Sixty Days to Live Page 3

  ‘What has that to do with it?’ Lavina looked away angrily. ‘He has one of the best brains in England and he’s incredibly nice.’

  ‘Perhaps. But, if it comes to brains, I daresay Einstein has a better. I should have thought brains were one of the least important things when it came to a question of marriage.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. I never said I was marrying him for his brains alone.’

  ‘For what, then? His money?’

  ‘Don’t you think that you’re exceeding the privileges of even a very old friend?’ Lavina said, with dangerous quietness.

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘Let’s canter.’

  An hour later, when they got back to the house and Derek had handed the horses over to the groom he had brought with him, they found Gervaise Stapleton, his brother Oliver, and Sir Samuel Curry congregated in the library.

  ‘One can’t ignore Oliver’s statement,’ Gervaise was saying. ‘After all, he’s an astronomer, and if he says this comet is coming nearer to the earth than it ever has before, we must accept that as a fact.’

  The three men turned as Lavina and Derek came into the room. ‘Hullo,’ she cried, ‘we’ve had such a glorious ride that I’d almost forgotten about the comet. I see Sam’s having it out with you.’

  ‘I was just saying,’ smiled Sam, ‘that, although your uncle is no doubt right about this comet approaching, the universe being so vast, it doesn’t follow that the thing will get drawn into our orbit and smash us up.’

  ‘What is all this?’ inquired Derek amiably.

  ‘You’d better ask Uncle Oliver,’ Lavina replied. ‘He scared me into fits last night by saying that he didn’t think any of us had more than sixty days to live.’

  Oliver shook his dome-like, sparsely covered head, from the back and sides of which wisps of fine brown hair stood out untidily. ‘You’re a very naughty girl, Lavina. I told you this was a most dangerous secret and must go no further, yet the first thing you do is to tell Sir Samuel here, and then Derek.’

  She blew him a playful kiss. ‘Nonsense, darling. Sam’s as deep as a well and Derek is almost one of the family. Besides, you as good as confessed, before I went up to bed, that you were joking. I only mentioned it to Sam after breakfast this morning because I thought it would be fun to see you pull his leg about it.’

  ‘I’m afraid Oliver wasn’t joking, dearest.’ Gervaise spoke with quiet firmness. ‘He only allowed you to assume that he was, so that you could sleep on it and this appalling thing shouldn’t come as too great a shock to you.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You mean—you really mean …?’

  ‘I mean that Oliver seems to be convinced that a comet is going to smash our world to fragments on June 24th.’

  ‘But—what do you think?’

  Gervaise smiled a little grimly. ‘My dear, what can any of us think, or do, except accept the opinion of an expert and make up our minds to face whatever is to come with what fortitude we may.’

  Derek flung his riding crop on a chair and sat down. ‘Surely, Oliver, you can’t be serious? The idea that the world will come to an end in eight weeks’ time is really a bit too much to swallow.’

  ‘Naturally, it is rather an alarming thought at first,’ Oliver replied mildly. ‘But worlds do come to an end, you know, and there’s no reason to suppose that ours should be specially immune from such a catastrophe. If you had witnessed some of the mighty flare-ups which have occurred in the heavens during the many years I have spent in Greenwich Observatory you would, I think, be more ready to accept my statement as a real probability.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of challenging your authority on such a subject, sir,’ Sam Curry said politely, ‘and you must correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always understood comets were mainly composed of gases. Even if one hit our earth, it would probably only destroy a portion of the population. In any case, there would be no cataclysmic collision such as one might expect in the case of two great heavenly bodies rushing together.’

  Gervaise smiled. ‘I expect you’re thinking of H. G. Wells’s fantasy, In the Days of the Comet. In that the gases only caused everyone to fall into a twilight sleep, from which they woke up as model socialists to develop a new and perfect worldstate.’

  Oliver shook his head. ‘This comet may be composed only of gas and a great collection of small meteorites. Many comets are, but not all. There is, for example, the classic case of a comet which caused the great red spot on Jupiter.’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Derek quickly.

  ‘Jupiter has a very dense, cloud-laden atmosphere which, as far as we know, was more or less uniform all over its surface until May 19th, 1664. It was then that the astronomer, Hooke, observed a huge red spot on its surface. That spot has been there ever since, and our modern instruments have shown us that it consists of fiery vapours like those of a vast volcano which pour out unceasingly right through the planet’s thick cloud-layers. The only possible explanation for the phenomenon is that a solid comet of great size crashed into Jupiter in the seventeenth century with such force that it broke clean through the planet’s surface making a rent which has never healed.’

  ‘Well, even if that happened to us,’ said Sam, ‘it might mean great loss of life in one particular area but the rest of the world would go on much the same.’

  ‘I fear that would hardly be the case,’ Oliver disagreed, ‘if it were a comit like the one that hit Jupiter. You see, Jupiter is over thirteen hundred times the bulk of our earth and its cloud-layer alone is estimated to be 6,000 miles thick. The rent that was torn in it is 7,000 miles broad by 30,000 miles long, so, if we came into collision with the same sort of body, the whole of our earth would be shattered into tiny little bits.’

  ‘Still, it might not be as big,’ Derek suggested hopefully.

  ‘True,’ Oliver agreed.

  ‘And it might not be a solid meteorite at all,’ added Sam.

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Oliver again. ‘The chances are, in fact, some what in favour of its being no more than a great mass of cosmic dust, small meteorites and flaming gas. But, even if it is, should it actually come into collision with us, the disturbance caused by its arrival here would almost certainly blot out all life on our planet.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ exclaimed Sam. ‘The earth has often passed through the tails of comets without the public even being aware of what was happening.’

  ‘True. But the tails of comets are often tens of thousands of miles in length and such comets have always swept on their way without passing sufficiently near to be drawn into our sphere of gravity; whereas in this case, if my calculations are correct, we shall pull the solid body or the mass of flaming gas right in on top of us.’

  ‘I gather, though, Oliver, that all your colleagues are not of the same opinion as yourself,’ remarked Gervaise.

  Oliver shrugged his bent shoulders. ‘The comet is still so distant that it has been impossible up till now to estimate its track with any real exactness and some of us consider there is still a hope that it may pass us by. Until we reach agreement there is no point in alarming the public unnecessarily and that is why we have, so far, refrained from publishing anything about it.’

  ‘That, too,’ added Gervaise, ‘is why I think it should be understood between us that no mention of the matter is made outside this house. You see, if the danger became generally known, it might lead to the most appalling panic, and even riots.’

  ‘But your own opinion, Oliver, is that it’s going to hit us?’ Lavina’s voice had a slightly hysterical note.

  ‘Yes, my dear. When I spoke to you last night I had just finished an entirely new set of calculations by which I proved the matter to my own satisfaction and which I feel reasonably certain will convince my colleagues that I am right.’

  ‘But hang it all!’ Derek jumped up from his chair. ‘I can’t believe it! I suppose the world’s got to end some time, but it’s been going on for such millions of years. It just doesn’t seem credible that it should
come to an end almost without warning like this.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s what most people will feel,’ Oliver said quietly. ‘Perhaps I ought never to have mentioned it. You must forgive me if I’ve scared you all but when I spoke to Lavina I was a little over-excited by the success of my calculation.’

  ‘Success!’ Sam echoed, with a queer little laugh. ‘Anyhow, you don’t seem at all put out about the impending catastrophe yourself.’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all. You see, as a scientist, I can only regard the ending of the world as an extraordinarily interesting phenomenon. In fact, I count it a great privilege to be living at a time when such a momentous event is about to take place and I hope to have the opportunity of making observations up to the very last moment. But, of course, you people having other interests are naturally inclined to take a rather different view. I’m so sorry if I’ve upset any of you by letting the cat out of the bag a little prematurely.’

  Gervaise was not listening to his brother’s rather vague apology for his pronouncement, which might well be calculated utterly to disrupt the even tenor of all their lives. He was studying the expressions of the people grouped about him.

  Derek Burroughs’ open face showed quite clearly that the full import of Oliver’s words had not yet come home to him. Sir Samuel Curry’s was veiled, but Gervaise felt instinctively that the millionaire believed Oliver to be a crank, although he was much too polite to say so.

  Margery had entered the room while they were talking and she had also been present during the earlier part of the discussion, before the arrival of Lavina and Derek. Her father knew that, although for a long time she had given up going to church, she was still imbued with the rather narrow religious beliefs of her youth; and therefore regarded Oliver’s prognostications with a somewhat similar disbelief to that displayed by the priests of the Middle Ages when Galileo declared the world to be round. He gave an inward chuckle at the thought that her reactions could almost be summed up with some such phrase as ‘I’m sure God would never permit His creatures all to be wiped out, without warning, like that.’

  Gervaise’s eye then fell upon his younger daughter. Lavina, he knew, was a fatalist and she had unbounded faith in her uncle’s scientific knowledge. The night before she had thought that he was joking, but it was clear that she had now accepted his prophecy of death for all mankind without further question.

  Gervaise was not surprised when she laid her hand on Sam Curry’s arm and said, ‘Well, if we’ve only got sixty days, darling, I’ll marry you just as soon as you like.’

  4

  A STRANGE PREMONITION

  When Lavina had promised Sam Curry that she would marry him just as soon as he liked, she had not meant that quite literally; and the ten days that followed seemed to her one long series of abominably crowded hours punctuated by intervals of exhausted sleep.

  At times he chaffed her, on the lines that, if the world was really coming to an end on June 24th, why should she worry herself about a hundred little things which would not matter to anyone on June 25th.

  As the passing days had not in the least shaken her belief in the accuracy of her uncle’s scientific prediction, she admitted that many of her activities were really a waste of time; yet some innate sense compelled her to put her house in order. She spent hours with her agent, who thought her mad, wrangling about the cancellation of future contracts; and further hours endeavouring to placate irate film magnates. In addition, she had made up her mind that, even if she was not going to have a big wedding, that was no reason at all why she should not get herself a complete trousseau, and her dressmakers claimed her constant attention.

  Sam had not pressed her unduly about the date of the wedding, as he did not believe for one moment that the world was coming to an end on June 24th, but he got her to agree to marry him on May 12th and in the meantime he was anxious that she should meet as many of his friends as possible; for which purpose he arranged a series of luncheons at his big house in St. James’s Square.

  Most of these were large affairs but on May 8th he had a small party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Fink-Drummond, the Marchesa del Serilla and Captain Rupert Brand. Conchita del Serilla was an old friend of Sam’s and it was he who had introduced her to Rupert Brand, the ace airman. They had fallen for each other at once and were now engaged to be married, which made Sam rather pleased with himself. He was, therefore, particularly anxious that Lavina should get to know and like them.

  Having called for Lavina at Aage Thaarup’s and dragged her away from the collection of hats which that expert was making for her, Sam told her on the short drive back to St. James’s Square something of the people whom she was going to meet.

  ‘The Marchesa sounds most seductive,’ Lavina smiled. ‘I shall be diabolically jealous of her, though. I’m sure you know her much better than you’re prepared to admit.’

  ‘Oh, not really.’ Sam looked a little self-consciously at his feet. ‘She’s a good-looker, of course, but she had a ghastly time in Spain. She was pretty badly beaten up by those swine in the Revolution and she just wouldn’t look at a man after that—till she met Rupert. He’s a grand chap and they’re absolutely made for each other. Neither of them are children and I believe they’ve both fallen really in love for the first time. It’s only when you’ve had plenty of experience that you recognise when a person’s really worth while, you know.’

  Lavina shot a swift glance at the greying hair above Sam’s strong features. He had never concealed the fact that he had had plenty of experience.

  ‘Does that apply to women, too?’ she could not resist asking with just a shade of gentle mockery.

  ‘Lord, no! Women are different,’ he laughed, ‘although Conchita must be thirty-ish.’

  ‘What are the Fink-Drummonds like?’ she inquired, to break the little silence that followed.

  ‘Surely you know about them. He resigned from the Government about a year ago. Made a great song and dance about it. Thought he could split the Cabinet and force them to go to the country; but he didn’t pull it off. He’s not quite as clever as he thinks he is, but he’s been mighty useful to me in a business way and may be again if a sudden twist of the political wheel brings him back into power. That’s why I want you to be nice to him.’

  ‘I see. He’s the puppet and you pull the strings. How clever of you, Sam darling. But what about her? She was a famous beauty, wasn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s hard as nails and has had lovers by the score, but she still believes he’ll be Prime Minister one day. She’d like to move into No. 10 Downing Street, and, through her boy-friends, she wields enormous influence. That’s why they married and why they stick together.’

  Over cocktails Lavina met the people of whom they had been talking. Fink-Drummond was a tall, dark man, with a pompous manner, a very prominent nose and a rather weak chin; his wife certainly had been beautiful in her youth and was beautiful still. Her large, rather tired blue eyes looked out of a pale, oval face, crowned by not too obviously touched-up golden hair. She was as slim as a sylph and as icy as a February wind. Lavina took an instinctive dislike to the Fink-Drummonds but, having Sam to consider, she used all her cleverness to conceal it.

  Her view of Conchita del Serilla and Rupert Brand was entirely different. The big, dark eyes of the lovely Spanish Marchesa were friendly and sincere, while the strong, light-grey ones of the airman held courage and good faith. To anyone coming from Lavina’s sophisticated world it was a joy to see two people who so obviously adored each other and made no bones about showing it.

  It was after lunch when the servants had left the room that Fink-Drummond said:

  ‘I heard an extraordinary thing this morning. Although I’m no longer in the Cabinet, I know everything that’s going on. I’ve plenty of friends on the inside, still, who keep me well informed. Apparently, the P.M. is considerably disturbed about a comet that’s coming our way. Of course, it’s all very hush-hush, but the Astronomer Royal reported it some d
ays ago, and it appears they’re afraid now that somewhere towards the end of June it’s going to hit us.’

  ‘That seems a pretty tall story,’ laughed Captain Brand, as Lavina and Sam exchanged a quick glance.

  ‘It certainly seems so on the face of it,’ Fink-Drummond admitted. ‘I shouldn’t have taken any serious notice of the story myself if it hadn’t come from an impeccable source. I’m told, though, that some members of the Cabinet are seriously alarmed. They seem to think it may bring about the end of the world.’

  ‘How absurd!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘And just the sort of stupid story which might create a panic. But perhaps that’s the explanation. The P.M.’s clever. He’s quite capable of using it to force a General Election in order to get the Government home again on a wave of hysteria.’

  Fink-Drummond nodded. ‘That occurred to me, but I don’t think that’s the game. I hear they’re determined to keep it from the public as long as possible, so it looks as if they were genuinely scared.’

  ‘What would happen if it were really true?’ asked the Marchesa, in her deep, husky voice.

  ‘I don’t really know.’ Fink-Drummond considered for a moment. ‘Probably we’d have earthquakes, great tidal waves, and that sort of thing.’

  Rupert Brand laughed. ‘Then the only safe place would be in the air. My new plane, which is specially equipped for stratosphere flying, would be just the thing. Whatever happened down here, we’d be safe enough up on the ceiling; then we’d land again when the tidal waves had subsided.’ He looked across with smiling eyes at Conchita.

  ‘What a honeymoon,’ she purred. ‘Perhaps, when we came down again there’d be no one left alive on the earth, so we should have to start the world all over again, like Adam and Eve, in a new Garden of Eden.’

  Mrs. Fink-Drummond smiled a little weakly. ‘It sounds too enchanting, but I don’t think being up in the air would help you much if this comet really crashed into us.’

  ‘It won’t,’ her husband declared pompously. ‘Comets are only composed of meteorites and gas, so there is no question of any actual collision.’