‘You find out, I think, whether the job you hired him to do was humanly possible, before you take out your knife, anyway.’
‘That’s up to the man who takes the job. And what was it? Just to keep a tight rein on a few dagoes.’
‘I don’t know very much about it, but I understand he had charge of the transport animals as well.’
‘He surely did; and let the whole thing slip out of his hand. Well, I don’t expect you to side against your nephew. But can I see your Peruvians?’
‘Certainly.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
During the mutual inspection which followed Adrian frequently glanced at the magnificent specimen of Homo Sapiens who stood beside him. A man so overflowing with health and life he had seldom seen. Natural enough that any check should gall him. Sheer vitality would prevent him from seeing the other side of things. Like his nation, matters must move his way, because there was no other way that seemed possible to his superabundance.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘he can’t help being God’s own specimen – Homo transatlanticus superbus’; and he said slyly: ‘So the sun is going to travel West to East in future, Professor?’
Hallorsen smiled, and his smile had an exuberant sweetness.
‘Well, Mr Curator, we’re agreed, I guess, that civilization started with agriculture. If we can show that we raised Indian corn on the American continent way back, maybe thousands of years before the old Nile civilization of barley and wheat, why shouldn’t the stream be the other way?’
‘And can you?’
‘Why, we have twenty to twenty-five types of Indian corn. Hrwdlicka claims that some twenty thousand years was necessary to differentiate them. That puts us way ahead as the parents of agriculture, anyway.’
‘But alas! no type of Indian corn existed in the old world till after the discovery of America.’
‘No, sir; nor did any old-world type cereal exist in America till after that. Now, if the old-world culture seeped its way across the Pacific, why didn’t it bring along its cereals?’
‘But that doesn’t make America the light-bringer to the rest of the world, does it?’
‘Maybe not; but if not, she just developed her own old civilizations out of her own discovery of cereals; and they were the first.’
‘Are you an Atlantean, Professor?’
‘I sometimes toy with the idea, Mr Curator.’
‘Well, well! May I ask if you are quite happy about your attack on my nephew?’
‘Why, I certainly had a sore head when I wrote it. Your nephew and I didn’t click.’
‘That, I should think, might make you all the more doubtful as to whether you were just.’
‘If I withdrew my criticism, I wouldn’t be saying what I really thought.’
‘You are convinced that you had no hand in your failure to reach your objective?’
The frown on the giant’s brow had a puzzled quality, and Adrian thought: ‘An honest man, anyway.’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ said Hallorsen, slowly.
‘You chose my nephew, I believe?’
‘Yes, out of twenty others.’
‘Precisely. You chose the wrong man, then?’
‘I surely did.’
‘Bad judgement?’
Hallorsen laughed.
‘That’s very acute, Mr Curator. But I’m not the man to advertise my own failings.’
‘What you wanted,’ said Adrian, dryly, ‘was a man without the bowels of compassion: well, I admit, you didn’t get him.’
Hallorsen flushed.
‘We shan’t agree about this, sir. I’ll just take my little lot of skulls away. And I thank you for your courtesy.’
A few minutes later he was gone.
Adrian was left to tangled meditation. The fellow was better than he had remembered. Physically a splendid specimen, mentally not to be despised, spiritually – well, typical of a new world where each immediate objective was the most important thing on earth till it was attained, and attainment more important than the methods of attainment employed. ‘Pity,’ he thought, ‘if there’s going to be a dog-fight. Still, the fellow’s in the wrong; one ought to be more charitable than to attack like that in public print. Too much ego in friend Hallorsen.’ So thinking, he put the maxilla into a drawer.
Chapter Five
DINNY pursued her way towards St Augustine’s-in-the-Meads. On that fine day the poverty of the district she was entering seemed to her country-nurtured eyes intensely cheerless. She was the more surprised by the hilarity of the children playing in the streets. Asking one of them the way to the Vicarage, she was escorted by five. They did not leave her when she rang the bell, and she was forced to conclude that they were actuated by motives not entirely connected with altruism. They attempted, indeed, to go in with her, and only left when she gave them each a penny. She was ushered into a pleasant room which looked as though it would be glad if someone had the time to enter it some day, and was contemplating a reproduction of the Castelfranco Francesca, when a voice said: