In the utter silence Mac Strann leaned across the
table to Haw-Haw Langley.
“He’s come alone this time,” he
said, “but the next time he’ll bring his
master with him. We’ll wait!”
The Adam’s-apple rose and fell in the throat
of Haw-Haw.
“We’ll wait,” he nodded, and he
burst into the harsh, unhuman laughter which had given
him his name.
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE
This is the letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received
over the signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It
was such a strange letter that between paragraphs
Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy
Park studio and stared, baffled, at the heights of
the Metropolitan Tower.
“Dear Swinnerton,
“I’ll be with you in good old Manhattan
about as soon as you get this letter. I’m
sending this ahead because I want you to do me a favour.
If I have to go back to those bare, blank rooms of
mine with the smell of chemicals drifting in from
the laboratory, I’ll—get drunk.
That’s all!”
Here Swinnerton Loughburne lowered the letter to his
knees and grasped his head in both hands. Next
he turned to the end of the letter and made sure that
the signature was “Randall Byrne.”
He stared again at the handwriting. It was not
the usual script of the young doctor. It was
bolder, freer, and twice as large as usual; there was
a total lack of regard for the amount of stationery
consumed.
Shaking his head in bewilderment, Swinnerton Loughburne
shook his fine grey head and read on: “What
I want you to do, is to stir about and find me a new
apartment. Mind you, I don’t want the loft
of some infernal Arcade building in the Sixties.
Get me a place somewhere between Thirtieth and Fifty-eighth.
Two bed-rooms. I want a place to put some
of the boys when they drop around my way. And
at least one servant’s room. Also at least
one large room where I can stir about and wave my
arms without hitting the chandelier. Are you with
me?”
Here Swinnerton Loughburne seized his head between
both hands again and groaned: “Dementia!
Plain and simple dementia! And at his age, poor
boy!”
He continued: “Find an interior decorator.
Not one of these fuzzy haired women-in-pants, but
a he-man who knows what a he-man needs. Tell him
I want that place furnished regardless of expense.
I want some deep chairs that will hit me under the
knees. I want some pictures on the wall—but
nothing out of the Eighteenth Century—no
impressionistic landscapes—no girls dolled
up in fluffy stuff. I want some pictures I can
enjoy, even if my maiden aunt can’t. There
you are. Tell him to go ahead on those lines.
“In a word, Swinnerton, old top, I want to live.
For about thirty years I’ve thought,
and now I know that there’s nothing in it.
All the thinking in the world won’t make one
more blade of grass grow; put one extra pound on the
ribs of a long-horn; and in a word, thinking is the
bunk, pure and simple!”
