The World Masters Read online

  CHAPTER II

  "And so, Monsieur le Ministre, I am to take that as your final word? Ihave given you every proof that I can--saving the impossible--thebringing of my apparatus from Strassburg to Paris, which, of course,you know is an impossibility, since it would have to cross thefrontier, which was once a French high road. I have shown you thefacts, the figures, the drawings--everything. Can you not see that Iam honest, that I love my country, from which I have been torn away--Iwho come from a family that has lived in Alsace since it was firstFrench territory--I who am a Frenchman through five generations--I whohave sold my son to the Prussians--I who have masqueraded for years inthe Prussian University of Strassburg, once the Queen of the RhineProvince--I who have discovered a secret which has lain buried sincethe days of the great Faraday--I who have discovered, or I should sayre-discovered, after him the true theory, and, what is more, theactual working of the magnetic tides which flow north and souththrough the two hemispheres to the pole--I who can give you, Monsieurle Ministre, and through you France, the control of those tides, sothat you may make them ebb and flow as the tides of the seado--prosperity with the flow, adversity with the ebb, that is what itcomes to--ah, it is incredible!

  "Once more, not as a scientist, not as an inventor, but only as aloyal son of France, let me implore you, Monsieur le Ministre, not toregard what I have told you as the dream of an enthusiast who has onlydreamt and not done."

  "If you have done as much as you say, Monsieur," replied the FrenchMinister of War, leaning back in his chair and twisting up the leftpoint of his moustache as he looked coldly and incredulously acrosshis desk at Doctor Emil Fargeau, late Professor of Physical Science atthe University of Strassburg, "how comes it that you have not beenable to bring actual, tangible proofs to me here in Paris? Why, forinstance, could you not have performed the miracle that you have justbeen telling me about in one of our laboratories in Paris? If you haddone that--well, we might have investigated the miracle, and, afterinvestigation, might have some conviction--a conviction, if you willpardon me saying so, which might have enabled us to overcome the verynatural prejudice that the Government of the Republic may be expectedto have against a man of ancient family, whose ancestors had beenFrench subjects for, as you say, five generations, but who has becomehimself a German subject, and has permitted his son, his only son, toenter the Prussian service, and has endured the shame of seeing himrise year after year, rank upon rank, in the favour of the man who isdestined to be to Germany what the Great Napoleon was to France.

  "No, sir, I cannot believe you; I can understand what you have told meabout what you call your invention, but understanding withoutconviction is like hunger without a good dinner. I am not satisfied.Bring your apparatus here; let me see it work. Convince me that youcan do what you say, and all that you ask for is yours; but withoutconviction I can guarantee you nothing.

  "With every consideration that is due to the position that you haveoccupied in what may be called the enemy's country, the stolenprovinces, I must take leave to say that very few days pass without aninterview of this kind. I assure you, my dear sir, that saviours ofour country and regainers of the Lost Provinces are to be counted byhundreds, but we have not yet found one whose scheme is capable ofsustaining a practical test."

  "But, Monsieur le Ministre, I can assure you with equal faith thatthis is not a scheme, a theory, a something in the air. On thecontrary, it is a theory reduced to fact--solid fact; what I have saidto you I can do before you. I can convince you----"

  "Exactly, my dear sir, exactly," said the Minister; "you will notthink me discourteous if I say that within the last six months I havehad visits from inventors of air-ships who could create aerial navieswhich would assume the dominion of the air, annihilate armies andfleets, and make fortifications useless because impotent. Others havecome to me with plans which, if the theory could only have beentranslated into practice, would have given us a submarine navy whichin six months would have sunk every cruiser and battleship on theocean. In fact, in one of the drawers of this very bureau I have amost exactly detailed scheme for diverting the Gulf Stream through themuch-lamented Panama Canal into the Pacific, and so reducing theBritish Islands, the home of our ancient enemies, to the conditions--Imean, of course, the climatic conditions, of Labrador. That is to say,that nine months in the year London, Southampton, Plymouth, Liverpool,Glasgow, to say nothing of the ports on the east and the south, wouldbe frozen up. The British Navy--that curse of the world--could notoperate; Britain's shipping trade would be paralysed, and after thather industries. They are free-traders, and so they don't believe it;but it would be if it could be done. But it could not be done,Monsieur; and that is the objection which I have to this mostsplendidly promising scheme of yours."

  "But, Monsieur le Ministre, I assure that it is only a questionof--well, I will say a few thousand francs to convince you that I amnot one of those scientific adventurers who have perhaps imposed onthe credulity of the Government before. What I have described to youis the truth--the truth as I have wrought it by my own labour, as Ihave seen it with my own eyes, as I have finished it with my ownhand."

  "Tres bien, Monsieur! Then all you have to do is, as I said before, tobring your apparatus here, perform the same experiment before acommittee of experts, and if you break the piece of steel as you woulda piece of glass--voila, c'est fini! We are convinced, and what youask for will be granted."

  "But, Monsieur le Ministre, nothing could be fairer than that; onlyyou have not remembered what I told you during our last interview. Ihave spent hundreds of thousands of francs to bring this idea of mineto perfection. I have spent every centime----"

  "Pfennige I think you should call them, Professor," interrupted theMinister, with a perceptible sneer. "I am afraid you are forgettingyour new nationality; and, since you are a German subject, living inGerman territory, as it now is, it is permissible for me to ask whythis wonderful invention of yours was not offered first toGermany--that is to say, if it has not already been offered andrefused."

  As the Minister of War spoke these few momentous words, accentuatingthem with his pen on the blotting-pad in front of him, Doctor Fargeauarose from his seat on the other side of the desk, and said, in avoice which would have been stronger had it not been broken by anuncontrollable emotion:

  "Monsieur le Ministre, you have spoken, and, officially, the matter isfinished. Through you I have offered France the Empire of the World.Through you France has refused it. You ask me to bring my apparatushere to Paris, to prove that it is a question of practice, not oftheory. I cannot do it, and why?--because, as I told you, I have spentevery centime, or pfennige, if you like, in making this thingpossible.

  "Everything is gone: the farms and vineyards that have been ours sincethe days of St Louis are mortgaged. We are homeless. I have no home togo back to. I have borrowed more than I can pay; I trusted everythingto you, to the intelligence and patriotism of France. I have not evenenough money to take me back to the home that I have ruined for thesake of France and her lost provinces. It was impossible to think thatyou would disbelieve me. A thousand francs, Monsieur le Ministre,would be enough--enough to save me from ruin, and to make France themistress of the world. Even out of your own pocket, it would not bevery much. Think, I implore you, of all that I have suffered andsacrificed; of all the hours that I have spent in making this greatideal a reality----"

  "And which, if you will excuse me saying so, monsieur," replied theMinister, rising rather sharply from his seat, "has yet to be provedto our satisfaction, to be a concrete reality instead of a dream--thedream of an enthusiast who does not even possess the credit of havingremained a Frenchman. If, indeed, your personal necessities are sopressing, and a fifty-franc note would be of any use to you--well,seeing that you were once a Frenchman----"

  As he said this the Minister took his pocket-book out, and, as he didso, Doctor Fargeau sprang from his seat, and said, in quick, huskytones:

  "Mais, non, Monsieur le Ministre! I came here not to ask for c
harity,but to give France the dominion of the world. Those whom she haschosen as her advisers have treated me either as a lunatic or a quack.Very well, let it be so. Through you I have offered to France apriceless gift; you have refused it for the sake of a paltry thousandfrancs or so. Very well, you will see the end of this, though I shallnot. I have devoted my life to this ideal. I have dreamt the dream ofFrance the Mistress of the World, as she was in the days of la GrandeMonarque. I have found the means of realising the ideal. You and thosewho with you rule the destinies of France have refused to accept mystatements as true. On your heads be it, as the Moslems say. I havedone. If this dream of mine should ever be heard of again, if itshould ever be realised, France may some day learn how much she haslost through her official incredulity."

  Emil Fargeau left the Minister of War a broken man--broken in mind andheart as well as in means. In youth it is easy, in early manhood it ispossible, to survive the sudden destruction of a life's ideal; butwhen the threescore years have been counted, and the dream and thelabours of half a lifetime are suddenly brought to nought, it isanother matter. It is ruin--utter and hopeless; and so it was withEmil Fargeau.

  He had risked everything on what he had honestly believed to be thecertainty of his marvellous discovery being taken up and developed bythe French Government. In fact, he was so certain of it, that, beforeleaving his laboratory at Strassburg, he had taken the precaution todestroy the essential parts of his accumulator, lest, during hisabsence, his sanctum might be invaded and some one stumble by accidenton his discovery. In a word, he had staked everything and losteverything. To go back was impossible. Everything he had was sold ormortgaged. He had been kept by official delays more than a fortnightin Paris, and he had barely a hundred francs left, and even of thismore than half would be necessary to pay his modest hotel bill for theweek.

  And then, worse than all, there was that fatal indiscretion into whichhe had permitted his enthusiasm to betray him--an indiscretion whichplaced him absolutely at the mercy of a German Jew money-lender, who,under the rigid laws of Germany, could send him to penal servitude forthe rest of his life.

  No, there was no help for it; there was only one way out of theterrible impasse into which his enthusiasm, and that moral weaknesswhich is so often associated with great intellectual power, had ledhim, and that way he took.

  He went back to his hotel, and spent about an hour in writing letters.One of these was directed to Captain Victor Fargeau, German Embassy,Petersburg. Another was directed to Reuss Weinthal, Judenstrasse,Strassburg. The third, without date or signature, he placed in alittle air-tight tin case, with the complete specifications of hisdiscovery.

  He took off his coat and waistcoat, and fastened this to his body sothat it just came in the small of his back. Then, when he had dressedhimself and put on a light overcoat, he took a small handbag, forappearance's sake, walked to the Nord Station, and took a second-classticket to Southampton, _via_ le Havre.

  At midnight the steamer was in mid-channel, and Emil Fargeau wastaking his last look on sea and sky from the fore-deck. For a momenthe looked back eastward over the dark waters towards the land of hisruined hopes, and murmured brokenly:

  "My beautiful France, I have offered you the Empire of the World, butthe dolts and idiots you have chosen to govern you have refused it.'Tant pis pour toi'! Now I will give the secret to the Fates--toreveal it or to keep it hidden for ever, as they please. For me it isthe end!"

  As the last words left his lips he took a rapid glance round thedeserted deck, and slipped over the rail into the creaming water thatwas swirling past the vessel's side. In another moment one of thewhirling screws had caught him and smashed him out of human shape, andwhat was left of him, with the little tin box containing the secretsof a world-empire lashed to it, went floating away in the broad wakethat the steamer left behind it.