“I venture to think that you are right,” said the dying man. “But as I say, do not ever forget that Gazelee Payne Murdwell is the writing on the wall for the human race.”
This talk with Mr. Murdwell made a deep impression on the vicar. Unable by nature or mental habit to accept all the premises of an abnormal thinker, it was beginning to strike Mr. Perry-Hennington with new and rather bewildering force, that truth has many aspects. At Wellwood the previous day he had felt a vague distrust of his own perceptions. Things were not quite as they seemed. Even poor, deranged John Smith could not be dismissed by a simple formula. It had suddenly dawned on a closed mind that a door was opening on the unknown. Somehow the relation of John Smith to many dimly understood phenomena could not be bridged by a phrase. And a feeling of imperfect knowledge was intensified by contact with this other remarkable personality. One must be read in the light of the other. Murdwell was the antithesis, the negation of John Smith. And the nature of things being as it was, each must have his own meaning, his own message to be related to the sum of human experience.
XLI
Distressed by the interview with his neighbor, the vicar took the first chance of going to Hart’s Ghyll with the sad news. He had a craving to unburden his mind. And Brandon, with whom he was now on terms of complete amity, was the one person likely to share an almost painful interest in Murdwell’s Law and its discoverer.
Brandon, indeed, was only too ready to discuss the matter. The tenant of Longwood had loomed large in his thoughts from the hour in which he had first had the privilege of knowing him. To the mind of a Gervase Brandon, he was a portent, a phenomenon; in sober truth “the writing on the wall for the human race.” But the vicar’s news caused Brandon less concern than might have been the case had he not been able in a measure to anticipate and therefore to discount it. He recalled his last glimpse of Professor Murdwell in London, and the prophetic words of Urban Meyer.
“A terrible nemesis,” said the vicar. “A great tragedy.”
“An intervention of a merciful providence,” was Brandon’s rejoinder.
“No doubt—if his theories are rooted in scientific fact. To me, I confess, they seem wholly fantastic. They suggest megalomania. How does Murdwell’s Law stand scientifically?”
“It is accepted by the mathematician, and is said to provide a key to certain unknown forces in the physical world. It has given rise to an immense amount of speculation, and for some little time past very remarkable developments have been predicted.”
“Which may not now materialize?”