'That was so.'
'And I not there!' he groaned, and turned dismally once more to the hosing of his car.
There was a sudden grinding of wheels upon gravel. The old cab had actually pulled up at Challenger's door. I saw the young occupant step out from it. An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest sleep, appeared with a card upon a tray. Challenger snorted ferociously as he looked at it, and his thick black hair seemed to bristle up in his wrath.
'A pressman!' he growled. Then with a deprecating smile: 'After all, it is natural that the whole world should hasten to know what I think of such an episode.'
'That can hardly be his errand,' said Summerlee, 'for he was on the road in his cab before ever the crisis came.'
I looked at the card: 'James Baxter, London Correspondent, New York Monitor.'
'You'll see him?' said I.
'Not I.'
'Oh, George! You should be kinder and more considerate to others. Surely you have learned something from what we have undergone.'
He tut-tutted and shook his big, obstinate head.
'A poisonous breed! Eh, Malone? The worst weed in modern civilization, the ready tool of the quack and the hindrance of the self-respecting man! When did they ever say a good word for me?'
'When did you ever say a good word to them?' I answered. 'Come, sir, this is a stranger who has made a journey to see you. I am sure that you won't be rude to him.'
'Well, well,' he grumbled, 'you come with me and do the talking. I protest in advance against any such outrageous invasion of my private life.' Muttering and mumbling, he came rolling after me like an angry and rather ill-conditioned mastiff.
The dapper young American pulled out his notebook and plunged instantly into his subject.
'I came down, sir,' said he, 'because our people in America would very much like to hear more about this danger which is, in your opinion, pressing upon the world.'
'I know of no danger which is now pressing upon the world,' Challenger answered gruffly.
The pressman looked at him in mild surprise.
'I meant, sir, the chances that the world might run into a belt of poisonous ether.'
'I do not now apprehend any such danger,' said Challenger.
The pressman looked even more perplexed.
'You are Professor Challenger, are you not?' he asked.
'Yes, sir; that is my name.'
'I cannot understand, then, how you can say that there is no such danger. I am alluding to your own letter, published above your name in the London Times of this morning.'
It was Challenger's turn to look surprised.
'This morning?' said he. 'No London Times was published this morning.'
'Surely, sir,' said the American in mild remonstrance, 'you must admit that the London Times is a daily paper.' He drew out a copy from his inside pocket. 'Here is the letter to which I refer.'
Challenger chuckled and rubbed his hands.
'I begin to understand,' said he. 'So you read this letter this morning?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And came at once to interview me?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you observe anything unusual upon the journey down?'
'Well, to tell the truth, your people seemed more lively and generally human than I have ever seen them. The baggage man set out to tell me a funny story, and that's a new experience for me in this country.'
'Nothing else?'
'Why, no, sir, not that I can recall.'
'Well, now, what hour did you leave Victoria?'
The American smiled.
'I came here to interview you, Professor, but it seems to be a case of `Is this nigger fishing, or is this fish niggering?' You're doing most of the work.'
'It happens to interest me. Do you recall the hour?'
'Sure. It was half-past twelve.'
'And you arrived?'
'At a quarter-past two.'
'And you hired a cab?'
'That was so.'
'How far do you suppose it is to the station?'
'Well, I should reckon the best part of two miles.'
'So how long do you think it took you?'
'Well, half an hour, maybe, with that asthmatic in front.'
'So it should be three o'clock?'
'Yes, or a trifle after it.'
'Look at your watch.'
The American did so and then stared at us in astonishment.
'Say!' he cried. 'It's run down. That horse has broken every record, sure. The sun is pretty low, now that I come to look at it. Well, there's something here I don't understand.'
'Have you no remembrance of anything remarkable as you came up the hill?'
'Well, I seem to recollect that I was mighty sleepy once.
It comes back to me that I wanted to say something to the driver and that I couldn't make him heed me. I guess it was the heat, but I felt swimmy for a moment. That's all.'
'So it is with the whole human race,' said Challenger to me. 'They have all felt swimmy for a moment. None of them have as yet any comprehension of what has occurred. Each will go on with his interrupted job as Austin has snatched up his hose-pipe or the golfer continued his game. Your editor, Malone, will continue the issue of his papers, and very much amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young friend,' he added to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused geniality, 'it may interest you to know that the world has swum through the poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf Stream through the ocean of ether. You will also kindly note for your own future convenience that to-day is not Friday, August the twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in your cab for twenty-eight hours upon the Rotherfield hill.'
And 'right here,' as my American colleague would say, I may bring this narrative to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, only a fuller and more detailed version of the account which appeared in the Monday edition of the Daily Gazette-an account which has been universally admitted to be the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, which sold no fewer than three-and-a-half million copies of the paper. Framed upon the wall of my sanctum I retain those magnificent headlines:-
TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS' WORLD COMA UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE CHALLENGER JUSTIFIED OUR CORRESPONDENT ESCAPES ENTHRALLING NARRATIVE THE OXYGEN ROOM WEIRD MOTOR DRIVE DEAD LONDON REPLACING THE MISSING PAGE GREAT FIRES AND LOSS OF LIFE WILL IT RECUR?
Underneath this glorious scroll came nine and a half columns of narrative, in which appeared the first, last, and only account of the history of the planet, so far as one observer could draw it, during one long day of its existence. Challenger and Summerlee have treated the matter in a joint scientific paper, but to me alone was left the popular account. Surely I can sing 'Nunc dimittis.' What is left but anti-climax in the life of a journalist after that!
But let me not end on sensational headlines and a merely personal triumph. Rather let me quote the sonorous passages in which the greatest of daily papers ended its admirable leader upon the subject-a leader which might well be filed for reference by every thoughtful man.
'It has been a well-worn truism,' said the Times, 'that our human race are a feeble folk before the infinite
