The River of Death

THE sky was as brass, a stifling heat radiated from stone and wood and iron - a close, reeking heat that drove one back from the very mention of food. The five million odd people that go to make up London, even in the cream of the holiday season, panted and gasped and prayed for the rain that never came. For the first three weeks in August the furnace fires of the sun poured down till every building became a vapour bath with no suspicion of a breeze to temper the fierceness of it. Even the cheap press had given up sunstroke statistics.

The drought had lasted since April. Tales came up from the provinces of stagnant rivers and quick, fell spurts of zymotic diseases. For some time the London water companies had restricted supplies, but there was no suggestion of alarm. The heat was almost unbearable but, people said, the wave must break soon and the metropolis would breathe again.

Professor Owen Darbyshire crawled homewards towards Harley Street with his hat in his hand, his grey frock coat showing a wide expanse of white shirt below. There was a buzz of electric fans in the hall, yet the atmosphere was hot and heavy. There was one solitary light in the dining-room - a room all sombre oak and dull red walls as befitted a man of science - and a visiting card glistened on the table. Darbyshire read it with annoyance: 'James P Chase, Morning Telephone'.

'I'll have to see him,' he groaned, 'But is it possible these confounded pressmen have got hold of the story already?' Doubtless Chase was merely plunging around after sensations - the constant pestering of newspaper men was no new thing to Darbyshire with his reputation for fighting disease in bulk, the one man always sent for when there was an epidemic to be grappled with. Still, the pushing little American might have stumbled on the truth. When he came back, he had better be granted an audience, however brief. Meanwhile Darbyshire took down his telephone and churned the handle.

'Are you there? Yes, give me 30795, Kensington . . . That you, Longdale? Step round here at once, will you? Yes, I know it's hot and I wouldn't ask you to come if it wasn't a matter of the last importance.'

He hung up his receiver, lighted a cigarette, and proceeded to con over some notes. He was roused presently by the hall bell and Dr Longdale entered. 'I suppose it's come at last?' he asked.

'Of course it has,' Darbyshire replied, 'and in a worse form than you think. Just listen to this': and he took from his pocket a newspaper clipping.

STRANGE AFFAIR AT ALDENBURGH

A day or two ago the barque Santa Anna came ashore at Spur, near Aldenburgh, and quickly became a total wreck. The crew of eight presumably took to their boats, for nothing has been seen of them since. How the Santa Anna came to be wrecked on a clear, calm night remains a mystery. From the thousands of oranges which have been picked up at Aldenburgh lately, the coastguards presume the barque to be Portuguese.

Darbyshire produced a phial of cloudy fluid, some of which he proceeded to lay on the glass of a powerful microscope. Longdale fairly staggered back from the eyepiece. 'Bubonic! The water reeks with the bacillus! You don't mean . . .'

'I do. This sample comes from the Thames. Those seamen, who ran their ship aground and deserted her, have been suffering from bubonic fever- and by a series of circumstances they have infected the river which gives most of London its water supply. That deadly poison is hourly drawing nearer to the metropolis into which presently it will be ladled by the million gallons. People will wash in it, drink it, Mayfair along with Whitechapel!'

'The supply must be cut off!'

'And deprive four-fifths of London of water when it is grilling like a furnace? No flushing of sewers, no watering of roads, not even a drop to drink. In two days London would be a reeking, seething hell - try and picture it!'

'There's only one alternative - that process of sterilisation of yours.'

Darbyshire smiled, and moved towards his office. The notes were there, but they seemed to have been disturbed. On the floor lay a torn sheet with shorthand cypher: thereon Darbyshire flew to the bell and rang it violently.

'Verity,' he cried when the butler appeared, 'has that Mr Chase been here again?'

'Well, he have, sir, just after Mr Longdale. So I asked him to wait, which he did, then he come out again after a bit, saying he would call again, looking very excited, sir.'

'It's clear enough,' Darbyshire turned to Longdale. 'That confounded journalist has heard all we said- and tomorrow the whole thing will be blazing in the Telephone. Those fellows would wreck the empire for a "scoop". But we can perhaps convince the editor that that article must not appear.' He called the butler again. 'Get me a hansom, fast as you can.'

A minute later there was a rattle of wheels outside and Darbyshire plunged hatless into the night. 'Offices of the Telephone. A sovereign if I'm there in twenty minutes.'

The cab plunged on headlong. The driver was going to earn that sovereign or know the reason why. He drove furiously into Trafalgar Square, a motor car crossed him recklessly, and a moment later Darbyshire was shot out onto his head. He lay there with no interest in mundane things. A crowd gathered, a doctor in evening dress appeared.

'Concussion of the brain . . . By jove, it's Darbyshire! Here, police, hurry up with the ambulance: he must be removed to Charing Cross Hospital at once.'

The controlling genius of the Telephone sat limp and bereft of coat and vest. His greeting of Chase was not over-polite. But when he saw the sheet of notes that the journalist carried, the tired look faded from his eyes. Here was the tonic his soul craved for.

'It wants pluck . . . A scare like that might ruin the Empire.'

'Take it or leave it. If you haven't got the grit, Sutton of the Flashlight will jump at it.'

Grady made his decision. 'Sit down right away and make two columns of it. I'll get some statistics out for you.'

Cold facts made the story seem worse, rather than better. The upper waters of the Thames were poisoned - yet nearly all London derived its water supply from those waters. Only two London water companies did not derive their water from the Thames - the New River Company and the Kent Company. Only those fortunate enough to be served by these mains would be exempt from peril - and even they would soon be in danger from their neighbours.

The further Grady read, the more he felt that if he could get this dread information into the hands of the people before it was too late, he would be playing the part of a benefactor. Desperate as the situation looked, the Telephone might yet save it. Professor Darbyshire had no right to hold up such a secret when he should have been taking measures to avert the threatened danger.

An hour later the presses were roaring: presently huge parcels of damp sheets were vomited into the street. London awoke, and on a hundred thousand breakfast tables the eye was arrested by scare heads:

THE POISONED THAMES

Millions of plague germs flowing down into London. Bacillus of bubonic plague in the river. New River and Kent Companles alone can supply pure water. Stupendous discovery by Professor Darbyshire. Death in your breakfast cup today. Shun it as you would poison. If you are not connected with either of the above companies, or if you have no private supply - CUT OFF YOUR WATER AT THE MAIN AT ONCE!

At eight in the morning London's pulse was calm and regular. An hour later it was writhing like some great reptile in the throes of mortal pain.

The one man who could have done most to help was lying unconscious at Charing Cross Hospital. Meanwhile Dr Longdale was the man of the hour - but he could not allay the panic that had gripped London. Under a blazing sunshine after days of heat and dust the packed East-end was suddenly deprived of every drop of water. For an hour or two no great hardship was felt, but after that every moment added to the agony. Before long the railway termini were packed with people eager to be away from the metropolis.

By midday business was at a standstill. There was not a water cart to be seen from Kensington to the Mansion House. Every cart and tank had been despatched into the New River and Kent Water area to convey a supply as speedily as possible to the congested districts East and South-east of the Thames. By lunchtime the City presented a strange spectacle. Well-dressed business men could be seen proceeding in cabs with buckets and water cans with the object of taking a supply forthwith. Cabmen were commanding their own prices.

Mineral waters went up 200% in price: by midday the supply had ceased - men of means with an eye to the future had bought up the whole stock. The streets were crowded with people anxiously awaiting developments. They were rewarded a little after two o'clock when a boy came yelling down the Strand with a flapping of papers on his shoulder: 'The plague broken out! Two cases of bubonic fever at Limehouse! Speshull!'

Perhaps if the readers had known these two cases were renegades from the Santa Anna, the panic might have been allayed. But nobody knew. Though no fever could have broken out so soon, it was assumed that the two poor fellows had drunk of the polluted flood and paid the penalty. It might be the turn of any of them next. There were those who shrugged their shoulders stolidly, others that crept into bars and restaurants and asked furtively for brandy.

By this time everything that could be done was being done. The artesian wells of East and South London were being tapped. Private houses which possessed pumps were besieged. Main line trains made way for trains of tanks bringing water to the city. But the problem of distribution remained - how could the little water available be distributed fairly among six million people over an area of some thirty square miles?

Night came, but brought no end to the stream of people coming and going between Trafalgar Square and such other open supplies as were available. Morning brought the promise of another sweltering day. Smartly dressed men were to be seen with grimy chins and features frankly dirty. The dust in the unwatered streets became intolerable. Tempers were strained. Small riots broke out here and there, some people were robbed of their precious fluid as they carried it home. Democratic agitators took advantage of the situation, a mob stormed the Houses of Parliament singing the Marseillaise in strident tones. Looters ravaged the markets, went off with baskets of apples and oranges. Mysteriously, as the sign that called up the Indian Mutiny, the signal went round to raid the public houses and hotels. Men stood in the Strand outside famous restaurants with bottles of strange liquids in their hands, the necks of which they knocked off without ceremony to reach the precious fluid within.

What might have happened when these last scant resources gave out will fortunately never be known. For suddenly, beneath the hubbub of the streets, the clamour and shrieks of the rioters, a strange unbelievable sound was heard. The shouting died away - and the people of London heard it now with no mistaking: the sound of water! The water supply had been restored!

The turnocks in the Strand were busy flushing the gutters with standpipes, a row of fire engines were proceeding to wash the streets down from the mains. The whole thing was so sudden and unexpected that it seemed like a dream.

And what was even less expected - what people only learnt when they read their papers that evening - was that the city's water supply was safe to drink all these days. For what Dr Darbyshire had no time to tell colleague, in his hurry to get to the Telephone offices, was that as soon as he realised the pollution of the water at Ashchurch, he had applied his sterilising process on the spot. A few miles further down the river, the water gave the result of perfect purity.

But for the accident in Trafalgar Square, there would have been no untoward consequences: but Dr Longdale, having seen the bacillus-infested water, and not knowing of the sterilisation, had no alternative but to cut off the water supply forthwith.

London that night was in a frenzy of elation. Men shook one another by the hand, hats were cast into the air and forgotten: people stood under the beating drip of the fire-engines' sluicing until they were soaked to the skin: well-dressed men raved themselves in the clear running gutters. London was saved from disaster, and Dr Darbyshire was the hero of the hour.

'All the same, it was a near thing, Longdale. Some day perhaps this country will realise what a debt it owes to its men of science - and perhaps learn to foster them a little more. For nothing but science could, these past days, have prevented a calamity that would have multiplied ten-fold the horrors of the Great Plague, and destroyed not thousands, but tens of thousands.'