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They started on Saturday for Hertford, and by twilight next day they had reached Biggleswade on the Ivell, where he had a house, wherein the company slept. The mourning crowds actually blocked the way to the church. The bier was left in the church that Sunday night.
A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor's face was furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu of features. "People called Deverill, at Foulis Castle?" asked Sir Angus. "Yes," replied Professor Biggleswade. "How curious! I am going to the Deverills, too," said the third man.
Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked down upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium and argon for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of radio-activity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his world-wide fame said somewhat ironically: "If the experiments were so important, why didn't you lock yourself up with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?"
She inherited the faculty from her mother, who entertained the whole world. We're sure to find archbishops, and eminent actors, and illustrious divorcées asked to meet us. That's one thing. But why I, who loathe country house parties and children and Christmas as much as Biggleswade, am going down there to-day, I can no more explain than you can. It's a devilish odd coincidence."
Samuel Whitbread, who died in 1796, founded the brewery in Chiswell Street, E.C., which still bears his name, was Member for the Borough of Bedford, and purchased from the fourth Lord Torrington a fine place near Biggleswade, called Southill, of which the wooded uplands supplied John Bunyan, dwelling on the flats of Elstow, with his idea of the Delectable Mountains.
A heavy splash followed, and, simultaneously, several of the men forward shouted out "Ship MI of water water up to our hammocks;" while Waggy, who had rolled off his narrow couch, sang out at the top of his pipe, "I am drowned, Bang. Tom Cringle, my dear Gelid, I am drowned we are all drowned the ship is at the bottom of the sea, and we shall have eels enough here, if we had none at Biggleswade.
Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated coldness could repress.
They lifted the dead man and brought him into the room, and after laying him on a dirty strip of carpet they did their best to straighten the stiff limbs. Biggleswade put on the table a bundle which he had picked up outside. It contained some poor provisions a loaf, a piece of fat bacon, and a paper of tea.
The car sped on through an unseen wilderness. Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound, and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been struck by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade screamed. McCurdie cursed.
He opened the door, peeped in, and then, returning for the lamp, disappeared, leaving McCurdie and Biggleswade in the pitch darkness, with the dead man on the floor. "For heaven's sake, give me a drop of whiskey," said the Professor, "or I shall faint." Presently the door opened and Lord Doyne appeared in the shaft of light. He beckoned to his companions.
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