Such vigor, and such rage, burst forth in that last phrase that he aviator could not help shivering.
“So be it!” he said. “Tell Claude Barsac, the Minister, that I’ll do everything to bring the bird to the generalissimo personally before the end of the week, ready for service.”
“Oh, thank you, my friend, thank you!”
Nasenberg tried to shake both Georges Turner’s hands, but the latter, instinctively, without knowing why, abruptly turned away.
X. The War in the Trenches, on the Ground
and in the Air
The turbine was completely finished by the day, imminent as it was, that Turner had announced—and when he informed Nasenberg of the date fixed for the final test, the banker could not hold back his joy.
“You’ve saved us, my dear friend, you’ve saved us. France will never be able to thank you enough for your devotion...but I’m here to give you the recompense that is your due: a red ribbon.”
As evidence of his omnipotence he displayed his button-hole, in which the enormous rosette of an officer of the Légion d’honneur flourished—but Turner lowered his eyes; he experienced an irritation on seeing that insignia on the breast of the ex-Alboche,44 and it disgusted him slightly that he might one day have to accept, as a mere Chevalier, being officially inferior to that resident alien and pirate.
The Germans had been retreating for three days, in harsh stages, under the incessant pressure of our armies. Hopes were already amplified, and their flight beyond the frontier was anticipated. Alas, all of a sudden, they came about, and there was then a brutal shock followed by a calm.
Soon, we learned that he enemy, harassed by our soldiers, had gone underground like moles in order to put up more resistance. They suddenly disappeared into trenched prepared behind them; they took shelter in defensive earthworks of astonishing perfection, and from there they repelled all attacks.
There was general astonishment—but the astonishment turned to indignation where it was learned that our former defenses were serving the Germans as lairs and that they had organized shelters scattered throughout our territory during peacetime. Thus, factories that had seemed to be innocently occupied in some vague industry suddenly became fortresses, just as “tennis courts” were miraculously transformed into concrete platforms for the accommodation of large-caliber guns. Thanks to these artful dispositions, which a vast espionage had had time to prepare, The German army entrenched itself in such a manner that it was necessary to lay siege to it, literally, along the entire zigzag lines of the Vosges, opposed aircraft being the eyes of armies hidden in the trenches, the tunnels and the shelters: millions of men civilized by forty centuries of progress toward the ideal reduced to living underground like moles, to be slaughtered en masse like anonymous sheep.
XI. The Aircraft of the United States of Europe
It was in the evening that the turbine, set up on the test-bench, was prepared for the final trial. Everyone was there. Nasenberg, standing beside Turner, waited feverishly for the order to start it up, the supreme experiment of the marvelous aircraft that would produce a formidable sensation as soon as it appeared on the battlefield.
It did not take long. As soon as the expansive gases were conveyed by the pipes to the housing of the winglets, the machine began to purr. It rotated in a regular and dull manner, at such a speed that one might have thought it motionless, as if fixed in a mulish inertia. Around it, however, the air was stirred tumultuously, and those terrible eddies testified to the power of the new engine.
As he contemplated his work, finally concluded, Georges Turner was pale with emotion, but Nasenberg had an intense flame of emotion in his eyes.
With a tranquil expression, but not without betraying a strange impatience, the banker said: “The turbine spins. Bravo, my friend. But will the airplane fly?”
“We’ll know tomorrow,” Turner replied.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow—more delays! Why not today?”
“Darkness is falling—and furthermore, listen to the wind blowing outside. Within an hour, there’ll be a storm.”
“Are you afraid?”
The aviator looked at Nasenberg, resolutely and angrily.
“I was never afraid when I flew in an unstable ‘demoiselle’ in the early days of aviation, nor when I tested the first seaplanes over the open sea, far from the coast and any help. Why would I tremble in this sure marvel, which has permitted the greatest of feats—the crossing of the Atlantic? The turbine won’t be mounted in the apparatus tonight because, after weeks of relentless work, night and day, our workmen can do no more. Tomorrow, I repeat, the powerful bolide will rise into the air, before their ecstatic gaze—and that will be their recompense, to see what they have built, realized for France, depart...”
“Tomorrow! Ought one to say tomorrow, when it’s a matter of National Defense and the lives of so many brothers who are receiving, sleeplessly, the terrible impact of an enemy that does not want to admit defeat?”
Nasenberg’s eyes met Turner’s, seemingly containing a reproach—and the engineer gave in.
“You’ve made your point. Let’s go!”
Turning to the workmen, who were looking at him impatiently, he said: “Lads, we don’t have the right to pause—so we’re going to mount the turbine in the airplane and proceed to the testing of the ensemble.”
Everyone hastened to carry out the orders that he gave immediately thereafter. I did not take long. On the light steel beams that made up the principal framework of the aircraft, solid beds were ready to receive the engine’s bolts. Everything had been arranged for a long time, with a view to the marriage of the organ transmitting propulsive force and the rigid bird that would soon fly like a titanic arrow through the tormented air.
Ever methodical, Turner wanted to proceed initially with a resistance trial in the hangar’s wind-tunnel, where the solidity of the wings and stays were normally tested. The airplane was therefore suspended from the enormous rings in the vault, and when everything was ready, instead of setting the usual fan in motion, the turbine aboard the machine was activated. Turner, wanting to see the minute results of the trial for himself, took his place at the controls, as if he were really going to take off for a flight.
“Look out!” he cried.
The watchers withdrew. Immediately, the aviator, having turned a handle, caused the engine to purr—and, abruptly, the bird began to pull on the steel cables that retained it, whose extremities were fixed to the powerful dynamometers.
“How many?” asked Turner, leaning out of the cockpit.
Having consulted the dials where slender needles were agitating feverishly, a workman called out a number. The engineer’s face lit up, but, wanting to take the trial as far as possible, he turned the handle controlling the gas a little further. Then, it seemed that the imprisoned bolide was about to break free, to smash though the iron portal sealing the tunnel. The steel cables stretched, seemingly elongated like lead pipes.
Nasenberg, who was very pale, made a sign to Turner. “Be careful!” he cried, in a taut voice.
But the other did not hear him. He turned the handle a little further. Outside, the storm broke. A howling wind blew over the corrugated iron roofs of the factory, in gusts mingled with rain, whose rattle was reminiscent of a fusillade. At intervals, dull thuds, like the impacts of a sledgehammer on the walls, testified to the destructive rage of the furious elements.
The anxious workmen looked at one another. One of them, leaning toward his neighbor, said: “The boss isn’t going out in this weather?”
“He’s perfectly capable of it...”
Now there were brutal assaults on the iron portal by wind and water—and infernal cataclysmic music. And Turner, in his solid bird, which wanted to launch itself forth, suddenly thought about the soldiers of France who were holding firm out there in the trenches, beneath that cold rain and in that tempest, in the midst of shell-bursts and squalls of bullets and shrapnel.
He reproached himself for his b
elatedness in joining the heroes; they would see the bird of mystery and death fly over the Boche lines. What demoralizing effect would it produce on the enemy troops if, in such conditions, he dropped a cargo of explosives upon them? That magical aircraft carried in its flanks and on its wings the massacre and the destruction of the accursed city of Berlin, but also, after the crushing of the last military feudalism, after the annihilation lf the last brutal autocracy, the seeds of a future society of free nations, governing themselves under the same flag, also starry: that of the United States of Europe.
Suddenly, Turner ordered: “Open the doors!”
But Nasenberg threw himself in front of the workmen. “Don’t do it—he’s mad! Prevent him from departing, whether he likes it or not, for he owes it to France. Tomorrow, in calm weather, he can take off.”
This reasoning was fair, and humane. The workmen hesitated. Astonished, Turner stopped the engine—and when the purr of the engine had died away, Nasenberg took the engineer’s hands.
“You were right, my friend. There’s no need to set out in this atrocious darkness. It’s too late now, and it would be madness. I beg your pardon for having insisted just now.”
What did this change of attitude mean? Trying to read what as in the depths of Nasenberg’s eyes, Turner sought the truth in that enigmatic individual—but he was soon gripped again by his desire to depart, haunted now by the vision of the inundated trenches and the spectacle of our soldiers battling, in spite of everything, amid that elemental fury.
“They’re not asleep,” he said. “Why should I rest? So it’s you, now, who says: Tomorrow!”
“Yes, for I recognize that a soldier must do what he can to protect his life, when he cannot be replaced. If you were to have some stupid accident, who would replace you? And what use would Rozal’s invention be then?”
Turner understood. He got down from the armored cockpit, and turned to his workers. “Thank you, my friends. Go to bed—you deserve it. And be here tomorrow morning, at daybreak. I want to shake hands with all of you before leaving...”
“Well shake yours this evening Boss,” declared one of them, “to thank you for having succeeded.”
Emotionally, Turner held out his hands to those that his collaborators were extending to him. Then, when he was alone with Nasenberg, he said: “Permit me to give a few orders to the night-watchman. It’s important that the factory be guarded tonight.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine that anyone would venture out here, in open countryside on the bank of the Seine, in this tempest!”
“No matter—it’s my duty.”
“Then do it quickly. You too, my dear chap, deserve a night’s rest. Go to bed. Sleep, above all, in order to be in good condition tomorrow morning. Yes, do it quickly. I’ll wait for you by the factory door, sheltering in the limousine. I’ll take you home.”
A few minutes later, the two men, silently ensconced in the corners of the luxurious automobile, were rolling toward Paris.
XII. A Dramatic Night
As soon as he got home, instead of going to bed, Georges Turner started thinking. He was oppressed by a strange anguish; anxieties assailed his brain. He could not settle down to go to sleep. He was incessantly haunted by the memory of the slightest incidents of that day—and the last few minutes, especially, which he had spent aboard the apparatus, returned to his memory. He had the impression that he was under threat from some danger; he was not tranquil. Why? He did not know. Agitated and tortured, however, by a presentiment, he could not decide to undress in order to go to bed.
Suddenly, he cried out in a loud voice: “I won’t go to bed without having gone back there!”
From a cupboard, he took a large rubberized garment and covered his head with a helmet. After having checked that the revolver he always carried with him was in working order, he went down to the street.
The garage was ten paces away. He ran to it hurriedly, without paying any heed to the rain that stung his face.
“My car, quickly,” he said to the attendant.
Two minutes later, the engine roared and he launched himself into the night and the storm. Turner’s automobile was a low-slung sports car, agile, silent and extremely fast; it soon reached the barrière. There, he was stopped so that his papers might be examined, but Turner had all the necessary authorizations to circulate freely. He was allowed to pass.
He had soon passed over the Pont de Neuilly and was climbing the toad to the Défense. Then, on the plain of Nanterre, he sped forward at maximum velocity, at the risk of an accident. He no longer felt alive as he got closer, for his anguish became more intense.
At one o’clock in the morning he was on the muddy road that led through the fields to the factory door, but as soon as he had taken that road, reserved exclusively for the service of the factory, he stopped; light was filtering from the windows of the great hall where the airplane was lodged.
“I suspected as much!” he raged.
But what was he going to do when he got there? Now, he was possessed by an anxious fury, for he feared the worst. “What do those lights signify? Someone’s inside? The night-watchman? Why?”
He pressed the accelerator, but the noise of the engine made him afraid of betraying his presence. Then he parked the automobile by the roadside and got out in order to go the rest of the way on foot.
He was soon at the factory entrance, and was astonished not to hear Wilbur, the guard dog, barking. That mystery was immediately explained, however; the cadaver of the animal lay by the gate, covered in mud. He drew his revolver then, and without hesitation, went into the factory.
He did not pause at the night-watchman’s lodge, for that would have lost time, and he had no doubt that the unfortunate watchman would have suffered the same fate as the dog. Now, there was a grim resolution within him; he wanted to surprise the unknown individuals who had come to steal Rozal’s invention, of which he was the custodian.
Familiar with every nook and cranny, he was able to hide himself cleverly, advancing in the shadow of machines. And when after a thousand precautions, he had reached the entrance to the tunnel, he stopped, his chest taut. In the distance, the iron doors were open, and the impressive silhouette of the aircraft beneath the vault seemed ready to take flight.
He heard a voice asking a question, but he did not understand, for it had spoken in German.
“Boche! Oh, the swine!” And his hand clenched on the butt of the revolver.
Suddenly, the turbine purred. He did not hesitate any longer; he bounded forward. Then a head, emerging from the cockpit of the airplane, displayed an anxious face.
“Kauffmann!” Turner exclaimed.
He took aim coolly and fired two shots. The head fell back, inert, on the armor-plating.
Immediately, however, the engineer threw himself to the ground; a bullet had just whistled past his ear.
He got up again straight away, this time to throw himself behind a machine-tool, which shielded him. In a circle of light coming from his own office he had just recognized Nasenberg on the threshold, searching with the barrel of his gun for the intruder who had just surprised him.
A man of incomparable self-composure, Turner happened to be, at that moment, next to an electrical distribution panel; he could not put out the lights in the office in order to get closer to Nasenberg, but he caused a short-circuit that plunged everything into darkness. Without leaving the banker time to make a decision, he leapt upon him, disarmed him easily, and shoved him like a parcel into the room where he had been doing God only knew what underhand work.
When, after a brief struggle in the darkness, the fat man, out of breath, begged for mercy, Turner—who knew where to find the switch for the emergency lighting, hastened to restore the illumination.
“Bandit!” he cried, perceiving papers scattered on his desk. “I’ve unmasked you, finally!”
All the drawers were open, the strong-box emptied out. The distinguished burglar stood there dazed, his rage impotent, but with insolence
in his eyes even so, in the midst of his uncompleted work.
“So you’re a spy? Filthy swine! Blackguard!”
Nasenberg raised his head proudly. “I’m a servant of my country, as you are of yours. You don’t have any right to insult me.”
“But I have the right to punish you.”
“Perhaps, Except that you’ll be punished in your turn, for we’ll be the masters one day, and my death will be avenged.”
Thus, even though he sensed that he was doomed, the man still faced up to his adversary with a tenacious courage—a kind of insupportable pride that scorned the victor’s force.
“Who are you, then?” asked Turner. “You who have hidden your personality so well?”
“Still Nasenberg, but a commander in the German reserve, since you’re curious.”
“And you dare to wear the insignia of an officer of the Légion d’honneur, given to you by imbeciles or bought from rogues? You dare to call yourself French?”
Nasenberg sniggered. “French! As to that, pooh!” He spat contemptuously, like a street urchin, ripped off his red rosette, which he showed to Turner, and threw it on to his spittle.
Turner’s outrage increased. “I like that better! This way, I won’t have any scruples about killing you like a dog, Alboche that you are.”
And he raised his weapon toward the traitor—but Nasenberg wanted to live. He wanted it ardently, in order to complete his mission, and because he experienced a grim hatred for his triumphant adversary. The failure was more important to him than the loss of his life.
Seeing that Turner was about to fire, the banker still had the strength to jeer: “What are you going to do, my dear chap? I know how delicate you are; you’ll have too much repugnance to recover from my cadaver the documents that I’ve stolen from you, and of which you might have need. Permit me to return...”
The Human Arrow Page 29