Jennie Baxter, Journalist

R >> Robert Barr >> Jennie Baxter, Journalist

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

"There," she said, "we are quite safe from interruption, Professor
Seigfried; but I must request you not to move from your chair."

"I have no intention of doing so," murmured the old man. "Who sent you?
You said you would tell me. I think you owe me an explanation."

"I think you owe me one," replied the girl. "As I told you before,
no one sent me. I came here entirely of my own accord, and I shall
endeavour to make clear to you exactly why I came. Some time ago there
occurred in this city a terrific explosion--"

"Where? When?" exclaimed the old man, placing his hands on the arms of
his chair, as if he would rise to his feet.

"Sit where you are," commanded Jennie firmly, "and I shall tell you all
I can about it. The Government, for reasons of its own, desires to keep
the fact of this explosion a secret, and thus very few people outside
of official circles know anything about it. I am trying to discover the
cause of that disaster."

"Are you--are you working on behalf of the Government?" asked the old
man eagerly, a tremor of fear in his quavering voice.

"No. I am conducting my investigations quite independently of the
Government."

"But why? But why? That is what I don't understand."

"I would very much rather not answer that question."

"But that question--everything is involved in that question. I must know
why you are here. If you are not in the employ of the Government, in
whose employ are you?"

"If I tell you," said Jennie with some hesitation, "will you keep what I
say a secret?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried the scientist impatiently.

"Well, I am in the service of a London daily newspaper."

"I see, I see; and they have sent you here to publish broadcast over
the world all you can find out of my doings. I knew you were a spy the
moment I saw you. I should never have let you in."

"My dear sir, the London paper is not even aware of your existence. They
have not sent me to you at all. They have sent me to learn, if possible,
the cause of the explosion I spoke of. I took some of the _debris_ to
Herr Feltz to analyze it, and he said he had never seen gold, iron,
feldspar, and all that, reduced to such fine, impalpable grains as was
the case with the sample I left with him. I then asked him who in Vienna
knew most about explosives, and he gave me your address. That is why I
am here."

"But the explosion--you have not told me when and where it occurred!"

"That, as I have said, is a Government secret."

"But you stated you are not in the Government employ, therefore it can
be no breach of confidence if you let me have full particulars."

"I suppose not. Very well, then, the explosion occurred after midnight
on the seventeenth in the vault of the Treasury."

The old man, in spite of the prohibition, rose uncertainly to his feet.

Jennie sprang up and said menacingly, "Stay where you are!"

"I am not going to touch you. If you are so suspicious of every move
I make, then go yourself and bring me what I want. There is a map of
Vienna pinned against the wall yonder. Bring it to me."

Jennie proceeded in the direction indicated. It was an ordinary map of
the city of Vienna, and as Jennie took it down she noticed that across
the southern part of the city a semi-circular line in pencil had been
drawn. Examining it more closely, she saw that the stationary part of
the compass had been placed on the spot where stood the building which
contained the Professor's studio. She paid closer attention to the
pencil mark and observed that it passed through the Treasury building.

"Don't look at that map!" shrieked the Professor, beating the air with
his hands. "I asked you to bring it to me. Can't you do a simple action
like that without spying about?"

Jennie rapidly unfastened the paper from the wall and brought it to him.
The scientist scrutinized it closely, adjusting his glasses the better
to see, then deliberately tore the map into fragments, numerous and
minute. He rose--and this time Jennie made no protest--went to the
window, opened it, and flung the fluttering bits of paper out into the
air, the strong wind carrying them far over the roofs of Vienna. Closing
the casement, he came back to his chair.

"Was--was anyone hurt at this explosion?" he asked presently.

"Yes, four men were killed instantly, a dozen were seriously injured and
are now in hospital."

"Oh, my God--my God!" cried the old man, covering his face with his
hands, swaying from side to side in his chair like a man tortured with
agony and remorse. At last he lifted a face that had grown more pinched
and yellow within the last few minutes.

"I can tell you nothing," he said, moistening his parched lips.

"You mean that you _will_ tell me nothing, for I see plainly that you
know everything."

"I knew nothing of any explosion until you spoke of it. What have I to
do with the Treasury or the Government?"

"That is just what I want to know."

"It is absurd. I am no conspirator, but a man of learning."

"Then you have nothing to fear, Herr Seigfried. If you are innocent, why
are you so loth to give me any assistance in this matter?"

"It has nothing to do with me. I am a scientist--I am a scientist. All
I wish is to be left alone with my studies. I have nothing to do with
governments or newspapers, or anything belonging to them."

Jennie sat tracing a pattern on the dusty floor with the point of her
parasol. She spoke very quietly:--

"The pencilled line which you drew on the map of Vienna passed through
the Treasury building; the centre of the circle was this garret. Why did
you draw that pencilled semi-circle? Why were you anxious that I should
not see you had done so? Why did you destroy the map?"

Professor Seigfried sat there looking at her with dropped jaw, but he
made no reply.

"If you will excuse my saying so," the girl went on, "you are acting
very childishly. It is evident to me that you are no criminal, yet if
the Director of Police had been in my place he would have arrested you
long ago, and that merely because of your own foolish actions."

"The map proved nothing," he said at last, haltingly, "and besides, both
you and the Director will now have some difficulty in finding it."

"That is further proof of your folly. The Director doesn't need to find
it. I am here to testify that I saw the map, saw the curved line passing
through the Treasury, and saw you destroy what you thought was an
incriminating piece of evidence. It would be much better if you would
deal as frankly with me as I have done with you. Then I shall give you
the best advice I can--if my advice will be of any assistance to you."

"Yes, and publish it to all the world."

"It will have to be published to all the world in any case, for, if I
leave here without full knowledge, I will simply go to the police office
and there tell what I have learned in this room."

"And if I do speak, you will still go to the Director of the Police and
tell him what you have discovered."

"No, I give you my word that I will not."

"What guarantee have I of that?" asked the old man suspiciously.

"No guarantee at all except my word!"

"Will you promise not to print in your paper what I tell you?"

"No, I cannot promise that!"

"Still, the newspaper doesn't matter," continued the scientist. "The
story would be valueless to you, because no one would believe it. There
is little use in printing a story in a newspaper that will be laughed
at, is there? However, I think you are honest, otherwise you would have
promised not to print a line of what I tell you, and then I should have
known you were lying. It was as easy to promise that as to say you would
not tell the Director of Police. I thought at first some scientific
rival had sent you here to play the spy on me, and learn what I was
doing. I assure you I heard nothing about the explosion you speak of,
yet I was certain it had occurred somewhere along that line which I drew
on the map. I had hoped it was not serious, and begun to believe it was
not. The anxiety of the last month has nearly driven me insane, and, as
you say quite truly, my actions have been childish." The old man in his
excitement had risen from his chair and was now pacing up and down the
room, running his fingers distractedly through his long white hair, and
talking more to himself than to his auditor.

Jennie had edged her chair nearer to the door, and had made no protest
against his rising, fearing to interrupt his flow of talk and again
arouse his suspicions.

"I have no wish to protect my inventions. I have never taken out a
patent in my life. What I discover I give freely to the world, but I
will not be robbed of my reputation as a scientist. I want my name to go
down to posterity among those of the great discoverers. You talked just
now of going to the police and telling them what you knew. Foolish
creature! You could no more have gone to the central police office
without my permission, or against my will, than you could go to the
window and whistle back those bits of paper I scattered to the winds.
Before you reached the bottom of the stairs I could have laid Vienna
in a mass of ruins. Yes, I could in all probability have blown up the
entire Empire of Austria. The truth is, that I do not know the limit of
my power, nor dare I test it."

"Oh, this is a madman!" thought Jennie, as she edged still nearer to the
door. The old man paused in his walk and turned fiercely upon her.

"You don't believe me?" he said.

"No, I do not," she answered, the colour leaving her cheeks.

The aged wizard gave utterance to a hideous chuckle. He took from one of
his numerous shelves a hammer-head without the handle, and for a moment
Jennie thought he was going to attack her; but he merely handed the
metal to her and said,--

"Break that in two. Place it between your palms and grind it to powder."

"You know that is absurd; I cannot do it."

"Why can't you do it?"

"Because it is of steel."

"That is no reason. Why can't you do it?"

He glared at her fiercely over his glasses, and she saw in his wild eye
all the enthusiasm of an instructor enlightening a pupil.

"I'll tell you why you can't do it; because every minute particle of
it is held together by an enormous force. It may be heated red-hot
and beaten into this shape and that, but still the force hangs on as
tenaciously as the grip of a giant. Now suppose I had some substance,
a drop of which, placed on that piece of iron, would release the force
which holds the particles together--what would happen?"

"I don't know," replied Jennie.

"Oh, yes you do!" cried the Professor impatiently; "but you are like
every other woman--you won't take the trouble to think. What would
happen is this. The force that held the particles together would be
released, and the hammer would fall to powder like that gold you showed
me. The explosion that followed, caused by the sudden release of the
power, would probably wreck this room and extinguish both our lives. You
understand that, do you not?"

"Yes, I think I do."

"Well, here is something you won't understand, and probably won't
believe when you hear it. There is but one force in this world and but
one particle of matter. There is only one element, which is the basis of
everything. All the different shapes and conditions of things that we
see are caused by a mere variation of that force in conjunction with
numbers of that particle. Am I getting beyond your depth?"

"I am afraid you are, Professor."

"Of course; I know what feeble brains the average woman is possessed
of; still, try and keep that in your mind. Now listen to this. I have
discovered how to disunite that force and that particle. I can, with
a touch, fling loose upon this earth a giant whose strength is
irresistible and immeasurable."

"Then why object to making your discovery public?"

"In the first place, because there are still a thousand things and more
to be learned along such a line of investigation. The moment a man
announces his discoveries, he is first ridiculed, then, when the truth
of what he affirms is proven, there rise in every part of the world
other men who say that they knew all about it ten years ago, and will
prove it too--at least, far enough to delude a gullible world; in the
second because I am a humane man, I hesitate to spread broadcast a
knowledge that would enable any fool to destroy the universe. Then there
is a third reason. There is another who, I believe, has discovered how
to make this force loosen its grip on the particle--that is Keely, of
Philadelphia, in the United States--"

"What! You don't mean the Keely motor man?" cried Jennie, laughing.
"That arrant humbug! Why, all the papers in the world have exposed his
ridiculous pretensions; he has done nothing but spend other people's
money."

"Yes, the newspapers have ridiculed him. Human beings have, since the
beginning of the world, stoned their prophets. Nevertheless, he has
liberated a force that no gauge made by man can measure. He has been
boastful, if you like, and has said that with a teacupful of water he
would drive a steamship across the Atlantic. I have been silent, working
away with my eye on him, and he has been working away with his eye on
me, for each knows what the other is doing. If either of us discovers
how to control this force, then that man's name will go down to
posterity for ever. He has not yet been able to do it; neither have I.
There is still another difference between us. He appears to be able to
loosen that force in his own presence; I can only do it at a distance.
All my experiments lately have been in the direction of making
modifications with this machine, so as to liberate the force within
the compass, say, of this room; but the problem has baffled me. The
invisible rays which this machine sends out, and which will penetrate
stone, iron, wood, or any other substance, must unite at a focus, and
I have not been able to bring that focus nearer me than something over
half a mile. Last summer I went to an uninhabited part of Switzerland
and there continued my experiments. I blew up at will rocks and boulders
on the mountain sides, the distances varying from a mile to half a mile.
I examined the results of the disintegration, and when you came in and
showed me that gold, I recognized at once that someone had discovered
the secret I have been trying to fathom for the last ten years. I
thought that perhaps you had come from Keely. I am now convinced that
the explosion you speak of in the Treasury was caused by myself. This
machine, which you so recklessly threatened to throw out of the window,
accidentally slipped from its support when I was working here some
time after midnight on the seventeenth. I placed it immediately as you
see it now, where it throws its rays into mid-air, and is consequently
harmless; but I knew an explosion must have taken place in Vienna
somewhere within the radius of half a mile. I drew the pencilled
semi-circle that you saw on the map of Vienna, for in my excitement
in placing the machine upright I had not noticed exactly where it had
pointed, but I knew that, along the line I had drawn, an explosion must
have occurred, and could only hope that it had not been a serious one,
which it seems it was. I waited and waited, hardly daring to leave my
attic, but hearing no news of any disaster, I was torn between the
anxiety that would naturally come to any humane man in my position
who did not wish to destroy life, and the fear that, if nothing had
occurred, I had not actually made the discovery I thought I had made.
You spoke of my actions being childish; but when I realized that I had
myself been the cause of the explosion, a fear of criminal prosecution
came over me. Not that I should object to imprisonment if they would
allow me to continue my experiments; but that, doubtless, they would not
do, for the authorities know nothing of science, and care less."

In spite of her initial scepticism, Jennie found herself gradually
coming to believe in the efficiency of the harmless-looking mechanism of
glass and iron which she saw on the table before her, and a sensation of
horror held her spellbound as she gazed at it. Its awful possibilities
began slowly to develop in her mind, and she asked breathlessly,--"What
would happen if you were to turn that machine and point it towards the
centre of the earth?"

"I told you what would happen. Vienna would lie in ruins, and possibly
the whole Austrian Empire, and perhaps some adjoining countries would
become a mass of impalpable dust. It may be that the world itself would
dissolve. I cannot tell what the magnitude of the result might be, for
I have not dared to risk the experiment."

"Oh, this is too frightful to think about," she cried. "You must destroy
the machine, Professor, and you must never make another."

"What! And give up the hope that my name will descend to posterity?"

"Professor Seigfried, when once this machine becomes known to the world,
there will be no posterity for your name to descend to. With the present
hatred of nation against nation, with different countries full of those
unimprisoned maniacs whom we call Jingoes--men preaching the hatred of
one people against another--how long do you think the world will last
when once such knowledge is abroad in it?"

The Professor looked longingly at the machine he had so slowly and
painfully constructed.

"It would be of much use to humanity if it were but benevolently
employed. With the coal fields everywhere diminishing, it would supply a
motive force for the universe that would last through the ages."

"Professor Seigfried," exclaimed Jennie earnestly, "when the Lord
permits a knowledge of that machine to become common property, it is His
will that the end of the world shall come."

The Professor said nothing, but stood with deeply wrinkled brow, gazing
earnestly at the mechanism. In his hand was the hammer-head which he had
previously given to the girl; his arm went up and down as if he were
estimating its weight; then suddenly, without a word of warning, he
raised it and sent it crashing through the machine, whose splintering
glass fell with a musical tinkle on the floor.

Jennie gave a startled cry, and with a low moan the Professor struggled
to his chair and fell, rather than sat down, in it. A ghastly pallor
overspread his face, and the girl in alarm ran again to the cupboard,
poured out some brandy and offered it to him, then tried to pour it down
his throat, but his tightly set teeth resisted her efforts. She chafed
his rigid hands, and once he opened his eyes, slowly shaking his head.

"Try to sip this brandy," she said, seeing his jaws relax.

"It is useless," he murmured with difficulty. "My life was in the
instrument, as brittle as the glass. I have--"

He could say no more. Jennie went swiftly downstairs to the office of a
physician, on the first floor, which she had noticed as she came up.

The medical man, who knew of the philosopher, but was not personally
acquainted with him, for the Professor had few friends, went up the
steps three at a time, and Jennie followed him more slowly. He met the
girl at the door of the attic.

"It is useless," he said. "Professor Seigfried is dead; and it is my
belief that in his taking away Austria has lost her greatest scientist."

"I am sure of it," answered the girl, with trembling voice; "but perhaps
after all it is for the best."

"I doubt that," said the doctor. "I never feel so like quarrelling with
Providence as when some noted man is removed right in the midst of his
usefulness."

"I am afraid," replied Jennie solemnly, "that we have hardly reached a
state of development that would justify us in criticizing the wisdom of
Providence. In my own short life I have seen several instances where it
seemed that Providence intervened for the protection of His creatures;
and even the sudden death of Professor Seigfried does not shake my
belief that Providence knows best."

She turned quickly away and went down the stairs in some haste. At the
outer door she heard the doctor call down, "I must have your name and
address, please."

But Jennie did not pause to answer. She had no wish to undergo
cross-examination at an inquest, knowing that if she told the truth she
would not be believed, while if she attempted to hide it, unexpected
personal inconvenience might arise from such a course. She ran rapidly
to the street corner, hailed a fiacre and drove to a distant part of the
city; then she dismissed the cab, went to a main thoroughfare, took a
tramcar to the centre of the town, and another cab to the Palace.

CHAPTER XVII.

JENNIE ENGAGES A ROOM IN A SLEEPING CAR.

Jennie had promised Professor Seigfried not to communicate with the
Director of Police, and she now wondered whether it would be breaking
her word, or not, if she let that official know the result of her
investigation, when it would make no difference, one way or the other,
to the Professor. If Professor Seigfried could have foreseen his own
sudden death, would he not, she asked herself, have preferred her to
make public all she knew of him? for had he not constantly reiterated
that fame, and the consequent transmission of his name to posterity, was
what he worked for? Then there was this consideration: if the Chief of
Police was not told how the explosion had been caused, his fruitless
search would go futilely on, and, doubtless, in the course of police
inquiry, many innocent persons would be arrested, put to inconvenience
and expense, and there was even a chance that one or more, who had
absolutely nothing to do with the affair, might be imprisoned for life.
She resolved, therefore, to tell the Director of the Police all she
knew, which she would not have done had Professor Seigfried been alive.
She accordingly sent a messenger for the great official, and just as she
had begun to relate to the impatient Princess what had happened, he was
announced. The three of them held convention in Jennie's drawing-room
with locked doors.

"I am in a position," began Jennie, "to tell you how the explosion in
the Treasury was caused and who caused it; but before doing so you must
promise to grant me two favours, each of which is in your power to
bestow without inconvenience."

"What are they?" asked the Director of Police cautiously.

"To tell what they are is to tell part of my story. You must first
promise blindly, and afterwards keep your promise faithfully."

"Those are rather unusual terms, Miss Baxter," said the Chief; "but I
accede to them, the more willingly as we have found that all the gold is
still in the Treasury, as you said it was."

"Very well, then, the first favour is that I shall not be called to
give testimony when an inquest is held on the body of Professor Carl
Seigfried."

"You amaze me!" cried the Director; "how did you know he was dead? I had
news of it only a moment before I left my office."

"I was with him when he died," said Jennie simply, which statement
drew forth an exclamation of surprise from both the Princess and the
Director. "My next request is that you destroy utterly a machine which
stands on a table near the centre of the Professor's room. Perhaps the
instrument is already disabled--I believe it is--but, nevertheless, I
shall not rest content until you have seen that every vestige of it is
made away with, because the study of what is left of it may enable some
other scientist to put it in working order again. I entreat you to
attend to this matter yourself. I will go with you, if you wish me
to, and point out the instrument in case it has been moved from its
position."

"The room is sealed," said the Director, "and nothing will be
touched until I arrive there. What is the nature of this instrument?"

"It is of a nature so deadly and destructive that, if it got into the
hands of an anarchist, he could, alone, lay the city of Vienna in
ruins."

"Good heavens!" cried the horrified official, whose bane was the
anarchist, and Jennie, in mentioning this particular type of criminal,
had builded better than she knew. If she had told him that the
Professor's invention might enable Austria to conquer all the
surrounding nations, there is every chance that the machine would have
been carefully preserved.

"The explosion in the Treasury vaults," continued Jennie, "was
accidentally caused by this instrument, although the machine at the
moment was in a garret half a mile away. You saw the terrible effect of
that explosion; imagine, then, the destruction it would cause in the
hands of one of those anarchists who are so reckless of consequences."

"I shall destroy the instrument with my own hands," asserted the
Director fervently, mopping his pallid brow.

Jennie then went on, to the increasing astonishment of the Princess and
the Director, and related every detail of her interview with the late
professor Carl Seigfried.

"I shall go at once and annihilate that machine," said the Director,
rising when the recital was finished. "I shall see to that myself. Then,
after the inquest, I shall give an order that everything in the attic
is to be destroyed. I wish that every scientific man on the face of the
earth could be safely placed behind prison bars."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16