Lord Orrel and the count started from the little station just outside
the western gate of the works in the private car used by the directors
and drawn by a neat little electric engine, which was accustomed to do
the four miles in ten minutes.
Meanwhile, Lady Olive had what might, by a stretch of imagination, be
called afternoon tea, in that land where it was never quite afternoon
or morning, on the western wall looking down towards the harbour. When
Miss Chrysie sat down and threw back her afternoon wrap Adelaide and
Sophie were disconcerted, if not altogether surprised, to see that she
had a light, long-barrelled, wicked-looking pistol hanging by a couple
of silver chains from her waist-band.
"My dear Chrysie," said Lady Olive, "what are you carrying that
terrible-looking weapon for? You don't expect that you will have to
use it, surely," she went on, with just a touch of sarcasm in her
tone, "considering what very good friends we have all managed to keep
so far?"
"Well, I hope not," said Miss Chrysie, looking round the tables with
eyes which had both a laugh and a menace in them. "Of course, it is to
be hoped that everything will go off smoothly, but poppa had a friend
in the old times who said something that means a lot. He said, 'You
don't want a gun often, but when you do want it you want it badly.'
Isn't that so, poppa?"
"Just his words, Chrysie," said the president, "just his words; and he
knew what he was talking about when he used them. I never met a man
who could hold his temper longer or shoot quicker; and when he used a
gun someone usually wanted a funeral pretty soon."
"But surely," said Sophie, "you don't suppose for a moment that our
expected guests from the expedition will----"
"I don't know what they'll do, although I think I know what they'll
want to do," she replied, quickly. "But somehow I managed to lose my
other little pepper-box this morning. Where it's gone to or who's got
it I don't know, so I got this instead. It's a pretty thing," she went
on, playing with it as a woman might toy with a jewel, "seven-shooter
and magazine action. If you hold the trigger back after you've fired
the first shot, it shoots the other six in about three seconds."
"A very handy thing in a tight corner, I should say," said Hardress,
smiling at her over the top of his tea-cup, "and in such hands I
should think a very ugly thing to face."
Adelaide's fingers were itching to take out the revolver and shoot
both of them when she saw the all-meaning glance which passed between
them while he spoke, but instead of that she raised her tea-cup and
touched it with her pretty lips, and as she put the cup down she said,
with the sweetest of smiles, to the president:
"I think it is quite charming of you, Mr President, to ask the leaders
of the expedition to dinner in such a friendly way. Surely it is not
always usual to ask the enemy within the gates?"
"We have no enemies, marquise," he replied, gravely, "except those who
stand in the way of our commercial undertaking, and with them, of
course, business is business, and there is no sentiment in that. Of
course we have a pretty good idea why these two expeditions have come
to the magnetic pole instead of trying to get to the North Pole, but
we've not been lying awake at nights worrying about that, and there's
no particular reason why we shouldn't ask the scientific explorers to
dinner. All the same, if they happen to have come with the idea that
they have a better right to these works than we have, and they want
any trouble--why, they can have it."
"And," added Hardress, still looking across at Chrysie, "I think they
will find it the most extraordinary kind of trouble that mortal man
ever ran up against."
"It's to be hoped," said Doctor Lamson, speaking for the first time
since the little tea-party had begun, for he had been thinking hard,
and every now and then raising his eyes as though to seek inspiration
from Lady Olive's calm, patrician face, as calm now, on the eve of a
struggle which could scarcely end without bloodshed, and might end in
ruin, as it would have been in a London drawing-room--"I most
sincerely hope that it will not come to actual hostilities; it would
be really too awful."
"I wonder if it would be permissible for a prisoner of war to ask what
would be too awful, doctor," said Sophie, looking at him with a smile
which somehow made him think of a beautiful tigress he had seen in the
Thiergarten in Berlin.
"The means that we should be compelled to employ in such a case to
reduce those two squadrons, or expeditions, or whatever they call
themselves, to something about as unsubstantial as that," replied the
doctor, blowing a puff of cigarette smoke into the air.
At this moment Austin Vandel came up on to the wall, and handed a
piece of paper to his father.
"Just come through, dad," he said. "I reckon we've frozen that war
clean out."
The president opened the paper and read aloud:
"'Powers agree to stop war and settle matters of dispute by
arbitration if you will restore electric equilibrium in Europe.
Terms between you and Powers to be arranged at a council of
Sovereigns and Ministers presided over by myself. If this is
satisfactory, please reply, and stop your machinery. Conditions
becoming very serious in Europe.--(Signed) Edward R.I.'"
"Well," continued the president, "that means they've climbed down.
Doctor, I reckon we can switch off the engines now, couple up the
connections, and use the power for something else if it's wanted. What
do you think, viscount?"
"Certainly," replied Hardress. "If the Powers have accepted King
Edward's arbitration we can do nothing else; and, besides, if our not
entirely unexpected visitors allow themselves to be tempted to commit
any hostile act after that they will place themselves outside the law
of nations, and we shall be at liberty to deal with them as we
please."
"That's so," replied the president, looking lazily across the table at
Sophie and Adelaide. "Austin, you can go and telegraph to St John's
that we put ourselves entirely in King Edward's hands, and that the
engines have stopped. They'll have a few thunderstorms most likely,
but in twenty-four hours everything will be as it was before. You
might also mention that the French and Russian expeditions are here,
and that to-night we hope to have the leaders to dinner."
The dinner-party in the board-room of the works to which the guests
sat down at 8 P.M. was quite the strangest that had ever been given in
the Northern Hemisphere. It was a dinner given by the holders of a
citadel which had been proved to be the veritable throne of the
world-empire to four men who had come to the wilderness of Boothia
Land with the now practically avowed object of taking it from them by
force of arms.
For no other possible reason could these two peaceful expeditions have
sailed from Riga and le Havre to go to the North Pole, or as near to
it as might be, and arrive at the Magnetic Pole, bristling with
weapons, and obviously prepared to attack the works, situated as they
were on the territory of a friendly nation, as though they were a
fortress on hostile soil. Yet Vice-Admiral Alexis Nazanoff, in command
of the Russian expedition, came with Professor Josef Karnina in just
such friendly style as did Vice-Admiral Dumont and ex-Captain Victor
Fargeau, late of the German staff-corps.
They were all far too well versed in the ways of war or diplomacy not
to be considerably surprised at the nature of their reception, even as
they were at the colossal dimensions of the buildings which at the
bidding of the magic of millions had arisen in the midst of this
inhospitable wilderness. They had expected a fleet of guardships
protecting the entrance to the harbour, and they would not have been
surprised if their passage through the narrow Lankester Sound had been
prevented by torpedos, or opposed by privateers equipped by the Trust;
and for that reason they had mounted their guns and felt their way for
days at the rate of two or three knots an hour through the narrow
passages which led southward to Port Adelaide, but all they had seen
was the fleeting shape of a white-painted yacht, the now world-famous
_Nadine_, scouting on the horizon and then vanishing into the grey
twilight of the long northern day.
Not only had they been permitted to anchor in the natural harbour
which formed the only approach by sea to the works without the
slightest notice being taken of them, but, most wonderful of all, Lord
Orrel, the English nobleman who was one of the three directors of the
Trust, had come down with Count Valdemar, who, with his daughter, had
organised the Russian expedition, to invite them to dinner in just as
friendly a fashion as they might have done if Boothia Land had been
Paris, and the Great Storage Works the Hotel Bristol.
The situation was distinctly mystifying, and therefore not without its
elements of uneasiness--even perhaps of something keener, and the
uneasiness and the fear were amply shared by the friends whom they met
so unexpectedly within the four walls of the great world-citadel.
But astonishment became wonder when the two admirals, clad in their
full-dress uniforms, found themselves and their scientific colleagues
ushered into first a luxuriously-appointed reception-room lighted by
softly-shaded electric lamps, where the president of the Trust, the
multi-millionaire magnate, the king of commerce, who played with
millions as boys play with counters, dispensed cocktails from a bar
which might have been spirited away from the Waldorf-Astoria, and the
men and women, friends and enemies, received them in costumes which
might have come straight from Poole's or Worth's.
Then, when the cocktails had been duly concocted and consumed, and
Lord Orrel's own butler announced that dinner was served, Lady Olive,
as chatelaine of the castle, took the Russian admiral's arm and led
the way through the curtained archway into the softly-lighted
dining-room, so perfectly appointed that it might well have been
spirited from London or Paris or Petersburg to the wilderness of
Boothia.
The French admiral followed with Countess Sophie, Count Valdemar with
the marquise, and Lord Orrel with Miss Chrysie, the rest of the men
bringing up the rear.
The dinner, as Admiral Dumont said afterwards to Admiral Nazanoff, was
a gastronomic miracle. Wines, soup, fish, and so on, were perfect; it
was a wonder in the wilderness. But even more wonderful still was the
conversation which flowed so easily around the table. No one listening
to it would have dreamt that the greatest war of modern times had been
brought to a state of utter paralysis by the quiet-spoken men who were
so lavishly entertaining enemies who had come to dispossess them of
the throne of the world, any more than they would have dreamt that the
elements of a possible revolution, greater than any that had yet
shaken the foundations of the world, were gathered round that
glittering, daintily-adorned dinner-table.
But when Lady Olive rose and led the way back to the drawing-room Lord
Orrel began the serious business of the evening by asking Hardress and
Doctor Lamson to pass a couple of decanters of '47 port, from the
cellars of Orrel Court, to their guests. When the decanters had gone
round and the glasses were filled, Lord Orrel raised his own glass,
and said:
"Well, gentlemen, the time has come for me to formally and yet not the
less cordially bid you welcome to Boothia Land. We understood before
we left England that you were bound on a voyage of discovery to the
North Pole; to that goal which so many brave men have tried to reach,
and which has so far been unattainable."
Then his voice dropped to a sterner tone, and he went on:
"I wish to ask you, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, those who
are working with me in the enterprise which you have to-day seen in
concrete form, whether your visit is one of peace or war. Those, I am
well aware, are grave words to use, yet, under the strange
circumstances which have brought us together, I must ask you to
believe me that it is necessary, even inevitable, that they should be
used. If you have paid a visit to Boothia Land and the Storage Works
only in the interests of science, I can assure you that we and our
staff will spare no pains to show you everything that can be seen.
"Considering the slow rate at which you have been compelled by
circumstances to travel from Halifax, it may not be within your
knowledge that since you left Europe we have happily been able to stop
a great European war. We have paralysed the fleets and armies of a
continent, and the warships of Europe are now resting motionless in
dockyards or lying as wrecks on the sands and rocks of the coasts. The
great Powers have, in short, found it impossible to prosecute the war
without our consent--for, as a matter of fact, their armies were
starving to death in face of each other--and have consented to place
their difference in the hands of King Edward. The German Emperor, the
President of the French Republic, and the Ministers of all the Powers
engaged have assented to this. Here is a transcript of a dispatch
received from London to-day, which will, I hope, convince you that the
world is, happily, once more at peace. Therefore it is, of course,
impossible that your mission can be anything but a peaceful one."
The two admirals and Victor Fargeau had been looking at each other
somewhat uneasily while Lord Orrel was speaking. They had no idea of
the events which had been taking place in Europe during the last
fortnight. What Lord Orrel had said might be true or simply a
deliberate attempt to frighten them out of their purpose; but whether
he was telling the truth or not, there were still the sealed orders
with which both expeditions had sailed, and obedience is the first
duty of a sailor. So when Lord Orrel continued:
"And, that being so, gentlemen, I hope you will be able to join me in
a glass of wine and drink to continued peace to Europe, and prosperity
to the enterprise which has so far been successfully carried through
by those who have the honour to be your hosts to-night."
"My lord," said the Russian admiral, rising to his feet, but not
taking his glass, "you have been honest with us, and we--I speak for
my colleague, Admiral Dumont, as well--cannot be less than honest with
you. It is not necessary for me to remind you that scientific Polar
expeditions do not carry such guns as we do--guns which, great and all
as these buildings are, could wreck them in a few hours. You have been
frank with us, we will be frank with you. We know nothing of this
mysterious power by which, as your lordship says, you have stopped the
war in Europe. As servants of our countries, we know only the orders
we have received, and those are either to compel the surrender of
these works into our hands, or destroy them. We accepted your
hospitality in the hope that we might be able to make terms for a
peaceable surrender."
"And that, sir," said Hardress, starting to his feet, "I may as well
tell you at once, is impossible. You can no more take or destroy these
works than the European armies could fight each other three days ago.
You are our guests now, and therefore safe from all harm. You are at
liberty to rejoin your ships at any time you please. If you choose to
leave us in peace and take your way back you may go, and there will be
an end of the matter. But it is only my duty to tell you that if a
shot is fired with intent to injure any portion of these works, you
and your ships will not only be destroyed, you will be annihilated."