I made another evasive gesture.
“You would be wrong to remain in that belief, which would be humiliating for us,” the president of the tribunal continued. “We knew that, sooner or later you would attempt to discover things that ought to remain secret, and we have, so to speak, led you by the hand in all your hidden steps toward what you wanted to know. It was necessary for our projects, Monsieur Ménestin, that we were guilty in your eyes, in order for us to impose our will upon you, and we have succeeded.”
“Less than you think,” I said. “A man who exists today cannot cease to exist tomorrow without those who love him becoming anxious and seeking information, without their moving heaven and earth to know what has become of that living man.”
The smile straying over the man’s thin lips became frightful.
“You’re quite wrong, Monsieur Engineer,” he went on, “to think that your life is in danger. It is precious to us, as it is to you, and to the fiancée who is waiting for you. We have no designs on your life, and, if you will give us your word of honor—which you will keep, we are convinced—to maintain an absolute silence about your discovery, we are prepared to render you your liberty.”
“I have no oath to make.”
“Who knows? In any case, that solution, which remains at your discretion, is nevertheless subject to certain conditions. Would you like to know what they are?”
“I don’t believe there’s any point. What I want to know is what you’re going to do with me.”
“You’ll know when the time comes, Monsieur Ménestin…believe me, you’ll know when the time comes. So, Monsieur, since you have guessed it, Germany is preparing the vengeance for her defeat, every day, patiently. You will understand—at least we hope so—that a grain of sand, in the form of a human life, cannot count for very much if it were to hinder the realization of our projects. That is to tell you that is necessary not to constrain us to extremities that we would like to avoid. Yes, Monsieur, your sagacity has seen clearly; Germany is no longer anything but an immense clandestine factory; her seas already shelter redoubtable invisible fleets beneath their surface; her population is no longer anything but an army ready for any sacrifice, and the day is not far off when our ever-glorious eagle will extend its wings again in a sky of battle and revenge.”
That heroic and grandiloquent ode was followed by a brief silence; then the man continued: “Now, Monsieur, it follows from all that that your existence would be nothing in our eyes if its suppression could be of any utility to us. If we let you live—weigh my words carefully—it is because we have an interest in doing so, and we would be heart-broken if you mistook our decision for an evidence of interest or sentimental weakness.”
I had resolved not to interrupt the man, but anger was making my blood boil, and at that moment I put my hand to the pocket that contained my automatic pistol.
“Leave your pistol tranquil, Monsieur Ménestin, it no longer contains its cartridges,” said the president.
There was a minute’s heavy silence, which I did not break.
When the colonel understood that I did not want to speak, he continued: “I was saying, Monsieur Ménestin, that we have need of you. We have already alerted you to that fact, yesterday, but you turned a deaf ear. When we hired you, it was in the quality of a chemist rather than an engineer; we knew that you had studied toxic gases, and had even written a paper on those that had been employed in the Great War. Having you with us, it only remained for us to put you in a situation of being unable to refuse to work for us. You are in that situation today, and these are our conditions.
“You are going to take charge in one of our establishments of a laboratory that has been prepared for you. No escape, and no communication with the earth and those who inhabit it will be possible for you. There, you will have to hand all the means necessary to reconstitute gas KBI. As soon as you have given us the true formula—for we know that the gas that France is employing to sanitize its colonies is not the real KBI but a derivative thereof—you will be set free, on the condition of maintaining silence. In any case, we shall monitor your silence.
“If, as reason commands you to do, you obey, your salary will be paid in full, as well as a bonus.”
“And if I refuse?”
“In that case...” A menacing gesture completed the sentence.
“What if, as is the truth, I am completely ignorant of the composition of the gas KBI about which you are talking?”
“That would be very unfortunate for you, but we know that you’re not unaware of it.”
“Then, I repeat, what if I know it, but I refuse to divulge it?”
“We will constrain you to do so.”
“Never!”
For the first time, the light veneer of politeness that covered the nature of the colonel cracked and split, and the brute’s true face appeared. He struck the table with a violent blow of his fist, his pallor was accentuated, and the muscles of his jaw tautened under the influence of a furious anger.
“We need that formula, do you hear!” he vociferated. “We need it, and we know how to obtain it.”
I tried to take possession of the stool before which I was standing, in order, if necessary, to make a weapon of it, but it was riveted to the floor.
One of the assessors—the one who was not acting as a stenographer—spoke in his turn.
Softly and paternally, his hands benevolently crossed over his breast, he spoke with compunction.
“You’ll reflect, Monsieur Ménestin, we’re convinced of it. We’ll give you twenty-four hours, during which, you’ll understand, it will be necessary for us to watch over you, but nothing will be done to you, you won’t be molested in any fashion. In twenty-four hours, you’ll give us a response, which, I hope, will be dictated by your reason.”
Oh, the treacherous face, the miserable hypocrite!
The president had calmed down under the unction of his aide’s words. He recovered all is dignity and addressed me. “You’re going to be taken, Monsieur, to a place where you can do nothing against us or against yourself. In twenty-four hours, you’ll let us know your decision.”
The guard who was still standing behind me placed his hand on my shoulder. The three judges of the infernal tribunal stood up and left through a little door.
“Follow me,” said the guard, in a curt and mocking tone.
I followed him.
VII. Twenty-Four Agonizing Hours
My guard did not say another word during the twenty-five or thirty paces he made me take in a corridor whose extreme narrowness was calculated, it seemed to me.
By means of a secret mechanism, the man opened a small door that I made out vaguely in the gloom, and said: “Go in.”
“And if I refuse?” I said, pushed by a sentiment of curiosity rather than revolt.
He did not hesitate; abruptly placing his heavy hands on my shoulders, he shoved me with so much brutality that I stumbled two or three times before being able to recover my equilibrium.
I head the click of a lock behind me. I was a prisoner. I found myself in a cell constituted by walls of a soft, elastic substance, against which—I carried out the experiment—one could make every effort without the slightest chance of breaking the resistance or ripping a hole therein.
In one corner, a bed had been fixed to the wall, devoid of sheets or blankets: a small mattress thrown on a block, all of it made from the same substance, which I was encountering for the first time. In another corner there was a lavatory. Daylight was entering from above, through a round opening sealed with the aid of striated glass and an armature of steel wire. I explored the cell hastily. There was nothing that could serve as a weapon, against oneself or anyone else. It was also in vain that I searched for the door through which I had been thrust into the lair; it was so perfectly dissimulated that it could escape the finest sagacity.
I fell on to the bed; I needed to calm my nerves, which were dolorously overexcited, in order to be able to reflect sanely.
&
nbsp; What were they going to do to me?
That was the first question that I posed to my anguish. I did not have many hypotheses to envisage in that regard, alas. The wretches would never release me if I persisted in my refusal. Yield to their orders or die: such was the dilemma.
If I obeyed, I would extract myself from their claws—but was that certain, in spite of their promises? And was it not still my duty, in any case, to refuse what they expected of me, and to oppose to them, no matter what, the force of inertia?
Nothing remained, therefore, but to await events.
The time passed drop by drop; the wan daylight dispensed by the cupola gradually diminished in intensity, and then a strange phenomenon occurred; the walls, the floor and the ceiling became luminous, not by virtue of transparency, but in themselves. They emitted a light analogous to that of phosphorus, and that luminosity increased by reason of the disappearance of the daylight. Finally, it became fixed at a moderate intensity. I understood. Thanks to that light, I was observed, as everyone must have been who had occupied that cell temporarily for some reason. None of my gestures could escape the inquisitive eye that I sensed fixed upon me from the other side of the partition.
A slight noise attracted my attention; it was a very soft rustle, which my ears perceived in the surrounding silence. And I saw a kind of tower appear, pivoting, bringing into the cell a tabletop on which there were two covered plates, a bread roll and a small pitcher. There was a large envelope on top of it, which I opened.
It contained a piece of paper stamped with an eagle, only bearing the words: Twenty-four hours have been accorded you to make a decision.
I accepted the nourishment that had been thus presented to me, not wanting to weaken myself.
Is it necessary to say how many plans of escape agitated in my poor head? But no, no resource presented itself to me, not even that of throwing myself, in a moment of rage at a guard, because I understood that none would come.
Finally, day dawned. Another tower had appeared opposite the first, which had disappeared. It bore more nourishment and a second letter. That one informed me that I only had eight hours left to decide. I had decided.
I wrote two lines of protest at the bottom of the letter, which I replaced on the tower. I broke the bread, drank a mouthful of water, and returned to lie down on the bed, no longer wanting to think about anything but the past and the person I had left behind, desperate.
Toward evening, I had the intuition that something was about to happen. I heard a soft hiss, and, indeed, something changed in the ambience of the place where I found myself. It seemed to me that the atmosphere became blue-tinted; furthermore, a slight odor, quite pleasant, floated around me. Then, by degrees, but fairly rapidly, I sensed myself becoming torpid, my mental faculties weakening.
That happened painlessly; I even felt a kind of relief in feeling myself sink into unconsciousness. I made an attempt to get up, but did not have the strength.
Well, I thought, it’s death by asphyxia. I was preparing myself for that, when a voice rang out in the cell.
“If you consent to obey, raise your hand or say yes.”
Certainly movement as still possible; I could still speak—but a residue of will caused me to remain motionless.
The wretches had counted on my weakness, on the anguish caused by the approach of death, but they had misjudged me. My last thoughts were for the woman I loved. A violet veil extended over my sight; my ears were buzzing; it seemed to me that I was falling indefinitely. Then I lost consciousness.
What happened between the moment when I no longer had a sentiment of things and the one when I recovered consciousness? I don’t know, but it seemed to me that I was emerging from a long and very profound sleep when I sensed once again that I was alive. Gradually, the faculties that had abandoned me under the influence of a powerful anesthetic returned, and I had the sensation of lying on a kind of mattress, bound so tightly that any movement of my arms and legs was impossible.
A particular noise had been striking my ears for some time; it was a kind of purr, like that made by large nocturnal insects in flight. Above me extended thick darkness, but cold air was striking my face.
In spite of the frightful dolor that any mental labor provoked in me, I understood—and was confirmed in that idea by the sudden appearance of a star that scintillated momentarily before my eyes—that I was aboard an airplane and that the plane was rising through the night air.
The night might have been well advanced when I recovered the use of my senses. Slowly and by degrees, I saw the darkness brighten. I know not what delight, what sentiment of joy, invaded me at the sight of that nascent light; at a stroke, I felt penetrated by a new strength, a greater courage, and my entire soul, in a sentiment of gratitude and joy, rose up toward the sky, whose limpidity announced the fulgurance of the first blaze of dawn.
Light fleecy clouds were rising toward the zenith; a gold stripe lit up in the orient; everything was vibrant; and the sun, the divine sun, leapt, so to speak, into space.
We were rising very rapidly. I had understood everything. I was a prisoner, tied up, put aboard a fast airplane: a military aircraft, because I could see the stock of a machine-gun at my feet, and under one of the wings, in the course of a swift bank, I glimpsed German colors.
Suddenly, in the confines of the horizon, which my gaze could reach, I saw an object scintillating, on the metallic surface of which the sun ignited dazzling flashes. From then on, my intelligence was focused on the thing in question, which I saw growing rapidly, because it was coming toward us, as we were going toward it.
Its form became distinct. It was an enormous airship, very long, a monstrous biplane of an aspect with which I was not yet familiar. I had the leisure to observe it. Ten or twelve propellers must assure its propulsion; they were sweeping through the air so rapidly that one could not count the number of blades composing them; but they ceased momentarily to be spinning suns and were immobilized; I saw then that they had two sets of blades, differentially geared. As soon as their movement stopped, the giant aircraft began to rise up vertically; I concluded that another ascensional system must exist on board. Then it became motionless and its wings commenced palpitating, like the wings of a bird hovering above its prey. Our airplane headed toward it, in such a fashion as to remain beneath the great metallic bird.
Then the keel appeared; it was singularly powerful, with its two sets of landing gears, one fitted with wheels, the other with floats.
Beneath the keel of the great aerial vessel I saw a trapdoor open, through which a stout steel cable descended supporting magnetic slings. Then a man, whom I had not seen and must have been stationed immediately behind the pilot at my feet, came to my mattress; the latter, I understood by the rapidity of the maneuver, must be fixed to a light metal frame, to which, guided by the aforementioned man, the slings were attached. Then the man whistled stridently.
Immediately, I saw him disappear, as if swallowed by the void beneath.
Tilting my head slightly, I realized what had happened; the airplane that had brought me was letting itself drop, and was now fleeing through the air; it was soon no more than a dot in the ultramarine sky, and then disappeared.
Looking up, I saw that the stout steel cable was drawing me toward the trap-door of the gigantic biplane, which had resumed its progress, albeit very slowly. I went past the keel, full of iron struts and articulated organs: apparatus for lifting the enormous anchors that were asleep at their post, and was absorbed by the trap-door, which closed again. Finally, I was deposited on the airship’s metallic deck.
Immediately, two men—two soldiers as silent as shadows—approached, bent down and removed my bonds. They took me under the arms, stood me up and dragged me away.
I did not say a word, convinced of the pointlessness of resistance, but I was biding my time. Sooner or later, the moment would come.
VIII. Aboard the Aerobagne
The men who were supporting me guided me to one of the si
des of the airship, to a small door overhanging a kind of gallery, access to which, possible by climbing, was prevented by a mesh of steel wire. On that gallery I perceived a man on sentry duty between two machine-guns mounted on pivots. That was all that I saw on board. My conductors opened the door, pushed me across the threshold and closed it behind me.
The place where I found myself resembled both the cabin of a ship and a cell. A hammock with an inflatable mattress, a table and a lavatory constituted its furniture. All the objects composing it were fashioned from tubes or sheets of aluminum.
The cabin was brightly illuminated by squares of translucent silk and a sheet of a more solid transparent material that must have been set in the floor of the gallery I mentioned. The cell was, like everything on the biplane, constructed of riveted sheets of aluminum; the framework was tubing of the same metal.
I was a prisoner aboard an airship.
They left me there for about an hour. Apart from the purr of the propellers, no sounds reached me. Three strokes were sounded by a bell. Did that indicate the hour, or was it the signal for same maneuver? I had stopped pacing back and forth in my cell; my head was still heavy and prey to a strong desire to sleep. Perhaps they were speculating on that state of lesser resistance. That was credible, for the door opened and a feldwebel appeared on the threshold.
“Come,” he said.
He stood aside and saluted. I went out.
I had decided to obey, not to put up any physical resistance to their orders—could I have done otherwise?—but I was still determined not to surrender the formula that they wanted.
I followed the man. The door let out into a place that resembled the fore or aft decks of a first class battleship. The floor was constituted by woven aluminum wire; one could see the void through the inferior structures. The area was dominated to the right and the left by the gallery I mentioned, which ran around the airship. The third side, toward which we were heading, was constituted by a metallic partition pierced by a door and two portholes. Above the door, below the Germanic eagle, was inscribed the word Kommandant. On the fourth face, a similar partition with a low door above which I could read Bagne and the number 32.
The Mirror of Present Events Page 28