Jeremy described his awakening, the terrors and doubts that had succeeded it and his eventual dismay when he was able at last to climb into the world again. He explained how he had gone back with Roger to the crevice, how they had seen the rat run out, and how he had found the vacuum-tube. When he had finished, the Speaker was silent for a moment or two. Then he rose and walked slowly to a desk, which stood in the further corner of the room. He returned with an ivory tablet and a pencil which he gave into Jeremy’s hands.
“Mark on that,” he said, “the River Thames and the position of as many of the great railway stations of London as you can remember.”
Jeremy suffered a momentary bewilderment, and stared at the intent but expressionless face of the old man, with an exclamation on his lips. But instantly he understood, and, as he did so, the map of old London rose clearly before his eyes. He drew the line of the river and contrived to mark, with reasonable accuracy, on each side of it as many of the stations as he could think of. He forgot London Bridge; and he explained that there had been a station called Cannon Street, which he had, for some reason, never had occasion to use, and that he did not know quite where it had stood.
The Speaker nodded inscrutably, took back the tablet and studied it. “Do you remember London Bridge?” he asked. Jeremy bit his lip and owned that he did. “Then can you say,” the Speaker went on, “whether it was north of the river or south?”
Jeremy discovered, with a wild anger at his own idiocy, that he could not remember. It would be absurd, horribly absurd, if his credit were to be at the mercy of so unaccountable a freak of the brain. He thought at random, until suddenly there appeared before his mind a picture of the bridge, covered with ant-like crowds of people, walking in the early morning from the station beyond.
“It was on the south,” he cried eagerly. “I remember because—”
The Speaker held up a wrinkled but steady hand. “Your story is true,” he said slowly. “I know very well, as you know, that nothing can prove it to be true; but nevertheless I believe it. Do you know why I believe it?”
“I think so,” Jeremy began with hesitation. He felt that keen gaze closely upon him.
“It would be strange if you knew in any other way what only three or four men in the whole country have cared to learn. You could have learnt it, no doubt, from maps or books. Such exist, though none now look at them. Yet how should you have guessed what question I would ask you? Do you know that of those stations only two remain? I know where the rest were, because I have studied the railways, wishing to restore them. But now they are all gone and most of them even before my time. They were soon gone and forgotten. When I was a boy I walked among the ruins of Victoria, just before it was cleared by my grandfather to extend his gardens. Did you go there ever when the trains were running in and out?”
The question aroused in Jeremy vivid memories of departures for holidays in Sussex, of the return to France after leave.... He replied haltingly, at random, troubled by recollections.