveal an empty room, and the track of the footsteps away from the window is at once explained—fully to the two who knew that a delirious man was the only tenant of the room, and clearly enough for purpose of action to the third, who only sees that some person, to whom the exclamation of both at once, "He has escaped!" applied, has been able to close the window behind him to disguise his flight, and may by now be far away at the end of a long trail they all start to follow, running through the snow as best they may. It is difficult to run, as the drifted snow is nearly knee-deep sometimes. But here and there the wind has kept the ground clear, blowing it like dry dust.
The track goes straight to the closing fence at the street end, at a point the youthful marauders of Tallack Street have chosen for inroads into the railway territory beyond. It is passable, for those who can climb a little, and whose clothes do not mind nail-rip or paint-stain. As the three follow one another over this obstacle, Athelstan Taylor and the doctor send back a shouted word or two of reassurance to whoever it is that has opened the house-door and come out with a cry of alarm—woman or child or both. They do not stop to see which, but get on as fast as possible. The track ends for a few yards where the railway arch has made a gap in the snow, but it is soon found on the other side, and then is easy to follow over a desolation of land ripe for building—ripe for the creation of ground-rents—ripe with the deadly ripeness we all know so well, of the land that the hay will never smell sweet upon again, the land that even now awaits interminable streets of dwellings no man or woman of the days to come shall ever think of as a home in childhood. Easy to follow as it lies clear in the thick snow it has had all to itself, and will have till the road is reached that leads to the Refuse Destroyer, with its two hundred feet of chimney-shaft, from which a black cloud is pouring—presumably of refuse that has refused to be destroyed; or has reappeared after destruction in an astral body, or suppose we say disastral—and the canal, and the Breweries, and the Chemical Bottle Stout Works, and the Artificial Food Works the Sewage Appropriation Company, Limited, are building down Snape's Lane this side of the canal-basin.
The track goes straight to the road, but on reaching it swerves aside, baffled by a hedge, or the memory of what was once a hedge, whose function has been reinforced by barbed wire; probably the last expiring effort of a pastoral age to induce sheep to remain on the land and be tempted by the dirty grass. The swerved footsteps follow on to an opening two sad stumps face one another in, and think, perhaps, at times of the days when they were a stile, and real villagers stepped over them, and distant London was unknown. Then the track is lost for a space in a maze of other tracks of men on their way to brew, to bottle stout chemically, to appropriate sewage, that artificial food may be stocked, in tins, for a race with powers of digestion up to date. Then is found again, and followed on to a canal-bank with Platonic locks that sleep sometimes from day's end to day's end, bargeless, and dream of a past when railways were unknown, and they were full of purpose, and the world was young. And then is lost again, at a bridge.
Stragglers are gathering round, anxious to satisfy curiosity about the nature of the search; also anxious to impart information about its object, whether possessed of any or not. Willingness to further the public interest, without any qualifications of data to go upon, is often a serious hindrance to the end in view. In this case several casuals, who have not seen a man in his shirt-sleeves, without ne'er a hat on, go by, are so anxious to mould the particulars of something else they have seen into a plausible substitute for information about the said man, that the necessity for hearing enough of their evidence to reject it becomes an obstacle trying to the patience of the searchers. It seems injudicious to snub a volunteer informant who see a party go along the road in the opposite direction rather better than an hour ago, with a sack over his head and shoulders, who "might have been a dorg-fancier, to look at, in the manner of describing him," and to tell him to shut up if he can't go any nearer than that; not only because this drastic treatment may discourage other informants who have really something to tell, but because, being put on his mettle, he proceeds to adjust his evidence to the facts, so far as he can ascertain them. He removes the sack from the head of his recollection, makes it walk the other way at any acceptable time; won't undertake, now you ask so partic'lar, that it hadn't shirt-sleeves, and surrenders the dog-fancier in favour of any vocation you are inclined to put a leading question about. In like manner, a party sim'lar to you describe come straight—according to other proffered testimony—acrost yarnder open ground to this very self-same spot, and so forrard over the bridge to'ards the Princess Charlotte down the lane, and went in at the bar. But the photographic likeness of this person to any description you choose to give of the man sought for fails to establish the identity of the two, as he was seen on the previous day, maybe about dinner-time. Compromise is impossible; the informant stands committed to yesterday, past recall.
But the track on the snow is lost—that is the one fact clear. Give it up and go back?—is that the only course open to us? Not when the chase ends so close to a canal-lock. True, the footsteps do not go to the edge, but only because a wind-swept skirting of brick pavement is clear of snow. The last one is none so far off the stone curb, above the water. Look down into the empty lock, and think!
The parson and the doctor represent intelligent speculation; the policeman, official reserve ready to listen to information and compare it with his pre-omniscience; the gathering crowd of early workmen, the uselessness of defective reasoning powers brought to bear on insoluble problems.
After a moment the parson speaks to the doctor: "The ice is broken over there—just where the water is running in."
"Are you sure?" asks the doctor. "Isn't it only the wash of the water melting it off? But your eyesight is better than mine, I expect."
"No, there's a broken edge. The water-wash would scoop and leave a curve."
"What do you think?" the doctor asks the policeman, who replies briefly: "Gentleman's right, perhaps. Worth trying, anyhow!... Now then, some of you, idling round, I want that bit of ice broke up—against the lower gate. Look alive now!... Yes!—a couple of planks and a short ladder and a yard or so of scaffold-cord. Get 'em anywhere round! I'm answerable. Never you mind what anyone says—just you take 'em!" And the leading casuals, probably