Evening star., 1939-01-25


luton. They decided he must be got
ten rid of, but they did not know how.
BY H. 1. WELLS.
CHAPTER XLvI
Whom Can 1 Trust?
Deep down in Rud's heart, sup
pressed and denied, stirred a pro-
found conviction in complete agree
ment with Norvel's question. Why
did no one kill him? He had this
feeling ever since the death of Chit
fan, and sometimes it forced itself
up almost to definite realization.
He perceived an increasing quality
of menace in his bearing towards
the people about him, though he
tried to soften it with a spasmodic
geniality and familiarity, he sensed
that he was becoming too much for
them, and surely therefore, he de-
cided, they must be whispering and
scheming his death-as in similar
circumstances he would have whis-
pered and schemed. OF course, they
were trying to kill him. They would
try to do it unobtrusively but they
would do it.
He surrounded himself with pre-
cautions. He was amazed already
at the recklessness with which he
had exposed himself to Chiffan-if
Chiffan had decided to stab or
shoot. He had not thought of that.
In his natural, generous way he
had let the threatened man come
to him. That must not happen
again. Henceforth guards must
hover invisibly about him and be-
hind them other trust guards must
watch to see they attempted no
treason upon him. But precautions
were not enough for Rud. He had
never been able to wait for an at
tack. The tension of his long wait
for Reedly had been torture to
him. His instinct was to strike
first and unexpectedly. So now
he spent considerable amount of
nervous energy. peering. so to speak,
into the world about him, to de-
tect any possible gatherings of con-
spirators against bis revolution and
himself. He wanted to destroy every
stratum OF recalcitrance in the
world. before it could assemble a
definite attack upon him.
Persecution Intensified.
Christianity he had alway de-
tested, and his persecution of its
assemblies and formal worship was
now intensified. Quite number of
young, rather stupid men who
might otherwise have gone from
the cradle to the grave unlit by any
touch of nobility, died like saints
and heroes under the secret inter-
rogations of Rothberg. Then Rud
chanced upon a book about Jesuits
and realized that they constituted
q special and efficient branch of the
Christian campaign against modern
enlightment. The spirit of Ioyola
had been revived by the church's
disaster, and to their energy and
efficiency he attributed the exasp-
Grating phenomenon OF vanishing
Pope. He had wanted to offer re-
wards for the Pope, properly au-
thenicated, dead or alive" but Thirp
had dissuaded him. From the
Jesuits his imagination passed to
Freemasonry. That mysterious body
also has been suitable material al
ways for the politically suspicious,
and it required quite lot of re-
search before he unearthed its Sc
cret, which was that it had no secret
and was one thing here and another
there, and nothing in particular, an
excuse for assemblies.
Then the searchlight of his sus-
picions swung round upon the Jews.
In his earlier years he had adopted
q very liberal attitude towards the
Jews, If only on account of the in
disputable race" of his maternal
grandmother. But now they at
tracted his attention again. When
all the rest of the world was be-
coming one community, why did
they still cling to their peculiarities
of food and observance? 1t was odd,
he said in the daylight, and that
was all there was to it. It was odd,
he said in the troubled hours of
sleepless night, and at once the old
witch of dreamland set about sup
plying nightmare explanations of
this oddity. From which dreamland
he came trailing clouds of vague
distrust about him, into the COM
mon light of day.
sense of Conspiracy.
Once he was started on that slip
perry slope he could not get the Jew
ish question out of his head. There
was something wrong about the per-
sistent separateness of these people.
Gradually the conviction grew upon
him that they constituted con-
spiracy, though it was never quite
clear in his mind what the conspir-
acy was about. It was impossible
to believe that they were still gen.
uinely worried about the exodus
from Egypt or the captivity or the
destruction of Jerusalem. Yet they
still seemed to brood and wall over
these things. He felt there must be
something more immediate behind
this affectation of remote sorrows.
What was 1t? Why this invincible
addiction to ritual trivialities? He
began to distrust these Jews more
and more, as subtly antagonistic to
the solidarity of mankind, as subtly,
tnvisibly active-at something?
So in the new world as in the
old the potentiality of pogrom
gathered.
He closed synagogues, he pro-
hibited the printing of Bible or Tai
mud in spite of Norvel's resistance,
he began to scrutinize the faces
about him for what he supposed to
be racial traits.
"They will assimilate," said Nor
vel. "They are assimilating. 1t is
Just a dwindling cult of old ladies,
old rabbis, sentimentalists, eccen-
tries, men with caricature profiles
which they cannot escape, who keep
the old promise alive. Leave them