Tales of Space and Time | Page 8

the latter could put on wings at will.
He several times saw certain clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes,
white and partially translucent, feeding among certain of the lichenous
trees, and once some of these fled before one of the hopping,
round-headed Martians. The latter caught one in its tentacles, and then
the picture faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most tantalisingly in the
dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave thought at first
was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway
beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr.
Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of
extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had
passed out of sight.
After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians,
and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to
the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately
turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of
signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the
Martian had departed.
Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and
then Mr. Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the
crystal were allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that,
as occasion arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself
with what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence.
In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming
examination became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for
a week, and for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw
nothing of Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations,
and the stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to

Seven Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's
window, and then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at
once called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in
cheap but ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without
any very great surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already
buried. She was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just
returned from Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own
prospects and the honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace
was at last able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been
found dead in his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit
to Mr. Wace, and the crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands.
His face was smiling, said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the
minerals lay on the floor at his feet. He must have been dead five or six
hours when he was found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself
bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's
ill-health. But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that
topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities.
He was dumbfounded to learn that it was sold.
Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs,
had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds
for the crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt in
which her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his
address. As they were without the means required to mourn and bury
Cave in the elaborate style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant
demands, they had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great
Portland Street. He had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at
a valuation. The valuation was his own and the crystal egg was
included in one of the lots. Mr. Wace, after a few suitable consolatory
observations, a little off-handedly proffered perhaps, hurried at once to
Great Portland Street. But there he learned that the crystal egg had
already been sold to a tall, dark man in grey. And there the material
facts in this curious, and to me at least very suggestive, story come

abruptly to an end. The Great Portland Street dealer did not know who
the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed him with sufficient
attention to describe him minutely. He did not even know which way
this person had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr. Wace
remained in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless
questions, venting his own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly
that the