While all this plotting and counter-plotting had been going on in
England and Europe, and France, thanks to what some might call the
patriotic treachery of Victor Fargeau, was rapidly preparing for an
invasion of Germany, which a magnificently-equipped army of nearly
four million men meant to make a very different affair to the last
one; while Russia was swiftly and secretly massing her huge military
and very formidable naval forces in the near and far east, and England
had, as usual, been muddling along, chattering over reforms on land
and sea without getting them done; and while Germany, for once about
to be taken unawares, was quietly getting ready for the inevitable
struggle, a quiet, broad-browed, deep-eyed man had been at the head of
an army of workmen, building up what was intended to be the real
capital and governing centre of the world. In the midst of a broad,
barren plain, broken by great masses of rock, many of them snow-capped
and ice-crowned even in the middle of the northern summer, there rose
the walls and chimneys of what looked like a commonplace collection of
factories, such as might be found in any of the manufacturing
districts of Europe and America.
About four miles to the west, under a rocky promontory which the
discoverer of this desolate land had named Cape Adelaide, little
thinking what a connection it would have with another Adelaide, there
was a small natural harbour, navigable for about five months in the
year, constantly crowded with colliers. For over a year it had been
packed with them. Before the previous winter set in they had been
laden with coal and machinery and building materials, and throughout
the long winter Doctor Lamson had relentlessly pushed the work on
under rows of electric lights, which rivalled the _Aurora_ itself.
The men were well housed and fed and lavishly paid, and so, in spite
of the cold and darkness, they had worked well and cheerfully, well
knowing that it was impossible for them to get back, save in the
steamers that brought them. By the time the ice broke and the vessels
were released another long line of them was already making its way up
through the still half-frozen waters of Davis Strait and Lancaster
Sound, laden with more coal, materials, and machinery. A telegraph
line had been taken from Port Nelson across Hudson Bay over Rae
Isthmus, and then through the Gulf of Boothia to the works, and this
put Dr Lamson in direct communication with Winnipeg and the rest of
the world.
At intervals of two hundred miles, across the icy desert of the north,
groups of huge steel masts, three hundred feet high, had been erected,
and these had been continued singly or in pairs over all the principal
elevations of the North American Continent, and also over Greenland
and Iceland to the north of Scotland, and thence to the rest of the
British Islands. It was a miracle that could only have been wrought by
millions, but the millions were spent without stint, in the full
knowledge that they would be repaid in the days when it was possible
to tax the world for the privilege of living.
The Storage Works were in the form of a square, measuring four hundred
feet each way. In the exact centre of an interior square measuring
fifty feet each way was that mysterious spot of earth where the needle
of the compass points neither to north nor south nor east nor west,
but straight down to the centre of the globe; and over it was built a
great circular tower, forty feet in diameter and a hundred feet in
height, which contained a gigantic reproduction of the instrument
which had stood on Doctor Emil Fargeau's table in his laboratory at
Strassburg on that memorable night when he had completed the work
which was destined to lead to his own ruin and death and to the
revolutionising of the world.
From this tower ran underground, in all directions, thousands of
copper cables leading to the gigantic storage batteries with which the
greater part of the buildings were filled. In the middle of each side
of the great square a two thousand horse-power engine was ready to
furnish the necessary electrical force in the absorber, as the great
apparatus in the centre was called.
Everything was in order to commence work; in fact, Doctor Lamson had
just decided that he would try his engines together for the first
time, when Clifford Vandel's telegram reached him from Southampton.
His agent in Winnipeg had kept him well informed of the principal
events going on in the world during his long isolation, and the
sailing of the French and Russian Polar expeditions _via_ Davis
Straits had not escaped him. For a few minutes after he had read the
dispatch he walked up and down the telegraph room, into which no one
but himself and Austin Vandel, Clifford's nephew and his own general
manager, could under any circumstances gain admission, since none but
they knew the combinations of the lock which opened the steel door.
Austin was sitting at the table where he had received the message, and
he broke the silence by saying:
"I guess, doctor, that looks a bit ugly. I suppose it's that Alsatian
Frenchman and that pretty Frenchwoman you were telling me about that's
fixed this up."
"There's not the slightest doubt about that," said Lamson, whose
enthusiasm for the great scheme had quite overcome his earlier
scruples. "If we had only known of that other set of specifications,
and managed to get hold of them somehow--still that wouldn't have done
much good, because even then the Frenchwoman, this beautiful daughter
of the Bourbons as they call her, would have given it away as soon as
she guessed what we were doing; and if she hadn't done so--well,
Fargeau would have done so; so I suppose after all it's inevitable."
"Then you think we'll have to fight for it?" said Austin.
"If those expeditions are really armed forces, and their object is to
take these works by hook or by crook, of course we must," replied
Lamson. "Poor devils! I wonder what they'll feel like when we turn the
disintegrators on them?"
"Don't talk about those," said Austin. "Time enough for that when we
have to use them to save ourselves--which the Lord forbid. I sha'n't
forget that experiment of yours on poor Hudson's body; but to see it
turned on to a living man! Great Scott!"
"Yes; it won't be very pleasant," said Lamson, whose rather gentle and
retiring nature had become completely transformed under the influence
of the gigantic possibilities which were now at his disposal. "But
suppose they get their ships up to Port Adelaide?--it's rather
curious, by the way, that it should have the same name as that
Frenchwoman, who, I suppose, is by this time about our most dangerous
and determined enemy--but suppose they get them there, and begin
knocking the works about with big guns. Suppose," he went on, with
something like a shudder, "a shell bursts in the absorber, where are
we? And, mind you, if they come they'll bring Fargeau with them; and
if they took us prisoners or killed us, he would have material enough
here to make another one--and he would know how to do it. No, no,
Vandel; if I have to defend the works I'll do it. My whole life and
soul are here now, and no Frenchman or Russian sets foot inside here
while I'm alive, unless he comes as a prisoner."
"But look here," said Austin; "couldn't you paralyse 'em? Why not set
the engines to work, and mop up this world's soul, or whatever you
call it, right away, so that their engines should break down long
before they got here, and just freeze them out."
"That, my dear Austin," replied the doctor, "is a rather more hasty
remark than I should have expected you to make. Don't you see that if
we were to start the engines, and cut off our American communications,
as would be necessary, we should not only paralyse the expedition, we
should also paralyse the whole of Canada and the United States, cut
off our communications with England, and make it impossible for our
friends to communicate with us, or for them to come here--as they are
doing this month."
"Guess I spoke a bit too soon," said Austin. "That's so; and, of
course, we couldn't do it."
The doctor continued his walk up and down the room for a few moments
longer, then stopped and said suddenly, "No; but I'll tell you what we
can and will do if there's going to be any of this sort of foul play
about. The president and all our friends will be much safer here than
in any other part of the world, for if we have to starve the world out
they'll be all right here. Wire to your uncle; say that we have
received his message and are acting upon it, and tell him to bring the
whole party here with the utmost speed; call it a pleasure-trip or a
tour of inspection, or what they please, but they must come at once,
and, above all, they must get here before these so-called Polar
expeditions."
"That's the talk, doctor," exclaimed Austin; "you've got right down on
to it this time. I'll fix that up in the code and send it right away."
There is, of course, neither day nor night during June in Boothia
Land, only a little deepening of the twilight towards midnight, but
the message was despatched _via_ Winnipeg a little after nine in the
evening, according to conventional time, and so Clifford Vandel was
able to decipher it in his sitting-room at Orrel Court before
breakfast the next morning. The carriages were already waiting to take
the party down to the _Nadine's_ berth at Southampton Water as soon as
possible after an early breakfast, for there was to be a race round
the Isle of Wight for cruising yachts that day, and some of the finest
yachts in the two hemispheres were going to compete, the _Nadine_ and
several other steam-yachts, including the _Vlodova_, belonging to the
Grand Duke Ruric, were to follow the race, and the day was to wind up
with supper at Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes.
Therefore the moment he had finished translating the cipher, without
waiting even for breakfast, he sent his man to ask Lord Orrel and his
son for the favour of a few minutes' private conversation in his
lordship's library. This man was the brother of the Countess Sophie's
French maid--deaf, handy, silent, and wonderfully well up to his work.
He had engaged him on the count's recommendation, after dismissing his
English valet on the instant for, as he thought, trying to learn more
than he ought to know from his correspondence. It is scarcely
necessary to add that Ma'm'selle Sophie knew as much about the one as
she did about the other; and, as a matter of fact, she had procured
both appointments. This being so, it was only natural that within a
very few minutes Count Valdemar and his daughter should have heard of
the receipt of the telegram, and Clifford Vandel's request for an
interview with Lord Orrel and his son. The immediate result was two
interviews before breakfast instead of one.
"What can it mean, papa?" said Sophie, when she had softly locked her
father's door. "Jules says that the dispatch was brought up from
Southampton this morning. Before he gave it to Mr Vandel he, of
course, steamed the envelope and looked at it. It was in cipher, as
one might expect; but it came from Winnipeg, and Winnipeg is the one
point of communication between Boothia and the rest of the world. Mr
Vandel translated it at once, and immediately went to talk to Lord
Orrel and the viscount about it. I wonder whether--but no, that's
impossible. We couldn't have been overheard, and no one that knows
anything of our plans could have any possible inducement to betray us.
The marquise told me that she had a letter from Fargeau yesterday: I
wonder if she has said anything."
"My dear Sophie," replied her father, "as I told you the night before
last, a woman in love is a woman lost to all purposes of diplomacy,
unless her interests and those of the man she is in love with are
identical. Here they are diametrically opposed; a word from her to the
viscount would ruin everything--at least, so far as the expeditions
are concerned."
"All the more reason then," said Sophie, clenching her hands, "that
we--I mean that the _Vlodoya_ should capture the _Nadine_ with all
these people on board her. If we have them at our mercy we have
everything. I would give a good deal to know what there was in that
dispatch that Clifford Vandel had this morning."
"And so would I," replied her father; "a great deal. Do you think that
if your maid were to promise her brother, say, L500, for the
transcription which Vandel must have made of it, there would be any
chance of getting it?"
"We can only try," replied Sophie. "The old gentleman is very careful
about his papers, they tell me; still, we will try."
* * * * *
"Well, gentlemen," said Clifford Vandel, about the same moment in Lord
Orrel's library, "I think you will agree with me that the doctor would
not have sent a dispatch like this without pretty good reason; and if
these people mean pushing matters to extremity, why, of course, it
might be necessary for him to, as he says here, freeze them out, in
which case they couldn't get there. And if they couldn't we couldn't;
wherefore it seems good reasoning to say that we ought to be there
first--if we're going to get there at all."
"My dear Vandel," replied his lordship, "it is the best of reasoning;
and I am quite sure that Doctor Lamson would not have dreamt of
sending such a dispatch without good reasons, and I think I am
justified in telling you that this morning I received a confidential
letter from an old colleague of mine in the Foreign Office, in which
he says that, according to reports of our agents, both in France and
Germany, an outbreak of hostilities may occur at any moment within the
next few weeks, without warning--just as it did in 1870."
"Then," said Hardress, sharply, "if that is so, there simply must be
some connection between that and the dispatch of these two
expeditions. I don't often jump to conclusions, Mr Vandel, but I think
now that Miss Chrysie was perfectly right. They're not going to try
and get to the Pole at all. It's the Magnetic Pole they want, and
they'll be there this summer if we don't find some way to stop them;
and I quite agree that we ought to get there first. It may be
necessary to show Europe that they can't get on without us, even in
the matter of fighting."
"Very well, then," said Lord Orrel, "we'll call that settled; we'll
make it a summer Arctic trip. How soon can you get us across the
Atlantic, Hardress?"
"I can land you in Halifax in six days. We'll coal up there; and, if
we're not too much crowded with ice, I'll get you to Rae Isthmus in
six days more. Meanwhile I will telegraph to Lamson to have one of his
steamers waiting for us on the other side of the Isthmus, and in
another week, including the land travel, which may be difficult, we
will be at the works. Or, if we find the sea fairly clear, we'll steam
straight up to Fox Channel, Kury's Strait, and take you straight to
Boothia Land. At any rate, the expeditions are only just starting, one
from Havre and the other one from Riga, and, at that rate, we should
certainly be there a clear month before them, even if they really are
going."
"Then," said Clifford Vandel, slowly but gravely, "if that's so, I
guess the best thing we can do is to get there as quickly as possible
and start the circus as soon as we can. If Europe means
fighting--well, we can't have a better way of proving our power, and
showing France and Germany and the rest of them that it will pay them
to deal with the Great Storage Trust, than by just making their own
war impossible. When they find they can't even fight without our
permission, I guess they'll pretty soon come to terms."
"I agree with you entirely, my dear Vandel," said Lord Orrel.