But this was only one of the symptoms of the grave troubles which were menacing the success of Nordenholt’s plans. I do not doubt that he had foreseen the condition into which affairs had drifted; but it seems to me that he recognised the impossibility of eradicating the roots of the discontent. Its origin lay in the actual material and moral states of affairs; and without abandoning his whole scheme it was impossible to change these things.
I know that during these months he stiffened the discipline of the Labour Defence Force considerably in view of eventualities; and he had frequent conferences with the officers in command of its various units. I guessed, from what I saw, that in future he intended to drive the population into safety if he could not lead them there; and I confess that at times I took a very gloomy view of our chances of success.
It was during this trying period, I think, that Nordenholt’s young men were his greatest source of strength. He was always in touch with them; and in some way he seemed to draw encouragement from them while spurring them on to further efforts. They seemed to lean on him and yet to support him in his work; and often I felt that without some comradeship as this our whole plans would have been doomed to failure. The Nordenholt Gang practically occupied all the posts of any responsibility in the Nitrogen Area; and this, I expect, rendered the working of the machine much smoother than it would otherwise have been.
Since my new work brought me into touch with many fresh departments, my acquaintance with Nordenholt’s men increased; and I was amazed to find the ramifications of his system and the super-excellence of the human material in which he had dealt. They were all young, hardly any were over thirty-five and most were younger; yet they seemed to have a fund of moral courage and self-reliance which struck me especially in those dark times. They never seemed to doubt that in the end things would come right. It was not that they blindly trusted in Nordenholt to the exclusion of common sense: for they all seemed to face the facts quite squarely. But behind their even weighings of the situation I detected an unspoken yet wholehearted belief that Nordenholt would bring us through without a hitch. Hero-worship has its uses, when it is soundly based; and all of them, it was easy to see, had made Nordenholt their hero. When I thought over the many-sided nature of their activities and the differences of personality among them, I could not help finding my view of Nordenholt himself expanding. They were all picked men, far above the average; their minds worked on different lines; their interests were as divergent as the Poles: and yet, one and all, they recognised Nordenholt as their master. I do not mean that he excelled them in their own special lines: for I doubt, in many cases, whether he had even a grip of the elements of the subjects which they had made their own. But he had been able to impress upon all these various intellects the feeling that he was in a class by himself; and that effect implied immense personality in him.
Despite their widely different fields of activity, there was a very strong esprit de corps among them all; and it was not for some time that I felt myself to be received on equal terms with the rest. I think they felt that I was outside their particular circle, at first. But the real passport into it was efficiency; and when I had had time to show my power of organisation, they accepted me at once as one of themselves.
Of them all, I think Henley-Davenport interested me most, though I can hardly put into words the reasons which led to this attraction. I never learned how Nordenholt had discovered him originally; but I found that when Henley-Davenport began to open up the subject of induced radioactivity, Nordenholt had stepped in and bought up for him a huge supply of various radioactive materials which he required in his work and which he had despaired of acquiring on account of their enormous cost.
What struck me most about him was his fearlessness. Once he gave me, incidentally in the course of a talk upon something else, a suggestion of the risks which his work entailed. It seemed to me that I would have faced half a dozen other kinds of death rather than that one. Purely as a matter of physiological interest, he told me that the effect of radioactive materials on a large scale upon the human body would exceed the worst inventions of medieval torturers.
“The radiations, you know,” he said, drawing at his cigarette. “The radiations have a knack of destroying tissue; but they don’t produce immediate effects. The skin remains quite healthy, to all appearances, for days after the damage is done. Then you get festering sores appearing on the affected parts.
“Well, on a large scale, the affected parts will be the whole surface of the body; so that in itself will be pretty bad, as you can see. Poor old Job will have to take a back seat after this.
“Then, again, I expect enormous quantities of radioactive gas will be evolved; and probably one will breathe some of it into one’s lungs. The result of that will be rather worse than the external injuries, of course. I doubt if a man will last half an hour under that treatment; but that half-hour will be the limit in pain.”
“Can’t you use a mask or some lead protection?” I asked. “Or could you not fix
