The World Masters Part 12

"There's not the slightest doubt about that," said Lamson, whose enthusiasm for the great scheme had quite overcome his earlier scruples. "If we had only known of that other set of specifications, and managed to get hold of them somehow--still that wouldn't have done much good, because even then the Frenchwoman, this beautiful daughter of the Bourbons as they call her, would have given it away as soon as she guessed what we were doing; and if she hadn't done so--well, Fargeau would have done so; so I suppose after all it's inevitable."

"Then you think we'll have to fight for it?" said Austin.

"If those expeditions are really armed forces, and their object is to take these works by hook or by crook, of course we must," replied Lamson. "Poor devils! I wonder what they'll feel like when we turn the disintegrators on them?"

"Don't talk about those," said Austin. "Time enough for that when we have to use them to save ourselves--which the Lord forbid. I sha'n't forget that experiment of yours on poor Hudson's body; but to see it turned on to a living man! Great Scott!"

"Yes; it won't be very pleasant," said Lamson, whose rather gentle and retiring nature had become completely transformed under the influence of the gigantic possibilities which were now at his disposal. "But suppose they get their ships up to Port Adelaide?--it's rather curious, by the way, that it should have the same name as that Frenchwoman, who, I suppose, is by this time about our most dangerous and determined enemy--but suppose they get them there, and begin knocking the works about with big guns. Suppose," he went on, with something like a shudder, "a sh.e.l.l bursts in the absorber, where are we? And, mind you, if they come they'll bring Fargeau with them; and if they took us prisoners or killed us, he would have material enough here to make another one--and he would know how to do it. No, no, Vandel; if I have to defend the works I'll do it. My whole life and soul are here now, and no Frenchman or Russian sets foot inside here while I'm alive, unless he comes as a prisoner."

"But look here," said Austin; "couldn't you paralyse 'em? Why not set the engines to work, and mop up this world's soul, or whatever you call it, right away, so that their engines should break down long before they got here, and just freeze them out."

"That, my dear Austin," replied the doctor, "is a rather more hasty remark than I should have expected you to make. Don't you see that if we were to start the engines, and cut off our American communications, as would be necessary, we should not only paralyse the expedition, we should also paralyse the whole of Canada and the United States, cut off our communications with England, and make it impossible for our friends to communicate with us, or for them to come here--as they are doing this month."

"Guess I spoke a bit too soon," said Austin. "That's so; and, of course, we couldn't do it."

The doctor continued his walk up and down the room for a few moments longer, then stopped and said suddenly, "No; but I'll tell you what we can and will do if there's going to be any of this sort of foul play about. The president and all our friends will be much safer here than in any other part of the world, for if we have to starve the world out they'll be all right here. Wire to your uncle; say that we have received his message and are acting upon it, and tell him to bring the whole party here with the utmost speed; call it a pleasure-trip or a tour of inspection, or what they please, but they must come at once, and, above all, they must get here before these so-called Polar expeditions."

"That's the talk, doctor," exclaimed Austin; "you've got right down on to it this time. I'll fix that up in the code and send it right away."

There is, of course, neither day nor night during June in Boothia Land, only a little deepening of the twilight towards midnight, but the message was despatched _via_ Winnipeg a little after nine in the evening, according to conventional time, and so Clifford Vandel was able to decipher it in his sitting-room at Orrel Court before breakfast the next morning. The carriages were already waiting to take the party down to the _Nadine's_ berth at Southampton Water as soon as possible after an early breakfast, for there was to be a race round the Isle of Wight for cruising yachts that day, and some of the finest yachts in the two hemispheres were going to compete, the _Nadine_ and several other steam-yachts, including the _Vlodova_, belonging to the Grand Duke Ruric, were to follow the race, and the day was to wind up with supper at Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes.

Therefore the moment he had finished translating the cipher, without waiting even for breakfast, he sent his man to ask Lord Orrel and his son for the favour of a few minutes' private conversation in his lordship's library. This man was the brother of the Countess Sophie's French maid--deaf, handy, silent, and wonderfully well up to his work.

He had engaged him on the count's recommendation, after dismissing his English valet on the instant for, as he thought, trying to learn more than he ought to know from his correspondence. It is scarcely necessary to add that Ma'm'selle Sophie knew as much about the one as she did about the other; and, as a matter of fact, she had procured both appointments. This being so, it was only natural that within a very few minutes Count Valdemar and his daughter should have heard of the receipt of the telegram, and Clifford Vandel's request for an interview with Lord Orrel and his son. The immediate result was two interviews before breakfast instead of one.

"What can it mean, papa?" said Sophie, when she had softly locked her father's door. "Jules says that the dispatch was brought up from Southampton this morning. Before he gave it to Mr Vandel he, of course, steamed the envelope and looked at it. It was in cipher, as one might expect; but it came from Winnipeg, and Winnipeg is the one point of communication between Boothia and the rest of the world. Mr Vandel translated it at once, and immediately went to talk to Lord Orrel and the viscount about it. I wonder whether--but no, that's impossible. We couldn't have been overheard, and no one that knows anything of our plans could have any possible inducement to betray us.

The marquise told me that she had a letter from Fargeau yesterday: I wonder if she has said anything."

"My dear Sophie," replied her father, "as I told you the night before last, a woman in love is a woman lost to all purposes of diplomacy, unless her interests and those of the man she is in love with are identical. Here they are diametrically opposed; a word from her to the viscount would ruin everything--at least, so far as the expeditions are concerned."

"All the more reason then," said Sophie, clenching her hands, "that we--I mean that the _Vlodoya_ should capture the _Nadine_ with all these people on board her. If we have them at our mercy we have everything. I would give a good deal to know what there was in that dispatch that Clifford Vandel had this morning."

"And so would I," replied her father; "a great deal. Do you think that if your maid were to promise her brother, say, 500, for the transcription which Vandel must have made of it, there would be any chance of getting it?"

"We can only try," replied Sophie. "The old gentleman is very careful about his papers, they tell me; still, we will try."

"Well, gentlemen," said Clifford Vandel, about the same moment in Lord Orrel's library, "I think you will agree with me that the doctor would not have sent a dispatch like this without pretty good reason; and if these people mean pushing matters to extremity, why, of course, it might be necessary for him to, as he says here, freeze them out, in which case they couldn't get there. And if they couldn't we couldn't; wherefore it seems good reasoning to say that we ought to be there first--if we're going to get there at all."

"My dear Vandel," replied his lordship, "it is the best of reasoning; and I am quite sure that Doctor Lamson would not have dreamt of sending such a dispatch without good reasons, and I think I am justified in telling you that this morning I received a confidential letter from an old colleague of mine in the Foreign Office, in which he says that, according to reports of our agents, both in France and Germany, an outbreak of hostilities may occur at any moment within the next few weeks, without warning--just as it did in 1870."

"Then," said Hardress, sharply, "if that is so, there simply must be some connection between that and the dispatch of these two expeditions. I don't often jump to conclusions, Mr Vandel, but I think now that Miss Chrysie was perfectly right. They're not going to try and get to the Pole at all. It's the Magnetic Pole they want, and they'll be there this summer if we don't find some way to stop them; and I quite agree that we ought to get there first. It may be necessary to show Europe that they can't get on without us, even in the matter of fighting."

"Very well, then," said Lord Orrel, "we'll call that settled; we'll make it a summer Arctic trip. How soon can you get us across the Atlantic, Hardress?"

"I can land you in Halifax in six days. We'll coal up there; and, if we're not too much crowded with ice, I'll get you to Rae Isthmus in six days more. Meanwhile I will telegraph to Lamson to have one of his steamers waiting for us on the other side of the Isthmus, and in another week, including the land travel, which may be difficult, we will be at the works. Or, if we find the sea fairly clear, we'll steam straight up to Fox Channel, Kury's Strait, and take you straight to Boothia Land. At any rate, the expeditions are only just starting, one from Havre and the other one from Riga, and, at that rate, we should certainly be there a clear month before them, even if they really are going."

"Then," said Clifford Vandel, slowly but gravely, "if that's so, I guess the best thing we can do is to get there as quickly as possible and start the circus as soon as we can. If Europe means fighting--well, we can't have a better way of proving our power, and showing France and Germany and the rest of them that it will pay them to deal with the Great Storage Trust, than by just making their own war impossible. When they find they can't even fight without our permission, I guess they'll pretty soon come to terms."

"I agree with you entirely, my dear Vandel," said Lord Orrel.

CHAPTER XVI

That same morning, as it happened, Adelaide received a letter from Victor Fargeau, dated from Paris, telling her, among other things, that the two alleged Polar expeditions would be ready to start in a fortnight's time, and that he had been appointed to, as he put it, the scientific command of the French one. There had been a considerable amount of veiled friction between the French and Russian governments as soon as they had both been compelled to admit to each other the true object of the expeditions, and it was even suspected that the Russian government was secretly preparing a much more formidable scientific expedition of four vessels--including their celebrated ice-breaker _Ivan the Terrible_, a vessel built in an English yard for the purpose of breaking up the Baltic ice in winter, in order to keep the ports free and the Russian Baltic squadron always serviceable.

With such a vessel to lead it the Russian expedition would be quite certain of reaching Boothia Land whatever the condition of the ice might be, because she would be able to clear a course for her consorts through it. All the probabilities were, therefore, in favour of the Russian squadron getting to Boothia Land first. If they did that, and were successful in getting possession of the works, it was not very likely that Russia would be inclined to share the dominion of the world with the ally she had already bled so freely, and in this case France would be once more robbed of the fruits of his father's discovery.

Soon after afternoon tea on the lawn of Clifford Vandel's bungalow, Adelaide said to Sophie, as they sat in their deck-chairs beside each other:

"I am given to understand that Russia is quite determined to reach the Pole, if possible, in this next expedition."

"The Pole?" laughed Sophie, with a swift glance under her half-lowered eyelids. "My dear marquise, surely you are joking with me a little unnecessarily. Which Pole?"

"Really, my dear countess, I am speaking quite seriously," she replied, turning her head on her cushion, and looking at her companion with somewhat languid eyes. "I presume, of course, it must be the North Pole--because I hear from a quite reliable source that your government is sending out the big ice-breaker--the _Ivan the Terrible_, you know; and that would hardly be necessary to get to the other Pole, the one that you perhaps mean, unless, of course, they wished to make certain of getting there as quickly as possible."

Sophie would have given a great deal to know the source of this information, which had only reached her father a day or so before, but it was, of course, impossible for her to ask, so she contented herself with saying, in slow, careless tones:

"Really, that is quite interesting. But then, of course, you know, when Russia takes anything like this in hand she generally does it thoroughly, and, of course, the ice may be late this year, as they call it, crowded up in the narrow places I suppose; and in that case, of course, the French expedition will find it accommodating to have a ship like that to break the way in advance--and out again if necessary. I suppose you have quite decided to take the trip across the Atlantic on the _Nadine_?"

"Oh yes; that is quite arranged. It will be my first visit to America--that wonderful land."

"America--wonderful? Well, I should say!" said Miss Chrysie, coming behind them at this instant, and putting her hands on the backs of their chairs, "It's a pity you can't come too, countess. I guess I could promise you both a pretty interesting time from Niagara right away to----"

"Suppose we say the Magnetic Pole?" murmured Sophie, turning her head back, and looking up at her with a glance that was lazy and yet full of challenge.

"Well, yes, that might be interesting, too," replied Miss Chrysie, looking steadily down into her eyes. "Those works that the viscount and poppa are getting fixed up there, whatever they mean them for, must be something pretty wonderful, for they're spending quite a lot of money on them. It might not be impossible that we'll be going up to see them some day, and if you'd come across, countess, I dare say I might be able to show you round."

"Really, that's more than kind of you, Miss Vandel; but I'm sorry to say that my father's official duties demand his presence at Petersburg, and we absolutely must leave when the house-party at Orrel Court breaks up; but excuse me, I see my father beckoning to me. I will leave you my seat, Miss Vandel."

She got up, and walked away forward to where her father was standing near the verandah. Miss Chrysie took possession of her seat, clasped her hands behind her head, stretched out her legs till a pair of dainty pointed toes peeped from under the hem of her dress, and said, with a sidelong glance at Adelaide, and in a slow drawl:

"Nice girl the countess, marquise, and very good-looking--very; but, somehow--well, perhaps you haven't noticed it, but I have--she seems to have a sort of way of talking at you instead of to you, and always meaning just something a bit different to what she says."

"It is quite possible," said Adelaide, slightly coldly, for Chrysie's words were just a little too frank to please her taste; "but, you see, she's a Russian; and the daughter of a diplomat. All Russians of good family are born diplomatists, and diplomacy, you know----"

"Why yes," laughed Chrysie; "diplomacy is the whole art and science of saying one thing and meaning another, and getting the other fellow to believe that you're telling the ironclad truth when you are lying like Ananias; and I guess the countess hasn't learnt her lessons very badly."

"In other words, Miss Vandel," said Adelaide, with a laugh that had a note of harshness in it, "you think the Countess Valdemar is, to put it into quite brutal English, a liar."

"Why no," replied Chrysie, looking straight down at her shapely toes; "just a diplomatist, or, I should say, the daughter of one. But we don't want to pull each other to pieces like this. What's the matter with changing the subject? What's your idea, marquise, about these two Polar expeditions being started off this year? Doesn't it strike you as just a bit curious that they should be going north up Davis Straits just when our Storage Works are getting finished? Shouldn't wonder if the countess gave herself away a bit when she spoke just now about the Magnetic Pole."

This was a kind of diplomacy that was entirely strange to Adelaide, and for a moment or two she hardly knew what to say; then she replied, rather languidly:

"Really, Miss Vandel, it is a matter that interests me very little. I believe this is the proper time for setting out on Polar expeditions, and you know the Russians are very fond of making these journeys in the interests of science and exploration."