Алексей Николаевич Толстой - The Garin Death Ray

"Still, it's a pity that shark's going to swallow half the profits," said Lenoir, calling a waiter. "A bottle of Irroise, the driest there is..."

"Without capital we can't move. I'll tell you one thing, Victor, if my Kamchatka enterprise turned out all right, I'd send a dozen Rollings to the devil."

"What Kamchatka enterprise?"

The waiter brought a bottle and glasses, Garin lit a cigar, leaned back in the cane chair, rocking it on its back legs, and, frowning, began to tell his story.

"Do you remember Nikolai Khristoforovich Mantsev, the geologist? In 1915 he found me out in Petrograd. He'd just returned from the Far East, was scared of mobilization and asked my help so that he would not be drafted into the army."

"Mantsev worked for the British gold company, I believe?"

"He prospected on the Lena, on the Aldan, and then on the Kolyma. He had a wonderful tale to tell. They found thirty-pound nuggets just lying around. It was then that I first got my idea, the great idea of my life. It is more than bold, it is even mad, but still I believe in it. And if I believe in anything, then Old Nick himself won't stop me. You see, my friend, the one thing on earth that I value with all my heart and soul is power. Not just regal or imperial power—that's petty, vulgar, and boring. No, I mean absolute power. Some time I'll tell you about my plans in detail. In order to get power I must have gold. In order to rule in the way I intend to, I must have more gold than all the industrial, banking, and other kings taken together."

"Your plans are certainly bold enough," said Lenoir, laughing merrily.

"But I'm on the right track. The whole world will be in my hands—like this!" And Garin clenched his fist. "The milestones on my road are the genius Nikolai Khristoforovich Mantsev, then Rolling, or rather his billions, and thirdly my death ray..."

"What about Mantsev, then?"

"In 1915 I mustered all the money I could, and more by sheer impudence than by bribery I freed Mantsev from military service and sent him with a small expedition to Kamchatka, to the backwoods... Up to 1917 he kept writing to me: the work was hard, terribly laborious, the conditions under which he worked not fit for a dog... Since 1918 I've lost track of him, well, you know why... Everything depends on his prospecting."

"What is he looking for?"

"He isn't looking for anything. Mantsev merely has to confirm my theoretical assumptions. The Pacific seaboards, both Asiatic and American, are the edges of an ancient continent that has sunk to the bottom of the sea. Such a gigantic weight must have had some effect on the distribution of the rock strata that were in a state of flux... The chains of active volcanoes in South America, in the Andes and the Cordilleras, the volcanoes of Japan and of Kamchatka confirm the fact that the molten mass of the Olivine Belt—gold, mercury, olivine and so on—is nearer to the surface of the earth around the edges of the Pacific Ocean than anywhere else in the world. Do you understand so far?"

"I don't know what you want with that Olivine Belt."

"In order to conquer the world, old man. Let's drink to our success."

Zoe Montrose, heavily powdered, with mascara-treated eyes, wearing the black silk blouse of a midinette and a short skirt, got off the bus at the Porte de Saint-Denis, ran across the busy street and entered the Cafe Globe, a huge corner establishment with entrances on two streets, the refuge of singers from Montmartre, second-rate actors and actresses, thieves, prostitutes, and anarchically-minded young men of the type that roam the streets with ten sous in their pockets, licking their dried, feverish lips in their lust for women, shoes, silk underwear, and everything else in the world...

Zoe found a vacant table. She lit a cigarette, sat down, and crossed her legs. Immediately an old man brushed past, muttering huskily, "Why the angry look, ma petite?" She turned away. Another, squinting at her from his table, stuck out his tongue. A third came running up as though by mistake, "Kiki, at last..." Zoe dispatched him briefly to the devil.

Apparently she was the titbit here although she had tried to get herself up like a street girl. The habitues of the Cafe Globe had a nose for women. She ordered the garden to bring her a litre of red wine, poured out a glass, and sat with her head in her cupped hands. "That's bad, ma petite, taking to drink," said an elderly actor, patting her on the back as he passed.

* There exists a theory that between the earth's crust and a solid core in the centre there is a layer of molten metals, the so-called Olivine Belt.—Author's note.

She had already smoked three cigarettes when the man she was waiting for at last strolled leisurely into the cafe, a morose, thickset individual with a low, hairy forehead and cold eyes. He wore his moustache with the ends upturned and his strong neck was tightly encircled by a coloured collar. He was excellently dressed, without extravagance. He sat down and greeted Zoe curtly. As he looked round the room some people lowered their eyes when they met his. This was Gaston Bee de Canard, formerly a thief and later a bandit in the notorious Boneaut gang. During the war he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and since demobilization had been quietly pimping on a large scale.

At the moment he was with the well-known Susanne Bourge. That lady, however, was fading. She had descended to a level that Zoe had long since left behind her.

"Susanne is good material," Gaston Bee de Canard would say, "but she doesn't know how to make the best of herself. Susanne has no sense of modernity. What is so marvellous in lace knickers and milk baths? That's all old stuff that only gets the provincials. No, I swear by the mustard gas that burned my back at the ferryman's house on the Ysere that if the modern courtesan wants to be elegante she must have a wireless set in her bedroom, she must learn to box, she must be as prickly as barbed wire, as well-trained as an eighteen-year-old boy, must learn to walk on her hands and dive twenty metres into the water. She must attend fascist meetings, must be able to talk about poison gas, and must change her lovers once a week so that they won't learn any swinishness. But my lady, if you please, lies in a milk bath like a Norwegian salmon and dreams of owning a ten-acre farm. She's a vulgar fool, she can't rise above the brothel level."

He treated Zoe with the greatest respect. When he met her in night restaurants he asked her politely for a dance and kissed her hand, something he did to no other woman in Paris. Zoe' would no more than nod her head to the well-known Susanne Bourge but she kept up her friendship with Gaston and from time to time he carried out some of her more delicate operations.

Today she had given Gaston a hurried call to the Cafe Globe and had herself appeared in the seductive guise of a midinette. Gaston merely clenched his teeth and behaved in the approved manner.

Sipping his sour wine and screwing up his eyes in the smoke from his pipe he listened gloomily to what Zoe had to say. When she had finished she pulled her fingers till they cracked.

"But that's... dangerous," he said.

"Gaston, if it comes off you're made for life."

"Not for all the money in the world will I get mixed up in anything in the stealing and killing line: things aren't what they used to be. Today the apaches prefer a job in the police and professional thieves publish newspapers and go in for politics. It's only beginners that kill and rob, provincials, you know, and boys with V.D. And what can we do about it? We grown-ups have to look for a quiet haven. If you want to hire me for money—I refuse. It is different if I do it for you. For you I might risk my neck."

Zoe blew the smoke out of the corner of her reddened lips, smiled tenderly, and placed her beautiful hand on Bee de Canard's sleeve.