"I wanted to tell him good-bye," said Marguerite. "It was hard enough that I could not see him." And she turned her face to the pillow and began to weep.
"What is it, my dear?" I pleaded, as I knelt beside her. "It was all right, of course. Why are you crying--you do not think, do you, that Dr. Zimmern betrayed us?"
Marguerite raised herself upon her elbow and looked at me with hurt surprise. "Do you think that?" she demanded, almost fiercely.
"By no means," I hastened to assure her, "but I do not understand your grief and I only thought that perhaps when you told him he was angered--I never understood why he seemed so anxious not to have you go with me."
"Oh, my dear," sobbed Marguerite. "Of course you never understood, because we too had a secret that has been kept from you, and you have been so apologetic because you feared so long to confide in me and I have been even slower to confide in you."
For a moment black rebellion rose in my heart, for though with my reasoning I had accepted the explanation that Zimmern had given for his interest in Marguerite, I had never quite accepted it in my unreasoning heart. And in the depths of me the battle between love and reason and the dark forces of jealous unreason and suspicion had smouldered, to break out afresh on the least provocation.
I fought again to conquer these dark forces, for I had many times forgiven her even the thing which suspicion charged. And as I struggled now the sound of Marguerite's words came sweeping through my soul like a great cleansing wind, for she said--"The secret that I have kept back from you and that I have wanted so often to tell you is that Dr. Zimmern is my father!"
~7~
In the early dawn of a foggy morning we beached the Eitel 3 on a sandy stretch of Danish shore within a few kilometres of an airdome of the World Patrol. A native fisherman took Grauble, Marguerite and myself in his hydroplane to the post, where we found the commander at his breakfast. He was a man of quick intelligence. Our strange garb was sufficient to prove us Germans, while a brief and accurate account of the attempted rescue of the mines of Stassfurt, given in perfect English, sufficed to credit my reappearance in the affairs of the free world as a matter of grave and urgent importance.
A squad of men were sent at once to guard the vessel that had been left in charge of the mate. Within a few hours we three were at the seat of the World Government at Geneva.
Grauble surrendered his charts of the secret passage and was made a formal prisoner of state, until the line of the passage could be explored by borings and the reality of its existence verified.
I was in daily conference with the Council in regard to momentous actions that were set speedily a-going. The submarine tunnel was located and the passage blocked. A fleet of ice crushers and exploring planes were sent to locate the protium mines of the Arctic. The proclamation of these calamities to the continued isolated existence of Germany and the terms of peace and amnesty were sent showering down through the clouds to the roof of Berlin.
Marguerite and I had taken up our residence in a cottage on the lake shore, and there as I slept late into the sunlit hours of a July morning, I heard the clatter of a telephone annunciator. I sat bolt upright listening to the words of the instrument--
"Berlin has shut off the Ray generators of the defence mines--all over the desert of German soil men are pouring forth from the ventilating shafts--the roof of Berlin is a-swarm with a mass of men frolicking in the sunlight--the planes of the World Patrol have alighted on the roof and have received and flashed back the news of the abdication of the Emperor and the capitulation of Berlin--the world armies of the mines are out and marching forth to police the city--"
The voice of the instrument ceased.
I looked about for Marguerite and saw her not. I was up and running through the rooms of the cottage. I reached the outer door and saw her in the garden, robed in a gown of gossamer white, her hair streaming loose about her shoulders and gleaming golden brown in the quivering light. She was holding out her hands to the East, where o'er the far-flung mountain craigs the God of Day beamed down upon his worshipper.
In a frenzy of wild joy I called to her--"Babylon is fallen--is fallen! The black spot is erased from the map of the world!"
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK,
