The World Masters Part 24

At this moment Austin Vandel came up on to the wall, and handed a piece of paper to his father.

"Just come through, dad," he said. "I reckon we've frozen that war clean out."

The president opened the paper and read aloud:

"'Powers agree to stop war and settle matters of dispute by arbitration if you will restore electric equilibrium in Europe.

Terms between you and Powers to be arranged at a council of Sovereigns and Ministers presided over by myself. If this is satisfactory, please reply, and stop your machinery. Conditions becoming very serious in Europe.--(Signed) Edward R.I.'"

"Well," continued the president, "that means they've climbed down.

Doctor, I reckon we can switch off the engines now, couple up the connections, and use the power for something else if it's wanted. What do you think, viscount?"

"Certainly," replied Hardress. "If the Powers have accepted King Edward's arbitration we can do nothing else; and, besides, if our not entirely unexpected visitors allow themselves to be tempted to commit any hostile act after that they will place themselves outside the law of nations, and we shall be at liberty to deal with them as we please."

"That's so," replied the president, looking lazily across the table at Sophie and Adelaide. "Austin, you can go and telegraph to St John's that we put ourselves entirely in King Edward's hands, and that the engines have stopped. They'll have a few thunderstorms most likely, but in twenty-four hours everything will be as it was before. You might also mention that the French and Russian expeditions are here, and that to-night we hope to have the leaders to dinner."

The dinner-party in the board-room of the works to which the guests sat down at 8 P.M. was quite the strangest that had ever been given in the Northern Hemisphere. It was a dinner given by the holders of a citadel which had been proved to be the veritable throne of the world-empire to four men who had come to the wilderness of Boothia Land with the now practically avowed object of taking it from them by force of arms.

For no other possible reason could these two peaceful expeditions have sailed from Riga and le Havre to go to the North Pole, or as near to it as might be, and arrive at the Magnetic Pole, bristling with weapons, and obviously prepared to attack the works, situated as they were on the territory of a friendly nation, as though they were a fortress on hostile soil. Yet Vice-Admiral Alexis Nazanoff, in command of the Russian expedition, came with Professor Josef Karnina in just such friendly style as did Vice-Admiral Dumont and ex-Captain Victor Fargeau, late of the German staff-corps.

They were all far too well versed in the ways of war or diplomacy not to be considerably surprised at the nature of their reception, even as they were at the colossal dimensions of the buildings which at the bidding of the magic of millions had arisen in the midst of this inhospitable wilderness. They had expected a fleet of guardships protecting the entrance to the harbour, and they would not have been surprised if their pa.s.sage through the narrow Lankester Sound had been prevented by torpedos, or opposed by privateers equipped by the Trust; and for that reason they had mounted their guns and felt their way for days at the rate of two or three knots an hour through the narrow pa.s.sages which led southward to Port Adelaide, but all they had seen was the fleeting shape of a white-painted yacht, the now world-famous _Nadine_, scouting on the horizon and then vanishing into the grey twilight of the long northern day.

Not only had they been permitted to anchor in the natural harbour which formed the only approach by sea to the works without the slightest notice being taken of them, but, most wonderful of all, Lord Orrel, the English n.o.bleman who was one of the three directors of the Trust, had come down with Count Valdemar, who, with his daughter, had organised the Russian expedition, to invite them to dinner in just as friendly a fashion as they might have done if Boothia Land had been Paris, and the Great Storage Works the Hotel Bristol.

The situation was distinctly mystifying, and therefore not without its elements of uneasiness--even perhaps of something keener, and the uneasiness and the fear were amply shared by the friends whom they met so unexpectedly within the four walls of the great world-citadel.

But astonishment became wonder when the two admirals, clad in their full-dress uniforms, found themselves and their scientific colleagues ushered into first a luxuriously-appointed reception-room lighted by softly-shaded electric lamps, where the president of the Trust, the multi-millionaire magnate, the king of commerce, who played with millions as boys play with counters, dispensed c.o.c.ktails from a bar which might have been spirited away from the Waldorf-Astoria, and the men and women, friends and enemies, received them in costumes which might have come straight from Poole's or Worth's.

Then, when the c.o.c.ktails had been duly concocted and consumed, and Lord Orrel's own butler announced that dinner was served, Lady Olive, as chatelaine of the castle, took the Russian admiral's arm and led the way through the curtained archway into the softly-lighted dining-room, so perfectly appointed that it might well have been spirited from London or Paris or Petersburg to the wilderness of Boothia.

The French admiral followed with Countess Sophie, Count Valdemar with the marquise, and Lord Orrel with Miss Chrysie, the rest of the men bringing up the rear.

The dinner, as Admiral Dumont said afterwards to Admiral Nazanoff, was a gastronomic miracle. Wines, soup, fish, and so on, were perfect; it was a wonder in the wilderness. But even more wonderful still was the conversation which flowed so easily around the table. No one listening to it would have dreamt that the greatest war of modern times had been brought to a state of utter paralysis by the quiet-spoken men who were so lavishly entertaining enemies who had come to dispossess them of the throne of the world, any more than they would have dreamt that the elements of a possible revolution, greater than any that had yet shaken the foundations of the world, were gathered round that glittering, daintily-adorned dinner-table.

But when Lady Olive rose and led the way back to the drawing-room Lord Orrel began the serious business of the evening by asking Hardress and Doctor Lamson to pa.s.s a couple of decanters of '47 port, from the cellars of Orrel Court, to their guests. When the decanters had gone round and the gla.s.ses were filled, Lord Orrel raised his own gla.s.s, and said:

"Well, gentlemen, the time has come for me to formally and yet not the less cordially bid you welcome to Boothia Land. We understood before we left England that you were bound on a voyage of discovery to the North Pole; to that goal which so many brave men have tried to reach, and which has so far been unattainable."

Then his voice dropped to a sterner tone, and he went on:

"I wish to ask you, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, those who are working with me in the enterprise which you have to-day seen in concrete form, whether your visit is one of peace or war. Those, I am well aware, are grave words to use, yet, under the strange circ.u.mstances which have brought us together, I must ask you to believe me that it is necessary, even inevitable, that they should be used. If you have paid a visit to Boothia Land and the Storage Works only in the interests of science, I can a.s.sure you that we and our staff will spare no pains to show you everything that can be seen.

"Considering the slow rate at which you have been compelled by circ.u.mstances to travel from Halifax, it may not be within your knowledge that since you left Europe we have happily been able to stop a great European war. We have paralysed the fleets and armies of a continent, and the warships of Europe are now resting motionless in dockyards or lying as wrecks on the sands and rocks of the coasts. The great Powers have, in short, found it impossible to prosecute the war without our consent--for, as a matter of fact, their armies were starving to death in face of each other--and have consented to place their difference in the hands of King Edward. The German Emperor, the President of the French Republic, and the Ministers of all the Powers engaged have a.s.sented to this. Here is a transcript of a dispatch received from London to-day, which will, I hope, convince you that the world is, happily, once more at peace. Therefore it is, of course, impossible that your mission can be anything but a peaceful one."

The two admirals and Victor Fargeau had been looking at each other somewhat uneasily while Lord Orrel was speaking. They had no idea of the events which had been taking place in Europe during the last fortnight. What Lord Orrel had said might be true or simply a deliberate attempt to frighten them out of their purpose; but whether he was telling the truth or not, there were still the sealed orders with which both expeditions had sailed, and obedience is the first duty of a sailor. So when Lord Orrel continued:

"And, that being so, gentlemen, I hope you will be able to join me in a gla.s.s of wine and drink to continued peace to Europe, and prosperity to the enterprise which has so far been successfully carried through by those who have the honour to be your hosts to-night."

"My lord," said the Russian admiral, rising to his feet, but not taking his gla.s.s, "you have been honest with us, and we--I speak for my colleague, Admiral Dumont, as well--cannot be less than honest with you. It is not necessary for me to remind you that scientific Polar expeditions do not carry such guns as we do--guns which, great and all as these buildings are, could wreck them in a few hours. You have been frank with us, we will be frank with you. We know nothing of this mysterious power by which, as your lordship says, you have stopped the war in Europe. As servants of our countries, we know only the orders we have received, and those are either to compel the surrender of these works into our hands, or destroy them. We accepted your hospitality in the hope that we might be able to make terms for a peaceable surrender."

"And that, sir," said Hardress, starting to his feet, "I may as well tell you at once, is impossible. You can no more take or destroy these works than the European armies could fight each other three days ago.

You are our guests now, and therefore safe from all harm. You are at liberty to rejoin your ships at any time you please. If you choose to leave us in peace and take your way back you may go, and there will be an end of the matter. But it is only my duty to tell you that if a shot is fired with intent to injure any portion of these works, you and your ships will not only be destroyed, you will be annihilated."

CHAPTER XXIX

A dead silence of some moments' duration--during which hosts and guests looked at each other as men might before the outburst of a storm--then Victor Fargeau, after an exchange of glances with the French admiral, said, in a voice which trembled with angry emotion:

"Milords, I think I am speaking for my comrades as well as myself if I say that we have come too far to be frightened from the accomplishment of our purpose. For my own part, I may say that nothing, not even the fear of that annihilation which the viscount has just threatened, would turn me from my purpose, because I have come to take back that which is mine and France's. These works may be your property, gentlemen, because you have built them with your money and your labour, but the soul which animates them, which makes them a living organism instead of a lifeless ma.s.s of brick and stone, the power which you say has enabled you to paralyse the fleets and armies of Europe, that is mine: for I am the son of the man who created it. He left it to me as his last legacy. I have returned to my allegiance to France after doing her what service I could elsewhere. Though France at first rejected the fruit of my father's genius she has now accepted it, and in our persons she and her ally are here to demand rest.i.tution of that which has been stolen from her."

"I think you can hardly say stolen, Monsieur Fargeau," said Hardress, without rising. "The French Ministry of War very foolishly refused to have anything to do with your father's invention, and he may have given you one set of specifications, but he also threw himself into the sea with the other, and we picked him up. You can call it chance or fate or anything you please, but it certainly wasn't theft. You see, we got this land and built these works while the French Government was thinking about it; and I must also remind you that they are built on British soil, and held under lease from a British Colonial Government.

"Russia, France, and Great Britain are at peace. The war in Europe is over, and therefore you will excuse me if I remind you and your colleagues that any attempt to attain your end by force would put you outside the pale of civilisation. In other words despite your uniforms and your commissions, you would simply be common pirates, with no claim to any of the rights of regular belligerents."

"But," said Victor Fargeau, speaking with a distinct snarl in his voice, "you forget, Monsieur le Vicomte, that we are in a position to compel surrender, and that, once masters of the works, we shall be, as you are, above the law. Granted all you say, it comes to this: Nothing can justify our mission but success, and we shall succeed."

"In that case," said the president, in his somewhat halting French, "it doesn't seem worth while to discuss the matter any further. We won't surrender the works, and the last man left alive in them would fire the mines and die in their ruins. These gentlemen think they can take them. We think they can't. It's no use talking about a proposition like that. It's got to be argued with guns and other things. It seems to me that the only question we've got to ask is, whether all these gentlemen are unanimous in their determination to take the works by force, if they can?"

Admiral Dumont exchanged a whispered word with his Russian colleague, and then he rose and said:

"Milords, I regret to say our orders leave us no other alternative, and our duty to our countries will compel us to take that action, most reluctantly as we shall do so. As Monsieur Fargeau has said, we believe that the vital principle of this system belongs to him and to France. We have been sent here to regain what was lost to us through an unfortunate mistake, and we must do so. Yet we do not wish to be precipitate. We will ask you to take until six o'clock to-morrow morning, that is to say, eight hours from now, to reconsider your decision as to surrender. And there is just one more point.

"You have certain guests, not entirely voluntary ones, in the works.

If it should, unhappily, come to a struggle between us, it would, of course, be impossible for such chivalrous gentlemen to retain two ladies and a Russian n.o.bleman and ex-Minister. We request that, in the unfortunate case of hostilities becoming inevitable, they shall be permitted to come on board one of our ships."

As the French admiral sat down, Lord Orrel got up and said:

"Gentlemen, I am exceedingly sorry that matters have come to such a pa.s.s as this. There can be no question of surrender, but our guests will be free to join your squadrons when they please. Therefore, for their convenience, and in order not to bring our little dinner to too abrupt a close, we will accept the truce till six o'clock. Perhaps by that time other and, I think, better counsels may have prevailed with you.

"I sincerely hope that they will; for I can a.s.sure you that my son was not speaking idly when he said that you would not only be destroyed, but annihilated. We have here means of destruction which have never yet been used in war. For your sakes, and for those of the brave men under your command, I trust that they never will be. And now, as further discussion would seem to be unprofitable, suppose we join the ladies. We may be friends, at anyrate, till six o'clock."

In the reception-room the mystified guests of the Trust found coffee and liqueurs, music and song and pleasant conversation, which touched on every possible subject, save battle, murder, and sudden death. Then came a stroll on the walls by the light of a brilliant _Aurora_, which made the sun, which was just touching the southern horizon, look like a pallid and exaggerated moon, and during this stroll Victor Fargeau managed to pa.s.s a small Lebel revolver and some cartridges to Sophie and the count in case of accidents. They had decided to go on board the _Ivan the Terrible_ when the guests left the works, and Ma'm'selle Felice and the count's servant were already putting their baggage together. The train was to wait for them at midnight.

Meanwhile, Doctor Lamson, who had left the party immediately after dinner, had been getting the defences of the works in order. The huge engines, disconnected now from the absorbers and storage batteries, from which the captured world-soul was now being released back into the earth, were still purring softly, and working as mightily as ever, but now their force was being used to a different end.

On each of the four towers at the corners of the quadrangle there had been mounted an apparatus which looked something like a huge searchlight, and underneath it were two real searchlights. On eight platforms, one on each side of the towers, but hidden by a circular wall of twelve-inch hardened steel, were mounted, on disappearing carriages, the president's big guns, enlarged copies of the one he had used so effectually on board the _Nadine_. Each would throw a sh.e.l.l containing a hundred pounds of Vandelite to a distance of eight miles.

The great engines worked continuously, storing up liquid air in chambers under the gun platforms, but they were also doing other and, for the present, much more deadly work. The huge copper tubes above the searchlights on the towers were turned above the harbour. They made neither light nor sound, but all the while they were acc.u.mulating destruction such as no mortal hand had yet dealt out to an enemy.

The evening pa.s.sed, apparently in the most friendly and peaceful fashion, and no one suddenly introduced into the reception-room would have dreamt that the members of Lord Orrel's dinner-party were not on the very best of terms with themselves and each other. Not even Adelaide or Sophie, sitting there with their revolvers in the pockets of their dinner dresses, and thoughts of murder in their souls, had the remotest idea of how terribly it was destined to end.

Miss Chrysie had sung "The Old Folks at Home," and Adelaide one of the old chansons which had delighted the Grand Monarque in the Trianon.

Then Sophie sat down at the piano, and the slow solemn strains of the Russian National Hymn wailed up in majestic chords from the instrument. There was something of defiance both in her touch and in her voice, but international courtesies were respected, and everyone in the room stood up. For Sophie Valdemar it was her swan-song--since she was never to sing another--and she sang it splendidly, with her whole soul in it. As the last line, "Give to us peace in our time, O Lord," left her lips, Lord Orrel went to her side, and said:

"Thank you, countess. A splendid hymn splendidly sung!" And then he turned to the French and Russian admirals, and said: "Gentlemen, is it not possible for you to answer, as you could answer, that prayer for peace? I can a.s.sure you, on my word of honour as an English gentleman, that this building in which you are now is impregnable to all forms of attack known to modern warfare. At a distance of five thousand miles we have paralysed the fleets and armies of Europe. Your ships are less than five miles from our walls: you are not courting defeat, you are courting annihilation. Can you not leave us in peace?"

"I was under the impression, milord," said Admiral Nazanoff, "that that subject was closed for the present. We have yet to be convinced as to these terrible powers which you claim to possess: but our orders are real, so too are our ships and guns; and since you have refused the terms we have offered we have no alternative but to put these boasted powers of yours to the test of war. I regret it most exceedingly, as I am sure my colleague, Admiral Dumont, does also, but that must be our last word."