Part 19

“And that’s usually a sin that finds somebody out,” added Waters. “Unfortunately, the sinner isn’t always the victim.”

“Why should it be?” said Matthews. “Nature does not work by a scheme of poetical justice.”

“Nor does God,” said Perry. “We suffer for one another, as, indeed, we must, being all members one of another. Can you separate the child from the father, the man from the brute, or even the man from the vegetable cell, Stingo?”

“No,” said Matthews. “It is you that have tried to keep up that story about Man in the image of God and lord of nature and so on. But trace the chain back and you will find every link hold—you yourself, compounded from your father and mother by the mechanical chemistry of the chromosomes. Back to your ancestors, back to prehistoric Neanderthal Man and his cousin, Aurignacian. Neanderthal was a mistake, he wouldn’t work properly and died out, but the line goes on back, dropping the misfits, leaving the stabilised forms on the way—back to Arboreal Man, to the common ancestor Tarsius, to the first Mammal, to the ancestral bird-form, back to the Reptiles, the Trilobites, back to the queer, shapeless jellies of life that divide and subdivide eternally in the waters. The things that found some kind of balance with their environment persisted, the things that didn’t, died out; and here and there some freak found its freakishness of advantage and started a new kind of life with a new equilibrium. At what point, Perry, will you place your image of God?”

“Well,” said Perry, “I should not attempt to deny that Adam was formed of the dust of the earth. And your ape-and-tiger ancestry at least provides me with a scientific authority for original sin. What a mercy the Church stuck to that dogma, in spite of Rousseau and the noble savage. If she hadn’t, you scientists would have forced it back on her, and how silly we should all have looked then.”

“But it was all guess-work,” retorted Matthews, “unless you call it inspiration, and very inaccurate at that. If the author of Genesis had said that man was made of sea-water, he would have been nearer the truth.”

“Well,” said Waters, “he put the beginnings of life on the face of the waters, which wasn’t so very far off.”

“But how did life begin?” I asked. “After all, there is a difference between the Organic and the Inorganic. Or there appears to be.”

“That’s for Waters to say,” said Matthews.

“I can’t be very didactic about that,” said the chemist. “But it appears possible that there was an evolution from Inorganic to Organic through the Colloids. We can’t say much more, and we haven’t—so far—succeeded in producing it in the laboratory. Matthews probably still believes that Mind is a function of Matter, but if he asks me to demonstrate it for him, I must beg to be excused. I can’t even show that Life is a function of Matter.”

“The Behaviourists seem to think that what looks like Intelligence and Freewill are merely mechanical responses to material stimuli,” I suggested.

“That’s all very well,” said Hoskyns, emerging with a grin from a cloud of tobacco-smoke, “but all you people talk so cheerfully about Matter, as if you knew what it was. I don’t, and it’s more or less my job to know. Go back again, go past your colloids and your sea-water. Go back to the dust of the earth and the mass of rotating cinders which was before the ocean even began. Go back to the sun, which threw the planets off so unexpectedly, owing to a rare accident which might not happen in a million light-years. Go back to the nebula. Go back to the atom. Do some of the famous splitting we hear so much about. Where is your Matter? It isn’t. It is a series of pushes or pulls or vortices in nothingness. And as for your train of mechanical causation, Matthews, when you come down to it, it resolves itself into a series of purely fortuitous movements of something we can’t define in a medium that doesn’t exist. Even your heredity-business is fortuitous. Why one set of chromosomes more than any other? Your chain of causation would only be a real one if all possible combinations and permutations were worked out in practice. Something is going on, that is as certain as anything can be—that is, I mean, it is the fundamental assumption we are bound to make in order to reason at all—but how it started or why it started is just as mysterious as it was when the first thoughtful savage invented a god to explain it.”

“Why should it ever have started at all?” said Matthews. “As Matter passes from one form to another, so forces change from one to another. Why should we suppose a beginning—or an end if it comes to that? Why not a perpetually shifting kaleidoscope, going through all its transformations and starting again?”

“Why, my lad,” replied Hoskyns, “because in that case you will come slap up against the second law of thermo-dynamics, and that will be the end of you.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Perry, “the formula that starts so charmingly about ‘Nothing in the statistics of an assemblage’—that appears to be all the Law and the Prophets nowadays.”

“Yes,” said Hoskyns. “Its general meaning is that Time only works in one direction, and that when all the permutations and combinations have been run through, Time will stop, because there will be nothing further by which we can distinguish its direction. All the possibilities will have been worked out, all the electrons will have been annihilated, and there will be nothing more for them to do and no radiant energy left for them to do it with. That is why there must be an end. And if an end, presumably a beginning.”

“And the end is implicit in the beginning?” said I.

“Yes; but the intermediate stages are not inevitable in detail, only overwhelmingly probable in the gross. There, Perry, if you like, you can reconcile Foreknowledge with Freewill.”

“Life, then, I suppose, is but one more element of randomness,” said I, “in the randomness of things.”

“Presumably,” said Hoskyns.

There was a pause.

“What is Life?” I asked, suddenly.

“Well, Pontius,” said Waters, “if we could answer that question we should probably not need to ask the others. At present—chemically speaking—the nearest definition I can produce is that it is a kind of bias—a lop-sidedness, so to speak. Possibly that accounts for its oddness.”

“I’ve said that kind of thing myself,” I said, rather astonished, “just as a sort of feeble witticism. Have I hit on something true by accident?”

“More or less. That is to say, it is true that, up to the present, it is only living substance that has found the trick of transforming a symmetric, optically inactive compound into a single, asymmetric, optically active compound. At the moment that Life appeared on this planet, something happened to the molecular structure of things. They got a twist, which nobody has ever succeeded in reproducing mechanically—at least, not without an exercise of deliberate selective intelligence, which is also, as I suppose you’ll allow, a manifestation of Life.”

“Thank you,” said Perry. “Do you mind saying the first part over again, in words that a child could understand?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said Waters. “When the planet cooled, the molecules of that original inorganic planetary matter were symmetric—if crystallised, the crystals were symmetric also. That is, they were alike on both sides, like a geometrical cube, and their reversed or mirror-images would be identical with themselves. Substances of this kind are said to be optically inactive; that is to say, if viewed through the polariscope, they have no power to rotate the beam of polarised light.”

“We will take your word for it,” said Perry.

“Oh, well, that’s quite simple. Ordinarily speaking, the vibrations in the æther—need I explain æther?”

“I wish you could,” said Hoskyns.

“We will pass æther,” said Perry.

“Thank you. Well, ordinarily the ætheric vibrations which propagate the light takes place in all directions at right angles to the path of the ray. If you pass the ray through a crystal of Iceland spar, these vibrations are all brought into one plane, like a flat ribbon. That is what is called a beam of polarised light. Very well, then. If you pass this polarised light through a substance whose molecular structure is symmetric, nothing happens to it; the substance is optically inactive. But if you pass it through, say, a solution of cane sugar, the beam of polarised light will be twisted, and you will get a spiral effect, like twisting a strip of paper either to the right or to the left. The cane sugar is optically active. And why? Because its molecular structure is asymmetric. The crystals of sugar are not fully developed. There is an irregularity on one side, and the crystal and its mirror image are reversed, like my right hand and my left.” He laid the palm of the right hand on the back of the left to show his meaning. We all frowned and practised on our own hands.

“Very good,” continued Waters. “Now, we can produce in the laboratory, by synthesis from inorganic substances, other substances which were at one time thought to be only the products of living tissues—camphor, for instance, and some of the alkaloids used in medicine. But what is the difference between our process and that of Nature? What happens is this. The substance produced by synthesis always appears in what is called a racemic form. It consists of two sets of substances—one set having its asymmetry right-handed and the other left-handed, so that the product as a whole behaves like an inorganic, symmetric compound; that is, its two asymmetrics cancel one another out, and the product is optically inactive and has no power to rotate the beam of polarised light. To get a substance exactly equivalent to the natural product, we have to split it into its two asymmetric forms. We can’t do that mechanically. We can do it by the exercise of our living intelligence, of course, by laboriously picking out the crystals. Or we can do it by swallowing the substance, when our bodies will absorb and digest the dextro-rotating form of, for example, glucose, and pass the lævo-rotating form out unchanged. Or we can get a living fungus to do it for us, such as blue mould, which will feed on and destroy the dextro-rotatory half of the racemic form of paratartaric acid and leave unchanged the lævo-rotatory half, which is the artificial, laboratory-made half. But we can’t, by one mechanical laboratory process, turn an inorganic, inactive, symmetric compound into one single, asymmetric, optically active compound—and that is what living matter will do cheerfully, day by day.”

Waters finished his exposition with a smart little thump of the fist on the table. I knew what that was. It was the postman’s knock, bringing the answer to that letter of mine. A horrid sinking feeling at the solar plexus warned me that in a very few minutes I should have to ask a question. Why need I do it? The subject was remote and difficult. I could easily pretend not to understand. If there really was a difference between the synthetic and the natural product, it was not my business to investigate it. Waters was changing the subject. He had gone back to the first day of creation. Hang him! Let him stay there!

“So that, as Professor Japp said, as long ago as 1898, ‘The phenomena of stereo-chemistry support the doctrine of vitalism as revived by the younger physiologists, and point to the existence of a directive force, which enters upon the scene with Life itself and which, in no way violating the laws of the kinetics of atoms’—that ought to comfort you, Hoskyns—‘determines the course of their operation within the living organism. That is that at the moment when Life first arose, a directive force came into play—a force of precisely the same character as that which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his will, to select one crystallised enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite.’ I learnt that passage by heart once, as a safeguard against cocksureness and a gesture of proper humility in face of my subject.”

“In other words,” said Matthews, “you believe in miracles, and something appearing out of nowhere. I am sorry to find you on the side of the angels.”

“It depends what you mean by miracles. I think there is an intelligence behind it all. Else, why anything at all?”

“You have Jeans on your side anyway,” put in Hoskyns. “He says, ‘Everything points with overwhelming force to a definite event, or series of events, of creation at some time or times, not infinitely remote. The universe cannot have originated by chance out of its present ingredients.’ I can’t tell you what produced the first molecules of gas, and you can’t tell me what produced the first asymmetric molecules of Life. The parson here may think he knows.”

“I don’t know,” said Perry, “but I give it a name. I call it God. You don’t know what the æther is, but you give it a name, and deduce its attributes from its behaviour. Why shouldn’t I do likewise? You people are making it all very much easier for me.”

It was no good. I had to ask my question. I burst in, violently, inappropriately, on this theological discussion:

“You mean to tell me,” I said, “that it is possible to differentiate a substance produced synthetically in the laboratory from one produced by living tissue?”

“Certainly,” said Waters, turning to me in some surprise, but apparently accepting my tardy realisation of this truth as mere vagary of my slow and unscientific wits. “So long, of course, as the artificial substance remains in the first or racemic form, for this would be optically inactive, while that from the living tissues would rotate the beam of polarised light, when viewed in the polariscope. If, however, that racemic form had been already split up by the intelligent operator, or some other living agency, into its two dextro- and lævo-rotary forms, it would be impossible to distinguish between them.”

I saw a path of escape opening up. Surely the synthetic muscarine at St. Anthony’s would have had this other operation performed on it. There was no reason at all why I should interfere. I relapsed into silence, and the conversation wandered on.

I was recalled to myself by a movement about me. Matthews was explaining that he had to be getting home. Waters rose to accompany him. In a minute he would be gone and the opportunity lost. I had only to sit still.

I got up. I made my fatuous farewells. I said I had a perfectly good wife to go home to. I thanked my host and said how much I had enjoyed the evening. I followed the other men out into the narrow hall, with its loaded umbrella-stand and ugly, discoloured wall-paper.

“Dr. Waters,” I said.

“Yes?” He turned smiling towards me. I must say something now or he would think me a fool.

“May I have a word with you?”

“By all means. Which way do you go?”

“Bloomsbury,” said I, hoping desperately that he lived at Hendon or Harringay.

“Excellent, I am going that way myself. Shall we share a taxi?”

I murmured something about Professor Matthews.

“No, no,” said he, “I’m going by tube to Earl’s Court.”

We found our taxi and got in.

“Well, now?” said Waters.

I was in for it now. I told him the whole story.

“By God,” he said, “that’s damned interesting. Fine idea for a murder. Of course, any jury in the country would be only too ready to believe it was accident. Tempting Providence, and all that. And unless your man was fool enough to use the synthetic muscarine in its racemic form, you know, I’m very much afraid he’s pulled it off. There’s a chance, of course. They may not have gone further than that. Why didn’t you ask Benson while you were about it?”

“I thought of doing so,” I admitted. “At least, I didn’t know about this racemic business, but I thought there might be some way of telling the artificial stuff from the real. But Harrison seemed satisfied——”

“He would be. I know these people. Wrapped up in their own subjects. An engineer—_he_ ought to know something about molecular structure. But no. He’s no occasion to study Organic, so it doesn’t occur to him that there’s anything to know about it. The word of a first-year student at Anthony’s is enough for him. You have more imagination. Why didn’t you——?”

“I don’t know that I quite wanted to.”

“Let bad alone, eh? But damn it, it’s interesting. I say, what a scoop for the papers, if it comes off! ‘First murder ever caught by the polariscope.’ Better than Crippen and the wireless. Only they’ll have a bit of a job explaining it. Now, look here, what are we going to do about it? Who did the analysis?”

“Lubbock.”

“Oh, yes—Home Office man, of course. We’ll have to get on to him. It’s chance if he’s kept the stuff by him. What? Oh, he has. That’s all right then. We’ve only got to take a squint at it and then we shall know. I mean, if the stuff really is racemic, we shall know. If not, we never shall. What’s the time? Quarter-past eleven. No time like the present. Here, driver!”

He thrust his head out of the window and gave an address in Woburn Square.

“It’s all on our way, and Lubbock never goes to bed before midnight. I know him well. He’ll be keen on this.”

His energy swept me up, feebly protesting, and in a few minutes’ time we were standing on Sir James Lubbock’s doorstep, ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a manservant, of whom Waters inquired whether Sir James was at home.

“No, sir. He is working late to-night, sir, at the Home Office. I think it’s the arsenic case, sir.”

“Oh, of course. That’s luck for us, Munting. We’ll run down and catch him there. You might give him a ring, Stevens, and say I’m coming down to see him on an urgent matter. You know who I am?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Dr. Waters. Very good, sir. You’ll find him in the laboratory, sir.”

“Right. We’d better hurry up, or we may just miss him.”

We plunged back into the taxi.

“Shall we find any difficulty in getting in?”

“Oh, no. I’ve been there before. We’re making very good time. Provided he hadn’t started before Stevens got through to him, he’ll wait for us. Ah! here we are.”

We drew up at a side door in the big Government building. After a short colloquy with the man on duty, we were passed through. I stumbled at Waters’ heels through a number of dreary corridors, till we fetched up in a kind of small ante-room.

“I feel strongly persuaded,” I said, “that I am on a visit to the dentist.”

“And you hope very much he’ll say there’s nothing to be done to you this time. I, on the contrary, hope very much that it’s something malignant and unusual. Have a fag.”

I accepted the fag. I tried to think of Harrison, perishing horribly in his lonely shack, but instead I could only see Lathom with his hair rumpled and his teeth set, painting with his usual careless brilliance. I got the idea that God or Nature or Science or some other sinister and powerful thing had set a trap for him, and that I was pushing him into it. I thought it was ruthless of God or whoever it was. Pom, pomty; pom, pomty; pom, pomty; pom, pomty—I was nervously humming something and I couldn’t think what. Oh, yes— Haydn’s _Creation_—that bit, where the kettle-drums thump so gently, so ruthlessly, on one note—“And-the-spi-rit-of-God (pomty) moved-upon-the-face-of-the-waters-(pom)”—only apparently it wasn’t the Spirit of God, but an asymmetric molecule, which didn’t fit the rhythm. Somebody was walking down the corridor, with a soft, muffled beat, rather like kettle-drums. “Let there be light (pomty-pom) and there was——”

The door opened.

I recognised Sir James Lubbock at once, of course, though now, in a white overall and pair of crimson carpet slippers, he presented an appearance less point-devise than he had done at the inquest. He greeted Waters cordially and received my name with a faint look of puzzledom.

“Mr. Munting? Yes—let me see, haven’t we met before?”

I reminded him of Manaton.

“Of course, of course. I knew I knew your face. Mr. Munting, the novelist. Delighted to make your acquaintance under more pleasant auspices.”

“I don’t know that they are much more pleasant,” said Waters. “As a matter of fact, it’s the Harrison case we wanted to see you about.”

“Really? Has something fresh turned up? You know, the other day I had a letter from the man’s son. Rather an odd letter. He seemed to have got the idea that there was more in the case than met the eye. Hinted that we might have found something else—strychnine or something. Quite ridiculous, of course. There wasn’t the faintest doubt about the cause of death. Muscarine poisoning. Perfectly straightforward.”

“Just so. By the way, Lubbock, did it by any chance occur to you to give that muscarine the once-over with the polariscope?”

“With the polariscope? Good heavens, no. Why should it? That wouldn’t tell one anything. You know all about muscarine. Dextro-rotatory. Nothing abstruse about it.”

“Oh, quite. But we’ve been having a little discussion, and—as a matter of fact, Lubbock, it would relieve Mr. Munting’s mind—and mine—considerably, if you would just check up on that point.”

“Well, if you insist, there’s nothing easier. But what’s the mystery?”

“Nothing at all, probably. Just an extra bit of collateral evidence, that’s all.”

“You’ve something at the back of your mind, Waters. Can’t I be allowed to know?”

“I’ll tell you after you’ve done it.”

Sir James Lubbock shook his handsome grey head.

“That’s Waters all over. He’s like Sherlock Holmes. Never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”

“No,” said Waters. “It’s just native caution. Don’t want to commit myself and be made to look foolish.”

“Oh, well, come along and we’ll get it over.”

“Aren’t we interrupting your work?” I said. I hope this question was prompted by politeness, but I think I spoke in a vain hope of delaying the crisis.

“Not a bit. I’d just finished—was packing up, in fact, when I got your message.”

We traversed some more corridors and eventually came out into a large laboratory, faintly lit by a single electric bulb. An attendant was just locking a cupboard. He turned as he saw us.

“It’s all right, Denis. I’ll see to things. You can trot away home.”

“Very well. Good night, Sir James.”

“Good night.”

Sir James switched on some more lights, flooding the gaunt room with what Poe has called somewhere a “ghastly and inappropriate splendour.” Stepping across to a tall cupboard labelled with his name, he unlocked it with a key that hung upon his watch-chain.

“Here’s my bluebeard’s chamber,” he said, smiling. “Relics of all kinds of crimes and tragedies. Bottled murders. Bottled suicides. Plenty of plots for novels here, Mr. Munting.”

I said I supposed so.

“Here we are, Harrison. Extract from stomach. Extract from vomit. Extract from dish of fungus. Which is it you particularly want, Waters?”

“Doesn’t matter. Try the extract from the dish of fungus. It’ll be less open to—that is, it is possibly better for our purpose. What’s this, Lubbock?”