CHAPTER XV
While all this plotting and counter-plotting had been going on inEngland and Europe, and France, thanks to what some might call thepatriotic treachery of Victor Fargeau, was rapidly preparing for aninvasion of Germany, which a magnificently-equipped army of nearlyfour million men meant to make a very different affair to the lastone; while Russia was swiftly and secretly massing her huge militaryand very formidable naval forces in the near and far east, and Englandhad, as usual, been muddling along, chattering over reforms on landand sea without getting them done; and while Germany, for once aboutto be taken unawares, was quietly getting ready for the inevitablestruggle, a quiet, broad-browed, deep-eyed man had been at the head ofan army of workmen, building up what was intended to be the realcapital and governing centre of the world. In the midst of a broad,barren plain, broken by great masses of rock, many of them snow-cappedand ice-crowned even in the middle of the northern summer, there rosethe walls and chimneys of what looked like a commonplace collection offactories, such as might be found in any of the manufacturingdistricts of Europe and America.
About four miles to the west, under a rocky promontory which thediscoverer of this desolate land had named Cape Adelaide, littlethinking what a connection it would have with another Adelaide, therewas a small natural harbour, navigable for about five months in theyear, constantly crowded with colliers. For over a year it had beenpacked with them. Before the previous winter set in they had beenladen with coal and machinery and building materials, and throughoutthe long winter Doctor Lamson had relentlessly pushed the work onunder rows of electric lights, which rivalled the _Aurora_ itself.
The men were well housed and fed and lavishly paid, and so, in spiteof the cold and darkness, they had worked well and cheerfully, wellknowing that it was impossible for them to get back, save in thesteamers that brought them. By the time the ice broke and the vesselswere released another long line of them was already making its way upthrough the still half-frozen waters of Davis Strait and LancasterSound, laden with more coal, materials, and machinery. A telegraphline had been taken from Port Nelson across Hudson Bay over RaeIsthmus, and then through the Gulf of Boothia to the works, and thisput Dr Lamson in direct communication with Winnipeg and the rest ofthe world.
At intervals of two hundred miles, across the icy desert of the north,groups of huge steel masts, three hundred feet high, had been erected,and these had been continued singly or in pairs over all the principalelevations of the North American Continent, and also over Greenlandand Iceland to the north of Scotland, and thence to the rest of theBritish Islands. It was a miracle that could only have been wrought bymillions, but the millions were spent without stint, in the fullknowledge that they would be repaid in the days when it was possibleto tax the world for the privilege of living.
The Storage Works were in the form of a square, measuring four hundredfeet each way. In the exact centre of an interior square measuringfifty feet each way was that mysterious spot of earth where the needleof the compass points neither to north nor south nor east nor west,but straight down to the centre of the globe; and over it was built agreat circular tower, forty feet in diameter and a hundred feet inheight, which contained a gigantic reproduction of the instrumentwhich had stood on Doctor Emil Fargeau's table in his laboratory atStrassburg on that memorable night when he had completed the workwhich was destined to lead to his own ruin and death and to therevolutionising of the world.
From this tower ran underground, in all directions, thousands ofcopper cables leading to the gigantic storage batteries with which thegreater part of the buildings were filled. In the middle of each sideof the great square a two thousand horse-power engine was ready tofurnish the necessary electrical force in the absorber, as the greatapparatus in the centre was called.
Everything was in order to commence work; in fact, Doctor Lamson hadjust decided that he would try his engines together for the firsttime, when Clifford Vandel's telegram reached him from Southampton.
His agent in Winnipeg had kept him well informed of the principalevents going on in the world during his long isolation, and thesailing of the French and Russian Polar expeditions _via_ DavisStraits had not escaped him. For a few minutes after he had read thedispatch he walked up and down the telegraph room, into which no onebut himself and Austin Vandel, Clifford's nephew and his own generalmanager, could under any circumstances gain admission, since none butthey knew the combinations of the lock which opened the steel door.
Austin was sitting at the table where he had received the message, andhe broke the silence by saying:
"I guess, doctor, that looks a bit ugly. I suppose it's that AlsatianFrenchman and that pretty Frenchwoman you were telling me about that'sfixed this up."
"There's not the slightest doubt about that," said Lamson, whoseenthusiasm for the great scheme had quite overcome his earlierscruples. "If we had only known of that other set of specifications,and managed to get hold of them somehow--still that wouldn't have donemuch good, because even then the Frenchwoman, this beautiful daughterof the Bourbons as they call her, would have given it away as soon asshe 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 totake these works by hook or by crook, of course we must," repliedLamson. "Poor devils! I wonder what they'll feel like when we turn thedisintegrators on them?"
"Don't talk about those," said Austin. "Time enough for that when wehave to use them to save ourselves--which the Lord forbid. I sha'n'tforget that experiment of yours on poor Hudson's body; but to see itturned on to a living man! Great Scott!"
"Yes; it won't be very pleasant," said Lamson, whose rather gentle andretiring nature had become completely transformed under the influenceof the gigantic possibilities which were now at his disposal. "Butsuppose they get their ships up to Port Adelaide?--it's rathercurious, by the way, that it should have the same name as thatFrenchwoman, who, I suppose, is by this time about our most dangerousand determined enemy--but suppose they get them there, and beginknocking the works about with big guns. Suppose," he went on, withsomething like a shudder, "a shell bursts in the absorber, where arewe? And, mind you, if they come they'll bring Fargeau with them; andif they took us prisoners or killed us, he would have material enoughhere 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 andsoul are here now, and no Frenchman or Russian sets foot inside herewhile I'm alive, unless he comes as a prisoner."
"But look here," said Austin; "couldn't you paralyse 'em? Why not setthe engines to work, and mop up this world's soul, or whatever youcall it, right away, so that their engines should break down longbefore they got here, and just freeze them out."
"That, my dear Austin," replied the doctor, "is a rather more hastyremark than I should have expected you to make. Don't you see that ifwe were to start the engines, and cut off our American communications,as would be necessary, we should not only paralyse the expedition, weshould also paralyse the whole of Canada and the United States, cutoff our communications with England, and make it impossible for ourfriends to communicate with us, or for them to come here--as they aredoing this month."
"Guess I spoke a bit too soon," said Austin. "That's so; and, ofcourse, we couldn't do it."
The doctor continued his walk up and down the room for a few momentslonger, then stopped and said suddenly, "No; but I'll tell you what wecan and will do if there's going to be any of this sort of foul playabout. The president and all our friends will be much safer here thanin any other part of the world, for if we have to starve the world outthey'll be all right here. Wire to your uncle; say that we havereceived his message and are acting upon it, and tell him to bring thewhole party here with the utmost speed; call it a pleasure-trip or atour of inspection, or what they please, but they must come at once,and, ab
ove all, they must get here before these so-called Polarexpeditions."
"That's the talk, doctor," exclaimed Austin; "you've got right down onto 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 BoothiaLand, only a little deepening of the twilight towards midnight, butthe message was despatched _via_ Winnipeg a little after nine in theevening, according to conventional time, and so Clifford Vandel wasable to decipher it in his sitting-room at Orrel Court beforebreakfast the next morning. The carriages were already waiting to takethe party down to the _Nadine's_ berth at Southampton Water as soon aspossible after an early breakfast, for there was to be a race roundthe Isle of Wight for cruising yachts that day, and some of the finestyachts in the two hemispheres were going to compete, the _Nadine_ andseveral other steam-yachts, including the _Vlodova_, belonging to theGrand Duke Ruric, were to follow the race, and the day was to wind upwith supper at Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes.
Therefore the moment he had finished translating the cipher, withoutwaiting even for breakfast, he sent his man to ask Lord Orrel and hisson for the favour of a few minutes' private conversation in hislordship's library. This man was the brother of the Countess Sophie'sFrench maid--deaf, handy, silent, and wonderfully well up to his work.He had engaged him on the count's recommendation, after dismissing hisEnglish valet on the instant for, as he thought, trying to learn morethan he ought to know from his correspondence. It is scarcelynecessary to add that Ma'm'selle Sophie knew as much about the one asshe did about the other; and, as a matter of fact, she had procuredboth appointments. This being so, it was only natural that within avery few minutes Count Valdemar and his daughter should have heard ofthe receipt of the telegram, and Clifford Vandel's request for aninterview with Lord Orrel and his son. The immediate result was twointerviews before breakfast instead of one.
"What can it mean, papa?" said Sophie, when she had softly locked herfather's door. "Jules says that the dispatch was brought up fromSouthampton this morning. Before he gave it to Mr Vandel he, ofcourse, steamed the envelope and looked at it. It was in cipher, asone might expect; but it came from Winnipeg, and Winnipeg is the onepoint of communication between Boothia and the rest of the world. MrVandel translated it at once, and immediately went to talk to LordOrrel and the viscount about it. I wonder whether--but no, that'simpossible. We couldn't have been overheard, and no one that knowsanything of our plans could have any possible inducement to betray us.The marquise told me that she had a letter from Fargeau yesterday: Iwonder if she has said anything."
"My dear Sophie," replied her father, "as I told you the night beforelast, 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 areidentical. Here they are diametrically opposed; a word from her to theviscount would ruin everything--at least, so far as the expeditionsare concerned."
"All the more reason then," said Sophie, clenching her hands, "thatwe--I mean that the _Vlodoya_ should capture the _Nadine_ with allthese people on board her. If we have them at our mercy we haveeverything. I would give a good deal to know what there was in thatdispatch that Clifford Vandel had this morning."
"And so would I," replied her father; "a great deal. Do you think thatif your maid were to promise her brother, say, L500, for thetranscription which Vandel must have made of it, there would be anychance of getting it?"
"We can only try," replied Sophie. "The old gentleman is very carefulabout his papers, they tell me; still, we will try."
* * * * *
"Well, gentlemen," said Clifford Vandel, about the same moment in LordOrrel's library, "I think you will agree with me that the doctor wouldnot have sent a dispatch like this without pretty good reason; and ifthese people mean pushing matters to extremity, why, of course, itmight be necessary for him to, as he says here, freeze them out, inwhich 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 therefirst--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 ofsending such a dispatch without good reasons, and I think I amjustified in telling you that this morning I received a confidentialletter from an old colleague of mine in the Foreign Office, in whichhe says that, according to reports of our agents, both in France andGermany, an outbreak of hostilities may occur at any moment within thenext few weeks, without warning--just as it did in 1870."
"Then," said Hardress, sharply, "if that is so, there simply must besome connection between that and the dispatch of these twoexpeditions. I don't often jump to conclusions, Mr Vandel, but I thinknow that Miss Chrysie was perfectly right. They're not going to tryand get to the Pole at all. It's the Magnetic Pole they want, andthey'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 benecessary to show Europe that they can't get on without us, even inthe matter of fighting."
"Very well, then," said Lord Orrel, "we'll call that settled; we'llmake it a summer Arctic trip. How soon can you get us across theAtlantic, Hardress?"
"I can land you in Halifax in six days. We'll coal up there; and, ifwe're not too much crowded with ice, I'll get you to Rae Isthmus insix days more. Meanwhile I will telegraph to Lamson to have one of hissteamers waiting for us on the other side of the Isthmus, and inanother week, including the land travel, which may be difficult, wewill be at the works. Or, if we find the sea fairly clear, we'll steamstraight up to Fox Channel, Kury's Strait, and take you straight toBoothia Land. At any rate, the expeditions are only just starting, onefrom Havre and the other one from Riga, and, at that rate, we shouldcertainly be there a clear month before them, even if they really aregoing."
"Then," said Clifford Vandel, slowly but gravely, "if that's so, Iguess the best thing we can do is to get there as quickly as possibleand start the circus as soon as we can. If Europe meansfighting--well, we can't have a better way of proving our power, andshowing France and Germany and the rest of them that it will pay themto deal with the Great Storage Trust, than by just making their ownwar impossible. When they find they can't even fight without ourpermission, I guess they'll pretty soon come to terms."
"I agree with you entirely, my dear Vandel," said Lord Orrel.
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