Barr Robert
Jennie Baxter, Journalist
“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.”
“I am afraid that wouldn’t do much good,” replied Jennie, “unless you could prevent chemicals being smuggled in. The scientists would probably reduce your prison to powder, and walk calmly out through the dust.”
Mr. Hardwick had told Jennie that if she solved the Vienna mystery she would make a European reputation for the Daily Bugle. Jennie did more than was expected of her, yet the European reputation which the Bugle established was not one to be envied. It is true that the account printed of the cause of the explosion, dramatically completed with the Professor’s tragically sudden death, caused a great sensation in London. The comic papers of the week were full of illustrations showing the uses to which the Professor’s instrument might be put. To say that any sane man in England believed a word of the article would be to cast an undeserved slight upon the intelligence of the British public. No one paused to think that if a newspaper had published an account of what could be done by the Röentgen rays, without being able to demonstrate practically the truth of the assertions made, the contribution would have been laughed at. If some years ago a newspaper had stated that a man in York listened to the voice of a friend at that moment standing in London, and was not only able to hear what his friend said, but could actually recognize the voice speaking in an ordinary tone, and then if the paper had added that, unfortunately, the instrument which accomplished this had been destroyed, people would have denounced the sensational nature of modern journalism.
Letters poured in upon the editor, saying that while, as a general rule, the writers were willing to stand the ordinary lie of commerce daily printed in the sheet, there was a limit to their credulity and they objected to be taken for drivelling imbeciles. To complete the discomfiture of the Daily Bugle, the Government of Austria published an official statement, which Reuter and the special correspondents scattered broadcast over the earth. The statement was written in that calm, serious, and consistent tone which diplomatists use when uttering a falsehood of more than ordinary dimensions.
Irresponsible rumours had been floating about (the official proclamation began) to the effect that there had been an explosion in the Treasury at Vienna. It had been stated that a large quantity of gold had been stolen, and that a disaster of some kind had occurred in the Treasury vaults. Then a ridiculous story had been printed which asserted that Professor Seigfried, one of Austria’s honoured dead, had in some manner that savoured of the Black Art, encompassed this wholesale destruction. The Government now begged to make the following declarations: First, not a penny had been stolen out of the Treasury; second, the so-called war-chest was intact; third, the two hundred million florins reposed securely within the bolted doors of the Treasury vaults; fourth, the coins were not, as had been alleged, those belonging to various countries, which was a covert intimation that Austria had hostile intent against one or the other of those friendly nations. The whole coinage in this falsely named war-chest, which was not a war-chest at all, but merely the receptacle of a reserve fund which Austria possessed, was entirely in Austrian coinage; fifth, in order that these sensational and disquieting scandals should be set at rest, the Government announced that it intended to weigh this gold upon a certain date, and it invited representatives of the Press, from Russia, Germany, France, and England to witness this weighing.
The day after this troy-weight function had taken place in Vienna, long telegraphic accounts of it appeared in the English press, and several solemn leading articles were put forward in the editorial columns, which, without mentioning the name of the Daily Bugle, deplored the voracity of the sensational editor, who respected neither the amity which should exist between friendly nations, nor the good name of the honoured and respected dead, in his wolfish hunt for the daily scandal. Nothing was too high-spiced or improbable for him to print. He traded on the supposed gullibility of a fickle public. But, fortunately, in the long run, these staid sheets asserted, such actions recoiled upon the head of him who promulgated them. Sensational journals merited and received the scathing contempt of all honest men. Later on, one of the reviews had an article entitled “Some Aspects of Modern Journalism,” which battered in the head of the Daily Bugle as with a sledge hammer, and in one of the quarterlies a professor at Cambridge showed the absurdity of the alleged invention from a scientific point of view.
“I swear,” cried Mr. Hardwick, as he paced up and down his room, “that I shall be more careful after this in the handling of truth; it is a most dangerous thing to meddle with. If you tell the truth about a man, you are mulcted in a libel suit, and if you tell the truth about a nation, the united Press of the country are down upon you. Ah, well, it makes the battle of life all the more interesting, and we are baffled to fight better, as Browning says.”
The editor had sent for Miss Baxter, and she now sat by his desk while he paced nervously to and fro. The doors were closed and locked so that they might not be interrupted, and she knew by the editor’s manner that something important was on hand. Jennie had returned to London after a month’s stay in Vienna, and had been occupied for a week at her old routine work in the office.
“Now, Miss Baxter,” said the editor, when he had proclaimed his distrust of the truth as a workable material in journalism, “I have a plan to set before you, and when you know what it is, I am quite prepared to hear you refuse to have anything to do with it. And, remember, if you do undertake it, there is but one chance in a million of your succeeding. It is on this one chance that I propose now to send you to St. Petersburg—”
“To St. Petersburg!” echoed the girl in dismay.
“Yes,” said the editor, mistaking the purport of her ejaculation, “it is a very long trip, but you can travel there in great comfort, and I want you to spare no expense in obtaining for yourself every luxury that the various railway lines afford during your journey to St. Petersburg and back.”
“And what am I to go to St. Petersburg for?” murmured Jennie faintly.
“Merely for a letter. Here is what has happened, and what is happening. I shall mention no names, but at present a high and mighty personage in Russia, who is friendly to Great Britain, has written a private letter, making some proposals to a certain high and mighty personage in England, who is friendly to Russia. This communication is entirely unofficial; neither Government is supposed to know anything at all about it. As a matter of fact, the Russian Government have a suspicion, and the British Government have a certainty, that such a document will shortly be in transit. Nothing may come of it, or great things may come of it. Now on the night of the 21st, in one of the sleeping cars leaving St. Petersburg by the Nord Express for Berlin, there will travel a special messenger having this letter in his possession. I want you to take passage by that same train and secure a compartment near the messenger, if possible. This messenger will be a man in whom the respective parties to the negotiation have implicit confidence. I wish I knew his name, but I don’t; still, the chances are that he is leaving London for St. Petersburg about this time, and so you might keep your eyes open on your journey there, for, if you discovered him to be your fellow-passenger, it might perhaps make the business that comes after easier. You see this letter,” continued the editor, taking from a drawer in his desk a large envelope, the flap of which was secured by a great piece of stamped sealing-wax. “This merely contains a humble ordinary copy of to-day’s issue of the Bugle, but in outside appearance it might be taken for a duplicate of the letter which is to leave St. Petersburg on the 21st. Now, what I would like you to do is to take this envelope in your hand-bag, and if, on the journey back to London, you have an opportunity of securing the real letter, and leaving this in its place, you will have accomplished the greatest service you have yet done for the paper.”
“Oh!” cried Jennie, rising, “I couldn’t think of that, Mr. Hardwick—I couldn’t think of doing it. It is nothing short of highway robbery!”
“I know it looks like that,” pleaded Hardwick; “but listen to me. If I were going to open the letter and use its contents, then you might charge me with instigating theft. The fact is, the letter will not be delayed; it will reach the hands of the high and mighty personage in England quite intact. The only difference is that you will be its bearer instead of the messenger they send for it.”
“You expect to open the letter, then, in some surreptitious way—some way that will not be noticed afterwards? Oh, I couldn’t do it, Mr. Hardwick.”
“My dear girl, you are jumping at conclusions. I shall amaze you when I tell you that I know already practically what the contents of that letter are.”
“Then what is the use of going to all this expense and trouble trying to steal it?”
“Don’t say ‘steal it,’ Miss Baxter. I’ll tell you what my motive is. There is an official in England who has gone out of his way to throw obstacles in mine. This is needless and irritating, for generally I manage to get the news I am in quest of; but in several instances, owing to his opposition, I have not only not got the news, but other papers have. Now, since the general raking we have had over this Austrian business, quite aside from the fact that we published the exact truth, this stupid old official duffer has taken it upon himself to be exceedingly sneering and obnoxious to me, and I confess I want to take him down a peg. He hasn’t any idea that I know as much about this business as I do—in fact, he thinks it is an absolute secret; yet, if I liked, I could to-morrow nullify all the arrangements by simply publishing what is already in my possession, which action on my part would create a furore in this country, and no less of a furore in Russia. For the sake of amity between nations, which I am accused of disregarding, I hold my hand.
“Now, if you get possession of that communication, I want you to telegraph to me while you are en route for London, and I will meet you at the terminus; then I shall take the document direct to this official, even before the regular messenger has time to reach him. I shall say to the official, ‘There is the message from the high personage in Russia to the high personage in England. If you want the document, I will give it to you, but it must be understood that you are to be a little less friendly to certain other newspapers, and a little more friendly to mine, in future.’”
“And suppose he refuses your terms?”
“He won’t refuse them; but if he does I shall hand him the envelope just the same.”
“Well, honestly, Mr. Hardwick, I don’t think your scheme worth the amount of money it will cost, and, besides, the chance of my getting hold of the packet, which will doubtless be locked safely within a despatch box, and constantly under the eye of the messenger, is most remote.”
“I am more than willing to risk all that if you will undertake the journey. You speak lightly of my scheme, but that is merely because you do not understand the situation. Everything you have heretofore done has been of temporary advantage to the paper; but if you carry this off, I expect the benefit to the Bugle will be lasting. It will give me a standing with certain officials that I have never before succeeded in getting. In the first place, it will make them afraid of me, and that of itself is a powerful lever when we are trying to get information which they are anxious to give to some other paper.”
“Very well, Mr. Hardwick, I will try; though I warn you to expect nothing but failure. In everything else I have endeavoured to do, I have felt confident of success from the beginning. In this instance I am as sure I shall fail.”
“As I told you, Miss Baxter, the project is so difficult that your failure, if you do fail, will merely prove it to have been impossible, because I am sure that if anyone on earth could carry the project to success, you are that person; and, furthermore, I am very much obliged to you for consenting to attempt such a mission.”
And thus it was that Jennie Baxter found herself in due time in the great capital of the north, with a room in the Hotel de l’Europe overlooking the Nevski Prospect. In ordinary circumstances she would have enjoyed a visit to St. Petersburg; but now she was afraid to venture out, being under the apprehension that at any moment she might meet Lord Donal Stirling face to face, and that he would recognize her; therefore she remained discreetly in her room, watching the strange street scenes from her window. She found herself scrutinizing everyone who had the appearance of being an Englishman, and she had to confess to a little qualm of disappointment when the person in question proved to be some other than Lord Donal; in fact, during her short stay at St. Petersburg she saw nothing of the young man.
Jennie went, on the evening of her arrival, to the offices of the Sleeping Car Company, to secure a place in one of the carriages that left at six o’clock on the evening of the 21st. Her initial difficulty met her when she learned there were several sleeping cars on that train, and she was puzzled to know which to select. She stood there, hesitating, with the plans of the carriages on the table before her.
“You have ample choice,” said the clerk; “seats are not usually booked so long in advance, and only two places have been taken in the train, so far.”
“I should like to be in a carriage containing some English people,” said the girl, not knowing what excuse to give for her hesitation.
“Then let me recommend this car, for one compartment has been taken by the British Embassy—Room C, near the centre, marked with a cross.”
“Ah, well, I will take the compartment next to it—Room D, isn’t it?” said Jennie.
“Oh, I am sorry to say that also has been taken. Those are the two which are bespoken. I will see under what name Room D has been booked. Probably its occupant is English also. But I can give you Room B, on the other side of the one reserved by the Embassy. It is a two-berth room, Nos. 5 and 6.”
“That will do quite as well,” said Jennie.
The clerk looked up the order book, and then said,—
“It is not recorded here by whom Room D was reserved. As a usual thing,” he continued, lowering his voice almost to a whisper and looking furtively over his shoulder, “when no name is marked down, that means the Russian police. So, you see, by taking the third room you will not only be under the shadow of the British Embassy, but also under the protection of Russia. Do you wish one berth only, or the whole room? It is a two-berth compartment.”
“I desire the whole room, if you please.”
She paid the price and departed, wondering if the other room had really been taken by the police, and whether the authorities were so anxious for the safety of the special messenger that they considered it necessary to protect him to the frontier. If, in addition to the natural precautions of the messenger, there was added the watchfulness of one or two suspicious Russian policemen, then would her difficult enterprise become indeed impossible. On the other hand, the ill-paid policemen might be amenable to the influence of money, and as she was well supplied with the coin of the realm, their presence might be a help rather than a hindrance. All in all, she had little liking for the task she had undertaken, and the more she thought of it, the less it commended itself to her. Nevertheless, having pledged her word to the editor, if failure came it would be through no fault of hers.
