As she turned away Lennard paid his cabman, and when he went back to the door he found the pa.s.sage almost filled by a tall, square-shouldered shape of a man, and a voice to match it said:

"If ye're wantin' Tom Bowc.o.c.k, measter, that's me. Will ye coom in? It's a bit wet i' t' street."

Lennard went in, and as the door closed he said:

"Mr Bowc.o.c.k, my name is Lennard--"

"I thou't it might be," interrupted the other. "You'll be Lord Westerham's friend. I had a wire from his lordship's morning telling me t' expect you to-night or to-morrow morning. You'll excuse t' kitchen for a minute while t' missus makes up t' fire i' t' sittin'-room."

When Lennard got into the brightly-lighted kitchen, which is really the living-room of small Lancashire houses, he found himself in an atmosphere of modest cosy comfort which is seldom to be found outside the North and the Midland manufacturing districts. It is the other side of the hard, colourless life that is lived in mill and mine and forge, and it has a charm that is all its own.

There was the big range, filling half the s.p.a.ce of one of the side-walls, its steel framings glittering like polished silver; the high plate-rack full of shining crockery at one end by the door, and the low, comfortable couch at the other; two lines of linen hung on cords stretched under the ceiling airing above the range, and the solid deal table in the middle of the room was covered with a snow-white cloth, on which a pretty tea-service was set out.

A brightly polished copper kettle singing on the range, and a daintily furnished cradle containing a sleeping baby, sweetly unconscious of wars or world-shaking catastrophes, completed a picture which, considering his errand, affected Gilbert Lennard very deeply.

"Lizzie" said the giant, "this is Mr Lennard as his lordship telegraphed about to-day. I daresay yo can give him a cup of tay and see to t' fire i' t' sittin'-room. I believe he's come to have a bit of talk wi' me about summat important from what his lordship said."

"I'm pleased to see you, Mr Lennard," said the pleasant voice, and as he shook hands he found himself looking into the dark, soft eyes of a regular "Lancashire witch," for Lizzie Bowc.o.c.k had left despair in the heart of many a Lancashire lad when she had put her little hand into big Tom's huge fist and told him that she'd have him for her man and no one else.

She left the room for a few minutes to see to the sitting-room fire, and Lennard turned to his host and said:

"Mr Bowc.o.c.k, I have come to see you on a matter which will need a good deal of explanation. It will take quite a couple of hours to put the whole thing before you, so if you have any other engagements for to-night, no doubt you can take a day off to-morrow--in fact, as the pit will have to stop working--"

"T' 'pit stop working, Mr Lennard!" exclaimed the manager. "Yo' dunno say so. Is that his lordship's orders? Why, what's up?"

"I will explain everything, Mr Bowc.o.c.k," replied Lennard, "only, for her own sake, your wife must know nothing at present. The only question is, shall we have a talk to-night or not?"

"If it's anything that's bad," replied the big miner with a deeper note in his voice, "I'd soonest hear it now. Mysteries don't get any t'

better for keepin'. Besides, it'll give me time to sleep on't; and that's not a bad thing to do when yo've a big job to handle."

Mrs Bowc.o.c.k came back as he said this, and Lennard had his cup of tea, and they of course talked about the war. Naturally, the big miner and his pretty little wife were the most interested people in Lancashire just then, for to no one else in the County Palatine had been given the honour of hearing the story of the great battle off the Isle of Wight from the lips of one who had been through it on board the now famous _Ithuriel_.

But when Tom Bowc.o.c.k came out of the little sitting-room three hours later, after Lennard had told him of the approaching doom of the world and had explained to him how his pit-shaft was to be used as a means of averting it--should that, after all, prove to be possible--his interest in the war had diminished very considerably, for he had already come to see clearly that this was undeniably a case of the whole being very much greater than the part.

Tom Bowc.o.c.k was one of those men, by no means rare in the north, who work hard with hands and head at the same time. He was a pitman, but he was also a scientific miner, almost an engineer, and so Lennard had found very little difficulty in getting him to grasp the details of the tremendous problem in the working out of which he was destined to play no mean part.

"Well, Measter Lennard," he said, slowly, as they rose from the little table across which a very large amount of business had been transacted.

"It's a pretty big job this that yo've putten into our hands, and especially into mine; but I reckon they'll be about big enough for it; and yo've come to t' right place, too. I've never heard yet of a job as Lancashire took on to as hoo didn't get through wi'.

"Now, from what yo've been telling me, yo' must be a bit of an early riser sometimes, so if yo'll come here at seven or so i' t' mornin', I'll fit yo' out wi' pit clothes and we'll go down t' shaft and yo' can see for yoursel' what's wantin' doin'. Maybe that'll help yo' before yo'

go and make yo'r arrangements wi' Dobson & Barlow and t'other folk as yo'll want to help yo'."

"Thank you very much, Mr Bowc.o.c.k," replied Lennard. "You will find me here pretty close about seven. It's a big job, as you say, and there's not much time to be lost. Now, if Mrs Bowc.o.c.k has not gone to bed, I'll go and say good-night."

"She's no'on to bed yet," said his host, "and yo'll take a drop o'

summat warm before yo' start walkin' to t' hotel, for yo'll get no cab up this way to-neet. She'll just have been puttin' t' youngster to bed--"

Tom Bowc.o.c.k stopped suddenly in his speech as a swift vision of that same "youngster" and his mother choking in the flames of the Fire-Mist pa.s.sed across his senses. Lennard had convinced his intellect of the necessity of the task of repelling the Celestial Invader and of the possibility of success; but from that moment his heart was in the work.

It had stopped raining and the sky had cleared a little when they went to the door half an hour later. To the right, across the road, rose a tall gaunt shape like the skeleton of an elongated pyramid crowned with two big wheels. Lights were blazing round it, for the pit was working night and day getting the steam coal to the surface.

"Yonder's t' shaft," said Tom, as they shook hands. "It doesn't look much of a place to save the world in, does it?"

CHAPTER XXV

PREPARING FOR ACTION

The next day was a busy one, not only for Lennard himself but for others whose help he had come to enlist in the working out of the Great Experiment.

He turned up at Bowc.o.c.k's house on the stroke of seven, got into his pit clothes, and was dropped down the twelve-hundred-foot shaft in the cage.

At the bottom of the shaft he found a solid floor sloping slightly eastward, with three drives running in fan shape from north-east and south-east. There were two others running north and north-west.

After ten minutes' very leisurely walk round the base of the shaft, during which he made one or two observations by linear and perpendicular compa.s.s, he said to Tom Bowc.o.c.k:

"I think this will do exactly. The points are absolutely correct. If we had dug a hole for ourselves we couldn't have got one better than this.

Yes, I think it will just do. Now, will you be good enough to take me to the surface as slowly as you can?"

"No, but yo're not meanin' that, Measter Lennard," laughed the manager.

"'Cause if I slowed t' engines down as much as I could you'd be the rest o' t' day getting to t' top."

"Yes, of course, I didn't mean that," said Lennard, "but just slowly--about a tenth of the speed that you dropped me into the bowels of the earth with. You see, I want to have a look at the sides."

"Yo' needna' trouble about that, Mr Lennard, I can give yo' drawin's of all that in t' office, but still yo' can see for yo'rself by the drawin's afterwards."

The cage ascended very slowly, and Lennard did see for himself. But when later on he studied the drawings that Tom Bowc.o.c.k had made, he found that there wasn't as much as a stone missing. When he had got into his everyday clothes again, and had drunk a cup of tea brewed for him by Mrs Bowc.o.c.k, he said as he shook hands with her husband:

"Well, as far as the pit is concerned, I have seen all that I want to see, and Lord Westerham was just as right about the pit as he was about the man who runs it. Now, I take it over from to-day. You will stop all mining work at once, close the entrances to the galleries and put down a bed of concrete ten feet thick, level. Then you will go by the drawings that I gave you last night.

"At present, the concreting of the walls in as perfect a circle as you can make them, not less than sixteen feet inner diameter, and building up the concrete core four feet thick from the floor to the top, is your first concern. You will tell your men that they will have double wages for day work and treble for night work, and whether they belong to the Volunteers or Yeomanry or Militia they will not be called to the Colours as long as they keep faith with us; if the experiment turns out all right, every man who sees it through shall have a bonus of a thousand pounds.

"But, remember, that this pit will be watched, and every man who signs on for the job will be watched, and the Lord have mercy on the man who plays us false, for he'll want it. You must make them remember that, Mr Bowc.o.c.k. This is no childish game of war among nations; this means the saving or the losing of a world, and the man who plays traitor here is not only betraying his own country, but the whole human race, friends and enemies alike."

"I'll see to that, Mr Lennard. I know my chaps, and if there's one or two bad 'uns among 'em, they'll get paid and shifted in the ordinary way of business. But they're mostly a gradely lot of chaps. I've been picking 'em out for his lordship for t' last five yeers, and there isn't a Trade Unionist among 'em. We give good money here and we want good work and good faith, and if we don't get it, the man who doesn't give it has got to go and find another job.

"For wages like that they'd go on boring t' shaft right down through t'

earth and out at t' other side, and risk finding Owd Nick and his people in t' middle. A' tell yo' for sure. Well, good-mornin', yo've a lot to do, and so have I. A'll get those galleries blocked and bricked up at once, and as soon as you can send t' concrete along, we'll start at t'

floor."

Lennard's first visit after breakfast was to the Manchester and County Bank in Deansgate, where he startled the manager, as far as a Lancashire business man can be startled, by opening an account for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and depositing the t.i.tle-deeds of the whole of Lord Westerham's properties in and about Bolton.

When he had finished his business at the Bank, he went to the offices of Dobson & Barlow, the great ironworkers, whose four-hundred-and-ten-foot chimney towers into the murky sky so far above all other structures in Bolton that if you are approaching the town by road you see it and its crest of smoke long before you see Bolton itself.

The firm had, of course, been advised of his coming, and he had written a note over-night to say when he would call. The name of Ratliffe Parmenter was a talisman to conjure with in all the business circles of the world, and so Lennard found Mr Barlow himself waiting for him in his private office.

He opened the matter in hand very quietly, so quietly indeed that the keen-sighted, hard-headed man who was listening to him found that for once in his life he was getting a little out of his depth.