CHAPTER XXVIII
Lord Orrel and the count started from the little station just outsidethe western gate of the works in the private car used by the directorsand drawn by a neat little electric engine, which was accustomed to dothe four miles in ten minutes.
Meanwhile, Lady Olive had what might, by a stretch of imagination, becalled afternoon tea, in that land where it was never quite afternoonor morning, on the western wall looking down towards the harbour. WhenMiss Chrysie sat down and threw back her afternoon wrap Adelaide andSophie were disconcerted, if not altogether surprised, to see that shehad a light, long-barrelled, wicked-looking pistol hanging by a coupleof silver chains from her waist-band.
"My dear Chrysie," said Lady Olive, "what are you carrying thatterrible-looking weapon for? You don't expect that you will have touse it, surely," she went on, with just a touch of sarcasm in hertone, "considering what very good friends we have all managed to keepso far?"
"Well, I hope not," said Miss Chrysie, looking round the tables witheyes which had both a laugh and a menace in them. "Of course, it is tobe hoped that everything will go off smoothly, but poppa had a friendin the old times who said something that means a lot. He said, 'Youdon't want a gun often, but when you do want it you want it badly.'Isn't that so, poppa?"
"Just his words, Chrysie," said the president, "just his words; and heknew what he was talking about when he used them. I never met a manwho could hold his temper longer or shoot quicker; and when he used agun someone usually wanted a funeral pretty soon."
"But surely," said Sophie, "you don't suppose for a moment that ourexpected guests from the expedition will----"
"I don't know what they'll do, although I think I know what they'llwant to do," she replied, quickly. "But somehow I managed to lose myother little pepper-box this morning. Where it's gone to or who's gotit I don't know, so I got this instead. It's a pretty thing," she wenton, playing with it as a woman might toy with a jewel, "seven-shooterand magazine action. If you hold the trigger back after you've firedthe first shot, it shoots the other six in about three seconds."
"A very handy thing in a tight corner, I should say," said Hardress,smiling at her over the top of his tea-cup, "and in such hands Ishould think a very ugly thing to face."
Adelaide's fingers were itching to take out the revolver and shootboth of them when she saw the all-meaning glance which passed betweenthem while he spoke, but instead of that she raised her tea-cup andtouched it with her pretty lips, and as she put the cup down she said,with the sweetest of smiles, to the president:
"I think it is quite charming of you, Mr President, to ask the leadersof the expedition to dinner in such a friendly way. Surely it is notalways usual to ask the enemy within the gates?"
"We have no enemies, marquise," he replied, gravely, "except those whostand in the way of our commercial undertaking, and with them, ofcourse, business is business, and there is no sentiment in that. Ofcourse we have a pretty good idea why these two expeditions have cometo the magnetic pole instead of trying to get to the North Pole, butwe've not been lying awake at nights worrying about that, and there'sno particular reason why we shouldn't ask the scientific explorers todinner. All the same, if they happen to have come with the idea thatthey have a better right to these works than we have, and they wantany trouble--why, they can have it."
"And," added Hardress, still looking across at Chrysie, "I think theywill find it the most extraordinary kind of trouble that mortal manever ran up against."
"It's to be hoped," said Doctor Lamson, speaking for the first timesince the little tea-party had begun, for he had been thinking hard,and every now and then raising his eyes as though to seek inspirationfrom Lady Olive's calm, patrician face, as calm now, on the eve of astruggle which could scarcely end without bloodshed, and might end inruin, as it would have been in a London drawing-room--"I mostsincerely hope that it will not come to actual hostilities; it wouldbe really too awful."
"I wonder if it would be permissible for a prisoner of war to ask whatwould be too awful, doctor," said Sophie, looking at him with a smilewhich somehow made him think of a beautiful tigress he had seen in theThiergarten in Berlin.
"The means that we should be compelled to employ in such a case toreduce those two squadrons, or expeditions, or whatever they callthemselves, to something about as unsubstantial as that," replied thedoctor, blowing a puff of cigarette smoke into the air.
At this moment Austin Vandel came up on to the wall, and handed apiece of paper to his father.
"Just come through, dad," he said. "I reckon we've frozen that warclean 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 theconnections, and use the power for something else if it's wanted. Whatdo you think, viscount?"
"Certainly," replied Hardress. "If the Powers have accepted KingEdward's arbitration we can do nothing else; and, besides, if our notentirely unexpected visitors allow themselves to be tempted to commitany hostile act after that they will place themselves outside the lawof nations, and we shall be at liberty to deal with them as weplease."
"That's so," replied the president, looking lazily across the table atSophie and Adelaide. "Austin, you can go and telegraph to St John'sthat we put ourselves entirely in King Edward's hands, and that theengines have stopped. They'll have a few thunderstorms most likely,but in twenty-four hours everything will be as it was before. Youmight 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 guestssat down at 8 P.M. was quite the strangest that had ever been given inthe Northern Hemisphere. It was a dinner given by the holders of acitadel which had been proved to be the veritable throne of theworld-empire to four men who had come to the wilderness of BoothiaLand with the now practically avowed object of taking it from them byforce of arms.
For no other possible reason could these two peaceful expeditions havesailed from Riga and le Havre to go to the North Pole, or as near toit as might be, and arrive at the Magnetic Pole, bristling withweapons, and obviously prepared to attack the works, situated as theywere on the territory of a friendly nation, as though they were afortress on hostile soil. Yet Vice-Admiral Alexis Nazanoff, in commandof the Russian expedition, came with Professor Josef Karnina in justsuch friendly style as did Vice-Admiral Dumont and ex-Captain VictorFargeau, late of the German staff-corps.
They were all far too well versed in the ways of war or diplomacy notto be considerably surprised at the nature of their reception, even asthey were at the colossal dimensions of the buildings which at thebidding of the magic of millions had arisen in the midst of thisinhospitable wilderness. They had expected a fleet of guardshipsprotecting the entrance to the harbour, and they would not have beensurprised if their passage through the narrow Lankester Sound had beenprevented by torpedos, or opposed by privateers equipped by the Trust;and for that reason they had mounted their guns and felt their way fordays at the rate of two or three knots an hour through the narrowpassages which led southward to Port Adelaide, but all they had seenwas the fleeting shape of a white-painted yacht, the now world-famous_Nadine_, scouting on the horizon and then vanishing into the greytwilight of the long northern day.
Not only had they been permitted to anchor in the natural harbourwhich formed the only approach by sea to the works without theslightest notice being taken of them, but, most wonderful of all, LordOrrel, the English nobleman who was one of the three directors of theTrust, had come
down with Count Valdemar, who, with his daughter, hadorganised the Russian expedition, to invite them to dinner in just asfriendly a fashion as they might have done if Boothia Land had beenParis, and the Great Storage Works the Hotel Bristol.
The situation was distinctly mystifying, and therefore not without itselements of uneasiness--even perhaps of something keener, and theuneasiness and the fear were amply shared by the friends whom they metso unexpectedly within the four walls of the great world-citadel.
But astonishment became wonder when the two admirals, clad in theirfull-dress uniforms, found themselves and their scientific colleaguesushered into first a luxuriously-appointed reception-room lighted bysoftly-shaded electric lamps, where the president of the Trust, themulti-millionaire magnate, the king of commerce, who played withmillions as boys play with counters, dispensed cocktails from a barwhich might have been spirited away from the Waldorf-Astoria, and themen and women, friends and enemies, received them in costumes whichmight have come straight from Poole's or Worth's.
Then, when the cocktails had been duly concocted and consumed, andLord Orrel's own butler announced that dinner was served, Lady Olive,as chatelaine of the castle, took the Russian admiral's arm and ledthe way through the curtained archway into the softly-lighteddining-room, so perfectly appointed that it might well have beenspirited from London or Paris or Petersburg to the wilderness ofBoothia.
The French admiral followed with Countess Sophie, Count Valdemar withthe marquise, and Lord Orrel with Miss Chrysie, the rest of the menbringing up the rear.
The dinner, as Admiral Dumont said afterwards to Admiral Nazanoff, wasa gastronomic miracle. Wines, soup, fish, and so on, were perfect; itwas a wonder in the wilderness. But even more wonderful still was theconversation which flowed so easily around the table. No one listeningto it would have dreamt that the greatest war of modern times had beenbrought to a state of utter paralysis by the quiet-spoken men who wereso lavishly entertaining enemies who had come to dispossess them ofthe throne of the world, any more than they would have dreamt that theelements of a possible revolution, greater than any that had yetshaken the foundations of the world, were gathered round thatglittering, daintily-adorned dinner-table.
But when Lady Olive rose and led the way back to the drawing-room LordOrrel began the serious business of the evening by asking Hardress andDoctor Lamson to pass a couple of decanters of '47 port, from thecellars of Orrel Court, to their guests. When the decanters had goneround and the glasses were filled, Lord Orrel raised his own glass,and said:
"Well, gentlemen, the time has come for me to formally and yet not theless cordially bid you welcome to Boothia Land. We understood beforewe left England that you were bound on a voyage of discovery to theNorth 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 whoare working with me in the enterprise which you have to-day seen inconcrete form, whether your visit is one of peace or war. Those, I amwell aware, are grave words to use, yet, under the strangecircumstances which have brought us together, I must ask you tobelieve me that it is necessary, even inevitable, that they should beused. If you have paid a visit to Boothia Land and the Storage Worksonly in the interests of science, I can assure you that we and ourstaff will spare no pains to show you everything that can be seen.
"Considering the slow rate at which you have been compelled bycircumstances to travel from Halifax, it may not be within yourknowledge that since you left Europe we have happily been able to stopa great European war. We have paralysed the fleets and armies of acontinent, and the warships of Europe are now resting motionless indockyards or lying as wrecks on the sands and rocks of the coasts. Thegreat Powers have, in short, found it impossible to prosecute the warwithout our consent--for, as a matter of fact, their armies werestarving to death in face of each other--and have consented to placetheir difference in the hands of King Edward. The German Emperor, thePresident of the French Republic, and the Ministers of all the Powersengaged have assented to this. Here is a transcript of a dispatchreceived from London to-day, which will, I hope, convince you that theworld 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 othersomewhat uneasily while Lord Orrel was speaking. They had no idea ofthe events which had been taking place in Europe during the lastfortnight. What Lord Orrel had said might be true or simply adeliberate attempt to frighten them out of their purpose; but whetherhe was telling the truth or not, there were still the sealed orderswith which both expeditions had sailed, and obedience is the firstduty of a sailor. So when Lord Orrel continued:
"And, that being so, gentlemen, I hope you will be able to join me ina glass of wine and drink to continued peace to Europe, and prosperityto the enterprise which has so far been successfully carried throughby those who have the honour to be your hosts to-night."
"My lord," said the Russian admiral, rising to his feet, but nottaking his glass, "you have been honest with us, and we--I speak formy colleague, Admiral Dumont, as well--cannot be less than honest withyou. It is not necessary for me to remind you that scientific Polarexpeditions do not carry such guns as we do--guns which, great and allas these buildings are, could wreck them in a few hours. You have beenfrank with us, we will be frank with you. We know nothing of thismysterious power by which, as your lordship says, you have stopped thewar in Europe. As servants of our countries, we know only the orderswe have received, and those are either to compel the surrender ofthese works into our hands, or destroy them. We accepted yourhospitality in the hope that we might be able to make terms for apeaceable surrender."
"And that, sir," said Hardress, starting to his feet, "I may as welltell you at once, is impossible. You can no more take or destroy theseworks than the European armies could fight each other three days ago.You are our guests now, and therefore safe from all harm. You are atliberty to rejoin your ships at any time you please. If you choose toleave us in peace and take your way back you may go, and there will bean end of the matter. But it is only my duty to tell you that if ashot is fired with intent to injure any portion of these works, youand your ships will not only be destroyed, you will be annihilated."
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