He'd made a nearish
guess when he'd said that much of our knowledge is giving names to things
we know nothing about; only rule-of-thumb Physics thinks everything's
explained in the Manual; and you've always got to remember one thing:
You can call it Force or what you like, but it's a certainty that things,
solid things of wood and iron and stone, would explode, just go off in a
puff into space, if it wasn't for something just as inexplicable as that
that Rooum said he felt in his own person. And if you can swallow that,
it's a relatively small matter whether Rooum's light-footed Familiar
slipped through him unperceived, or had to struggle through obstinately. You see now why I said that "a queer thing overtook Rooum." More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again. And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
green. "Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
turning a ghastly grin on me. But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me. Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry. *       *       *       *       *

Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum. It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights
guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
the day shift came to relieve us. And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one. It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention. Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
I fairly lost my temper. "What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
Hopkins there?" "I don't know," he said. "Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
it's the only one." But he grabbed my arm. "Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up. Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
crane set off at a tear back. "Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
yelled, and made a spring for a ladder. The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place. By that time I was halfway up the second stage. Again the crane tore
past, with the massive tackle sweeping behind it, and again I heard the
crash at the other end. Whoever had the handling of it was managing
it skilfully, for there was barely a foot to spare when it turned again. On the fourth platform, at the end of the way, I found Hopkins. He was
white, and seemed to be counting on his fingers. "What's the matter here?" I cried. "It's Rooum," he answered. "I hadn't stepped out of the cab, not a
minute, when I heard the lever go. He's running somebody down, he says;
he'll run the whole shoot down in a minute--look!..." The crane was coming back again. Half out of the cab I could see Rooum's
mottled hair and beard. His brow was ribbed like a gridiron, and as he
ripped past one of the arcs his face shone like porcelain with the sweat
that bathed it. "Now ... you!... Now, damn you!..." he was shouting. "Get ready to board him when he reverses!" I shouted to Hopkins. Just how we scrambled on I don't know. I got one arm over the
lifting-gear (which, of course, wasn't going), and heard Hopkins on
the other footplate. Rooum put the brakes down and reversed; again came
the thud of the fall-blocks; and we were speeding back again over the
gulf of misty orange light. The stagings were thronged with gaping men. "Ready? Now!" I cried to Hopkins; and we sprang into the cab. Hopkins hit Rooum's wrist with a spanner.