Rouletabille at Krupp's

by Gaston Leroux

  “That evening, he was very, very disturbing. When he got up from the table, having launched his formidable tirade at us, he seemed literally crazy…and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d fallen down in front of us with an attack of apoplexy.

  “It was as if he forgot to shake my hand and didn’t notice that it was in my automobile that I had him taken home. When he’d gone, General D said to me: ‘He’s not the first man the war has driven mad. No matter! We’ve had in interesting evening! He’s amusing, with his torpedo!’ Then we talked about something else.

  “The next day, I received a note from Fulbert telling me that he had decided to offer his infernal machine to the English and asking whether I could facilitate his journey and obtain the necessary permits for him. I took care of it immediately, simply in order not to annoy him—and that’s how he came to cross the Channel. He’d already written to Mr. Cromer at the Scarborough Institute—and I soon learned the Mr. Cromer had taken seriously that which had simply amused General D*** and myself.”

  Having said that, the editor of L’Époque fell silent, and everyone in the office of the head of the Sûreté Générale looked at Mr. Cromer—and there was certainly a certain emotions in that group of “very important people” when the Englishman was heard to say:

  “Very good! Théodore Fulbert is not mad at all. I say, yes, he could destroy Berlin!”

  Chapter IV

  A Giant Torpedo

  After a brief silence, the President leaned toward Mr. Cromer and said: “Mr. Cromer, I’d like to know whether the opinion you’ve just offered relative to the interesting invention of Théodore Fulbert is the result of experiments that have been carried out before your eyes?”

  “Of course—the direct result.”

  “And Fulbert hasn’t exaggerated the incredible power of his device?”

  “No—no exaggeration.”

  “That’s entirely affirmative! Mr. Cromer, we shall envisage the whole truth with courage. Can you tell us how you arrived, on your own account, at such a clear, and also redoubtable, conclusion?”

  “There are things that I can say about the machine and things that I can’t.”

  “Then tell us what you can say, Mr. Cromer.”

  “All right. To begin with, I can say that I received Théodore Fulbert with the respect that one owes to an unfortunate old scientist who had distinguished himself so much with regard to the medicinal properties of radium. And immediately, when he told me that he had invented a machine to destroy Berlin, I said that that was not in his medical field—and he replied that it was in his medical field, because, in destroying Berlin, his machine would be destroying a disease of the earth!”

  In spite of the difficulty that Mr. Cromer was having in expressing himself and the effort that his listeners had to make to follow his narration, the latter was so interesting that there was no room for an interruption, or even a smile.

  Mr. Cromer related that Fulbert had brought his plans to him. After two days of explanations, Cromer had been convinced. He had was not in possession of the final secret that ensured the mathematical functioning of the formidable apparatus, but Fulbert had not hesitated to confide to an ally of Cromer’s scientific and moral value the principle of the secret of the new explosive with which his torpedo was loaded, and which also served for its propulsion.

  In sum, the novelty of the disposition of the turbines, the helices of suspension and those of direction, and a certain rudder counterbalancing the ailerons, whose function was to bring the engine back automatically to the hypothetical line traced between its point of departure and point of arrival, in spite of any possible perturbations of the atmosphere—all those technical details—had amply proved to Cromer, from the start, that he was facing an endeavor matured for a long time by a man to whom none of the problems of the new aviation and ballistics were unfamiliar.

  Cromer had therefore been seduced from the very beginning by the terrible Titania, of which no one in France had wanted to hear mention.

  Here, Cromer judged it necessary to explain the intentions that were henceforth his in their entirety.

  “I ought to say immediately, Your Excellencies, and you, Messieurs, that I never had it in mind to destroy Berlin, for we are not savages, but I did want to discover whether, instead of that machine, which would have cost at least sixty million, one might be able to make small Titanias, less expensive and designed specifically to destroy citadels and forts at long range and in a sure fashion, without risking the life of a single Tommy. But I did not confide my intention to Fulbert, who was absolutely determined to destroy Berlin in order to terrify Germany and bring a sudden end to war throughout the world.

  “In conversation, Théodore had been absolutely fervent about his fabrication of sixty-million-franc Titania—but as you can imagine, that was not my dream at all. So I told him that it would first be necessary to construct a scale model, a little Titania twenty-five meters long, and asked him how expensive that would be. He replied that he thought that it would cost at least five million francs. Then I spoke to the Privy Council of my Institute. In spite of everything I could say, they said that it was too dear for something problematic.

  “Then I went to London and brought back a very rich English patriot, who doesn’t want his name to be known, and who was also very interested, and said he would provide all the money required.

  “Fulbert didn’t want any money for himself or his family, but he wept with joy at the idea that he was going to work on the little Titania while waiting for the big one.”

  After that, Cromer related how, in three months, piece by piece, the little Titania was constructed in various workshops, and how the pieces were eventually brought together for assembly in a secret institution built for that purpose at the northern tip of the Isle of Man, in the middle of the Irish Sea, on land belonging to the wealthy English patriot. There, a special team from the Scarborough Institute worked under Fulbert’s direction and Cromer’s supervision.

  The inventor had brought his wife and his daughter Nicole, as well as his daughter’s fiancé, a Pole who had been collaborating in the father’s work for five years, and had particular responsibility for the manufacture of the explosive.

  “This is what I can tell you about the explosive,” Cromer specified. “It’s a liquid air explosive, admirable for both explosion and propulsion.” And he gave a few details, reticently. He was evidently conscious that he had a crowd of unfamiliar ears around him. Several times, he darted suspicious glances at the dark corner in which Rouletabille had tucked himself away.

  He explained in a rather embarrassed and perhaps deliberately confused fashion that the economical industrial manufacture of liquid air now permitted oxygen to be obtained in a simple form to serve for the combustion of explosive mixtures. Fulbert had personally discovered a procedure permitting him to use liquid oxygen directly, in very particular conditions related to the fabrication of oxylignite.16 It is well-known that one obtains oxylignite, patented in Germany in 1898, by steeping a cartridge containing either charcoal, pulverized cork, fossil Kieselguhr impregnated with petroleum or black powder in liquid air for a few minutes. Fulbert added a new element to a cartridge containing pulverized cork, for which he did not have a patent, but whose secret he had confided in good faith to Cromer.

  From all that resulted a blast incomparably more powerful than that of melinite of Boche TNT, but above all of an asphyxiating and incendiary power astonishing in such a small volume. The only inconveniences of the mixture were that of being extremely inflammable, and that of losing most of its force of any circumstance permitted the liquid air to evaporate. There was nothing of that kind to fear with regard to the Titania, which the genius of Fulbert had made into a “marvel”—to make use of Cromer’s enthusiastic expression.

  “It’s the marvel of marvels,” he exclaimed. “Even more so than the explosive, in fact, and I can say right way what a great marvel the big Titania will be. You know how a Zeppelin can carr
y little balloons in its belly; well, the big Titania conceals forty little Titanias in its entrails. Actually, I should say forty little things like little torpedoes. And when he big Titania explodes at its destination, those little Titanias, carried by precisely-regulated clockwork mechanisms, disperse around the center and explode in their turn at points determined in such a fashion that an entire circle several leagues in diameter is covered in ruins…and corpses. Yes, full of corpses! Put a city within that circle, and one or two million inhabitants in that city, and an hour after the arrival of the Titania, there would be none at all. What admirable work!”

  Another silence, even more marked than the others followed Cromer’s last words. Then the Tobacconist, who had let his cigar go out—which testified to the enormity of his emotion—asked for a light and a few explanations.

  “In my opinions, I think Mr. Cromer has assumed a great deal on the basis of the small experiment he has carried out, regarding the complete success of such a vast experiment as the Titania imagined by Fulbert, whose realization would inevitably encounter difficulties and perhaps impossibilities...”

  “No, Your Excellency, no! Not impossibilities! It’s perfectly possible! Yes—the little Titania was constructed exactly as the large one would be, with little torpedoes inside it, loaded with Fulbert explosive and directed by exactly the same mechanism. I can tell you this: the interior of the Titania is divided into three sections; much the largest is t contain the forty torpedoes loaded with explosive; the second section is occupied by the propulsive charge; and the third by all the machinery, which is very complicated and methodical. As for the disposition of the helices of suspension and turbines of propulsion, everything works perfectly. But the exact secret of the impossibility of changing direction and the perfect automatic intelligence of the engine in reverting to its direct route, in spite of the most terrible storm and perturbation, I shall never disclose because I shall never know it. Théodore Fulbert has taken that secret with him, alas. What a pity!”

  Horn-rimmed Glasses then took the floor: “Mr. Cromer, I have told these Messieurs briefly the extraordinary results of the experiment that took place before your eyes, but it would be useful to hear the details from your own mouth.”

  Cromer nodded his head, and then recounted that when the torpedo had been completed in the workshops in the Isle of Man, Fulbert, aided by his Polish assistant, had, at the last minute, introduced into the machine the box enclosing the mysterious mechanism that connected the compensating rudder to the ailerons. Then the signal for the torpedo’s departure had been given by the man who had provided the funds for the costly experiment.

  The rich Englishman had acquired, for the occasion, a small island situated about two hundred kilometers to the north-north-west of the Isle of Man, off Cape Fair.17

  Before arriving at its destination, which was that small island, the torpedo had to pass over the peninsula that terminates the southern Highlands to the west. The admiralty had been warned and all precautions taken, at sea as on land.

  The small island contained a village and three hamlets of fishermen, who had been evacuated, but fifty cattle and three hundred sheep were disembarked.

  Immediately after the departure of the torpedo, which left its tube with no other noise than a furious hiss, the Pole, Mademoiselle Fulbert, Cromer, the rich Englishman and a delegate from the War Office embarked in an automatic launch. They soon heard the distant echo of the explosion, which must have been formidable. When they arrived within sight of the island where the explosion had taken place, about an hour and a half later, nothing remained but embers.

  They were obliged to wait a further two hours before they could land, because of the asphyxiating gases, heavy clouds of which pursued them even over the waters. Finally, when they set foot on the ground, they were left in no doubt as to the extent of the disaster. There was absolutely nothing left on the island, thriving only a few minutes before. The villages, the woods, the cattle and the sheep had all been reduced to ashes; everything was dead. They were walking over an immense black rock.

  Confronted by this terrible result, Théodore Fulbert had rubbed his hands. “How do you expect anything to resist me thermite?” he said. “It explodes at a temperature of ten thousand degrees. With my thermite and my Titania, it’s the end of war!” And the old man had started dancing with you like a child, over the smoking ruins that he had made.

  In order to describe the Dantean aspect that the piece of land sacrificed to the genius of destruction had offered to him, Cromer had found terms so evocative in their harshness that his auditors could not help feeling once again the frisson that corresponded to an idea they already had, but that Rouletabille had not yet succeeded in specifying. In fact, he could not yet see anything in all of this that threatened Paris.

  The reporter was soon to be enlightened.

  The next few sentences pronounced, with a particular emotion, by Cromer finally put Rouletabille on the redoubtable track on which he might perhaps leave his intelligence and his bones.

  “The very evening of that terrible explosion, we all returned to the Isle of Man—well content, in truth. We had dinner, and toasted the success of the experiment with champagne. The next day, however, Théodore Fulbert did not meet me, as arranged, at the workshop. I thought that the poor man had a hangover from the champagne, so I went to his cottage on the Isle of Man. I found his wife unconscious and tied to the bed, her mouth gagged with a handkerchief—but I didn’t find Fulbert or Mademoiselle Fulbert, and I didn’t find the Polish fiancé either! And in Fulbert’s study I could no longer find the original plans of the Titania or any of Fulbert’s own papers. Everything had been taken, removed during the night—and an investigation immediately revealed that the Boche had been there, and had abducted the three people and taken away all the plans and papers in a boat that had returned to a submarine.

  “The government was immediately alerted. The Admiralty gave its orders: a hundred destroyers started hunting for the submarine, but without any result.

  “We had been robbed, stupidly. Yes—it’s terrible!”

  Chapter V

  Madame Fulbert

  Horn-rimmed Glasses, the Tobacconist, the Boss and the head of the Sûreté Générale were agitated. The President lit a cigarette from the Tobacconist’s cigar, blew out the smoke, gazed at it momentarily rising in blue spirals toward the ceiling, and said: “And now it’s against us that this frightful experiment has turned.”

  “Do we really have anything to fear?” asked the Tobacconist, hesitantly.

  “Do we have anything to fear!” exclaimed Horn-rimmed Glasses. “You’ll see, my dear colleague, when you’ve heard Nourry!”

  “Should I bring Nourry in?” asked the head of the Sûreté Générale.

  “No,” replied the President. “First, have Madame Fulbert come in.”

  Everyone got up when Madame Fulbert entered the room.

  The President addressed a few comforting words to her, confirming the news that had already been communicated to him, that her husband and daughter were prisoners in Germany but in good health, apparently in no danger, and that it was necessary, in consequence, not to despair of seeing them emerge soon from that frightful adventure. After which Madame Fulbert was invited to sit down.

  She sat down, shaking her head sadly. She was the old lady that Rouletabille had noticed in the vestibule. Her face was strained and distressed, and all the sadness that had spread within her seemed as old as she was.

  “Can you, Madame,” asked the President, “give us some details regarding the circumstances in which the abduction of your husband and daughter took place.?”

  “I’ve already answered that question,” the old lady said, in a vice as soft as that of a little girl. “I didn’t see or hear anything. What more can I add? I was tied up and gagged in darkness, and fainted in terror.”

  “During the evening, did the Pole remain with you all the time? Did he go home with you? Did he go to bed at the same ti
me as you?”

  “I have every reason to think so, Monsieur. He wished us all good night, and shut himself in his room.”

  “You didn’t suspect anything? You all went to sleep full of hope?”

  “Full of hope!” interjected the old lady. “Speaking for myself, I had no longer had any for a long time. My husband has never been happy about anything. Everything he has attempted has always turned against him—against us. This will end the same way. His inventions have ruined us and caused us countless troubles. My daughter’s dowry, like mine, has melted away in the crucible of his costly experiments. However, neither I nor my daughter ever complained. We loved that man as God has made him.”

  “Was not your daughter the fiancée of Monsieur Fulbert’s assistant?” the President asked.

  “Yes, Monsieur, and that too was a misfortune in my eyes. I knew that I had suffered with an inventor and I would have liked my daughter to enjoy another existence than the one made for me—but I confessed myself vanquished right away. Nicole is twenty-five years old. She’s very pretty but she hasn’t a sou. Then again, she loves her Pole.”

  “Can you give us a few details regarding Monsieur Fulbert’s assistant?” asked Horn-rimmed Glasses then. “In the present circumstances, they might be precious to us. We don’t want to surprise you. The first idea that occurred to us was that in the business of the abduction and the theft of the Titania’s plans, that foreigner might have done you a disservice...”

  “I don’t think so, Messieurs,” the old lady replied, without raising her voice. No, I really don’t think so. I’d put my hand in the fire to swear that Serge Rejitsky is incapable of betraying us.”

  “However, if he had wanted to, he would have been able to do it, wouldn’t he?”

  “Certainly! He was party to all my husband’s secrets and speculations, to which he added his own.”