The Door in the Wall, and Other StoriesWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Fantasy fiction, English; Science fiction, English; Short stories
When Azuma-zi saw Holroyd die in the grip of the Great Dynamo he had
been a little scared about the consequences of his act. Yet he felt
strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the Lord Dynamo was upon
him. His plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the
station, and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene
jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. This expert scarcely
noticed Azuma-zi, except to ask a few questions. Did he see Holroyd
kill himself? Azuma-zi explained that he had been out of sight at the
engine furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the
dynamo. It was not a difficult examination, being untinctured by
suspicion.
The distorted remains of Holroyd, which the electrician removed from
the machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained
tablecloth. Somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man.
The expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for
seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the
electric railway. Azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions
of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was
presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. Of
course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard—a crowd, for no
known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden
death in London; two or three reporters percolated somehow into the
engine-shed, and one even got to Azuma-zi; but the scientific expert
cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist.
Presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with
it. Azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over
again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still.
An hour after the murder, to anyone coming into the shed it would have
looked exactly as if nothing had ever happened there. Peeping presently
from his engine-room the black saw the Lord Dynamo spin and whirl
beside his little brothers, and the driving wheels were beating round,
and the steam in the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been
earlier in the evening. After all, from the mechanical point of view,
it had been a most insignificant incident—the mere temporary deflection
of a current. But now the slender form and slender shadow of the
scientific manager replaced the sturdy outline of Holroyd travelling up
and down the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps
between the engines and the dynamos.
“Have I not served my Lord?” said Azuma-zi inaudibly, from his shadow,
and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. As he looked
at the big whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had
been a little in abeyance since Holroyd’s death, resumed its sway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account