FARADAY dismissed his father’s unanswered question briefly next morning, for the reason that he was now largely concerned with his own affairs.
“Touching last night, I’m afraid we can only agree to differ, Father,” he began. “Your faith is built on certain static foundations which do not permit of scientific verification and so won’t satisfy us. But since you cannot sacrifice your foundations and we are unable to trust them, we must each follow his own road and leave time to prove which leads to more truth and the increased happiness and progress of mankind.
“And that,” he continued, “brings me to what I want to tell you. I have reached a point now when I had to make a tremendous choice: not between different theories of truth, but between two branches of science. With one I have been so far occupied and now, after a pretty deep contention, have decided to abandon it and devote the rest of my life to another. Don’t think, however, that this is a foolish fad. From the very first I never felt to regard medicine as my ultimate goal and, for the last ten years, while valuing the wisdom, the discipline and training I have won through it and the purely scientific attitude of mind it has created for me, I feel this is not enough. Now I want to join the pioneers and devote my brains to inquiry, experiment and research, where in my opinion lies still concealed the real road that waits to be discovered.”
Sir Hector regarded his son blankly.
“Go on — finish,” he said.
“I feel very deeply about this, of course, or I should not bother you with myself for a moment,” promised Faraday, his eyes on his father; “but if ever I had a clear picture of what is awaiting us, it is now — something that to me is probably what your eternal verities are to you. I believe that the time is ripe for tremendous advances and that we may be fast approaching another milestone on the road to truth. And far greater minds than mine are already on the road to it. Mysterious discoveries await us, Father, and they might hold the key to much happiness for the human race. We have struggled, step by step through the ages of Stone and Bronze, of Iron and Darkness to the sunshine of the Golden Ages — through the ages of steam and electricity, to the age of the air, where we now claim to be; and soon, we may find ourselves the inheritors of a future age which science approaches. There is sometimes a long era between these distinctive periods and sometimes a short one. Our activities on the air were swiftly turned to good purpose, for we learned to fly in it and also discovered the Hertzian rays, so that we could speak to each other round the equator and from pole to pole; but there is something greater yet waiting for us, and men like Professor Rutherford are on the very threshold of it. Therefore, I want to join those engaged in storming that threshold and be among the destined to enter, where may yet await us something so tremendous and almighty that it will throw open the doors to a changed world, confound all our old values and advance our eternal quest of truth.”
Nothing but deep doubt clouded his father’s face.
“Have you done?” he asked.
“Very nearly, Father,” answered Faraday. “You see we have discovered vast natural energies one after another and tamed them, one by one, to our needs and our huge advantage. So future energies yet awaiting us are to be welcomed, not feared. That is a great point. Had I dreaded this tremendous venture I might have been content to remain a physician all my life; but I am convinced we have reached a standpoint in human knowledge and reasoning powers where any immense new phenomena will be measured from the outset and controlled as carefully as we control earlier discoveries: things we call the laws of Nature.”
“What have such laws to do with human happiness?” asked Sir Hector. “The law of gravitation continues to break human necks and destroy human life, though we have discovered it.”
Faraday ignored this diversion.
“No matter for that,” continued his father. “Now let me speak and get your present position clear. I had thought you were going to ask me about your own future. I imagined the time was come when you would wish to go into practice and, fortified by your splendid degrees and your house-physicianship — which amounts to another degree in itself — you were now going to ask me for an increased income and whether I was prepared, either to buy you a practice, or see you start work in Harley Street with me behind you to leave your mind free from petty questions, as I have done all your life, and so enable you to continue with every energy and endowment devoted to your profession. And now you tell me that your design is to abandon your profession for the jack o’ lantern business of research and waste ten years that you have devoted to the noblest and sanest occupation in reach of any young man with brains.”
“Not wasted, Father. Please don’t say, or imagine any such thing,” begged Faraday. “I have gained enormously in a thousand ways by my introduction to the life of a scientist. It has taught me method, given me wide knowledge and furnished me with a sense of proportion and exactitude and understanding of Nature’s ways. I shall be putting all that I have learned to good purpose and I am starting on no jack o’ lantern adventure, but on a road, as I said before, already followed by very great scientists — a road that may lead us many strides forward and reorient the whole human outlook.”
“Such progress, if God so wills, must come gradually through the advance of evolution,” said Sir Hector. “In evolution I believe as much as you do; but there are no short cuts in Nature and they will not be made by the activities of human chemists, or alchemists, or mistaken savants, who squander their lives trying to find elixirs, or attempting to turn lead into gold. My own instincts are all against this probing and burrowing into the secrets of Nature. You say you are about to abandon medicine and you very well know what I think about that. But you would not have unveiled your intentions without a purpose. What is it? You are a very clever man, but not, I should judge, capable of discoveries destined to hasten the progress of evolution. What do you propose to do?”
“That will depend upon you; but I’m afraid your attitude makes it look as if the decision is to be made at once,” answered his son. “I had hoped that you would be on my side and enable me to fit out my own laboratory and work alone, of course, keeping in close touch with other physicists engaged in the same work; but if you feel averse from doing that, I can join up where I shall be very welcome and enlist under one of the swells. To start as I should like to start would require a lot of money. Speaking generally, I should love to see some of the millions this nation spends devoted to scientific research and so poured out for healthier and saner purposes than are supported at present. You are tremendously rich and amazingly generous, too; but, from my angle of vision, you waste hundreds of thousands on old causes and vested interests that were far better starved to death. That, of course, is no business of mine and if you don’t feel my future ambitions worthy of support, then I must pursue them without your help, Father.”
Sir Hector pulled up his riding-boots. He had dressed in pink this morning and was going with Alfred to a meet of hounds in half an hour.
“I am certainly quite unprepared to subsidize a big laboratory that you may spend the rest of your life searching for something that probably doesn’t exist,” he said. “What do you expect to find and how can you assume that it will advance the welfare of the world at large even if you do find it?”
The younger answered with one of his rare, wintry smiles.
“Franklin is my hero, just as Michael Faraday is yours, Father,” he replied. “Franklin loved research and was interested in every form of it. On the subject of balloons he spent much time and thought and, when somebody asked him ‘What is the use of balloons?’ he answered, ‘What is the use of a new-born baby?’ The good of anything depends on what we make of it in the long run; but science is only concerned with new truth, not the use we make of a new truth.”
“And is quite likely to discover new truths which faulty mankind will apply to evil rather than good. Many of your new truths are open to question. One sees much to give one pause in the world,” replied Sir Hector. “We can seek at least to educate our babies into usefulness, but science, in the shape of the motor car, slaughters our babies by the thousand annually on their way to school.”
“Not science, Father: our idiotic inability to regulate the pace of motor cars,” answered Faraday. “If science were permitted to make the laws governing motor traffic, you’d find a very different state of things. There may come a time when science will think twice before trusting laymen with its secrets, any more than we trust an imbecile, or an infant, with a box of matches.”
His father rose to end the interview.
“I must be on my way,” he said. “It’s a five-mile ride to the meet. I’m sorry I cannot pleasure you, or find the money you want; but I do not refuse out of any disappointment at your intentions, though I feel very great disappointment. I’ve given you a thousand a year ever since you were qualified to practise medicine and I shall go on doing so; but am not-disposed to furnish large capital that you may gamble with it on doubtful research. In my view science must be controlled. Any existence under the heel of science might well prove as free of liberty and self-respect as the socialists themselves would wish it to be — and doubtless will make it when they get the chance. Good-bye, Faraday, and I hope you may find time to come and see me and my gardens again during next pring. You have never beheld the beauties of Cliff in May and June since you were a youngster and I should not like to think the love of natural beauty was left out of you.”
He shook hands, as Alfred entered, also attired for the chase, and soon they rode away together; while a little later Faraday started to drive himself to London. Greta was travelling with him as far as Exeter and they talked together while she sat at the wheel beside him. She knew that her brother had something important to say to their father and now hoped all promised as Faraday might desire.
“Nobody ever had such a parent as we have I should think,” said Greta, “and sometimes I feel we don’t know our luck. He’s tremendously proud of you and I often think we are not half proud enough of him.”
“I’ve rather dashed his pride in me this morning,” confessed her brother. “We don’t often see alike and I guessed what I had to say might rather bother him. It did, and I drew a blank.”
“Sorry. Tell me — perhaps you put it badly.”
“He’ll tell you if you want to know, Greta. I’m not very articulate — never was, but I put my ideas before him as clearly as I could, and he wouldn’t entertain them, so I’m rather cast down for the moment.”
She laughed but without much amusement.
“Nobody ever saw you cast down, or lifted up for that matter. You might as well be a machine and Alfred says you are one. I suppose you wanted more fuel to keep going?”
“Exactly; and the old man won’t provide it for my purpose. He thinks science is in danger of being too uppish and wants keeping in its place. We differ rather hopelessly as to what place in the pattern of future things I am going to fill.”
“He may be right, Faraday. He’s generally pretty right. He knows the world a good deal better than you do.”
“He judges the world by his own highly successful experience of it and seldom undervalues the forces that make for progress. I don’t quarrel with him; but I look farther ahead, that’s all.”
“Tell me where he failed you and where you failed him,” she begged. “He’s so tolerant and ready to see other views and opinions than his own.”
But Faraday shook his head.
“I can’t go over all the ground again,” he answered. “I’ve talked more this morning than I have for a month of Sundays and I’m sick of my own voice. Father will tell you all about it if you want to know; and you’ll doubtless agree with him and say he is right.”
“I always agree with him and always know he’s right,” replied Greta stoutly. “I adore him and so does Alfred.”
Her brother did not reply, and after a long silence, Greta spoke again.
“You’ll come to the wedding I suppose?” she asked.
“What wedding — yours?”
She flushed under her dark skin and her eyes grew hard.
“No — neither you nor anybody else will ever come to mine. Which you very well know. I mean Alfred.”
“He should have told me he was engaged, then I would have congratulated him.”
“Can you have been here for three days and seen them together when the Stephensons called and not observed that he was in love with Nancy?”
“I’m afraid I missed it.”
“He’s going to ask her — to-day I expect, if she’s at the meet and a chance offers. She loves him and General Stephenson thinks the world of Alfred, too. Father expected we should have heard the news a fortnight ago. He likes Nancy and thinks she is just right for Alfred. They love country life and sport and all the same things.”
“And you approve?”
“Yes; I like Nancy too.”
“Where will they live?”
“At Cliff I expect. Father says she’ll be very welcome in our restricted family circle. But it remains to be seen whether she’s going to second the idea. She may prefer her own home and is far too young really to be married yet.”
Faraday changed the subject.
“Are you actually going to the headquarters of the police at Exeter?” he asked. “Was it worth while? I doubt if father would have bothered.”
“Not for the money, but the principle,” explained Greta. “It’s a case that demands the police. This is what happened, two days before you came down. Alfred sacked the cow-man at the home farm, and had every right to do so. He couldn’t have done less and wasn’t sorry to get the chance, because Abel Frost, the cow-man, is a rank ‘red’ and spends quite as much of his time talking rubbish to the farm people as he does looking after the cattle. So, when he asked for an absurd rise in his wages, Alfred promptly declined. But then Frost made his mistake and was insolent and lost his temper and swore. When he had finished and was going away, Alfred called him back and gave him a month’s notice and, two days after the month was ended and Frost had left Cliff, the big wheat stack — worth I don’t know how much — was burned to the ground.”
“Did Frost make any appeal or offer any apology, or see father after Alfred had dismissed him?”
“No. He has got work ten miles away and taken his wife and child there. But there’s not a shadow of doubt he burned the rick.”
“If there’s not a shadow of doubt, what do you want to go to Exeter for?” asked Faraday. “If arson can be proved against the man, why isn’t he arrested?”
“Because it hasn’t been proved and our local man cannot prove it. It’s one of those cases that need a little special detective work and a morsel of brain power. But father wanted to see them at Exeter and tell the story better than our local inspector was likely to tell it. So I’m going to do so to-day for him.”
“Father’s idea? I shouldn’t have thought he’d have troubled.”
“I made him trouble. It’s the principle. I pointed out to him that, granted Frost did it, then Frost ought to be punished and society at large protected from a scoundrel. He couldn’t deny that.”
“And Frost, of course, declares he had nothing to do with it?”
“He’s had no opportunity to declare anything. He hasn’t been approached or charged, and imagines he is safe accordingly.”
“He must have enough wits to know he may be suspected.”
“Probably he does and feels sure he left no clue to incriminate him. That’s where we shall find a professional detective is cleverer than Frost. Father doubts it, but I say that he ought to be and bowl the man out.”
“He’ll get five years if he’s caught,” said Faraday.
“And he’ll deserve it,” declared Greta.
They parted at Exeter and the girl went to the headquarters of the police with a communication from Sir Hector. The name of Heron commanded due attention. One officer summoned another — a younger man — and Greta told her tale with elaboration and full particulars, unaware that this trivial incident was in truth the entrance to events wherein her own destiny would be determined.
Detective-Inspector Trensham belonged to the new order of the police force. He was highly educated and possessed of those astute and energetic qualities that promised eminence in a difficult walk of life. He had chosen his calling and already justified his choice, being capable and courageous. Police work continued to attract him and he found it sufficed to fill his days and demand his energy and intelligence; but already on the threshold of success and with every confidence in his peculiar attainments, at two and thirty he looked ahead and reminded himself that, at best, his position in life must be subordinate and lie under masters rather than attain to that command, direction and control of others he felt to be his due. Appointed to the West Country, no question as to the future yet challenged him and now for young Ernest Trensham, as he sat and listened to Greta, there also dawned unguessed events to change the story that his opening years might have been supposed to predict.
He was a handsome man with a fine, lithe figure and upright and soldierly bearing. His face revealed intelligence and apprehension, his voice was educated and decisive, his manners courteous and tactful. He lacked sentiment and was pitiless to evil-doers, being concerned at no time with any issue but their pursuit and condemnation; in which employment his own ingenuity and skill seldom failed. As a hunter he concentrated on the chase, with absolute indifference to any human aspect of the prey. In some degree the detective mentally resembled Faraday Heron, for while moulded of coarser clay and without high intellectual attainment, he possessed the same fixity of purpose and determination, the like comfort in isolation and freedom from the interests of his fellows. To him a criminal case, until solved, was what the pursuit of hidden truths appeared to be to Faraday, for the young physician also possessed a hunter’s instinct, though his game promised to be found in country more difficult and even more dangerous than man-hunting could promise. Neither knew fear, nor was capable of feeling fear; both were competent to face peril in cold blood if circumstances so required them, and now, from the ashes of a burned corn stack, chance ordained that years to come would bring these men together.
Tresham listened with due attention to Greta’s narrative and admired her voice while she spoke. He attached no little attention to the human voice and it was one of his theories that, while education perfected diction, it could not conceal certain intonations. He professed to be guided by this quality and find inherent tone of voice often negative verbal oral evidence. “A tone will frequently tell you that men or women are lying,” he would say, and declared that an habitual criminal’s tone could be recognized, while, even though he might hesitate and be a poor witness, the honest man’s speech had different quality. He affirmed that this theory was his own and that it had served him well on more than one occasion; and now he alluded to it apropos of words Greta had spoken. “It’s something a man doesn’t suspect or guard against,” explained Trensham. “A question of vibration only audible to a highly trained ear — a nervous reflex probably. Dogs, which hear a thousand times better than we do, know it. The pitch of a man’s voice is well understood by them, and they can tell instantly what we are really feeling, though, of course, have no notion of what we are saying.”
His superior officer smiled at the youngster.
“You and your hobbies!” he said. “Now please return to the matter in hand, Detective-Inspector.”
The Heron corn rick promised no very interesting challenge and Trensham doubted not that he would quickly forge the needful links; what interested him more was Greta herself and the possibility of seeing Cliff and finding occasion to meet the old iron-master, who occupied a position of some importance in the country. Sir Hector felt it his duty to devote a measure of time to local politics and had long been famous for generous well-doing, so the detective felt interest in a trivial case for its possibilities and, before the visitor had finished, already guessed that Cliff House might furnish an experience and enable him to move for a moment in the novel atmosphere of wealth.
“A very full and perfect account of the situation, Miss Heron,” he said when she had done, “and everything straightforward and to the point. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the situation as it stands, with Frost unaware that steps are being taken. He’s bound to know himself suspected; but the fact that he has not been approached, or even asked to give an account of his movements on the night, are to the good, and one may be able to go ahead rather well from there. To make a man think nobody suspects him is often the surest way to get the evidence you want against him. I once took a homicide by building up a pretended belief that quite another man was guilty and making him feel I was after nobody else — least of all himself. In this case the simplest way will be for me to come on the scene as a stranger and not connected with the police. I can stop somewhere handy, meet those who know the man and occupy my time ostensibly in painting, or fishing, or something that will prevent any suggestion I am interested in local affairs.”
“My father had an idea of that sort,” said Greta. “It occurred to him you could come to us as a guest for a night or two and so work unknown.”
The young man approved her suggestion and thus it came about that Ernest Trensham entered into the circle of the Herons, dwelt under their roof for two days and won their goodwill. Sir Hector knew some of Ernest’s family and found him well mannered, clever and obviously destined to prosper in the business he had chosen; while Alfred Heron also took to the policeman and admired his physical strength. For Greta he came in a shape more formidable. Her brief and unhappy love-story had left her frozen to any further experience in that field and for two years she had remained impervious; but, during their exceedingly slight acquaintance, Greta found this stranger capable of wakening a sort of pallid interest in the male once more — a revival sufficient to create reflection after he had come and gone. But it persisted, and Greta was not uninterested to observe that her father and her brother were attracted by Trensham. They spoke of his quick mind: Sir Hector declared him good company and Alfred found him a sportsman.
“A face shining with intellegence,” said the iron-master, “and an attitude to his elders that speaks of sound values. With his tactful approach, good spirits and respectable opinions one might have expected him to choose a more promising profession than the police force; but, after all, his success in such a doleful theatre of work may be said to justify his choice. Not one’s idea of a detective officer, yet obviously very capable.”
“He’s a good-looking bloke,” commented Alfred. “Perhaps he’ll marry a rich wife some day and chuck his present job.”
But it was more Trensham’s way of looking at things and opinions and general joy of life that quickened Greta’s heart-beat a little while he remained. As for him, he found no difficulty in pleasuring them all. He much admired them and their simple, straightforward approach to life; he appreciated their friendly attitude and perceived that it would be easy to fall in love with Greta. But no thought of any enterprise so absurd troubled him. though he was conscious that she felt not unkindly and treated him with needless friendship.
Bringing his own, modern methods to the case and working largely with those who knew Abel Frost but did not know him, the detective came to the root of the matter, collected useful evidence, discovered one conclusive clue in the desolate theatre of the burnt stack and completed a task of small difficulty within a few days. What interested him far more was an invitation to return to Cliff for a week-end’s shooting if opportunity allowed him to do so.