White THE DOOM OF LONDON - Complete Series (Illustrated)

The Four White Days, The Four Days' Night, The Dust of Death, A Bubble Burst, The Invisible Force & The River of Death
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-80-268-7168-2
Verlag: e-artnow
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 137 Seiten

This carefully crafted ebook: 'THE DOOM OF LONDON - Complete Series (Illustrated)' is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Doom of London is a science-fiction series of stories in which various catastrophes beset Victorian London. Table of Contents: The Four White Days - A sudden and deep winter paralyses the city under snow and ice. The Four Days' Night - The city of London is beset by a massive killer smog. The Dust of Death - Diphtheria infects the city, spreading from refuse tips and sewers. A Bubble Burst - How a stock exchange scare dislocated the life of the Empire for two days. The Invisible Force - What might happen when underground London is tunneled for electric railways, if an explosion should take place in one of the tubes. The River of Death - A prolonged drought and heat wave leads up to the shrinking of the Thames, and the plague is found upstream. Frederick Merrick White (1859-1935) is mostly known for mysteries and he is considered as one of the pioneers of the spy story. He also wrote science-fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

White, Fred M.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Goble, Warwick

Leseproben

THE DUST OF DEATH
Table of Contents THE front door bell tinkled impatiently; evidently somebody was in a hurry. Alan Hubert answered the call, a thing that even a distinguished physician might do, seeing that it was on the stroke of midnight. The tall, graceful figure of a woman in evening dress stumbled into the hall. The diamonds in her hair shimmered and trembled, her face was full of terror. “You are Dr. Hubert,” she gasped. “I am Mrs. Fillingham, the artist’s wife, you know. Will you come with me at once… My husband… I had been dining out. In the studio… Oh, please come!” Hubert asked no unnecessary questions. He knew Fillingham, the great portrait painter, well enough by repute and by sight also, for Fillingham’s house and studio were close by. There were many artists in the Devonshire Park district—that pretty suburb which was one of the triumphs of the builder’s and landscape gardener’s art. Ten years ago it had been no more than a sw to-day people spoke complacently of the fact that they lived in Devonshire Park. Hubert walked up the drive and past the trim lawns with Mrs. Fillingham hanging on his arm, and in at the front door. Mrs. Fillingham pointed to a door on the right. She as too exhausted to speak. There were shaded lights gleaming everywhere, on old oak and armour and on a large portrait of a military-looking man propped up on an easel. On a lay figure was a magnificent foreign military uniform. Hubert caught all this in a quick mental flash. But the vital interest to him was a human figure lying on his back before the fireplace. The clean-shaven, sensitive face of the artist had a ghastly, purple-black tinge, there was a large swelling in the throat. “He—he is not dead?” Mrs. Fillingham asked in a frozen whisper. Hubert was able to satisfy the distracted wife on that head. Fillingham was still breathing. Hubert stripped the shade from a reading lamp and held the electric bulb at the end of its long flex above the sufferer’s mouth, contriving to throw the flood of light upon the back of the throat. “Diphtheria!” he exclaimed. “Label’s type unless I am greatly mistaken. Some authorities are disposed to scoff at Dr. Label’s discovery. I was an assistant of his for four years and I know better. Fortunately I happen to know what the treatment—successful in two cases—was.” He hurried from the house and returned a few minutes later breathlessly. He had some strange-looking, needle-like instruments in his hands. He took an electric lamp from its socket and substituted a plug on a flex instead. Then he cleared a table without ceremony and managed to hoist his patient upon it. “Now please hold that lamp steadily thus,” he said. “Bravo, you are a born nurse! I am going to apply these electric needles to the throat.” Hubert talked on more for the sake of his companion’s nerves than anything else. The still figure on the table quivered under his touch, his lungs expanded in a long, shuddering sigh. The heart was beating more or less regularly now. Fillingham opened his eyes and muttered something. “Ice,” Hubert snapped, “have you got any ice in the house?” It was a well-regulated establishment and there was plenty of ice in the refrigerator. Not until the patient was safe in bed did Hubert’s features relax. “We’ll pull him through yet,” he said. “I’ll send you a competent nurse round in half-an-hour. I’ll call first thing in the morning and bring Dr. Label with me. He must not miss this on any account.” Half-an-hour later Hubert was spinning along in a hansom towards Harley Street. It was past one when he reached the house of the great German savant. A dim light was burning in the hall. A big man with an enormous shaggy head and a huge frame attired in the seediest of dress coats welcomed Hubert with a smile. “So, my young friend,” Label said, “your face promises excitement.” “Case of Label’s diphtheria,” Hubert said crisply. “Fillingham, the artist, who lives close by me. Fortunately they called me in. I have arranged for you to see my patient the first thing in the morning.” The big German’s jocular manner vanished. He led Hubert gravely to a chair in his consulting-room and curtly demanded details. He smiled approvingly as Hubert enlarged upon his treatment of the case. “Undoubtedly your diagnosis was correct,” he said, puffing furiously at a long china pipe. “You have not forgotten what I told you of it. The swelling—which is caused by violent blood poisoning—yielded to the electric treatment. I took the virus from the cases in the north and I tried them on scores of animals. And they all died. “I find it is the virus of what is practically a new disease, one of the worst in the wide world. I say it recurs again, and it does. So I practise, and practise to find a cure. And electricity is the cure. I inoculate five dogs with the virus and I save two by the electric current. You follow my plans and you go the first stage of the way to cure Fillingham. Did you bring any of that mucous here?” Hubert produced it in a tiny glass tube. For a little time Label examined it under his microscope. He wanted to make assurance doubly sure. “It is the same thing,” he said presently. “I knew that it was bound to recur again. Why, it is planted all over our big cities. And electricity is the only way to get rid of it. It was the best method of dealing with sewage, only corporations found it too expensive. Wires in the earth charged to say 10,000 volts. Apply this and you destroy the virus that lies buried under hundreds of houses in London. They laughed at me when I suggested it years ago.” “Underground,” Hubert asked vaguely. “Ach, underground, yes. Don’t you recollect that in certain parts of England cancer is more common than in other places? The germs have been turned up in fields. I, myself, have proved their existence. In a little time, perhaps. I shall open the eyes of your complacent Londoners. You live in a paradise, ach Gott! And what was that paradise like ten years ago? Dreary pools and deserted brickfields. And how do you fill it up and level it to build houses upon?” “By the carting of hundreds of thousands of loads of refuse, of course.” “Ach, I will presently show you what that refuse was and is. Now go home to bed.” * * * * * Mrs. Fillingham remained in the studio with Hubert whilst Label was making his examination overhead. The patient had had a bad night; his symptoms were very grave indeed. Hubert listened more or less vaguely; his mind had gone beyond the solitary case. He was dreading what might happen in the future. “Your husband has a fine constitution,” he said soothingly. “He has overtried it lately,” Mrs. Fillingham replied. “At present he is painting a portrait of the Emperor of Asturia. His Majesty was to have sat to-day; he spent the morning here yesterday.” But Hubert was paying no attention. The heavy tread of Label was heard as he floundered down the stairs. His big voice was booming. What mattered all the portraits in the world so long as the verdict hung on the German doctor’s lips! “Oh, there is a chance,” Label exclaimed. “Just a chance. Everything possible is being done. This is not so much diphtheria as a new disease. Diphtheria family, no doubt, but the blood poisoning makes a difficult thing of it.” Label presently dragged Hubert away after parting with Mrs. Fillingham. He wanted to find a spot where building or draining was going on. They found some men presently engaged in connecting a new house with the main drainage—a deep cutting some forty yards long by seven or eight feet deep. There was the usual crust of asphalt on the road, followed by broken bricks and the like, and a more or less regular stratum of blue-black rubbish, soft, wet, and clinging, and emitting an odour that caused Hubert to throw up his head. “You must have broken into a drain somewhere here,” he said. “We ain’t, sir,” the foreman of the gang replied. “It’s nout but rubbidge as they made up the road with here ten years ago. Lord knows where it came from, but it do smell fearful in weather like this.” The odour indeed was stifling. All imaginable kinds of rubbish and refuse lay under the external beauties of Devonshire Park in strata ranging from five to forty feet deep. It was little wonder that trees and flowers flourished here. And here—wet, and dark, and festering— was a veritable hotbed of disease. Contaminated rags, torn paper, road siftings, decayed vegetable matter, diseased food, fish and bones all were represented here. “Every ounce of this ought to have gone through the destructor,” Label snorted. “But no, it is used for the foundations of a suburban paradise. My word, we shall see what your paradise will be like presently. Come along.” Label picked up a square slab of the blue stratum, put it in a tin, and the tin in his pocket. He was snorting and puffing with contempt. “Now come to Harley Street with me and I will show you things,” he said. He was as good as his word. Placed under a microscope, a minute portion of the subsoil from Devonshire Park proved to be a mass of living matter. There were at least four kinds of bacillus here that Hubert had never seen before. With his superior knowledge Label pointed out the fact that they all existed in the mucous taken from Fillingham on the previous evening. “There you...