II.

The next morning Fisher met Savitch coming from the Trinkhalle. The

Baron bowed with cold politeness and passed on. Later in the day a

valet de place handed to Fisher a small parcel, with the message: "Dr.

Rapperschwyll supposes that this will be sufficient." The parcel

contained two gold pieces of twenty marks.

Fisher gritted his teeth. "He shall have back his forty marks," he

muttered to himself, "but I will have his confounded secret in

return."

Then Fisher discovered that even a Polish countess has her uses in the

social economy.

Mrs. Fisher's table d'hote friend was amiability itself, when

approached by Fisher (through Fisher's wife) on the subject of the

Baron Savitch of Moscow. Know anything about the Baron Savitch? Of

course she did, and about everybody else worth knowing in Europe.

Would she kindly communicate her knowledge? Of course she would, and

be enchanted to gratify in the slightest degree the charming curiosity

of her Americaine. It was quite refreshing for a _blasee_ old woman,

who had long since ceased to feel much interest in contemporary

men, women, things and events, to encounter one so recently from

the boundless prairies of the new world as to cherish a piquant

inquisitiveness about the affairs of the grand monde. Ah! yes, she

would very willingly communicate the history of the Baron Savitch of

Moscow, if that would amuse her dear Americaine.

The Polish countess abundantly redeemed her promise, throwing in for

good measure many choice bits of gossip and scandalous anecdotes about

the Russian nobility, which are not relevant to the present narrative.

Her story, as summarized by Fisher, was this:

The Baron Savitch was not of an old creation. There was a mystery

about his origin that had never been satisfactorily solved in St.

Petersburg or in Moscow. It was said by some that he was a foundling

from the Vospitatelnoi Dom. Others believed him to be the

unacknowledged son of a certain illustrious personage nearly related

to the House of Romanoff. The latter theory was the more probable,

since it accounted in a measure for the unexampled success of his

career from the day that he was graduated at the University of Dorpat.

Rapid and brilliant beyond precedent this career had been. He entered

the diplomatic service of the Czar, and for several years was attached

to the legations at Vienna, London, and Paris. Created a Baron before

his twenty-fifth birthday for the wonderful ability displayed in the

conduct of negotiations of supreme importance and delicacy with the

House of Hapsburg, he became a pet of Gortchakoff's, and was given

every opportunity for the exercise of his genius in diplomacy. It was

even said in well-informed circles at St. Petersburg that the guiding

mind which directed Russia's course throughout the entire Eastern

complication, which planned the campaign on the Danube, effected the

combinations that gave victory to the Czar's soldiers, and which

meanwhile held Austria aloof, neutralized the immense power of

Germany, and exasperated England only to the point where wrath expends

itself in harmless threats, was the brain of the young Baron Savitch.

It was certain that he had been with Ignatieff at Constantinople when

the trouble was first fomented, with Shouvaloff in England at the time

of the secret conference agreement, with the Grand Duke Nicholas at

Adrianople when the protocol of an armistice was signed, and would

soon be in Berlin behind the scenes of the Congress, where it was

expected that he would outwit the statesmen of all Europe, and play

with Bismarck and Disraeli as a strong man plays with two kicking

babies.

But the countess had concerned herself very little with this handsome

young man's achievements in politics. She had been more particularly

interested in his social career. His success in that field had been

not less remarkable. Although no one knew with positive certainty his

father's name, he had conquered an absolute supremacy in the most

exclusive circles surrounding the imperial court. His influence with

the Czar himself was supposed to be unbounded. Birth apart, he was

considered the best _parti_ in Russia. From poverty and by the sheer

force of intellect he had won for himself a colossal fortune. Report

gave him forty million roubles, and doubtless report did not exceed

the fact. Every speculative enterprise which he undertook, and they

were many and various, was carried to sure success by the same

qualities of cool, unerring judgment, far-reaching sagacity, and

apparently superhuman power of organizing, combining, and controlling,

which had made him in politics the phenomenon of the age.

About Dr. Rapperschwyll? Yes, the countess knew him by reputation

and by sight. He was the medical man in constant attendance upon

the Baron Savitch, whose high-strung mental organization rendered

him susceptible to sudden and alarming attacks of illness. Dr.

Rapperschwyll was a Swiss--had originally been a watchmaker or

artisan of some kind, she had heard. For the rest, he was a

commonplace little old man, devoted to his profession and to the

Baron, and evidently devoid of ambition, since he wholly neglected

to turn the opportunities of his position and connections to the

advancement of his personal fortunes.

Fortified with this information, Fisher felt better prepared to

grapple with Rapperschwyll for the possession of the secret. For five

days he lay in wait for the Swiss physician. On the sixth day the

desired opportunity unexpectedly presented itself.

Half way up the Mercuriusberg, late in the afternoon, he encountered

the custodian of the ruined tower, coming down. "No, the tower was not

closed. A gentleman was up there, making observations of the country,

and he, the custodian, would be back in an hour or two." So Fisher

kept on his way.

The upper part of this tower is in a dilapidated condition. The lack

of a stairway to the summit is supplied by a temporary wooden ladder.

Fisher's head and shoulders were hardly through the trap that opens to

the platform, before he discovered that the man already there was the

man whom he sought. Dr. Rapperschwyll was studying the topography of

the Black Forest through a pair of field glasses.

Fisher announced his arrival by an opportune stumble and a noisy

effort to recover himself, at the same instant aiming a stealthy kick

at the topmost round of the ladder, and scrambling ostentatiously

over the edge of the trap. The ladder went down thirty or forty feet

with a racket, clattering and banging against the walls of the tower.

Dr. Rapperschwyll at once appreciated the situation. He turned sharply

around, and remarked with a sneer, "Monsieur is unaccountably

awkward." Then he scowled and showed his teeth, for he recognized

Fisher.

"It _is_ rather unfortunate," said the New Yorker, with imperturbable

coolness. "We shall be imprisoned here a couple of hours at the

shortest. Let us congratulate ourselves that we each have intelligent

company, besides a charming landscape to contemplate."

The Swiss coldly bowed, and resumed his topographical studies. Fisher

lighted a cigar.

"I also desire," continued Fisher, puffing clouds of smoke in the

direction of the Teufelmuehle, "to avail myself of this opportunity to

return forty marks of yours, which reached me, I presume, by a

mistake."

"If Monsieur the American physician was not satisfied with his fee,"

rejoined Rapperschwyll, venomously, "he can without doubt have the

affair adjusted by applying to the Baron's valet."

Fisher paid no attention to this thrust, but calmly laid the gold

pieces upon the parapet, directly under the nose of the Swiss.

"I could not think of accepting any fee," he said, with deliberate

emphasis. "I was abundantly rewarded for my trifling services by the

novelty and interest of the case."

The Swiss scanned the American's countenance long and steadily with

his sharp little gray eyes. At length he said, carelessly:

"Monsieur is a man of science?"

"Yes," replied Fisher, with a mental reservation in favor of all

sciences save that which illuminates and dignifies our national game.

"Then," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "Monsieur will perhaps

acknowledge that a more beautiful or more extensive case of trephining

has rarely come under his observation."

Fisher slightly raised his eyebrows.

"And Monsieur will also understand, being a physician," continued Dr.

Rapperschwyll, "the sensitiveness of the Baron himself, and of his

friends upon the subject. He will therefore pardon my seeming rudeness

at the time of his discovery."

"He is smarter than I supposed," thought Fisher. "He holds all the

cards, while I have nothing--nothing, except a tolerably strong nerve

when it comes to a game of bluff."

"I deeply regret that sensitiveness," he continued, aloud, "for it had

occurred to me that an accurate account of what I saw, published in

one of the scientific journals of England or America, would excite

wide attention, and no doubt be received with interest on the

Continent."

"What you saw?" cried the Swiss, sharply. "It is false. You saw

nothing--when I entered you had not even removed the----"

Here he stopped short and muttered to himself, as if cursing his own

impetuosity. Fisher celebrated his advantage by tossing away his

half-burned cigar and lighting a fresh one.

"Since you compel me to be frank," Dr. Rapperschwyll went on, with

visibly increasing nervousness, "I will inform you that the Baron has

assured me that you saw nothing. I interrupted you in the act of

removing the silver cap."

"I will be equally frank," replied Fisher, stiffening his face for a

final effort. "On that point, the Baron is not a competent witness. He

was in a state of unconsciousness for some time before you entered.

Perhaps I was removing the silver cap when you interrupted me----"

Dr. Rapperschwyll turned pale.

"And, perhaps," said Fisher, coolly, "I was replacing it."

The suggestion of this possibility seemed to strike Rapperschwyll like

a sudden thunderbolt from the clouds. His knees parted, and he almost

sank to the floor. He put his hands before his eyes, and wept like a

child, or, rather, like a broken old man.

"He will publish it! He will publish it to the court and to the

world!" he cried, hysterically. "And at this crisis----"

Then, by a desperate effort, the Swiss appeared to recover to some

extent his self control. He paced the diameter of the platform for

several minutes, with his head bent and his arms folded across the

breast. Turning again to his companion, he said:

"If any sum you may name will----"

Fisher cut the proposition short with a laugh.

"Then," said Rapperschwyll, "if--if I throw myself on your

generosity----"

"Well?" demanded Fisher.

"And ask a promise, on your honor, of absolute silence concerning what

you have seen?"

"Silence until such time as the Baron Savitch shall have ceased to

exist?"

"That will suffice," said Rapperschwyll. "For when he ceases to exist

I die. And your conditions?"

"The whole story, here and now, and without reservation."

"It is a terrible price to ask me," said Rapperschwyll, "but larger

interests than my pride are at stake. You shall hear the story.

"I was bred a watchmaker," he continued, after a long pause, "in the

Canton of Zurich. It is not a matter of vanity when I say that I

achieved a marvellous degree of skill in the craft. I developed a

faculty of invention that led me into a series of experiments

regarding the capabilities of purely mechanical combinations. I

studied and improved upon the best automata ever constructed by human

ingenuity. Babbage's calculating machine especially interested me. I

saw in Babbage's idea the germ of something infinitely more important

to the world.

"Then I threw up my business and went to Paris to study physiology. I

spent three years at the Sorbonne and perfected myself in that branch

of knowledge. Meanwhile, my pursuits had extended far beyond the

purely physical sciences. Psychology engaged me for a time; and then I

ascended into the domain of sociology, which, when adequately

understood, is the summary and final application of all knowledge.

"It was after years of preparation, and as the outcome of all my

studies, that the great idea of my life, which had vaguely haunted me

ever since the Zurich days, assumed at last a well-defined and perfect

form."

The manner of Dr. Rapperschwyll had changed from distrustful

reluctance to frank enthusiasm. The man himself seemed transformed.

Fisher listened attentively and without interrupting the relation. He

could not help fancying that the necessity of yielding the secret, so

long and so jealously guarded by the physician, was not entirely

distasteful to the enthusiast.

"Now, attend, Monsieur," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "to several

separate propositions which may seem at first to have no direct

bearing on each other.

"My endeavors in mechanism had resulted in a machine which went far

beyond Babbage's in its powers of calculation. Given the data, there

was no limit to the possibilities in this direction. Babbage's

cogwheels and pinions calculated logarithms, calculated an eclipse. It

was fed with figures, and produced results in figures. Now, the

relations of cause and effect are as fixed and unalterable as the laws

of arithmetic. Logic is, or should be, as exact a science as

mathematics. My new machine was fed with facts, and produced

conclusions. In short, it _reasoned_; and the results of its reasoning

were always true, while the results of human reasoning are often, if

not always, false. The source of error in human logic is what the

philosophers call the 'personal equation.' My machine eliminated the

personal equation; it proceeded from cause to effect, from premise to

conclusion, with steady precision. The human intellect is fallible; my

machine was, and is, infallible in its processes.

"Again, physiology and anatomy had taught me the fallacy of the

medical superstition which holds the gray matter of the brain and the

vital principle to be inseparable. I had seen men living with pistol

balls imbedded in the medulla oblongata. I had seen the hemispheres

and the cerebellum removed from the crania of birds and small animals,

and yet they did not die. I believed that, though the brain were to be

removed from a human skull, the subject would not die, although he

would certainly be divested of the intelligence which governed all

save the purely involuntary actions of his body.

"Once more: a profound study of history from the sociological point of

view, and a not inconsiderable practical experience of human nature,

had convinced me that the greatest geniuses that ever existed were on

a plane not so very far removed above the level of average intellect.

The grandest peaks in my native country, those which all the world

knows by name, tower only a few hundred feet above the countless

unnamed peaks that surround them. Napoleon Bonaparte towered only a

little over the ablest men around him. Yet that little was everything,

and he overran Europe. A man who surpassed Napoleon, as Napoleon

surpassed Murat, in the mental qualities which transmute thought into

fact, would have made himself master of the whole world.

"Now, to fuse these three propositions in to one: suppose that I take

a man, and, by removing the brain that enshrines all the errors and

failures of his ancestors away back to the origin of the race, remove

all sources of weakness in his future career. Suppose, that in place

of the fallible intellect which I have removed, I endow him with an

artificial intellect that operates with the certainty of universal

laws. Suppose that I launch this superior being, who reasons truly,

into the hurly burly of his inferiors, who reason falsely, and await

the inevitable result with the tranquillity of a philosopher.

"Monsieur, you have my secret. That is precisely what I have done. In

Moscow, where my friend Dr. Duchat had charge of the new institution

of St. Vasili for hopeless idiots, I found a boy of eleven whom they

called Stepan Borovitch. Since he was born, he had not seen, heard,

spoken or thought. Nature had granted him, it was believed, a fraction

of the sense of smell, and perhaps a fraction of the sense of taste,

but of even this there was no positive ascertainment. Nature had

walled in his soul most effectually. Occasional inarticulate

murmurings, and an incessant knitting and kneading of the fingers were

his only manifestations of energy. On bright days they would place him

in a little rocking-chair, in some spot where the sun fell warm, and

he would rock to and fro for hours, working his slender fingers and

mumbling forth his satisfaction at the warmth in the plaintive and

unvarying refrain of idiocy. The boy was thus situated when I first

saw him.

"I begged Stepan Borovitch of my good friend Dr. Duchat. If that

excellent man had not long since died he should have shared in my

triumph. I took Stepan to my home and plied the saw and the knife.

could operate on that poor, worthless, useless, hopeless travesty

of humanity as fearlessly and as recklessly as upon a dog bought or

caught for vivisection. That was a little more than twenty years ago.

To-day Stepan Borovitch wields more power than any other man on the

face of the earth. In ten years he will be the autocrat of Europe,

the master of the world. He never errs; for the machine that reasons

beneath his silver skull never makes a mistake."

Fisher pointed downward at the old custodian of the tower, who was

seen toiling up the hill.

"Dreamers," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "have speculated on the

possibility of finding among the ruins of the older civilizations some

brief inscription which shall change the foundations of human

knowledge. Wiser men deride the dream, and laugh at the idea of

scientific kabbala. The wiser men are fools. Suppose that Aristotle

had discovered on a cuneiform-covered tablet at Nineveh the few words,

'Survival of the Fittest.' Philosophy would have gained twenty-two

hundred years. I will give you, in almost as few words, a truth

equally pregnant. _The ultimate evolution of the creature is into the

creator._ Perhaps it will be twenty-two hundred years before the truth

finds general acceptance, yet it is not the less a truth. The Baron

Savitch is my creature, and I am his creator--creator of the ablest

man in Europe, the ablest man in the world.

"Here is our ladder, Monsieur. I have fulfilled my part of the

agreement. Remember yours."