“My wife had no child,” said McCurdie.

“I’ve avoided women all my life,” said Biggleswade.

“And I’ve been too busy to think of them.  God forgive me,” said Doyne.

* * * * *

The history of the next two hours was one that none of the three men ever cared to touch upon.  They did things blindly, instinctively, as men do when they come face to face with the elemental.  A fire was made, they knew not how, water drawn they knew not whence, and a kettle boiled.  Doyne accustomed to command, directed.  The others obeyed.  At his suggestion they hastened to the wreck of the car and came staggering back beneath rugs and travelling bags which could supply clean linen and needful things, for amid the poverty of the house they could find nothing fit for human touch or use.  Early they saw that the woman’s strength was failing, and that she could not live.  And there, in that nameless hovel, with death on the hearthstone and death and life hovering over the pitiful bed, the three great men went through the pain and the horror and squalor of birth, and they knew that they had never yet stood before so great a mystery.

With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder passed through the frame of the unconscious mother.  Then three or four short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away.  She was dead.  Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over her face, for he could not bear to see it.

They washed and dried the child as any crone of a midwife would have done, and dipped a small sponge which had always remained unused in a cut-glass bottle in Doyne’s dressing-bag in the hot milk and water of Biggleswade’s thermos bottle, and put it to his lips; and then they wrapped him up warm in some of their own woollen undergarments, and took him into the kitchen and placed him on a bed made of their fur coats in front of the fire.  As the last piece of fuel was exhausted they took one of the wooden chairs and broke it up and cast it into the blaze.  And then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the living.  And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had been born a male into the world.  Then, their task being accomplished, reaction came, and even Doyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned faint.  But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like men stricken with palsy.

Suddenly McCurdie cried in a high pitched voice, “My God!  Don’t you feel it?” and clutched Doyne by the arm.  An expression of terror appeared on his iron features.

“There!  It’s here with us.”

Little Professor Biggleswade sat on a corner of the table and wiped his forehead.

“I heard it.  I felt it.  It was like the beating of wings.”