CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
THE MYSTERIOUS MAN
How did I know Doctor Omega?
This is the whole story... a strange story... fantastic... inconceivable, and perhaps would I wish that I had never met this man! ...
Thus my life had been upset by such extraordinary events that I wonder sometimes if I did not dream the surprising adventures which occurred and made a hero of me, although I was undoubtedly the least daring of all mortals.
But the reviews and magazines, the newspaper cuttings which litter my table are there to remind me of the reality.
Not! ... I did not dream... I was not the toy of some morbid hallucination...
During nearly sixteen months I actually left this world.
What a strange creature is man! ...
It is almost always at the time when he is quietest, when he enjoys an ardently coveted happiness that he seeks the most stupid complications and creates the most useless worries.
After having for a long time pursued fortune without managing to seize it, I had had the unexpected chance to inherit a million from an old uncle whom I had always believed poor as Job because he lived in a dreadful shack and wore sordid clothing which couldn’t have been held together but by a miracle.
After his death one had however found in his straw mattress a thousand thousand-franc bills.
They were second-hand, but please believe that I did not make any objections to accepting them.
As soon as I was in possession of this heritage, I withdrew myself at once to the country.
I acquired at Marbeuf, my birthplace, a pretty cottage surrounded by a park of five hectares and I gave up without regret the Parisian swirl in which energies are used up and hope all too often sinks.
Me, who had been a slogger... an untiring workman of letters, I renounced suddenly, as soon as I was rich, any further work with the pen—even reading.
Locked up in my home, I lived quietly.
It appears that certain natures do not need a world of incidents to occupy themselves or have fun, and what appears monotonous with some abounds for others in excitement, in unutterable pleasures.
All that was actively noisy and disordered afflicted my ear by its discordance and gave me nothing but pain.
I would have liked to have had the only noise around me to have been that of my violin.
I forgot to mention that one thing, only one, still attached me to the civilized world: a passion for music.
I had bought a Stradivarius from a great virtuoso who had died suddenly while performing a concerto by Spohr and I had been lucky enough to obtain the instrument for almost nothing: forty-five thousand francs.
That will make, I know, everyone who has a horror of music smile.
To spend forty-five thousand francs on a violin, what madness!
Perhaps, but each one to his taste.
I prefer to play the works of the old Masters on a Stradivarius than to burn the roads at a hundred miles per hour.
I thus spent my time working on the strings of my instrument with a superb bow made of wood from Pernambouc, the frame of which was a little marvel.
Standing in front of my desk, I worked with some heat on the driest concertos of Paganini, Alard and Vieuxtemps.
One will not be able to say that I played with the aim of filling my contemporaries with wonder.
I was quite simply a solitary violinist, filled with his art, an impassioned, untiring and modest executant.
At one time, I received a visit from an old friend, a member of the Academy of the Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, who had formerly been my collaborator and with whom I had created some best-sellers.
Well! will I acknowledge it? ... when this friend rang at my gate and I saw in the alley his long silhouette, I could not repress a sudden bad mood.
I however endeavoured to receive him (one does not become a savage in a single day) but, when I had endured his presence for an entire day, I started to express impatience... The second day after his arrival I did not listen to him anymore, and, when he launched into a long essay on the recent discovery of a “palimpsest” of the Middle Ages, I abstractedly played out in silence an adagio of Beethoven.
This friend undoubtedly found that I was, with my violin, as tedious as Mr. Ingres, because he never returned.
However, through unceasingly reading double eighth notes and thirty-second notes, my eyes were sometimes tired; my fingers, in consequence of excessive overwork, became stiff and clumsy.
Then, I carefully fastened my violin in a case in purple wood, a true masterpiece from the end of the seventeenth century, and I went to sit on a small terrace located at the end of my park, at edge of the road.
There, while dreaming of sonatas, ariettas or cantilenas, I let my gaze wander over the landscape which extended in front of me.
As far as the eye could see, there were wood through which protruded here and there the uniform slate roofs of bell-tower. At my feet, i.e. at the bottom of the terrace, some houses were aligned along a street hardly suitable for motor vehicles, the majority of a disturbing architecture; their walls of red and black bricks laid out symmetrically, resembled vast chess-boards.
At the end of the village was a large monotonous plain in the center of which were two dreadful-looking hangars of tarred boards that I had always taken for aerostatic factories or warehouses.
These lugubrious buildings spoiled my view a little, but I didn’t let them bother me much.
I was, in matters of esthetics, not a little indifferent.
One evening while I was on my terrace, my spirit lost in some melodic daydream, I had not realized that night had come...
I was getting to my feet preparatory to returning to my cottage, when suddenly, in front of me, a sinister gleam leaped into the sky, spreading before me like an immense snake of fire... a great sparkle abruptly illuminated sleepy fields, and a formidable noise, a tumultuous crash like the voice of thousand cataracts echoed across the countryside and the ground shook as though it had the ague.
I was thrown from my rocking chair and the panes of my kiosk fell like rain on my head...
I gave out a cry.
My gardener and my manservant ran at once and raised me with concerned expressions. Perhaps they feared that I had been seriously hurt; perhaps they were also concerned about the possibility of a death which would have deprived them of an ideal Master, one not very demanding of service, and of a quiet workplace which was a true sinecure. When they realized that I was not wounded their faces cleared up.
“What is it? What happened?” I exclaimed.
A man who was passing along the wall of the park heard my interrogation and hastily threw these words at me:
“It’s one of the hangars of Doctor Omega that has just exploded!”
Then he began running toward the place of the disaster.
“Doctor Omega? Doctor Omega?” I murmured while looking at my servants. “Who is this individual? Do you know him?”
“He is,” answered the gardener, “an old man who does not speak to anybody. It is astonishing that Master has not noticed him yet, because he travels every morning along this road around nine o’clock. Doctor Omega is a small man dressed in black; he has a sinister figure and it is said around here that he throws spells; the peasants flee him like the plague... they even avoid looking at him... because his very eyes, they say, carry misfortune.”
“Ah!” I said abstractedly.
And, after dusting myself off with my handkerchief, I left the terrace.
All that evening I remained thoughtful. It was even impossible for me to play my violin. I blamed this nervousness on the strong emotions I had felt and I went upstairs to lie down.
Arriving in my room, I noted that the glass of my cupboard was cracked and that my portrait—a pastel which represented me at the twenty years age—had fallen to the foot of my bed.
“For an explosion,” my manservant observed, “one can say that it was impressive. There had to have been some victims... What a force! ... It is certain that this doctor owes something to Master... It will be necessary to make him replace the glass and the framework of the table.”
“It is well,” I said. “I will see to that. Draw the curtains.”
The servant obeyed and after I had finished with him, left.
During the next fifteen minutes, I paced my room, smoking a cigarette. Then I laid down and extinguished my lamp.
It was a singular thing, me who usually always slept happily, I could not close my eyes that evening...
I thought unceasingly of the hangar, the explosion, of Doctor Omega, and I sought, in spite of myself, to imagine this man who inspired such a fear throughout the village.
“Who knows,” I thought, “if he were not crushed under the debris of his masonry?” And I began to feel sorry for him.
It became an obsession.
Finally I slept.
But soon I was suddenly awakened by a light crackling... a kind of slithering. I listened for a few seconds by holding my breath, then I gently sat up on my bed. I did not understand anything any more.
“I’ve been dreaming,” I thought.
However, with a heavy head, I rose and opened the window.
A bat passed and plunged into a coppice.
Afar, a bluish fog floated on the trees which the moon lit for a moment.
A weak gleam similar to that of a brooding hEarth shone on the plain... in fact, it was the debris of the hangar being finally consumed.
I made the turn of my room, running my foot up against objects which the darkness concealed, then, completely reassured, I stopped pacing and regained my bed.
How long did I sleep? I could not say.
Suddenly I had an odd impression of faintness. It seemed to me that I choked, that I had an enormous weight on my chest.
I made a formidable leap and then I very distinctly heard the noise of a body falling on the parquet floor
A sudden numbness, a strange feeling instantaneously penetrated all my being. My heart beat like a disordered alarm bell, my limbs shivered, I tested an great cold inside me and my skin tingled.
I could no longer doubt it.
There was somebody in my room! I was sure.
For a long time I remained motionless, hidden under my covers. At last, gradually, I made so far as to protrude my head.
Around me all was quiet.
I started to regain confidence and invented a thousand reasons to alleviate my fear, when a horrible vision froze the blood in my veins.
In the darkness at the foot of my bed were two phosphorescent eyes which appeared enormous to me.
An insane terror invading me made my teeth chatter. I lost my head completely, my imagination went wild and brought to life alarming visions.
The pieces of furniture of my room appeared to become animated and soon a kind of luminous cloud clarified a terrible figure.
A diabolic being, a monster with wild air, was only a few steps away from me. He was laughing, and a bunch of grey hair similar to a brush was drawn up quivering on its shining cranium.
Its strange eyes, sparkling, rolling in their orbits, were slowly covered or veiled by large red eyelids which drooped and went up with a kind of regularity. At the same time I heard an enormous noise of jaws grinding and on my broken window I read in letters of fire this fateful word: Omega!
I do not remember any more what occurred then, because I fainted.
When I regained my senses, my manservant had lowered the blinds to protect me from the sun which shone full onto my bed. I rubbed my eyes, threw around me a flabbergasted glance, then examined the ceiling, the walls and the pieces of furniture; separately the crack in the window. I did not note anything abnormal.
However I was not yet reassured and, as my servant was going to leave, I retained him under an unspecified pretext. I did not want to remain alone
Finally, when I was on the point of rising, I noticed that a cat, a large black tom cat that I had never seen at home, slept at the foot of my bed. Probably frightened by the noise of the explosion, it had taken refuge in my room and, feeling safe, it had remained there
Then the light dawned in my mind. I understood it al. The weight that I had felt on my chest and the body falling on the parquet floor and the brilliant eyes...yes...all was explained now.
The animal had lain down on me. From there came the oppression which I had felt. It had then moved to the foot of my bed and the two phosphorescent spheres which had frightened me so much were its eyes.
All that had occurred in a half-sleep and my poor brain, strongly shaken by the incidents of the day, had then imagined everything.
I had fallen asleep while thinking of Doctor Omega and my imagination had forged fantastic ideas, as such often arrives when a fact deeply strikes you as you fall asleep.
I rose, took a bath and felt almost calmed. However, at the end of an hour or two, I became again nervous, irritable. The memory of the doctor again haunted me.
I tried to play the violin
I missed all my harmonics and my bow, badly balanced in my hand, squeaked lamentably on the strings.
I was despairing.
I stamped my foot with anger and left.
I then gained the terrace and leaned on the wall which overhung the road.
I was furious about having slept so badly as to have had such a cursed nightmare that I could do nothing but think unceasingly of this Doctor Omega, a person to whom I should have been completely indifferent.
Which of the fates was forcing me to become obsessed with this man?
Certain experts in psychic sciences would not fail to explain this singular state of spirit by saying it was a phenomenon of telepathy or thought transference, but there was nothing between Doctor Omega and myself which could give credence to such an assumption. How could two beings who had never met, who are mutually unaware of each other, be in communion of spirit?
I was at this point in my reflections when I heard below me, on the road, a small voice tremulous, nasal, horrifying.
I leaned away from the wall and was hard put to restrain a cry of amazement.
That voice! it was that of Doctor Omega! yes it was him whom I had before my eyes! It was the very man my servant had described.
And he sang! he sang! and only a few hours after the dreadful catastrophe which probably had its victims.
It was amazing! incomprehensible!
I was going to challenge him when he made an abrupt turn and took on the left a small path which curved between the hedges.
I had then an idea to shout to him to stop.
I was going to do it, but a feeling of appropriateness retained me.
I could not decently hail a man I did not know.
It was allowed finally to examine with leisure this extravagant character, because I could see him at a three-quarters angle.
He was a very small man who resembled the late Mr. Renan. Like that famous gentleman he had long grey hair and a fat, pale face.
His head was capped with a silk hat, in spite of the heat—we were in full summer—and dressed in a black frock coat with large pockets in which I saw rolls of blank paper.
As he hopped along, his boots make a small cracking sound rather similar to the song of the cricket.
In his hand he held a stick with which he occasionally drew figures on the ground, without interrupting his annoying chant..
As he moved away, his voice grew gradually fainter.
It was soon nothing more than a weak, hardly perceptible murmur...a little ridiculous.
This abrupt appearance, far from calming my curiosity, on the contrary only revived it.
This man, who in any other circumstance would not have held my attention, had the effect of a strange, diabolic being.
He appeared me like one of the damned, about whom Dante speaks, who sings in the middle of the fire like an evil spirit, a mischievous gnome full of infernal malice.
Does one sing when one has failed to sow death around oneself?
All the day I was in a bad mood and my servants, who were accustomed to never receive reproaches from me, were very surprised at hearing me berate them about everything.
I did not even think any more of my poor Stradivarius. Only the doctor was the subject of all my reflections.
His face, that I now knew, took on in my mind the oddest expressions.
I even managed to make this note: the monster that I had seen in my nightmare and Doctor Omega curiously resembled one another.
It was to be believed that there was in my dream a pretense of truth and that my panicked imagination had not entirely invented the scene of the previous night.
A curiosity that grew more and more bitter urged me on.
I eagerly wanted to know this enigmatic old man. I wanted to talk to him, if only for a moment...to question...finally to know what was this mysterious work on which he was engaged
My wish was soon fulfilled.
The following day, at the hour the doctor was accustomed to take his walk, I would be in his way.
As I feared another dreadful nightmare during my sleep, I did not lie down that evening.
I stretched out in an armchair and left my lamp lit.
How long the night seemed to me!
Lastly, a small wisp of netting slipped between the double drapes of my window.
I got dressed without the assistance with my manservant, and left the park by a gate which gave onto the fields.
It was crazy to leave my home so early because who I wanted to see usually did not appear until nine o’clock at the foot of the terrace. But feverish impatience tortured me. I would have stayed home, but I needed movement to relieve my excitement.
Hardly I passed the meadows which border my cottage I was, in spite of myself, precisely on the side where I did not want to go.
I stopped, wavered, took unknown paths in vain, while an invincible force always brought me back to the way that led to the plain inhabited by the doctor. Lastly, I arrived at a place where the coast stopped abruptly.
The valley extended in front of me and, under the rising sun, the remote roads, that the prospect had made steep, were covered in tons of molten gold.
As my eyes looked over the plain, I saw a compact mass of smoldering debris, which consisted of heavy timbers, boards and fittings strangely intertwined.
A kind of greenish reverberation, undoubtedly produced by the decomposition of acids and chemical substances, floated above these ruins.
It even seemed to me that I saw, in the middle of the debris, carbonized bodies which raised towards the sky their twisted and blackened arms.
As I approached, I recognized that what I took for bodies were simply small cylindrical tanks to which still adhered bits of burning wood.
In the middle of this tangle, a globe that remained intact but blackened by smoke emerged, like the head of a huge negro. It was something grotesque and lamentable.
Books were scattered everywhere and an old top hat and a red dressing gown hung from a rocky wall.
Around the place of the explosion the ground was creviced and plowed ... some trees had been cut evenly at ground level.
I was occupied in contemplating this sad spectacle when a small, merry voice rose suddenly.
I jumped and turned and found Doctor Omega standing in front of me.
He greeted me while smiling, but it appeared to me that there was in this kindness something ironic and cruel.
“Wait!” he said with a sharp snigger, “that was a marvelous leap!”
“Yes indeed,” I stammered, “and it is extremely fortunate that there no were victims.”
The doctor appeared not to hear this reflection. I grew bolder.
“You are undoubtedly the inventor, sir?” I said to him.
He made an affirmative sign with his head.
I was going to ask him of what his inventions consisted, but I did not dare.
I could not however leave it at that; it was necessary that there be some explanation.
Fortunately, I had a flash of genius.
“I, too,” I exclaimed, “am an inventor!”
The old man looked at me a few seconds with attention, and it should be believed that he was satisfied with this examination, because a small smile crossed his large smooth face. Abruptly placing a hand on my shoulder, he asked me this unexpected question:
“Are you a courageous man?”
“Why ask that?” I said rather anxiously.
“You will know that later. I ask whether you are a courageous man.”
“Certainly,” I answered, arching and wrinkling an eyebrow.
“Were you ever afraid in your life?”
“Never!” I lied with aplomb.
“Very well,” said the doctor, “you”re the one I was looking for. What is your name?”
“Denis Borel.”
“Come to see me this evening at nine o’clock.”
“There?” I asked, pointing a finger at the hangar, which remained upright in spite of the catastrophe.
“Yes, there. You will knock at the door but, I warn you, knock loudly because I am a little deaf. So now go, goodbye until this evening, my friend!”
And then the doctor firmly shook my hand.
The contact left me with an unpleasant feeling.
It was like touching a snakeskin
“My friend! He called me his friend!” I thought while turning back.
Devil if I accept his invitation! This man is quite simply insane!
If he wanted to talk with me he could do it right then. Ah! if he imagines that I will come to his hut in middle of the night he is mistaken.
I hardly wanted to pass an evening with a demented person
Returning home, I lunched with a good appetite and, in the afternoon, I played the violin for two hours.
I executed to perfection the Round of the Goblins of Bazzini ... and it seemed to me that my pizzicato could almost rival those of Jan Kubelik.
However, when evening came, my obsession again came over me.
I recalled the conversation of the morning, and began to wonder whether the doctor was really a lunatic.
After all, I said to myself, his eyes do not have anything worrying about them. They are a little hard, it is true, but that is undoubtedly because they are of a very clear blue.
His actions do not seem those of a deluded fool. They have jerky movements, abrupt, nervous, and my faith! Dr. Omega uses rather simple gestures. He is certainly an original, but who is not?
Those who pass their existence in deep thought have the right, after all, to be a little singular.
Nothing detaches you from external things like the fever of invention.
Altogether, the thinkers are separate, with their marvelous, powerful brains, too complicated to be understood by ordinary individuals who think that anything that exceeds their imaginations to be Utopian.
Do I have really the right to regard Doctor Omega as insane before having judged his work? What if this man were a genius?
The dinner hour arrived.
I did not touch the dishes I was served; I was satisfied with a broth in which I broke two eggs and I drank half a glass of wine.
When I rose from the table I was more anxious, more perplexed than ever.
I sat in my living room and thought about everything.
If I did not go to meet the Doctor, he would think me a coward and when I next met him he would laugh at me through the nose.
On the other hand, I was too much interested in this man to not benefit from this chance to finally learn something about him.
One thing worried me however: Why had he asked me whether I had been afraid sometime in my life?
Bah! I said. We will just see!
Half past eight had just sounded. I had risen and was about to leave when a new thought stopped me.
What if the doctor should subject to me to some terrible test? What if he were really insane and dangerous? Ah! my faith, so much the worse! I would defend myself! Besides, I would be armed with my Smith and Wesson.
I will see what his attitude is after I arrive. If it seems clear to me, I’ll quickly slip away from the mysterious inventor.
If he would try to retain me by force, I will manage well enough to escape that devil!
I am a young person, vigorous, he is an old man. I will be all right easily enough.
Already I was in the hall.
I asked for my rubber coat, because the weather was thundery, and I slipped my Smith into the pocket on the side of my jacket.
My servant, who saw this gesture, could not repress a movement of fear.
“Does Master leave?” he asked with a stupefied expression.
“Yes—what’s so unusual about that?”
“It is that since I have been in his service, Master has never left the house.”
“I have an appointment,” I answered.
And I added, as pure bravado, the words:
“An appointment with Doctor Omega.”
The servant rolled terrified eyes.
“You go to this old wizard? Oh! Take guard, Master! this man is capable of anything ... this afternoon I was even told about some scary things ... if you only knew!”
I shrugged my shoulders and me went from there from a calm air, although I was internally extremely disturbed.
As soon as I was on the road, I made quick time.
Large clouds rolled in the sky. Under their shadows I could not see ten steps in front of me.
However, when I passed the first houses of the village, the moon showed itself for a moment. My shadow then took shape on the ground, a shadow disproportionate, gigantic, which formed in front of me an enormous wavering mass.
As I passed by a farm, located at the entry of the plain, a dog started to howl and I was taken with a nervous tremor.
Was my courage going to give up on me?
But I straightened myself, fixed my cap and resolutely directed myself towards the hangar, whose only window was lighted.
Arriving in front of the black building, I hesitated a few seconds; finally, seizing a chain which hung to the right of the door, I pulled it abruptly.
It is impossible for me to express the effect the sound of the small bell produced upon me; a deceased person to which Providence had left the cruel ability to ring its own death knell, would not be affected more than I was it at that moment.
Soon a light shone through a peephole; the door opened and I found myself opposite Doctor Omega.
He was bare-headed and on his ivory cranium I noticed a small thatch of grey hair which stood upright like a brush.
Instantaneously, I remembered the dream that I had had and my legs began to tremble.
I made a movement to flee, but at that moment, the doctor, who had just closed the door, said with a little laugh which resembled the chuckle of a rooster:
“It will not open any further. See my system of closing? Is it rather clever? Nevertheless, it is extremely simple.”
There was a little click, then the man added:
“It is a true safety bolt, none other like it. But come on up.”
And the little old man preceded me, holding in his hand a copper lamp which projected along the walls a trembling illumination.
I made sure that my revolver was in my pocket. I felt the handle and regained my confidence.
The doctor climbed so quickly that I was sore put to follow him; the man had steel muscles.
Arriving on a very narrow landing, he opened a door and stood aside while saying:
“Enter my friend.”
I do not know why when it was when called me his friend I felt a kind of embarrassment.
I saw in this word a cruel mockery, like an ironic threat.
The room I entered was large and pentagonal.
On the right, as I entered, I saw a single, narrow, tall window, which rather resembled a loophole.
Deep inside the room, in a kind of passage forming a cul-de-sac and armored like the hold of a battleship, I could see the cupola of a fiery furnace, surmounted by a cylindrical cap covered with a sheet of metal.
“You may sit, my friend,” said the doctor, indicating a roughly-made wooden chair.
When in spite of his invitation I remained standing, he insisted:
“But you must sit as I request!”
I obeyed automatically. The old man then placed himself opposite me.
Half of his face was drowned in shadow while the lit part appeared to have a waxen whiteness
I noticed that one of his eyes shone with a singular glare and each time this luminous eye fixed on me I involuntarily shivered.
Outside the wind blew with fury.
The trees crackled and the wind vane on the roof of the hangar turned madly with a rattling noise.
Finally, the old man snapped his fingers and brought his seat closer to me.
“You,” he said, laughing, “would undoubtedly like to know why I made you come here?”
“Absolutely,”I answered. “I acknowledge that.”
The doctor rubbed his hands, then after a lowered glance, he spoke again:
“I sought a courageous man to accompany me on a fantastic voyage—that is the word—an extraordinary voyage which I never believed possible to achieve, but through recent discoveries I have made, I managed to find a substance that is repelled by gravity and makes use of it like a fulcrum to rise in the air.”
I nodded my head admiringly, but the more the doctor expounded upon his dense explanations, the more this opinion anchored itself in my mind: “this man is definitely insane. But if I don’t oppose him, I don’t have anything to fear.”
I was completely reassured, even though, from time to other, the doctor turned abruptly on his seat to look behind him
Several times he even rose and moved towards the cupola-shaped furnace which heated the lower part of the room.
This action intrigued me and the old man undoubtedly saw in my eyes the question which I did not dare to ask him, because he said to me:
“You wonder why I so often glance toward the container over there. I will tell you. “Boiling there is a substance that I am subjecting to a strong pressure and it would take but one moment of negligence for this hangar to explode like the other one.”
I felt a little chill pass along my body.
“Yes,” the doctor said, “it is a container much like the one which you see at the bottom of this corridor which brought on the catastrophe of the day before yesterday.
“One of my workmen had neglected, while leaving, to lower the heat of the hearth.”
And my interlocutor rose again to go to examine his apparatus.
“We can,” he said, after returning to sit down, “reach 15 atmospheres. It is the extreme limit, but at 14 3/4 atmospheres it is necessary to keep a sharp eye.”
“Where is it at this moment?” I asked with concern.
“Oh! to hardly 14. We can rest easy. I was just saying to you that I had found a substance which removes the ordinary action of gravity That seems impossible but it is the truth.”
The doctor, having noticed on my face a gleam of incredulity, added, while raising his voice a little:
“You do not believe me?”
“But if...”
“You doubt. I see that. Well! you will be convinced!
“Open the trunk you see there and take the first object which will fall to your hand.”
I wanted to take good care not to oppose the old scientist. I therefore raised the lid of the large sideboard that he had indicated to me and there seized a thick metal plate.
“I’ll never be able life that!” I exclaimed.
“Try it,” said the doctor with a little chuckle.
I gathered all my strength and gripped the enormous block.
O wonder! O miracle! I removed it without difficulty, as though it weighed less than a feather! Furthermore I noticed that it rose in spite of me and it was all I could do to restrain it
“Well, what do you think of that?” the doctor asked, while taking from me the metal block, which he replaced in the trunk.
“It is marvellous! amazing! phenomenal! extraordinary!” I exclaimed heatedly.
My sudden transition from doubt to enthusiasm brought a smile of satisfaction to the face of the doctor.
I looked at the man with amazement. It seemed to me now that he emitted from his person something superhuman, and I believed to see an aureole illuminating his face.
This little old man, who had appeared to me odious and ridiculous, metamorphosed into a demigod.
“You see,” he said, “that I really have solved the most marvellous of scientific problems. Do you still agree to accompany me in the great voyage which I will attempt?”
How could I hesitate, after what I had just seen? I was fascinated, filled with wonder, literally dazzled.
“Oh! doctor,” I answered, “I am ready to follow you everywhere, anywhere you go, even to the end of the world.”
“We will go further go than that,” pronounced the old man in a serious tone.
But suddenly, in spite of myself, I shivered. I had just heard an odd purring, an increasingly singular sound like rrouu rrouu. Instinctively, I turned my eyes toward the cupola-shaped furnace.
“Oh! do not fear anything,” said the doctor while smiling. “It is the metal which has started to undergo its final cooking We are at 14 1/4 atmospheres. In a few minutes I will slow down the combustion.”
“Then there is no danger?”
“At the moment, no.”
And the scientist continued, very calmly:
“I could have taken along one of my workmen but I do not need just a bold, courageous man. I also need an intelligent companion who can usefully assist me in taking notes and writing down my impressions.”
“A secretary.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Yes, yes I understand,” I said, distractedly, again looking at the container from which the rrouu had become threatening.
I even thought I heard small crackings as if the walls of the cast iron sphere were being tightened under the effort of fused metal.
Nevertheless I endeavoured to let my face appear calm. The beating of my heart could be seen through my clothing but my face remained rather calm, although a cold sweat ran along my temples.
“I believe that it would be high time,” I said in a timid voice, “to lower the pressure.”
The scientist shrugged his shoulders slightly and did not answer.
Suddenly a terrible crash came from the ground floor. Someone was pounding on the door violently. .
“What is that?” said the old man while suddenly drawing himself up. “My safety bolts would have slipped into their grooves... no, this is impossible! Wait for me one second and I will see. There is time for me to go down and come back up.”
“I am...I am...” I cried.
But the doctor had already left and the door through which he had disappeared had closed instantly, thanks to the invisible system that was an invention of this amazing man. I heard him go down the stairs four at a time. Then there was a noise of the door opening and the voice of the scientist rose shrill and furious.
What had happened?
I remained nailed to the spot, distressed, trembling.
The growls of the cupola-furnace were growing. It was now a howling like that of an angry monster.
I kicked at the door, I tried to open the safety bolt but it stayed firm. I tried to move it but it resisted my most desperate jolts.
Below, the scientist was shouting. I placed my ear against the parquet floor and I distinctly heard these words:
“The cupola-furnace! The cupola-furnace!”
I was done for! What I feared had arrived. The doctor would not return.
Gathering all my energy, I approached the container, and without hesitating, turned a copper lever firmly fixed in the sheet-metal cap. Perhaps it was a safety valve!
Curses! Had I hastened my end?
At once the substance in fusion began to fizz even more forcibly. The needle of the pressure gauge made a small jump and trembled on the dial A blinding blaze arose and a choking heat suffocated me.
I wanted to shout. But the blood rushed to my throat and my tongue stuck to my palate
Then I understood that it was the end
I moved to the end of the room, fixing my eye on the sinister gleam which radiated more and more strongly and, hiding my face in my hands, I dropped like a dead weight.
Anxiety strangled me, dashing from my delirious brain the last vestiges of reason.
