Rouletabille at Krupp's

by Gaston Leroux

  There are journalists in that troop running at the monster’s heels. Rouletabille recognizes colleagues from beyond the Rhine, with whom he has associated professionally in Paris, when they were peacetime correspondents there—and, in many ways, the preparers of war. The reporter is glad that the fulgurant presence of the Master dazzles all their eyes and leaves him in shadow.

  In the shadows, with his companion, he follows the escort. He makes himself part of it. Both of them seem to be there by order, with the bodyguards and the military flunkeys whom the steps of the Emperor of Fire always drag behind him.

  If anyone interrogates Rouletabille, he has a ready response that will formulate the order received to accompany the sovereign of Essen everywhere, just in case fire should forget its servitude. Two firemen, armed with extinguishers, are a safety measure, even for the Devil, if he disguises himself in human flesh in order to come to the earth.

  No one pay any attention to firemen—who, themselves, pay attention to everything.

  And now they find themselves in front of the Energy Laboratory.

  The troop goes into the central building, over the threshold on which Chief Engineer Hans greets his Master.

  They go through rooms where work is presently going on that would not have put the pride and audacity of the alchemists to shame. Will not radium permit the realization, in the near future, of all the dreams of the occult science of the Middle Ages? That is what the man who knows everything explains.

  While other peoples still linger over work on the recent discovery of the dematerialization of matter, here they are working on its rematerialization. Instead of following the sequence of successive transformations of radiant matter, which always operate by successive degradations of energy, the people working here are in the business of physiological reconstruction: taking the elementary particles of the ultimate substances of which our material world is constructed, and reconstructing the edifice of the world at will! A world that will no longer obey the ordinary laws of physics! Remaking the world! Behold the dream of the monster who has put God’s good work in his pocket!

  Listen to the damned:

  “If it is already certain that, by taking individual atoms one by one and manipulating them with magical fingers, one can imagine selecting them adroitly enough to remake, with the energy of decay, energy useful for any purpose, there is every reason to think that, by choosing among the materials that enter into the structure of the atom, we should be able to engage them in new combinations that will permit the renewal of useful energy. Where has this work got to, at the present moment? Excellencies, Messieurs, it is not my privilege, as yet, to tell you, but while we await the time when we shall be able to recreate the world”—the Antichrist declares with a hideous smile—“we shall continue to show you the means we have made to destroy it! Yes, the reason I have gathered you here, is in order that you will be able to tell the world that we have its fate in our hand, and that our hand has only to make a sign, for the richest cities in the world, with their inhabitants and their civilization, to disappear in a matter of minutes! And that without our having to leave here!”

  At this formidable statement, a visible frisson ran through the crowd—but the Emperor had made a sign, and Hans had opened a door opening into a corridor. Everyone trooped into it behind him.

  They arrived by this route in a rather large laboratory—the very same one in which Malet had worked. That laboratory had been separated into several sections, forming veritable private rooms in each corner, closed either by curtains or by doors.

  One of these small laboratories had a glazed door, the windows of which were illuminated by a vivid red glare.

  When everyone had assembled in the central room, the Emperor said, in a low voice, pointing to the glazed door: “Go and look through that window, and you will see a man working on an admirable project: a universal remedy by means of radium. You must have heard mention of that man. He is a genius; his name is Théodore Fulbert. He’s a Frenchman. He is our prisoner. I did not want the hazards of war to interrupt the course of work destined to cure all the ills of humankind—if humankind consents to be cured!—and we have put our laboratory at his disposal. You see that we are not total barbarians!”

  Having said that, he went to the door himself, and leaned toward the window; then he turned round and made a sign indicating that the others should come closer.

  The forward movement had already commenced when it came to an abrupt halt. A few guests even recoiled.

  That was because a strange and fantastic face had just appeared at the pane: eyes of fire; a grimacing mouth; a vast, tormented forehead hollowed out by profound wrinkles; framed by hair whose white wisps were entangled, twisting as if on the head of a gorgon...and that entire physiognomy, which seemed to be quivering in somber fury, was flamboyant in the red light of the laboratory, seemingly as sublime as genius and as terrible as madness.

  The Emperor himself, at that apparition, had taken a step backwards. The grim face had turned toward him and was burning him with its frightful gaze.

  Then the Emperor, as if to make fun of the instinctive movement that had caused him to recoil, said in a loud voice: “Théodore Fulbert definitely does not want to be disturbed while he is working!”

  Immediately, insensate cried erupted behind the window:

  “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

  Chapter XVII

  The Greater Blackmail of the World

  Singularly enough, before this clamor, the monarch of Essen was untroubled, and manifested no anger.

  With an imperious finger, he pointed at the door behind which Fulbert continued to rage and howl, and Hans opened it. Immediately, Fulbert rushed out, and then stopped abruptly on his shaking legs. Thus a wild beast bounds out of its cage to enter the circus arena, and suddenly suspends its surge before the innumerable and unexpected faces of the spectators.

  Fulbert gazed, as if bewildered, at the officers, the diplomats, the engineers and the journalists: the entire gaudily-clad troop surrounding the tamer; doubtless he was wondering, in his confused thoughts, for what obscure reason he had suddenly been produced, at liberty, before such an exceptional escort.

  But a furious lion cannot reflect for long, and Fulbert, shaking his white mane, resumed roaring: “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

  Guards were already running forward, but the Emperor immobilized them with a terrible gesture. “Let that man speak!” he said.

  And “that man” spoke. He said:

  “Behold the murderer of the world! Take care! If you do not kill the monster, the monster will kill you! And above all, take every precaution! Don’t let yourselves be captured, like me—as he has captured my daughter, as he had captured my son-in-law! His Majesty has a long arm and a cunning hand! You might believe, in truth, that you are in a corner hidden from other men, but that is exactly where he will seek you out, and will bring you here, bund hand and foot, into his forge, and he will make you work for him, night and day, like it or not! And if you refuse, he will invent tortures that you will be unable to resist!

  “Take care! Take care! If you have a daughter, he will torture your daughter. And if you have the accursed courage to let your daughter die, before your eyes, without surrendering your secret, he will bring your daughter’s fiancé down to the cell where the poor girl is dying—and then the fiancé will talk, and work for that man! And the world may tremble, for the secret will have been surrendered—the secret that ought to kill war, because when one possesses such a secret, war will no longer be possible!

  “Yes, it’s me; it’s me, Théodore Fulbert—you have heard mention, have you not, of Théodore Fulbert, an innocent scientist who was a friend to all humankind?—it’s me who discovered a machine…a mighty machine... Well, the monster has stolen it from me! I have killed war, but to the profit of the monster! If you do not kill him, tremble! For I tell you this, I tell you this: he will kill you or reduce you to servitude. How can he still exist? He will devo
ur you! I tell you that he will devour you! Tear his heart out, then, and throw it to the dogs! Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

  Had the Emperor smiled? Shrugged his shoulders? Sniggered? It only required one tiny gesture on the part of the detested adversary suddenly to multiply tenfold the rage of an animal whose blood was already boiling. At any rate, Fulbert, losing all semblance of humanity, suddenly hurled himself at the Emperor with the furious bound of a slavering beast, with blood on his teeth and fingernails clawed.

  This time, there was only just time to intervene, and two guards were not too many to hold the enraged old man back, throw him back into his workroom and lock the door behind him.

  “That man is mad!” proclaimed all those who were accompanying the Emperor.

  The Emperor, however, said: “No, he isn’t mad. He’s not mad, but simply furious at the fine trick that I’ve played on him, and which I shall explain to you.”

  With these words, still enigmatic to many, he drew his entire retinue into the room that they had initially entered, where they were shielded from Fulbert’s shouts, moans and curses.

  There, having lit a cigarette, and smiling, he began:

  “Gentlemen, Fulbert is so far from mad that it is no idle boast when he says that he has found a device such that no war is possible against the man who possesses it. When I took possession of Fulbert and those who were working with them—which is to say, his daughter and his daughter’s fiancé—Fulbert, as he has just told you, in the language of a prophet of doom, inspired by the basest hatred, was on the point of unleashing against me and against Germany the cruelest thunderbolt that a human brain has ever been able to conceive. That thunderbolt, I have stolen from him! And it is me that it shall serve. Is that not good strategy?”

  Immediately, those assembled there were no longer able to find words enough to express their admiration, but the Emperor reestablished silence with a gesture and continued:

  “The machine! It is me who has it, and I will show it to you—and you will understand Fulbert’s fury...and my calm, and my forgiveness. For I forgive that man, who wanted to destroy my country, but who has finally furnished the means for German Kultur to spread its benefits over the entire world. As Fulbert desired, gentlemen, his machine will be a machine of peace, but peace dictated by Germany, for the greater good of humankind!

  “One more word, gentlemen, before we continue on our way. Fulbert is not mad, but he is a liar! To obtain his secret, we have not tortured anyone! His daughter, who has never been in very good health, is as well as can be expected today, and is treated as a friend by engineer Hans’ own daughter, General von Berg’s niece. At the same time as you will be shown the infernal machine that will make us the masters of the world, you will be introduced to the man who surrendered Fulbert’s secret. It is his assistant, the Pole Serge Kaniewsky, the anarchist who was condemned by a French court to give years in prison merely for having held forbidden opinions. You will understand that France is not dear to Kaniewsky’s heart, and that it did not require any effort on our part to convince him, in return for a small fortune, to assist us in destroying Paris!”

  “Destroying Paris!” tremulous voices were heard to say. “Your Majesty is going to destroy Paris!”

  “I shall destroy everyone who resists me! Come, gentlemen.”

  While the Emperor was speaking thus, Fulbert, at the other end of the laboratory, collapsed on to the floor of the vast furnace of his laboratory, with his head in his hands, weeping. Yes, now he was crying like a baby! And his sobs, after the insensate fury that had shaken his aged carcass, were a benefit. They saved him, by soothing him. He found therein an unaccustomed gentleness, and bathed in his tears as in a refreshing wave.

  He was drawn out of that dolorous torpor by the sound of a small stone falling nearby. It was a stone that had fallen down the chimney—and it certainly had not fallen of its own accord, for it was wrapped in a piece of paper, of which the inventor surreptitiously took possession, and unfolded with a tremulous hand, having made sure that he was quite alone and that no one would catch him.

  The unfortunate scientist read: Hope! You have not been abandoned. Be at work here every night, at four o’clock in the morning, and do exactly what you are instructed by one who signs himself: TITANIA.

  The procession was now retracing its steps through the entire factory. La Candeur, who had just been rejoined by Rouletabille, no longer took his eyes off a certain person who was gradually drawing closer to our two firemen. That was Nelpas Pacha, who must have been slightly fatigued by all the infernal tribulations, because he was visibly limping. For a moment, he allowed all his colleagues and the officers accompanying him to draw ahead of him, stopping as if he were paying particular attention to some task, which actually had nothing special about it—and then he resumed his progress. To catch up with his group, however, he had to go past Rouletabille, and he had the time to hear a few words clearly pronounced although in a low voice: “Everything’s going well. It’s essential that you attend the engagement party for von Berg’s niece.”

  Nelpas Pacha nodded his head in a fashion that could not be misunderstood. He could not have furnished any more categorical response if he had pronounced the word: “Understood!” And he accelerated his pace.

  “He didn’t even look to me!” sighed La Candeur.

  “But you looked at him too much, you great imbecile!”

  “Thanks for the telling off!”

  “Shut up!”

  The two companions did not say another word until they reached the entrance to the famous wooden wall that enclosed the space reserved for the construction of what had been believed until now to be a new model of Zeppelin.

  Once there, Rouletabille could not suppress a gesture of satisfaction. “Good!” he murmured, between his teeth. “We’re going in through gate B...”

  The Emperor and his entourage had already passed over the redoubtable threshold. The two foremen, extinguishers in their belts, passed through in their turn.

  Immediately to the left there was a wooden building which served as a porter’s lodge as well as a military post and emergency station, as there was at all the gates. The door of that small house was open, and they could see a large common room in which, after the procession had passed through, soldiers resumed their places on the benches or sat around the tables, relighting their pipes.

  A fireman, recognizable by his coat and red cap, was leaning over a desk set against the wall, writing some kind of report. A mirror was hanging in front of the desk, attached to the wall. Slightly to the left of the table there was a small window, with a single pane, which looked outside and must permit the concierge, before opening the door, to examine from within the people who wanted to go into the enclosure outside the times when the workers went in and out.

  It was also in that small room that the distribution was made of the identity tags that were received there when the shifts changed.

  With a keen-eyed glance, Rouletabille took account of the distribution of the room and the places occupied by the people in it. He said to La Candeur: “Follow me, and whatever happens, play dumb and don’t get upset.”

  When they went into the room, the soldiers who had started smoking and chatting did not pay any attention to them. Only the fireman, who had finished his report and had turned round, looked at them curiously.

  The redoubtable appearance of La Candeur imposed itself upon him immediately, but, as Rouletabille headed for the desk that he had just quit, the fireman could not resist the temptation to say to him: “What are you doing here? Your section has no business here.”

  Rouletabille indicated the terrifying La Candeur with a sideways glance, and pronounced the simple word: “Polizei!”

  Immediately, the other, who had just seen the Emperor and his cortege pass by, jumped to the conclusion that he was confronted by important members of the secret police, and rectified his stance.

  “Not a word!” Rouletabille whispered to him. “Let me mak
e my report.”

  The fireman saluted and Rouletabille started writing on the sheets of blank paper that were on the desk.

  Strangely enough, although his handwriting was usually cramped and untidy, he was careful on this occasion to form the letters very neatly, and was undoubtedly in fear of blots, for he had only traced a few words when he carefully dried them with the blotting-pad with which the desk was equipped.

  He remained there for ten minutes, during which La Candeur’s brows became increasingly furrowed, because he was increasingly nervous—after which the reporter calmly folded up the piece of paper and put it into his pocket. Then, with the satisfied expression of a man who has finished a chore, he went back to La Candeur and said: “Let’s go.”

  “Are we finished?” implored La Candeur, as soon as they were out of the guard-post.

  “Bah! We’ve only just begun, old man!”

  “Damn!”

  “Now we have to trot to catch up with the procession. But first, hang on a moment!”

  They were presently isolated in a shadowy corner invaded by all kinds of detritus that had been swept there. Rouletabille meticulously tore up the pieces of paper he had just covered with magnificent writing and threw them on to a heap of ashes.

  “Right!” said La Candeur. “It was well worth the trouble of making me spend the worst minutes of my life waiting for you! You’ve never taken so long to write an article! And now you’ve thrown it on the rubbish heap!”

  Rouletabille close his mouth and showed him the procession, which was coming back in their direction.

  They rejoined it as it penetrated into the monstrous building whose fantastic silhouette dominated the factory and the city, and which was the subject of all conversations from Dusseldorf to Duisburg and the entire infernal plain between the Rhine and the Ruhle.

  The first impression one had, on entering that prodigious vessel, was compounded from two elements: a sense of being overwhelmed and amazed by the truly colossal dimensions of the cradle, whose length was almost a kilometer and was capable of containing the most monstrous of leviathans within its titanic framework of wood and iron, along with its launch-tube, which broadened at its highest extremity into a vast “ladle.” It was impossible, at first, to appreciate the height of the scaffolding, the walkways and the flying steel bridges, rolling on their castors, from one extremity to the other of that iron vaults, whose arch closed more than forty meters above the ground. It transported crews of workers who, at that distance, seemed to be the size of pen-holders. Yes, it was all overwhelming, and all amazing, by reason of the formidable tumult quivering along the hammered flanks of the Titania.