oad, low window opening out upon a balcony. The view
beyond was the same as that which we had already admired from the study.
Looking out, I could see no sign of disorder anywhere. There was a road
curving down the side of the hill, under my very eyes. A cab from the
station, one of those prehistoric survivals which are only to be found in
our country villages, was toiling slowly up the hill. Lower down was a
nurse girl wheeling a perambulator and leading a second child by the
hand. The blue reeks of smoke from the cottages gave the whole
widespread landscape an air of settled order and homely comfort. Nowhere
in the blue heaven or on the sunlit earth was there any foreshadowing of
a catastrophe. The harvesters were back in the fields once more and the
golfers, in pairs and fours, were still streaming round the links. There
was so strange a turmoil within my own head, and such a jangling of my
overstrung nerves, that the indifference of those people was amazing.

"Those fellows don't seem to feel any ill effects," said I, pointing down
at the links.

"Have you played golf?" asked Lord John.

"No, I have not."

"Well, young fellah, when you do you'll learn that once fairly out on a
round, it would take the crack of doom to stop a true golfer. Halloa!
There's that telephone-bell again."

From time to time during and after lunch the high, insistent ring had
summoned the Professor. He gave us the news as it came through to him in
a few curt sentences. Such terrific items had never been registered in
the world's history before. The great shadow was creeping up from the
south like a rising tide of death. Egypt had gone through its delirium
and was now comatose. Spain and Portugal, after a wild frenzy in which
the Clericals and the Anarchists had fought most desperately, were now
fallen silent. No cable messages were received any longer from South
America. In North America the southern states, after some terrible
racial rioting, had succumbed to the poison. North of Maryland the
effect was not yet marked, and in Canada it was hardly perceptible.
Belgium, Holland, and Denmark had each in turn been affected. Despairing
messages were flashing from every quarter to the great centres of
learning, to the chemists and the doctors of world-wide repute, imploring
their advice. The astronomers too were deluged with inquiries. Nothing
could be done. The thing was universal and beyond our human knowledge or
contr