The Stark Munro Letters by Arthur Conan Doyle (free novel 24 txt) 📕

he continued going across to the packing case, “is a saloon pistol, and will be exhibited in the museums of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches above the magnet. I am an absolutely dead shot. I fire. You will now advance, and satisfy yourself that the bullet is flattened upon the end of the magnet, after which you will apologise to me for that grin.”

I looked, and it certainly was as he had said.

“I’ll tell you what I would do,” he cried. “I am prepared to put that magnet in Hetty’s bonnet, and to let you fire six shots straight at her face. How’s that for a test? You wouldn’t mind, Hetty? Eh, what!”

“I don’t think she would have objected, but I hastened to disclaim any share in such an experiment.

“Of course, you see that the whole thing is to scale. My warship of the future carries at her prow and stern a magnet which shall be as much larger than that as the big shell will be larger than this tiny bullet. Or I might have a separate raft, possibly, to carry my apparatus. My ship goes into action. What happens then, Munro? Eh, what! Every shot fired at her goes smack on to the magnet. There’s a reservoir below into which they drop when the electric circuit is broken. After every action they are sold by auction for old metal, and the result divided as prize money among the crew. But think of it, man! I tell you it is an absolute impossibility for a shot to strike any ship which is provided with my apparatus. And then look at the cheapness. You don’t want armour. You want nothing. Any ship that floats becomes invulnerable with one of these. The war ship of the future will cost anything from seven pound ten.

You’re grinning again; but if you give me a magnet and a Brixton trawler with a seven-pounder gun I’ll show sport to the finest battle-ship afloat.”

“Well, there must be some flaw about this,” I suggested. “If your magnet is so strong as all that, you would have your own broadside boomeranging back upon you.”

“Not a bit of it! There’s a big difference between a shot flying away from you with all its muzzle velocity, and another one which is coming towards you and only needs a slight deflection to strike the magnet. Besides, by breaking the circuit I can take off the influence when I am firing my own broadside. Then I connect, and instantly become invulnerable.”

“And your nails and screws?”

“The warship of the future will be bolted together by wood.”

Well, he would talk of nothing else the whole evening but of this wonderful invention of his. Perhaps there is nothing in it—probably there is not; and yet it illustrates the many-sided nature of the man, that he should not say one word about his phenominal success here—of which I am naturally most anxious to hear—not a word either upon the important subject of our partnership, but will think and talk of nothing but this extraordinary naval idea. In a week he will have tossed it aside in all probability, and be immersed in some plan for reuniting the Jews and settling them in Madagascar. Yet from all he has said, and all I have seen, there can be no doubt that he has in some inexplicable way made a tremendous hit, and tomorrow I shall let you know all about it. Come what may, I am delighted that I came, for things promise to be interesting. Regard this not as the end of a letter, but of a paragraph. You shall have the conclusion tomorrow, or on Thursday at the latest. Goodbye, and my remembrance to Lawrence if you see him. How’s your friend from Yale?

VII.

1 THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 9th March, 1882.

Well, you see I am as good as my word, Bertie; and here is a full account of this queer little sample gouged out of real life, never to be seen, I should fancy, by any eye save your own. I have written to Horton also, and of course to my mother; but I don’t go into detail with them, as I have got into the way of doing with you.

You keep on assuring me that you like it; so on your own head be it if you find my experiences gradually developing into a weariness.

When I woke in the morning, and looked round at the bare walls and the basin on the packing case, I hardly knew where I was. Cullingworth came charging into the room in his dressing gown, however, and roused me effectually by putting his hands on the rail at the end of the bed, and throwing a somersault over it which brought his heels on to my pillow with a thud. He was in great spirits, and, squatting on the bed, he held forth about his plans while I dressed.

“I tell you one of the first things I mean to do, Munro,” said he. “I mean to have a paper of my own.

We’ll start a weekly paper here, you and I, and we’ll make them sit up all round. We’ll have an organ of our own, just like every French politician. If any one crosses us, we’ll make them wish they had never been born. Eh, what, laddie? what d’you think? So clever, Munro, that everybody’s bound to read it, and so scathing that it will just fetch out blisters every time. Don’t you think we could?”

“What politics?” I asked.

“Oh, curse the politics! Red pepper well rubbed in, that’s my idea of a paper. Call it the Scorpion.

Chaff the Mayor and the Council until they call a meeting and hang themselves. I’d do the snappy paragraphs, and you would do the fiction and poetry. I thought about it during the night, and Hetty has written to Murdoch’s to get an estimate for the printing. We might get our first number out this day week.”

“My dear chap!” I gasped.

“I want you to start a novel this morning. You won’t get many patients at first, and you’ll have lots of time.”

“But I never wrote a line in my life.”

“A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his hand to. He’s got every possible quality inside him, and all he wants is the will to develop it.”

“Could you write a novel yourself?” I asked.

“Of course I could. Such a novel, Munro, that when they’d read the first chapter the folk would just sit groaning until the second came out. They’d wait in rows outside my door in the hope of hearing what was coming next. By Crums, I’ll go and begin it now! “And, with another somersault over the end of the bed, he rushed from the room, with the tassels of his dressing gown flying behind him.

I daresay you’ve quite come to the conclusion by this time that Cullingworth is simply an interesting pathological study—a man in the first stage of lunacy or general paralysis. You might not be so sure about it if you were in close contact with him. He justifies his wildest flights by what he does. It sounds grotesque when put down in black and white; but then it would have sounded equally grotesque a year ago if he had said that he would build up a huge practice in a twelvemonth.

Now we see that he has done it. His possibilities are immense. He has such huge energy at the back of his fertility of invention. I am afraid, on thinking over all that I have written to you, that I may have given you a false impression of the man by dwelling too much on those incidents in which he has shown the strange and violent side of his character, and omitting the stretches between where his wisdom and judgment have had a chance.

His conversation when he does not fly off at a tangent is full of pith and idea. “The greatest monument ever erected to Napoleon Buonaparte was the British National debt,” said he yesterday. Again, “We must never forget that the principal export of Great Britain to the United States IS the United States.” Again, speaking of Christianity, “What is intellectually unsound cannot be morally sound.” He shoots off a whole column of aphorisms in a single evening. I should like to have a man with a note book always beside him to gather up his waste. No; you must not let me give you a false impression of the man’s capacity. On the other hand, it would be dishonest to deny that I think him thoroughly unscrupulous, and full of very sinister traits. I am much mistaken, however, if he has not fine strata in his nature. He is capable of rising to heights as well as of sinking to depths.

Well, when we had breakfasted we got into the carriage and drove off to the place of business.

“I suppose you are surprised at Hetty coming with us, said Cullingworth, slapping me on the knee. Hetty, Munro is wondering what the devil you are here for, only he is too polite to ask.”

In fact, it HAD struck me as rather strange that she should, as a matter of course, accompany us to business.

“You’ll see when we get there,” he cried chuckling.

“We run this affair on lines of our own.”

It was not very far, and we soon found ourselves outside a square whitewashed building, which had a huge “Dr. Cullingworth” on a great brass plate at the side of the door. Underneath was printed “May be consulted gratis from ten to four.” The door was open, and I caught a glimpse of a crowd of people waiting in the hall.

“How many here?” asked Cullingworth of the page boy.

“A hundred and forty, sir.”

“All the waiting rooms full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Courtyard full?

“Yes, sir.”

“Stable full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Coach-house full?”

“There’s still room in the coach-house, sir.”

“Ah, I’m sorry we haven’t got a crowded day for you, Munro,” said he. “Of course, we can’t command these things, and must take them as they come. Now then, now then, make a gangway, can’t you?”—this to his patients.

“Come here and see the waiting-room. Pooh! what an atmosphere! Why on earth can’t you open the windows for yourselves? I never saw such folk! There are thirty people in this room, Munro, and not one with sense enough to open a window to save himself from suffocation.”

“I tried, sir, but there’s a screw through the sash,”

cried one fellow.

“Ah, my boy, you’ll never get on in the world if you can’t open a window without raising a sash,” said Cullingworth, slapping him on the shoulder. He took the man’s umbrella and stuck it through two of the panes of glass.

“That’s the way!” he said. “Boy, see that the screw is taken out. Now then, Munro, come along, and we’ll get to work.”

We went up a wooden stair, uncarpeted, leaving every room beneath us, as far as I could see, crowded with patients. At the top was a bare passage, which had two rooms opposite to each other at one end, and a single one at the other.

“This is my consulting room,” said he, leading the way into one of these. It was a good-sized square chamber, perfectly empty save for two plain wooden chairs and an unpainted table with two books and a stethoscope upon it. “It doesn’t look like four or five thousand a year, does it? Now, there is an exactly