City of Endless Night, Milo Hastings [books to get back into reading .TXT] 📗

now as I reached the climax of my bitter speech, Marguerite, with a choking sob, fled from the room.

Angered at the situation and humiliated by what I had said, I was on the point of leaving at once. But a moment of reflection caused me to turn back. I had forced a quarrel upon Marguerite and the cause for my anger she perhaps did not comprehend. If I left now it would be impossible to return, and if I did not come back, there would be explanations to make to Zimmern and perhaps an ending of my association with him and his group, which was not only the sole source of my intellectual life outside my work, but which I had begun to hope might lead to some enterprise of moment and possibly to my escape from Berlin.

So calming my anger, I turned to the library and doggedly pulled down a book and began scanning its contents. I had been so occupied for some time, when there was a ring at the bell. I peered out into the reception-room in time to see Marguerite come from another door. Her eyes revealed the fact that she had been crying. Quickly she closed the door of the little library, shutting me in with the books. A moment later she came in with a grey-haired man, a staff officer of the electrical works. She introduced us coolly and then helped the old man find a book he wanted to take out, and which she entered on her records.

After the visitor had gone Marguerite again slipped out of the room and for a time I despaired of a chance to speak to her before I felt I must depart. Another hour passed and then she stole into the library and seated herself very quietly on a little dressing chair and watched me as I proceeded with my reading.

I asked her some questions about one of the volumes and she replied with a meek and forgiving voice that made me despise myself heartily. Other questions and answers followed and soon we were talking again of books as if we had no overwhelming sense of the personal presence of each other.

The hours passed; by all my sense of propriety I should have been long departed, but still we talked of books without once referring to my heated words of the earlier evening.

She had stood enticingly near me as we pulled down the volumes. My heart beat wildly as she sat by my side, while I mechanically turned the pages. The brush of her garments against my sleeve quite maddened me. I had not dared to look into her eyes, as I talked meaningless, bookish words.

Summoning all my self-control, I now faced her. "Marguerite," I said hoarsely, "look at me."

She lifted her eyes and met my gaze unflinchingly, the moisture of fresh tears gleaming beneath her lashes.

"Forgive me," I entreated.

"For what?" she asked simply, smiling a little through her tears.

"For being a fool," I declared fiercely, "for believing your cordiality toward me as Dr. Zimmern's friend to mean more than--than it should mean."

"But I do not understand," she said. "Should I not have told you that I liked you because you were young? Of course if you don't want me to--to--" She paused abruptly, her face suffused with a delicate crimson.

I stepped toward her and reached out my arms. But she drew back and slipped quickly around the table. "No," she cried, "no, you have said that you did not want me."

"But I do," I cried. "I do want you."

"Then why did you say those things to me?" she asked haughtily.

I gazed at her across the narrow table. Was it possible that such a woman had no understanding of ideals of honour in love? Could it be that she had no appreciation of the fight I had waged, and so nearly lost, to respect the trust and confidence that the old doctor had placed in me. With these thoughts the ardour of my passion cooled and a feeling of pity swept over me, as I sensed the tragedy of so fine a woman ethically impoverished by false training and environment. Had she known honour, and yet discarded it, I too should have been unable to resist the impulse of youth to deny to age its less imperious claims.

But either she chose artfully to ignore my struggle or she was truly unaware of it. In either case she would not share the responsibility for the breach of faith. I was puzzled and confounded.

It was Marguerite who broke the bewildering silence. "I wish you would go now," she said coolly; "I am afraid I misunderstood."

"And shall I come again?" I asked awkwardly.

She looked up at me and smiled bravely. "Yes," she said, "if--you are sure you wish to."

A resurge of passionate longing to take her in my arms swept over me, but she held out her hand with such rare and dignified grace that I could only take the slender fingers and press them hungrily to my fevered lips and so bid her a wordless adieu.

~3~

But despite wild longing to see her again, I did not return to Marguerite's apartment for many weeks. A crisis in my work at the laboratory denied me even a single hour of leisure outside brief snatches of food and sleep.

I had previously reported to the Chemical Staff that I had found means to increase materially the extraction percentage of the precious element protium from the crude imported ore. I had now received word that I should prepare to make a trial demonstration before the Staff.

Already I had revealed certain results of my progress to Herr von Uhl, as this had been necessary in order to get further grants of the rare material and of expensive equipment needed for the research, but in these smaller demonstrations, I had not been called upon to disclose my method. Now the Staff, hopeful that I had made the great discovery, insisted that I prepare at once to make a large scale demonstration and reveal the method that it might immediately be adopted for the wholesale extraction in the industrial works.

If I now gave away the full secret of my process, I would receive compensation that would indeed seem lavish for a man whose mental horizon was bounded by these enclosing walls; yet to me for whom these walls would always be a prison, credit at the banks of Berlin and the baubles of decoration and rank and social honour would be sounding brass. But I wanted power; and, with the secret of protium extraction in my possession, I would have control of life or death over three hundred million men. Why should I sacrifice such power for useless credit and empty honour? If Eitel I of the House of Hohenzollern would lengthen the days of his rule, let him deal with me and meet whatever terms I chose to name, for in my chemical retorts I had brewed a secret before which vaunted efficiency and hypocritical divinity could be made to bend a hungry belly and beg for food!

It was a laudable and rather thrilling ambition, and yet I was not clear as to just what terms I would dictate, nor how I could enforce the dictation. To ask for an audience with the Emperor now, and to take any such preposterous stand would merely be to get myself locked up for a lunatic. But I reasoned that if I could make the demonstration so that it would be accepted as genuine and yet not give away my secret, the situation would be in my hands. Yet I was expected to reveal the process step by step as the demonstration proceeded. There was but one way out and that was to make a genuine demonstration, but with falsely written formulas.

To plan and prepare such a demonstration required more genuine invention than had the discovery of the process, but I set about the task with feverish enthusiasm. I kept my assistants busy with the preparation of the apparatus and the more simple work which there was no need to disguise, while night after night I worked alone, altering and disguising the secret steps on which my great discovery hinged. As these preparations were nearing completion I sent for Dr. Zimmern and Col. Hellar to meet me at my apartment.

"Comrades," I said, "you have endangered your own lives by confiding in me your secret desires to overthrow the rule of the House of Hohenzollern as it was overthrown once before. You have done this because you believed that I would have power that others do not have."

The two old men nodded in grave assent.

"And you have been quite fortunate in your choice," I concluded, "for not only have I pledged myself to your ends, but I shall soon possess the coveted power. In a few days I shall demonstrate my process on a large scale before the Chemical Staff. But I shall do this thing without revealing the method. The formulas I shall give them will be meaningless. As long as I am in charge in my own laboratory the process will be a success; when it is tried elsewhere it will fail, until I choose to make further revelations.

"So you see, for a time, unless I be killed or tortured into confession, I shall have great power. How then may I use that power to help you in the cause to which we are pledged?"

The older men seemed greatly impressed with my declaration and danced about me and cried with joy. When they had regained their composure Zimmern said: "There is but one thing you can do for us and that is to find some way to get word of the protium mines to the authorities of the World State. Berlin will then be at their mercy, but whatever happens can be no worse than the continuance of things as they are."

"But how," I said, "can a message be sent from Berlin to the outer world?"

"There is only one way," replied Hellar, "and that is by the submarines that go out for this ore. The Submarine Staff are members of the Royal House. So, indeed, are the captains. We have tried for years to gain the confidence of some of these men, but without avail. Perhaps through your work on the protium ore you can succeed where we have failed."

"And how," I asked eagerly, "do the ore-bringing vessels get from Berlin to the sea?"

My visitors glanced at each other significantly. "Do you not know that?" exclaimed Zimmern. "We had supposed you would have been told when you were assigned to the protium research."

By way of answer I explained that I knew the source of the ore but not the route of its coming.

"All such knowledge is suppressed in books," commented Hellar; "we older men know of this by word of mouth from the days when the submarine tunnel was completed to the sea, but you are younger. Unless this was told you at the time you were assigned the work it is not to be expected that you would know."

I questioned Hellar and Zimmern closely but found that all they knew was that a submarine tunnel did exist leading from Berlin somewhere into the open sea; but its exact location they did not know. Again I pressed my question as to what I could do with the power of my secret and they could only repeat that they staked their hopes on getting word to the outer world by way of submarines.

Much as I might admire the strength of character that would lead men to rebel against the only life they knew because they sensed that it was hopeless, I now found myself a little exasperated at the vagueness of their plans. Yet I had none better. To defy the Emperor would merely be to risk my life and the possible loss of my knowledge to the world. Perhaps after all the older heads were wiser than my own rebellious spirit; and so, without making any more definite plans, I ended the interview with a promise to let them know of the outcome of the demonstration.

Returning once more to my work I finished my preparations and sent word to the Chemical Staff that all was ready. They came with solemn faces. The laboratory was locked and guards were posted. The place was examined thoroughly, the apparatus was studied in detail. All my ingredients were tested for the presence of extracted protium, lest I be trying to "salt the mine." But happily for me they accepted my statement as to their chemical nature in other respects. Then when all had been approved the test lot of ore was run. It took us thirty hours to run the extraction and sample and weigh and test the product. But everything went through exactly as I had planned.

With solemn faces