“Your evidence is conclusive. You have only to tell the world about it.”
“I can only tell you that I was met by incredulity,[27] born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. When men like yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with open arms. By nature I am fiery. I fear you may have remarked it.”
I touched my eye and was silent.
“Well, I invite you to be present at the exhibition.” Challenger handed me a card from his desk. “Mr. Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is to lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute’s Hall upon ‘The Record of the Ages’. I have been specially invited. Maybe a few remarks may arouse the interest of the audience. We’ll see… By all means,[28] come. It will be a comfort to me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and ignorant of the subject. No public use is to be made of any of the material that I have given you.”
“But Mr. McArdle… my news editor… will want to know what I have done.”
“Tell him what you like. I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in print. Very good. Then the Zoological Institute’s Hall at eight-thirty tonight.”
Chapter 5
Question!
McArdle was at his post as usual.
“Well,” he cried, expectantly, “Don’t tell me that he attacked you.”
“We had a little difference[29] at first.”
“What a man it is! What did you do?”
“Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothing out of him… nothing for publication.”
“You got a black eye[30] out of him, and that’s for publication. Mr. Malone, we must bring the man to his bearings.[31] Just give me the material. I’ll show him up for the fraud he is.”
“I wouldn’t do that, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is not a fraud at all.”
“You don’t mean to say you really believe this stuff about mammoths and mastodons?”
“I do believe he has got something new.”
I told him the Professor’s narrative in a few sentences.
“Well, Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “about this scientific meeting tonight. You’ll be there in any case, so you’ll just give us a pretty full report.”
That day I met Tarp Henry. He listened to my story with a sceptical smile on his face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.
“My dear friend, things don’t happen like that in real life. People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists. The man is full of tricks.”
“Will you come to the meeting with me?” I asked suddenly.
Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.
“He is not a popular person,” said he. “I should say he is about the best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out there will be no end of a mess.”
“You might at least do him justice[32] to hear him state his own case.”
“Well, it’s fair. All right. I’m your man for the evening.”
When we arrived at the hall we found more people than I had expected. The audience would be popular as well as scientific. We had taken our seats. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar medical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent. The behaviour of the audience at present was good-humoured, but mischievous.
The greatest demonstration of all, however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, Professor Challenger, when he passed down to take his place. Such a yell of welcome broke forth that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right that this audience was there not for the sake of[33] the lecture, but because the famous Professor would take part in the proceedings.
Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of puppies. He sat slowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand down his beard, and looked with drooping eyelids at the crowded hall before him.
Mr. Waldron, the lecturer, came up, and the proceedings began. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner. However he knew how to pass the ideas in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the public. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling, how the mountains were formed. On the origin of life itself he was vague. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elements of the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outside upon a meteor? Even the wisest man was the least categorical upon the point.
This brought the lecturer to the animal life, beginning with mollusks and sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last mammals. Then he went back to his picture of the past: the drying of the seas, the overcrowded lagoons with sea animals, the tendency of the sea creatures to come out of the sea, the abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth.
“Hence, ladies and gentlemen,” he added, “those creatures, which still frighten us, but which were fortunately extinct long before the first appearance of mankind upon this planet.”
“Question![34]” cried a voice from the platform.
This interjection appeared to him so absurd that at first he didn’t know what to do. He paused for a moment, and then, raising his voice, repeated slowly the words: “Which were extinct before the coming of man.”
“Question!” said the voice once more.
Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon the platform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leaned back in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if he were smiling in his sleep.
“I see!” said Waldron. “It is my friend Professor Challenger,” and he renewed his lecture as if this was a final explanation and no more need be said.
But the incident was far from being closed. Whatever the lecturer spoke of the past it brought the same exclamation from the Professor. The audience began to roar with delight when it came. Every time Challenger opened his mouth, there was a yell of “Question!” from a hundred voices. Waldron, though a strong man, started hesitating. He stammered, repeated himself, and finally turned furiously upon the cause of his troubles.
“This is really intolerable!” he cried, glaring across the platform. “I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to stop these ignorant interruptions.”
There was a hush over the hall, the students were delighted at seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves. Challenger slowly stoop up.
“I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron,” he said, “to stop saying what is not in strict accordance with scientific fact.”
“Shame! Shame!” “Give him a hearing!” “Put him out!” “Shove him off the platform!” emerged from a general roar in the hall. The chairman was on his feet and said nervously:
“Professor Challenger… personal views… later.”
The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked his beard, and relapsed into his chair. And Waldron continued his observations. At last the lecture came to an end… I should say the ending was hurried and disconnected. The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was restless. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and came up to the edge of the platform.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began. “I beg pardon… Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children, I should say thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened. There are points in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to express my opinion at once, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished his object well, that object being to give a simple and interesting account of what he conceives to have been the history of our planet. Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron will excuse me when I say that they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be aimed at an ignorant audience.” (Ironical cheering.) “But enough of this! Let me pass to some subject of wider interest. What is the particular point upon which I have challenged our lecturer’s accuracy? It is upon the existence of certain types of animal life upon the earth. I do not speak upon this subject as an amateur. They are indeed, as he has said, our ancestors, but they are our contemporary ancestors, who can still be found. Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic still exist.” (Cries of “Bosh!” “Prove it!” “How do YOU know?” “Question!”) “How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visited their secret home. I know because I have seen some of them.” (Applause, uproar, and a voice, “Liar!”) “Am I a liar? Did I hear someone say that I was a liar? If any person in this hall dares to doubt my words, I shall be glad to have a few words with him after the lecture.” (“Liar!”) “Who said that? Every great discoverer has been met with the same incredulity… the generation of fools. When great facts are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which would help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the men who have risked their lives to open new fields to science. You persecute the prophets! Galileo! Darwin, and I…” (Prolonged cheering and complete interruption.)