THE WORLD MASTERS
PROLOGUE
THE MOMENT OF TRIUMPH
High above the night-shrouded street, whose silence was only broken by the occasional tramp of the military patrol or the gruff challenges of the sentries on the fortifications, a man was walking, with jerky, uneven strides, up and down a vast attic in an ancient house overlooking the old Fisher's Gate, close by where the River Ill leaves the famous city of Strassburg.
The room, practically destitute of ordinary furniture, was fitted up as a chemical and physical laboratory, and the man was Doctor Emil Fargeau, the most distinguished scientific investigator that the lost province of Alsace had produced—a tall, spare man of about sixty, with sloping, stooping shoulders and forward-thrown head, thinly covered with straggling iron-grey hair. It was plain that he was in the habit of shaving clean, but just now there was a short white stubble both on his upper lip and on the lean wrinkled cheeks which showed the nervous workings of the muscles so plainly. In fact, his whole appearance was that of a man too completely absorbed by an over-mastering idea to pay any attention to the small details of life.
And such was the exact truth—for these few mid-night minutes which were being ticked off by an ancient wooden clock in the corner were the most anxious of his life. In fact, a few more of them would decide whether the Great Experiment, for which he had sacrificed everything, even to his home and his great professional position, was to be a success or a failure.
On the long, bare, pine table, beside which he was pacing up and down, stood a strange fabric about three feet high. It was round, and about the size of a four-gallon ale jar. It was covered completely by a closed glass cylinder, and rested on four strong glass supports. From the floor on either side of the table a number of twisted, silk-covered wires rose from two sets of storage batteries. Within the four supports was a wooden dish, and on this lay a piece of bright steel some four inches square and about an inch thick, just under a circle of needles which hung down in a circle from the bottom of the machine.
A very faint humming sound filled the room, and made a somewhat uncanny accompaniment to the leisurely tick of the clock and the irregular shuffling of the doctor's slippered feet.
Every now and then he stopped, and put his ear near to the machine, and then looked at the piece of steel with a gleam of longing anticipation in his keen, deep-set, grey eyes. Then he began his walk again, and his lips went on working, as though he were holding an inaudible conversation with himself. At last there came a faint whirr from the clock, a little window opened, and a wooden bird bobbed out and said "Cuckoo" once. The doctor stopped instantly, took out his watch and compared it with the clock.
"Now, let us see!" he said, quietly, in his somewhat guttural Alsatian French, for in this supreme moment of his life he had gone back to the patois of his boyhood, which he had spoken in the days before the Teuton's iron hand had snatched his well-loved native land from France and begun to rule it according to the pitiless doctrine of Blood and Iron.
He pulled the platter out from under the machine, picked up a little wooden mallet from the table, and, with a trembling hand, struck the steel plate in the centre. It splintered instantly to fragments, as though it had only been a thin sheet of glass. The doctor dropped the mallet, lifted his hand to the window that looked out over the river towards the citadel, and said:
"It is done! And so, Germany, stealer of our land and oppressor of my people, will I break the great fabric of your power with one touch of this weak old hand of mine!"
Then he threw open one of the old-fashioned dormer windows that looked out over the northern part of the city towards France, and began to speak again in a low, intense tone which rose and fell slightly as his deep breaths came and went.
"But France, my beautiful mother France, thou shalt know soon that I have done more than given thee the power to turn on thy conqueror and crush him. I can make thee queen and mistress of the world, and I will do it. The other nations shall live and prosper only at thy bidding, and they shall pay thee tribute for the privilege of being something more than the savages from which they came.
"Those who will not pay thee tribute shall go back to the Stone Age, for I will show thee how to make their metals useless. Only with thy permission shall their steam-engines work for them, or their telegraphs record their words; for I have found the Soul of the World, the Living Principle of Material Things, and I will draw it out of the fabric of Nature as I have done out of that block of steel. And I will give it into thy hands, and the nations shall live or die according to thy pleasure.
"And you, Adelaide, daughter of our ancient line of kings, descendant of the Grand Monarch, you shall join hands with my Victor after he has flung off the livery of his servitude, and together you shall raise up the throne of Saint Louis in the place where these usurpers and Republican canaille have reigned over ruined France. The Prince of Condé shall sit in the seat of his ancestors, and after him Adelaide de Montpensier—and Victor, my son, shall stand beside her, ruler of the world!
"A miracle, and yet 'tis true! Possible, for I have made it possible. It is only for France to believe me and spend her millions—millions that will buy her the Empire of the Earth, and it is done—done as easily as I worked that seeming miracle just now. I have risked much—all—for I have hazarded even honour itself; but my faith is justified, and I have won—and now, let me see how I stand before the world for the present."
He went and sat down before the only piece of ordinary furniture that the laboratory contained, an old oak bureau, on which stood a little shaded reading-lamp. He unlocked a drawer, and took out a little wash-leather bag. He undid it and emptied it into his hand. There were ten twenty-mark pieces—just ten pounds and a few pence in English money. In his pocket he had perhaps twenty-five marks more.
"It is not much," he whispered, as he looked at the gold in his hand; "not much at the end of a life's work, as the world would call it. But the world knows nothing of that!" he went on, half-turning his head towards the machine on the table. "As the world takes wealth, this is all that is left of fortune, lands, and savings. Everything is gone but this, and that—ay, and more also. Yes, it was a hard fate that forced me to do that. Still, science showed me how to alter the figures so that not even the filthy Jew Weinthal himself could tell if he had the draft in his hand. That he will never have; for it has a month to run, and before that France will have made me rich. It was not right, but the scoundrel only gave me half what the last farm was worth, and I had to have more to finish my work. Yet, is it not honourable even to sin in such a cause! Well, well, it is over now. I have triumphed, and that atones for all; and so to bed and good dreams, and to-morrow to Paris!"
It was the 27th of January, the Kaiser's birthday, and the reception-rooms of the German Embassy, on the Nevski Prospekt, overlooking the snow-covered quays and ice-bound waters of the Neva, were filled with as brilliant a throng as could have been found between the Ourals and the English Channel.
It has been said that Petersburg in the winter season contains more beautiful women than any other capital in Europe; and certainly the fair guests of His Excellency the German Ambassador to the Court of the White Czar went far towards proving the truth of the saying. The dresses were as ideal as they were indescribable, and the jewels which blazed round the softly moulded throats and on the fair white breasts, and gleamed on dainty coiffures of every hue, from ebony black to the purest flaxen, would have been bad to match even among the treasures of Oriental princes.
The men, too, were splendid in every variety of uniform, from the gold-laced broadcloth of Diplomacy to the white and gold of the Imperial Guard. Not a man was present whose left breast was not glittering with stars and medals, and, in most cases, crossed with the ribbon of some distinguished Order.
The windless, frosty air outside was still vocal with the jingling of the sleigh-bells as the vehicles sped swiftly and noiselessly up to the open doors, for it was only a little after ten, and all the guests had not yet arrived. Precisely at half-past a sleigh drawn by three perfectly black Orloff horses swept into the courtyard, and a few minutes later the major-domo passed through the open folding-doors and said, in loud but well-trained tones:
"His Highness the Prince de Condé, Duc de Montpensier! Mademoiselle la Marquise de Montpensier!"
At the same moment two lacqueys held aside the heavy curtains which hung on the inside of the doorway, and the latest arrivals entered.
The announcement of the once most noble names in Europe instantly hushed the hum of conversation, and all eyes were turned towards the doorway.
They saw a tall, straight, well-set-up man of about fifty, with dark moustache and imperial, and iron-grey hair still thick and strong. A single glance at his features showed that they bore the indelible stamp of the old Bourbon race. The high, somewhat narrow, forehead was continued in a straight line to the end of the long thin nose. The somewhat high cheek-bones, the delicate ears, the thin, sensitive nostrils, and the strong, slightly protruding chin, might have belonged to the Grande Monarque himself.
He was in ordinary court dress, the broad red ribbon of the Order of St Vladimir crossed his breast, the collar and jewel of the Golden Fleece hung from his neck, and the stars of half-a-dozen other Orders glittered on the left breast of his coat; but, though he bore the greatest name in France, there was not a French order among them, for Louis Xavier de Condé was a voluntary exile from the land over which his ancestors had once ruled so splendidly and so ruinously.
For three generations his branch of the great family had refused to recognise any ruler in France, from the First Consul to the President of the Third Republic. In his eyes they were one and all usurpers and plebeian upstarts, who ruled only by the suffrages of an ignorant and deluded mob. In short, his creed and the rule of his daily life were hatred and contempt of the French democracy. On this subject he was almost a fanatic, and in days soon to come this fanaticism of his was destined to influence events, of which only three people in all that crowded assembly were even dreaming.
The girl at his side—for she was not yet twenty-one—might well have been taken for a twentieth-century replica of Marie Antoinette, and to say that, is to say that among all the beautiful and stately women in that brilliant concourse, none were quite so beautiful and stately as Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier.
Of all the hundred eyes which were turned upon this peerless daughter of the line of St Louis, the most eager were those of a splendidly-built young fellow of about twenty-eight, dressed in the blue and white uniform of the Uhlan regiment of the German army. Captain Victor Fargeau, military attaché to the German Embassy in Petersburg, was perhaps the handsomest, and, at the same time, manliest-looking man in all that company of soldiers and diplomats. At least, so certainly thought Adelaide de Condé, as she saw his dark blue eyes light up with a swift gleam of admiration, and the bronze on his cheeks grow deeper as the quick blood flushed beneath it.
It was a strange bond that united the daughter of the Bourbons with the soldier and subject of the German Kaiser, and yet it must have been a close one. For, after the first formal presentations were over, her eyes sent a quick signal to his, which brought him instantly to her side, and when their hands met the clasp was closer, and lasted just a moment longer than mere acquaintance or even friendship would have warranted.
"Can you tell me, Captain, whether the gentleman who calls himself the French Ambassador has honoured us with his presence to-night?" said the Prince, as he shook hands with the young soldier.
"No, Prince, he has not," he replied. "I hear that, almost at the last moment, he sent an attaché with his regrets and excuses. Of course, as you know, there is a little friction between the Governments just now, and naturally, too, he would know that Your Highness and Mam'selle la Marquise would honour us with your presence—so, on the whole, I suppose he thought it more convenient to discover some important diplomatic matter which would deprive him of the pleasure of joining us."
"Ah," said the Marquise, looking up at him with a glance and a smile that set his pulses jumping, "then perhaps Sophie Valdemar was right when she told me this afternoon that His Excellency had really a good excuse for not coming—an interview with Count Lansdorf, and afterwards with no less a personage than the Little Father himself! And, you know, Sophie knows everything."
"Ah yes," said the Prince; "I had forgotten that. You told me of it. I should not wonder if the subject of their conversation were not unconnected with an increase of the French fleet in Chinese waters. And then Morocco is——"
"Chut, papa!" said the Marquise, in a low tone, "we must not talk politics here. In Petersburg ceilings have eyes and walls have ears."
"That is true," laughed Victor; "not even Embassies here are neutral ground."
At this moment a lacquey approached and bowed to Captain Fargeau.
"Pardon me a moment," he said to his companions; "I am wanted for something, and I can see a good many envious eyes looking this way. Ah, there goes the music! They will be dancing presently, and there will be many candidates for Mam'selle's hand. But you will keep me a waltz or two, won't you? and may I hope also for supper?"
"My dear Victor," she replied, with a bewildering smile, "have I not already told you that you may hope for everything? Meanwhile, au revoir! When you have done your business you will find us in the salon."
As he moved away, the curtains were again drawn aside, and the major-domo announced:
"His Excellency Count Valdemar! The Countess Sophie Valdemar!"
The Count was a big, strongly-built man in diplomatic uniform. His face was of the higher Russian type, and heavily bearded. His daughter, the Countess Sophie, was a strange contrast to him, slight and fair, with perfectly cut features, almost Grecian in their regularity, golden-bronze hair, dark, straight eyebrows, and big, wide-set, pansy-blue eyes. The only Russian trait that she possessed was her mouth—full-lipped and sensuous, almost sensular, in fact; and yet it was small enough, and the lips were so daintily shaped that it added to, rather than detracted from her beauty.
They were lips whose kisses had lured more than one bearer of a well-known name to destruction. Some they had sent to the scaffold, and others were still dreaming of their fatal sweetness in prison or in hopeless exile; for Sophie Valdemar, daughter of Count Leo Valdemar, Chief of the Third Section of the Ministry of the Interior, had been trained up from girlhood by her father in every art of intrigue, until even he was fully justified in calling her the most skilful diplomatic detective in Europe.
To her friends and acquaintances she was just a charming and brilliantly-accomplished girl of nineteen, who had reigned as undisputed Queen of Beauty in Moscow and Petersburg until Adelaide de Condé had come from Vienna with her father, and, by some mysterious means, unknown even to her, had been received into instant favour at Court, and in the most exclusive circles in the most exclusive city in the world. In fact, the enigma which it was the present object of her life to solve was how this could be possible—granted the tacit alliance between the Russian Empire and the French Republic, and the Prince's openly expressed contempt for all modern things French and Republican. There were, indeed, only three people in Europe who could have solved that riddle, and she was not one of them.
As she entered she saw Victor coming towards her. Instantly her eyes brightened, and the faintest of flushes showed through the pallor of her silken skin. He stopped for a moment to greet them, but his clasp on her hand was nothing more than the formal pressure which friendship expects, and she looked in vain for any gleam in his eyes answering that in her own.
When he had passed in towards the door she flung a swift glance round the room, and as the soft pansy eyes rested on the exquisite shape and lovely face of Adelaide de Condé they seemed to harden and blacken for just the fraction of a second. The next moment she and her father were greeting the Prince and the Marquise with a cordiality that was only tempered by the almost indefinable reserve which the place and the situation made indispensable.
"My dear Marquise," she said, in that soft, pure French which, outside France, is only heard in Russia, "if possible, you have excelled yourself to-night; you are a perfect vision——"
"My dear Sophie," laughed the Marquise, "what is the matter? You seem as formal as you wish to be flattering; but really, if it is a matter of compliments, it is not you, but I who should be paying them."
"Quite a waste of time, my dear children," laughed the Count, gruffly. "Imagine you two paying each other compliments when there are a couple of hundred men here with thousands of them crowding up to their lips. Still, Prince," he went on, "it is better so than rivalry, for rival beauty has always worked more harm in the world than rival ambitions."
"There can be no question of rivalry, my dear Count," replied the Prince. "Why should the Evening envy the Morning, or the Lily be jealous of the Rose?"
"Put like a Frenchman and a statesman, Prince: that was said as only one of the old regime could say it," said Sophie, with a little backward movement of her head. "How is it that the men of this generation never say things like that—or, if they try to, bungle over it."
"Perhaps they are too busy to revive the lost art of politeness," laughed Adelaide. "But come, papa; they are playing a lovely waltz, and I am dying for a dance, and so is Sophie, I daresay."
"And, by their looks, many of these young men are dying of the same complaint; so suppose we go into the salon," said the Prince, offering his arm to Sophie.
It was nearly half-an-hour before Victor found Adelaide disengaged in the ball-room. The first waltz that she had saved for him was just beginning, and, as he slipped his arm round her waist, he whispered under cover of the music:
"If you please, we will just take a couple of turns, and then you will give me a few precious minutes of your company in the winter garden."
She glanced up swiftly at him with a look of keen inquiry, and whispered in reply:
"Of course, my Victor, if you wish it; especially as it is getting a little warm here—and no doubt you have something more interesting for me than dancing."
"I think you will find it so," he said, as they glided away into the shining, smoothly-swirling throng which filled the great salon.
After two or three turns they stopped at the curtained entrance of the vast conservatory, whose tropical trees and flowers and warm scented air formed a delicious contrast to the cold, black, Russian winter's night. Almost at the same moment Sophie Valdemar said to her partner, a smart young officer of the Imperial Guard:
"I think that will do for the present, if you don't mind; I don't feel very vigorous to-night, somehow: suppose you find me a seat in the garden, and then go and tell one of the men to bring me an ice."
They stopped just as Victor and Adelaide passed through the curtains. They followed a couple of yards behind them, and Sophie quickened her step a little, her teeth came together with a little snap, and her eyes darkened again as she saw Adelaide look up at her companion and heard her say softly:
"Well, what is your news—for I am sure you have some?"
"Yes, I have," he replied; "and the greatest of good news; you know from whom?"
"Ah," said Adelaide, with a little catch in her voice, "from him; and has he——"
"Succeeded? Yes; and to the fullest of his expectations. He goes to Paris to-morrow, and then——"
The rest of the sentence was lost to Sophie as they turned away into the garden.
Her companion found her a seat under a tree-fern, and left her leaning back in her long-cushioned chair of Russian wicker, looking across the winter garden, through the palms and ferns, at Victor and Adelaide, as they moved along, obviously looking for a secluded corner. During those few moments her whole nature had, for the time being, completely changed. The jealous, passionate woman had vanished, and in her place remained the cold, clear-headed, highly-trained intriguer, with incarnate and unemotional intellect, thinking swiftly and logically, trying to find some meaning in the words that she had just heard, words which, if she had only known their import, she would have found pregnant with the fate of Europe.
"I wonder who has succeeded beyond his best expectations? Someone closely connected with both of them, of course! And Paris—why should his success take him to Paris? Victor Fargeau, Alsatian though he is, is one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of German officers, a favourite of the Emperor, a member of the Staff, and attaché here in Petersburg. And she, my dear friend and enemy, is a Bourbon, an aristocrat of the first water, the daughter of an open enemy of our very good and convenient ally the French Republic. Paris—he who has succeeded is going to Paris. Well, I would give a good deal to know who he is and why he is going to Paris."
"And so, Monsieur le Ministre, I am to take that as your final word? I have given you every proof that I can—saving the impossible—the bringing of my apparatus from Strassburg to Paris, which, of course, you know is an impossibility, since it would have to cross the frontier, which was once a French high road. I have shown you the facts, the figures, the drawings—everything. Can you not see that I am honest, that I love my country, from which I have been torn away—I who come from a family that has lived in Alsace since it was first French territory—I who am a Frenchman through five generations—I who have sold my son to the Prussians—I who have masqueraded for years in the Prussian University of Strassburg, once the Queen of the Rhine Province—I who have discovered a secret which has lain buried since the days of the great Faraday—I who have discovered, or I should say re-discovered, after him the true theory, and, what is more, the actual working of the magnetic tides which flow north and south through the two hemispheres to the pole—I who can give you, Monsieur le Ministre, and through you France, the control of those tides, so that you may make them ebb and flow as the tides of the sea do—prosperity with the flow, adversity with the ebb, that is what it comes to—ah, it is incredible!
"Once more, not as a scientist, not as an inventor, but only as a loyal son of France, let me implore you, Monsieur le Ministre, not to regard what I have told you as the dream of an enthusiast who has only dreamt and not done."
"If you have done as much as you say, Monsieur," replied the French Minister of War, leaning back in his chair and twisting up the left point of his moustache as he looked coldly and incredulously across his desk at Doctor Emil Fargeau, late Professor of Physical Science at the University of Strassburg, "how comes it that you have not been able to bring actual, tangible proofs to me here in Paris? Why, for instance, could you not have performed the miracle that you have just been telling me about in one of our laboratories in Paris? If you had done that—well, we might have investigated the miracle, and, after investigation, might have some conviction—a conviction, if you will pardon me saying so, which might have enabled us to overcome the very natural prejudice that the Government of the Republic may be expected to have against a man of ancient family, whose ancestors had been French subjects for, as you say, five generations, but who has become himself a German subject, and has permitted his son, his only son, to enter the Prussian service, and has endured the shame of seeing him rise year after year, rank upon rank, in the favour of the man who is destined to be to Germany what the Great Napoleon was to France.
"No, sir, I cannot believe you; I can understand what you have told me about what you call your invention, but understanding without conviction is like hunger without a good dinner. I am not satisfied. Bring your apparatus here; let me see it work. Convince me that you can do what you say, and all that you ask for is yours; but without conviction I can guarantee you nothing.
"With every consideration that is due to the position that you have occupied in what may be called the enemy's country, the stolen provinces, I must take leave to say that very few days pass without an interview of this kind. I assure you, my dear sir, that saviours of our country and regainers of the Lost Provinces are to be counted by hundreds, but we have not yet found one whose scheme is capable of sustaining a practical test."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, I can assure you with equal faith that this is not a scheme, a theory, a something in the air. On the contrary, it is a theory reduced to fact—solid fact; what I have said to you I can do before you. I can convince you——"
"Exactly, my dear sir, exactly," said the Minister; "you will not think me discourteous if I say that within the last six months I have had visits from inventors of air-ships who could create aerial navies which would assume the dominion of the air, annihilate armies and fleets, and make fortifications useless because impotent. Others have come to me with plans which, if the theory could only have been translated into practice, would have given us a submarine navy which in six months would have sunk every cruiser and battleship on the ocean. In fact, in one of the drawers of this very bureau I have a most exactly detailed scheme for diverting the Gulf Stream through the much-lamented Panama Canal into the Pacific, and so reducing the British Islands, the home of our ancient enemies, to the conditions—I mean, of course, the climatic conditions, of Labrador. That is to say, that nine months in the year London, Southampton, Plymouth, Liverpool, Glasgow, to say nothing of the ports on the east and the south, would be frozen up. The British Navy—that curse of the world—could not operate; Britain's shipping trade would be paralysed, and after that her industries. They are free-traders, and so they don't believe it; but it would be if it could be done. But it could not be done, Monsieur; and that is the objection which I have to this most splendidly promising scheme of yours."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, I assure that it is only a question of—well, I will say a few thousand francs to convince you that I am not one of those scientific adventurers who have perhaps imposed on the credulity of the Government before. What I have described to you is the truth—the truth as I have wrought it by my own labour, as I have seen it with my own eyes, as I have finished it with my own hand."
"Tres bien, Monsieur! Then all you have to do is, as I said before, to bring your apparatus here, perform the same experiment before a committee of experts, and if you break the piece of steel as you would a piece of glass—voila, c'est fini! We are convinced, and what you ask for will be granted."
"But, Monsieur le Ministre, nothing could be fairer than that; only you have not remembered what I told you during our last interview. I have spent hundreds of thousands of francs to bring this idea of mine to perfection. I have spent every centime——"
"Pfennige I think you should call them, Professor," interrupted the Minister, with a perceptible sneer. "I am afraid you are forgetting your new nationality; and, since you are a German subject, living in German territory, as it now is, it is permissible for me to ask why this wonderful invention of yours was not offered first to Germany—that is to say, if it has not already been offered and refused."
As the Minister of War spoke these few momentous words, accentuating them with his pen on the blotting-pad in front of him, Doctor Fargeau arose from his seat on the other side of the desk, and said, in a voice which would have been stronger had it not been broken by an uncontrollable emotion:
"Monsieur le Ministre, you have spoken, and, officially, the matter is finished. Through you I have offered France the Empire of the World. Through you France has refused it. You ask me to bring my apparatus here to Paris, to prove that it is a question of practice, not of theory. I cannot do it, and why?—because, as I told you, I have spent every centime, or pfennige, if you like, in making this thing possible.
"Everything is gone: the farms and vineyards that have been ours since the days of St Louis are mortgaged. We are homeless. I have no home to go back to. I have borrowed more than I can pay; I trusted everything to you, to the intelligence and patriotism of France. I have not even enough money to take me back to the home that I have ruined for the sake of France and her lost provinces. It was impossible to think that you would disbelieve me. A thousand francs, Monsieur le Ministre, would be enough—enough to save me from ruin, and to make France the mistress of the world. Even out of your own pocket, it would not be very much. Think, I implore you, of all that I have suffered and sacrificed; of all the hours that I have spent in making this great ideal a reality——"
"And which, if you will excuse me saying so, monsieur," replied the Minister, rising rather sharply from his seat, "has yet to be proved to our satisfaction, to be a concrete reality instead of a dream—the dream of an enthusiast who does not even possess the credit of having remained a Frenchman. If, indeed, your personal necessities are so pressing, and a fifty-franc note would be of any use to you—well, seeing that you were once a Frenchman——"
As he said this the Minister took his pocket-book out, and, as he did so, Doctor Fargeau sprang from his seat, and said, in quick, husky tones:
"Mais, non, Monsieur le Ministre! I came here not to ask for charity, but to give France the dominion of the world. Those whom she has chosen as her advisers have treated me either as a lunatic or a quack. Very well, let it be so. Through you I have offered to France a priceless gift; you have refused it for the sake of a paltry thousand francs or so. Very well, you will see the end of this, though I shall not. I have devoted my life to this ideal. I have dreamt the dream of France the Mistress of the World, as she was in the days of la Grande Monarque. I have found the means of realising the ideal. You and those who with you rule the destinies of France have refused to accept my statements as true. On your heads be it, as the Moslems say. I have done. If this dream of mine should ever be heard of again, if it should ever be realised, France may some day learn how much she has lost through her official incredulity."
Emil Fargeau left the Minister of War a broken man—broken in mind and heart as well as in means. In youth it is easy, in early manhood it is possible, to survive the sudden destruction of a life's ideal; but when the threescore years have been counted, and the dream and the labours of half a lifetime are suddenly brought to nought, it is another matter. It is ruin—utter and hopeless; and so it was with Emil Fargeau.
He had risked everything on what he had honestly believed to be the certainty of his marvellous discovery being taken up and developed by the French Government. In fact, he was so certain of it, that, before leaving his laboratory at Strassburg, he had taken the precaution to destroy the essential parts of his accumulator, lest, during his absence, his sanctum might be invaded and some one stumble by accident on his discovery. In a word, he had staked everything and lost everything. To go back was impossible. Everything he had was sold or mortgaged. He had been kept by official delays more than a fortnight in Paris, and he had barely a hundred francs left, and even of this more than half would be necessary to pay his modest hotel bill for the week.
And then, worse than all, there was that fatal indiscretion into which he had permitted his enthusiasm to betray him—an indiscretion which placed him absolutely at the mercy of a German Jew money-lender, who, under the rigid laws of Germany, could send him to penal servitude for the rest of his life.
No, there was no help for it; there was only one way out of the terrible impasse into which his enthusiasm, and that moral weakness which is so often associated with great intellectual power, had led him, and that way he took.
He went back to his hotel, and spent about an hour in writing letters. One of these was directed to Captain Victor Fargeau, German Embassy, Petersburg. Another was directed to Reuss Weinthal, Judenstrasse, Strassburg. The third, without date or signature, he placed in a little air-tight tin case, with the complete specifications of his discovery.
He took off his coat and waistcoat, and fastened this to his body so that it just came in the small of his back. Then, when he had dressed himself and put on a light overcoat, he took a small handbag, for appearance's sake, walked to the Nord Station, and took a second-class ticket to Southampton, via le Havre.
At midnight the steamer was in mid-channel, and Emil Fargeau was taking his last look on sea and sky from the fore-deck. For a moment he looked back eastward over the dark waters towards the land of his ruined hopes, and murmured brokenly:
"My beautiful France, I have offered you the Empire of the World, but the dolts and idiots you have chosen to govern you have refused it. 'Tant pis pour toi'! Now I will give the secret to the Fates—to reveal it or to keep it hidden for ever, as they please. For me it is the end!"
As the last words left his lips he took a rapid glance round the deserted deck, and slipped over the rail into the creaming water that was swirling past the vessel's side. In another moment one of the whirling screws had caught him and smashed him out of human shape, and what was left of him, with the little tin box containing the secrets of a world-empire lashed to it, went floating away in the broad wake that the steamer left behind it.
It was a lovely May morning on the English Channel, and the steam yacht Nadine was travelling under easy steam at about eight knots an hour midway between Guernsey and Southampton. Her owner, Ernest Shafto Hardress, Viscount Branston, eldest son of the Earl of Orrel, was taking his early coffee on the bridge with his college chum and guest, Frank Lamson, M.A. of Cambridge, and Doctor of Science of London, the youngest man save one who had won the gold medal in the examination for that distinguished degree. In fact, he was only thirty-two, and the medal had already been in his possession nearly a year.
The morning was so exquisitely mild, that sea and sky looked rather as though they were in the Mediterranean instead of the Channel. They were sitting in their pyjamas, with their bare feet in grass slippers.
"Well, I suppose it's time to go below and shave and dress; Miss Chrysie and Lady Olive will be up soon, and we'll have to make ourselves presentable," said Lamson, getting out of his deck-chair and throwing the end of his cigarette overboard. "Hello, what's that? Here, Hardress, get up! There's a body there in the water, horribly mangled."
"What!" exclaimed Hardress, springing from his seat and going to the end of the bridge where Lamson was standing. "So it is! Poor chap, what can have made such a mess of him as that?"
"Fallen overboard from a steamer, I should say, and got mopped by the screw," said Lamson, in his cold, bloodless voice. "It's a way screws have, you know, especially twin screws."
"That's just like you, Lamson," said Hardress; "you talk about the poor chap just as if he was an empty barrel. Still, he's been a man once, and it's only fair that he should have Christian burial, anyhow."
As he said this he caught the handle of the engine telegraph and pulled it over. "Stop." The yacht slowed down immediately, and he went on:
"Lamson, you might go and send the stewardess to tell the ladies not to get up for half-an-hour or so. This isn't exactly the sort of job a woman wants to see. Mr Jackson, will you kindly lower away the quarter-boat?"
The young Viscount was right—for the object that was hauled in from the sea could hardly even be called a human corpse, so frightfully was it mangled out of all mortal shape. When it was brought on board, a careful search was made through the tattered remnants of clothing that were still attached to it for some marks of identification; but nothing was found. A couple of pockets, one in the waistcoat and one in the trousers which were left intact, contained nothing. There was no mark on what was left of the linen. The upper half of the head was gone, and so there was no use in photographing the remains. In short, the ghastly spectacle was the only revelation of a secret of the sea which might never be further revealed.
"I'm afraid it's no good," said Lamson; "there's nothing that anybody could recognise the poor chap by. In fact, it looks to me like a case of deliberate suicide by someone who didn't want to be identified. He's evidently fallen overboard from a steamer, and people don't do that by accident with empty pockets. For instance, that inside coat pocket was made to button, and would probably have had a pocket-book and tickets in it. From what's left of them I should say the clothes were French, and, judging by the locality, I should say he might have been a French passenger from le Havre—perhaps to Southampton on one of the South-Western boats. Hello, what's this? Perhaps this is a clue to the mystery."
As he spoke he put his hand on the back of the body, where the sodden clothes outlined an oblong shape, a few moments after it had been turned over.
"It feels like a box, or something of that sort. At any rate, we'd better see what it is," he went on, taking a sheath-knife from one of the sailors and ripping the cloth open. "Tied to the body. By Jove! Why, this is mystery on mystery! Nothing in his pockets, no mark on his linen or clothes, and this thing tied to his body! Well, I suppose we may as well see what there is in it; and as you're the owner of the yacht and Deputy-Lieutenant of your county, I suppose I'd better hand it over to you."
As he said this he cut the cords and handed the tin box to Viscount Branston, who said as he took it:
"Of course, we shall have to open it, and we'll do it together after breakfast. Now, Mr Jackson, oblige me by having the body sewn up in a bit of canvas. I don't want the ladies to see it in that horrible state. And you may as well put on full speed; we don't want it on board any longer than we can help. Now, Lamson, come along and dress."
When they came out of their state-rooms they found the ladies already on deck, taking an ante-prandial stroll arm-in-arm. Lady Olive was a tall, perfectly-proportioned young woman of about twenty-five, not exactly pretty, but with a dark, strong, aristocratic face, which showed breeding in every line, and which was lighted up and relieved most pleasantly by a pair of soft, and yet brilliant, Irish eyes. When her features were in repose, some people would have called her handsome; when she smiled, others would have called her, not pretty, but charming—and they would have been about right.
Her companion, Miss Chrysie Vandel, daughter of Clifford K. Vandel, President of the American Electrical Storage Trust of Buffalo, N.Y., was an absolute contrast to her. She was about an inch shorter, exquisitely fair, and yet possessed of a pair of deep blue eyes, which in some lights looked almost black. Her brows were several shades darker than her hair, which was golden in the sun and brown in the shade. She was not what a connoisseur would call beautiful, for her features were just a trifle irregular, and her mouth was just ever so little too large. Still, taken as a whole, her face had that distracting and indescribable piquancy which seems to be the peculiar property of the well-bred American girl at her best.
Both were dressed in grey serge, short-skirted yachting suits, and each had a white duck yachting cap pinned to her hair.
"Well, Shafto," said Lady Olive, as the two men took their caps off, "and what is all this mystery about? Chrysie and I have been speculating all sorts of things."
"Why, yes, Lord Branston," chimed in Miss Chrysie. "I got out of my bath and fixed myself double quick, half expecting to come on deck and find ourselves held up by a French torpedo-boat, after all that talk we heard in Jersey about the trouble between you and France and Russia over China."
"I am happy to say it is not quite so serious as that, Miss Vandel," said Hardress, "and I hope we shall be able to get you safe to Southampton before the war starts. The fact is, about an hour ago, while Lamson and I were having our coffee on the bridge, he saw—well, the body of a man, terribly mangled, floating in the water. So we stopped to pick it up. It was frightfully mutilated, and, of course, it was nothing for eyes like yours to look upon, so we've had it sewn up in canvas, and we're taking it to Southampton to give it a decent burial."
"Now, I call that real good of you, Viscount. I guess you British have finer feelings in that way than we have. I don't believe Poppa would have stopped his yacht if he'd struck a whole burying lot afloat."
"Well," laughed Hardress; "that is what a busy man like your father might be expected to do. In fact, I suppose most Englishmen would have done so; but, as it happens, in this case virtue was rewarded—for we have discovered what may be a mystery."
"A mystery! Oh, do say, Viscount. That's just too lovely for words—a yacht, dead body at sea, and a mystery——"
"Yes," said Lamson; "and in a tin box, attached firmly by cords to corpse aforesaid."
"Don't, Mr Lamson; please don't," interrupted Lady Olive, somewhat severely. Then she went on, with a little shiver, "I hope, Shafto, you will get us to Southampton as quickly as you can. I don't want to be shipmates any longer than I can help with—with—ah—remains. It isn't lucky at sea, you know."
"My dear Olive," replied her brother, "about the first thing I thought of was that very idea; that is why we are now steaming full speed—twenty knots instead of eight—so that you and Miss Vandel may be relieved of this disquieting presence on board as soon as possible. And now, by way of passing the inconvenient hours that our new passenger will be with us, suppose we go to breakfast."
"A nice appetising sort of remark that, I must say, Viscount," said Miss Chrysie; "still I suppose we may as well go. This morning air at sea does make living people feel alive; I guess that's why I'm so hungry."
"And after breakfast, Shafto," said Lady Olive, "I presume that you will tell us all about the mystery of the tin box."
"My dear Olive," replied her brother, "it may be anything or nothing; and, as Lamson found it and gave it to me, instead of having it buried with the unknown deceased, I've agreed with him that we shall go through the contents, whatever they are, together; and, of course, if there's anything really interesting in them, then we shall tell you all about it."
"Now, that's real kind," said Miss Chrysie. "I guess if we don't have quite an interesting conversation over lunch it'll be the fault of our new passenger."
"My dear Chrysie," said Lady Olive, frigidly, "how can you! Really, you remind me rather strongly of what Kipling says about the Americans."
"And what might that be, Lady Olive?" she replied, looking up, with the flicker of a smile round her lips, and the twinkle of a challenge in her eyes.
"I don't think I remember the exact words just now, but I've got the 'Seven Seas' downstairs," replied Lady Olive; "but I think it's something about the cynic devil in his blood that bids him mock his hurrying soul."
"Thanks!" replied Miss Chrysie, with a toss of her shapely head, and an unmistakable sniff; "I think I've read that poem, too. Isn't there a verse in it that runs something this way?—
"'Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.'"
She repeated the lines with such an exquisite exaggeration of the "shrill accent" that the two men burst out laughing, and Lady Olive first flushed up to her brows, and then also broke into a saving fit of laughter.
"That's a distinct score for Miss Vandel, Olive," said Hardress. "If you knew the whole poem a bit better, I don't think you'd have made that last remark of yours. But, of course, Miss Vandel will be generous and allow you to take the only way there is out of the difficulty—the way to breakfast."
"Why, certainly," said Miss Chrysie, who was trying hard not to laugh at her little triumph. "Kipling's good, but breakfast's better, in an air like this."
And so, as she would have put it, they "let it go at that," and went down into the saloon to breakfast.
During breakfast it had been agreed that Lamson, as the discoverer of the mysterious tin box, should open it by himself, and, after examining its contents, report on them to Hardress.
This was a speculative suggestion, made by Lady Olive, seconded by Miss Chrysie, and so, perforce, agreed to. And thus it came about that all the essentials of Doctor Emil Fargeau's great discovery fell into the hands of a man who, by virtue of imagination, intellect, and scientific training, was the one man in Europe, perhaps in the world, who could either use it or abuse it to the best or worst advantage.
He took the box into his cabin, and opened it as carelessly as though it might have contained a few old love letters, or the story of some obsolete Anarchist conspiracy. But as soon as he had read the first page of the closely-written manuscript, he got up from his chair and locked the cabin door. As he went back to his seat, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. It looked almost strange to him; so he stopped and looked at it again.
"Good Lord!" he muttered, "is that me?" And then he said aloud: "You infernal scoundrel!"