THE “SUBTERRENE”
The first impression that struck Phil forcibly as “Count Topoff” entered
the room was the fact that he had been drinking. This reminded him of
the drink-fest that had incapacitated “the count” and his command of
guards, in a French inn a few weeks previously, to prevent the prisoners
in their charge from turning the tables on them.
“It’s probably lucky for me that he was too much under the influence to
remember the trick we played on them when we saw to it that every
‘drunk’ among them was super-drunk,” the boy mused after the strain of
his torture had been relieved by the cutting of his thumb-toe bonds.
Topoff wasted no time in the carrying out of the portion of his program
now due. Although plainly flushed with the liquor he had drunk recently,
there was nothing maudlin in his manner, and he had full command of his
usual wits.
“Well, go ahead with your yarn,” he ordered, sitting down in an armchair
ancient enough in appearance to have belonged to the days of
Charlemagne. “But hold on. Do you realize what is going to happen to you
if you lie? You’re going into that pillory, with your bare feet on those
sharp steel points. Now go ahead, but you’d better not talk at all if
you’re thinking of telling me another string of lies.”
Phil’s resolution was almost shattered at this prospect, and he was on
the verge of confessing the untruth of his purpose, when it occurred to
him that torture on the puncturing pillory could hardly be worse than
the agony he suffered in the unendurable attitude from which he had just
been released.
“If I have to die or torture, I don’t see that there’s much choice
between these two ways,” he concluded. “So here goes, hoping I’ll be
able to pull the wool over his eyes.”
“The truth is this,” he continued aloud with a camouflage of
desperation, “and may my native land never know of my traitorous act.
There’s really no need of my begging you to have mercy on me after
you’ve learned the truth from me, for I shall be so ashamed of my
cowardice that I shan’t be satisfied until I find a place where I can
hide my face from every other man on earth.”
As he spoke Phil covertly watched the countenance of Topoff and was
gratified with the evidence of growing and expectant interest that he
saw there.
“You people,” he continued, looking his captor straight in the eye,
“perfected the submarine and used it as a most destructive war engine.
America has just completed her invention of the subterrene, and will
soon be able with it to undermine any battle front you may be able to
establish.”
“What is the subterrene?” demanded “the count,” leaning forward eagerly.
“The word, I think, will explain itself to a man of your learning,”
replied the boy, recalling his flattery weapon. “It’s a machine that
bores a hole seven or eight feet in diameter right through the earth at
the rate of about a mile a day. It was through the first tunnel of the
first machine delivered at the battle front that I led a company of
soldiers into the basement of one of those buildings behind your lines
near Chateau Thierry.”
“And who invented that machine?” inquired the now excited and somewhat
bewildered Topoff.
“Thomas A. Edison,” Phil answered, uttering that magic name with a
swelling of hero worship and national pride.
The count meditated a few moments. It was evident that he was deeply
impressed with his prisoner’s story.
“How many of those machines has the American army?” he asked.
“Of course, I can’t say as to that,” Phil replied slowly. “But there’s
only one at the part of the front with which I’m familiar. However, I
understand they’re being made as rapidly as possible to be rushed all
along the American, English, and French fronts.”
Again Topoff lapsed into meditation. This time he was silent longer than
before. Then suddenly he looked up sharply at his “fabulizing informant”
and said:
“Here is an important question that needs more than any other to be
answered: What becomes of the excavated earth as the tunnel advances?”
This was surely a “stunner of a question” and tested Phil’s ingenuity to
the limit. When it first “hit” him it made the boy’s head swim, but he
clenched his fists and gritted his teeth with desperation and thought as
he had never thought before. An answer came, such as it was, and Phil
communicated it with all the aplomb that he could command.
“I’m not very familiar with the mechanical working of the contrivance,”
he said, “although I’ve seen it operate. The question you ask, of
course, involves the problem of the great principle of the invention.
The way I get it is this: It seems that Mr. Edison, in working out his
scheme, applied a new scientific discovery of his, electro-chemical,
they call it. By means of this new process they seem to be able to
convert the excavated earth into gas and a small amount of powdered
refuse. The gas is piped back through flexible tubes, and the refuse is
carted out in a low, narrow auto-truck.”
Phil had good cause, as he proceeded with this explanation, to
congratulate himself on the training he had received in a Philadelphia
technical school. But he never knew with what degree of credence the
latter part of his ingenious fabrication was received. He had scarcely
finished the statement last recorded, when sound of the hurried tramping
of many feet reached his ears. It reached the ears also of “Count
Topoff,” who sprang to his feet in bewildered alarm. Then the forms of
half a dozen armed men rushed into the room.
“Marines!” gasped Phil in amazement. “How in the world did they get
here?”