More than one physicist whom he had known years before at the Cavendish Laboratory did he now find serving here as a department head. One of these, knowing his work in the field of pure science, expressed surprise at seeing him in a rank below that of sublieutenant.
“You shouldn’t be wasting yourself as a gunner,” he said; “you ought to be directing research.”
“Well,” answered Evans, “I manage to get a shot at research now and then, and the kind of duty that comes my way on this job suits me pretty well, on the whole.”
Before he had been in London a day, Evans had arranged to see his friend Heringham in Cambridge. He took an afternoon train thither, and found dusk gathering in the narrow streets of the ancient town. At the sight of familiar landmarks, shops, and churches, memories came flooding over him of the happy winter spent there in his youth, learning from the world’s greatest masters of pure science. He recalled the profound debt he owed to the Cavendish for its part in the moulding of his career, and with the thought a deep gratitude stirred within him. Crossing the market-place, he came to the old College buildings, the beauty and dignity of their architecture never more impressive than now in the twilight. At last he came to the venerable main gate of Trinity and entered the Great Court, hallowed by the memory of Newton, Tennyson, and a host of other men of genius, through centuries the greatest fountain-head of high scholarship and learning in Anglo-Saxon civilization. He stopped and looked about him, and the realization of all that this place stood for came over him as it never had before. Here in these walls of weather-stained and crumbling stone was the cradle of that intellectual and spiritual growth which constituted the real world in which he lived and for which he would gladly die. There arose before his mind a picture of the calculating and mercenary group in Constantinople, and the cynical and iconoclastic spirit in which they would wreck the shrines of Western civilization and learning should they win the fight. He set his teeth and crossed the court to the stairway leading to Heringham’s room.
He knocked at the door and found his friend sitting by a small coal fire, smoking his pipe and reading the noncommittal news in the daily paper. Seated together by the fire, these two congenial souls were soon chatting comfortably on the basis of a natural and inalienable understanding which existed between them. Evans found, as he expected, that Heringham possessed an extraordinary knowledge of the leading characters in the Constantinople conspiracy and how matters stood among them.
“You ought to be using this knowledge in some way,” said Evans.
“How can I?” asked Heringham. “The army rejected me, and here I am.”
“Could you smuggle yourself into Constantinople without disturbing the equanimity of these devils you’ve been telling me about?” said Evans.
Heringham sucked hard at his pipe and stared at the fire.
“I don’t know that game,” he said at last. “I imagine it takes rather a lot of experience.”