Chapter II: A World in Darkness

Not everywhere did the phenomenon of darkness make its appearance so quietly. In London a bright sunshiny morning had been in being. The streets were filled with traffic. Children played in Kensington Gardens. Small tugs puffed importantly up and down the rather inadequate Thames.

In the houses of Parliament an impassioned debate was going on upon the subject of the manorial rights surviving in the village of Muttle Deeping, West Harborough, Hants. At the palace, a popular member of the royal family was in the act of entering a motor car to lay his fourth cornerstone for the week. London was, it is clear, in the middle of a normal, sunshiny morning.

Then the sky flickered, and all at once it was night. The sky was a dead, jet black. For a moment the city was stunned, before motor car headlights flamed into being. Two minutes later electric light bulbs began to glow in buildings. They dimmed, however, as the drain upon the power houses grew far more swiftly than the dynamos could be prepared to meet the load.

It was half an hour before the street lamps began to glow dully, and over an hour and a half before the city was illuminated as in a normal night, by which time the first and natural explanation of an eclipse in being was patently untrue. No eclipse ever lasted so long. And panic swept over London and all England.

In Budapest the darkness fell at high noon. In Madrid at eleven. At Stamboul--Constantinople--the sky was blotted out while myriads of the faithful bowed in prayer. In Calcutta the colors of the sunset were wiped out by an instantaneous curtain of utter darkness.

At Flagstaff, Arizona, an astronomer was peering patiently through a giant telescope at the planet Mars when the planet and all the stars beyond abruptly seemed to cease to be. He thought the telescope had met with some accident. Even later, when from the outside of the observatory the whole sky was seen to be blotted out, he still thought the obscuration due to an extremely heavy bank of clouds. But he puzzled bewilderedly over the suddenness of their forming.

Professor Schaaf was probably the first man in the whole world to evaluate the phenomenon at its true value. As May the fifth was the wedding day of his bosom friend Hines, Schaaf had spent the previous night at his flat, to listen patiently to the advantages of matrimony. He had shooed Hines benevolently to bed at two in the morning, and had slept peacefully himself. But at seven Schaaf was awake and found it dark outside.

The scientist looked at his watch and blinked, and listened to its ticking. He got up and stared out over the city, illuminated as if at midnight and already stirring. He saw the bright ribbon of an elevated train, several blocks away. He could see that it was filled with people.

He went to the telephone and called the apartment telephone operator. The Negro's voice came up gladly:

"Ya-as, suh, Professuh Schaaf! Seben o'clock. But, Professuh! Ah wish yo'd tell me 'bout dishere eclipse. Hit's dark outside, suh. How long's the eclipse goin' to last, suh? Sev'l of the tenants done asked me a'ready, suh."

Schaaf grunted, and turned around to squint out of the windows again.

"Der defil! Hm... Giff me der Meteorological Bureau. Find der number and call me back. I find out."

He padded to a window in carpet slippers. He heard Hines breathing evenly and regularly in the next room. Schaaf raised a window and stared up at the sky. An even, velvety black. No variation anywhere. As black as ink--blacker. Blacker than the darkness of an eclipse, because even during the moments of totality the stars can be seen. And starlight even upon a thick blanket of clouds would give more light than this.

Schaaf put down the window, blinking. He stood quite still, a disreputable figure in dressing-gown and slippers, with his luxuriant blond beard uncombed. And suddenly his eyes opened very wide, and he began to swear softly to himself.

* * * * *

He went back to the telephone.

"Der Meteorological Bureau? Professor Albert Schaaf speaking. Will you giff me der bolometer-reading of der moment?... Der _bolometer_ reading! Der amount of heat being radiated to der earth from der sky! Yes!"

He fumed and fretted while the telephone receiver was silent. Then he became intent.

"Yes... Hm... That is larger than a night reading, _hein_?... What would be der reading during der moments of totality of an eclipse?..."

He shook his head impatiently. "Nefer mind der corrections for latitude. Abbroximate! Giff me der figures!"

Again he fumed nervously.

"Fery well. Thank you. Abbroximately one-fourth der normal amount of heat is being radiated to der earth from der sky. Which is too much for an eclipse, and fery much too much for night-time. I thank you. I thought I was cuckoo in der head."

He hung up the receiver and swore classic German profanity while he jiggled the hook.

"Der _verdammt_ deffil!" he said bitterly; then, into the telephone: "Get police headquarters at once. Hurry!"

He scowled at the universe, represented by a section of Hines's library wall, until a voice answered. "Hello!" he said savagely into the transmitter. "This is der Herr Professor Albert Schaaf. You know me?"

A prompt affirmative came over the wire. In those few circles where Schaaf was unknown on his own account--few indeed after his notable part in battling the scientific fiend Preston--he was known as a friend of Police Inspector Hines, who had directed those fights.

"Now listen carefully. I am in Hines's apartment. He is still asleep. I haff not wakened him because he is going to need sleep before this thing is finished. But I giff an order in his name. Send some police at once to giff adequate protection to Miss Kathryn Bush, who is to marry Inspector Hines to-day. I haff reason to think she is in danger. Send them at once, and send plenty of them! You understand?"

A grunt of astonishment at the other end of the wire. Then the incisive voice of a man of action.

"Good!" said Schaaf, nodding into the telephone transmitter. "Fery good. And then if you haff more men to Spare, send them up to watch ofer Hines and me. We need them. And speed is der essence of der contract."'

The incisive voice asked a question.

"Think!" said Schaaf sardonically. "Look out of der window and think, if you can, of one man who makes a specialty of raising hell with der heafens, and who has no fondness for Hines and me. That is der answer. Good-by!"

He hung up decisively, drummed nervously on his knee, and called Kathryn Bush. She was not only Hines's fiancée, she was a very capable newspaper woman, and Schaaf alternately scolded and flattered her outrageously. He liked Kathryn very much, and since Hines was going to marry somebody, Schaaf approved his choice.

Her voice came clearly, hurried and uneasy.

"Hello! What is it?"

"Miss Bush," began Schaaf apologetically, "I am sorry that I am not Hines, but--"

"I'm leaving now," said Kathryn in a strained voice. "How is he, Professor Schaaf? Is he conscious yet?"

Sweat stood out suddenly on Schaaf's forehead.

"_Gott in Himmel!_" he said unsteadily. "I am just in time! Miss Bush! What kind of message haff you got? Hines is all right. There is nothing wrong. What haff you heard?"

Her voice--doubtful and desperately anxious--came over the wire, "Your note said there'd been an explosion and you both were hurt--"

"It is a forgery!" snapped Schaaf. "For der lofe of Gott, do not leafe your apartment! Call to der police! Raise der deffil! But stay where you are! Did you not look out of der window?"

There was a little pause, and he heard her gasp of amazement.

"I--I was awakened by the message," she said unsteadily, "and I didn't think of anything.... It's Preston, isn't it?"

"Der bolometer-reading has his name on it," said Schaaf grimly. "I haff telephoned der police to go to your house at once. I haff not waked up Hines, because I just found out what has happened. It must be der Heaviside Layer gone cuckoo. Stay where you are!"

"I will, I--I'm glad you telephoned."

"And so am I," said Schaaf from his heart. "You will telephone, Miss Bush, efery few minutes until der police come? They are on der way, but it may be minutes yet before you are safe. I am going to wake up Hines now."

"A-all right," said Kathryn. "Don't be afraid for me."

He heard the click of her receiver on its hook. And Schaaf wiped great droplets of sweat from his face.

"That deffil," he said unsteadily. "Oh, that damned deffil!"

* * * * *

He went padding into Hines's bedroom and shook the sleeping man. Outside, the world was dark save for a multitude of electric bulbs, which pierced the darkness with the effect of magic. Elevated trains were roaring all over the city, now. The people of the cities of the Atlantic coastline took the sun's absence with a quite astounding calmness. They classed the darkness as that of an eclipse, and thousands of offices opened, and hundreds of factories began their work with nearly full forces of workers on hand, though the telephone switchboards were nearly swamped with vain demands on the newspaper offices and weather bureau for information they did not have.

In his bedroom, Hines sat up and blinked, and was wide awake. He grinned at Schaaf.

"Good morning! This is my wedding day, isn't it?"

"I haff my doubts," said Schaaf soberly. "Hines, damned near der worst has happened. Preston is on der job again."

Hines was on his feet in seconds. "Kathryn--?"

"Is all right," said Schaaf. "I telephoned her minutes ago. She is all right and she is going to stay all right. Look out of der window and then at der clock." Hines stared blankly. Brightly lighted streets. Brilliantly illuminated stores. Elevated trains like streamers of fire, moving along distant steel trestles. Eight o'clock in the morning, and the sky was black with an utter, unrelieved blackness.

"But--it's night!" said Hines blankly.

"_Verdamm!_" said Schaaf impatiently. "Of course it is night! Night in der morning." He dropped into one of the wholly incongruous 'slang phrases that adorned his speech. "You are darned tooting it is night, Hines! Der sun did not rise this morning."

"The--sun--did--not--rise--this morning," said Hines slowly. "I--see."

The telephone rang shrilly. Hines started, and moved to answer it, while Schaaf stared out at the incredible darkness that lay upon the world hours after daylight should have appeared.

His identification of the darkness with a man named Preston was not an accident, of course. There was just one man in the world who could cause meteorological disturbances on a large scale, and the three previous disturbances of Preston's creation had been somewhat like this.

It was one of Schaaf's bitternesses that he had unwittingly helped in the development of the apparatus which had done so much harm. More than a year before, he had done some highly abstruse technical research for an electrophysicist named Preston. Schaaf's share had been the determination of the mass and dimensions of the ionized bodies in atmospheric air.

He had done that work, not guessing the devilish application to be made of it, for his fare back to his native Germany, since there seemed to be no room for a theoretic physicist in the United States. But before he sailed, he had been drafted by his present friend Hines to combat the danger his measurements had enabled Preston to create.

Using Schaaf's figures in his basic calculations, Preston had developed a way to make the air opaque, black, as horribly black as the ocean's deepest abyss. And he had done it. To be sure, heretofore he had confined his blackness to the surface of the earth, but that dull, dead, velvety sky overhead was like nothing as much as the darkness Preston produced.

Schaaf did not know what Preston had done now, or how he had done it, but that Preston was responsible he was sure.

* * * * *

There was a sudden blaring of horns down in the street. Minutes later, the clang of the elevator door outside the apartment. Then the doorbell.

Schaaf opened the door cautiously, with Hines's service revolver in the pocket of his dressing-gown pointed and ready. There were men in uniform in the hall, with only two figures in civilian clothes, one of whom carried a tripod and camera. Schaaf fixed those two with a distinctly unpleasant expression.

"Grab those two persons, please," he said shortly, "and bring them inside here. Inspector Hines will talk in a fery few seconds."

Hines hung up, smiling grimly, as they all crowded within. He nodded.

"That was Kathryn," he said briefly. "Thanks, Schaaf!"

The words said little. The tone said a great deal. Schaaf rumbled in his beard and indicated the sputtering civilians. One of them was snarling. Hines regarded them with a grim meditativeness.

"Who are these two men?" he asked softly.

"Lookin' for you, sir," said a sergeant of police, woodenly. "When Professor Schaaf called up for a detail to come up at once, sir, he said you were in danger. And these men were just asking for you at the switchboard downstairs, sir, and they tried to bolt--"

"I'm a reporter for the _Messenger_," snapped one of the two angrily, "and this man is one of our staff photographers. There's some talk that Preston's back of the sun not rising, and we came here to ask--"

Hines nodded pleasantly.

"Ah!" he said softly. "But reporters don't talk like that. If you were really a reporter you'd say, 'I'm from the _Messenger_' or maybe that you were 'on the _Messenger_,' but never that you were a reporter 'for the _Messenger_'. Never! Search 'em, sergeant!"

A search of the suddenly blaspheming man disclosed a pair of heavy automatics and no newspaper credentials whatever. The supposed photographer yielded the same, with a pair of brass knuckles as additional armament.

Hines smiled.

"It looks as if you two men came from Preston. You may be interested to hear that the attempt to kidnap Miss Bush has failed, and the taxi driver who waited below for her has been pinched. He's going to talk. Are you two going to tell what you know?"

The pseudo-reporter snarled and shut his lips tightly. He stared meaningly at the other man. The other man shook his head. Hines watched the by-play.

"Sergeant, I seem to remember that you were on the bomb squad once. That camera seems to be unusually heavy. Suppose you open it up--carefully?"

The sergeant lifted the camera, turned it this way and that, and began to use a penknife. He handled the thing gingerly after the first two or three incisions. Minutes later, with a grunt of satisfaction, he laid down a pear-shaped bomb upon the table. Dangling from it there was the exposure device, which here evidently functioned as a means of setting it off.

* * * * *

The two men in civilian clothes regarded the thing in gray-faced stupefaction. Hines looked at them. One of them tried to speak, and could not.

"You see," said Hines shortly, "it's a bomb. If you'd pulled the trigger, it would have blown us all to bits. But especially you. If I know Preston, he told you it was some kind of gun. Eh?"

The photographer croaked, abandoning all pose of innocence: "He tol' us it was a trick machine gun, an' if we sprayed y' wit' it--"

"At a guess," said Hines dryly, "it's combined high explosive and poison gas. That would seem logical. If I wasn't killed by the explosion, the gas would get me. You two men would be finished either way. A much better bet than a machine gun.... How much were you to get for standing behind this thing and setting it off?"

The pseudo-reporter cursed horribly.

"Ten grand, damn his soul!" he raged. "And him sending us to bump ourselves off--"'

"I'll give you ten grand," said Hines evenly, "for the dope on where to find him. Ten grand, and immunity."

"All I know," said the photographer hoarsely, "is he give us five grand ahead o' time an' said we'd get the rest if we croaked yuh. We don't know where he's at. We seen him yesterday in Brooklyn."

"Right," said Hines. "Tell me where and when you saw him, and you go clear."

The two men gave an address, and, to a second question, the time of their talk. Hines went to the telephone and asked for a number.

"All right, sergeant," he said impatiently, while he waited. "Turn 'em loose. And you two men remember there's ten grand in it for you if you get him. There's that much for anybody that gets him. And you'll get well taken care of if you tip off the man who gets him. Clear out!"

The two men stumbled to the door, too much shaken by the knowledge that they had been intended to blow themselves to bits, to be incredulous about their release.

Hines got his connection, in Brooklyn. He ordered a raid at once, with a succinct statement that Preston--who was sufficiently well known by name to the police and the nation at large--had been there the day before. He stood up.

"Why did you turn them loose?" demanded Schaaf irritably.

The doorbell rang. Hires nodded to a policeman to open it, and said dryly:

"Those two men spreading that offer and news of Preston's double crossing are a lot more useful out of jail than in.... What 've we got here?"

Three messenger boys had arrived simultaneously with sheafs of telegrams, radios, and cables. The extraordinary nightfall had been reasoned out in six nations as possibly an extension of certain previous events in the United States. The cables were mostly addressed to Schaaf, and were from every variety of scientific body and government authority, reporting the sudden falling of darkness and asking if he could explain its cause or possible duration.

Schaaf opened the first of them and swore. He opened more, and swore more luridly. He was sputtering German profanity in a steady stream before he reached the end of them. He looked up, still in his dressing-gown and slippers, and with his blond beard bristling in every direction, to find the room empty of police and Hines hunched over the telephone, talking quietly.

"Better get some clothes on, Schaaf," said Hines. "Kathryn's coming over here. We're going down to my office."

Schaaf scowled at him.

"Hines," he said hopelessly, "der _verdammt_ scoundrel has cofered der whole world with darkness! I know what it is, of course. Fife to fifteen miles up in der air, all ofer der earth, there is a layer of ionization. It is der Heaviside Layer, which raises der deffil with wireless telegraphy. Breston has somehow managed to penetrate it, and he has filled it with an electric field which makes der air _no longer transparent_. Der whole world is in darkness, and there is no way in which we can possibly locate der sending-station. Because he has practically charged der entire roof of der world with darkness. What are we going to do?"

Hines grinned.

"I've already got him located within a couple of hundred miles," he said dryly. "Get busy finding out what he's got, and I'll find where he is, and together we'll settle him."