CHAPTER XXIII
It was decided very differently from the way he imagined.
He had conceived a plan of seeking out in Balttin the person who had given himself out to be Carson and of saying to him something like this: “Whatever happens, I spit on your money; lead me at once to George Thomas, with whom I have business, and in return you shall get a good explosive, say fulminate of iodine with a guaranteed detonation of some eleven thousand metres per second, or a certain acid with a good thirteen thousand, my dear sir, and you can do with it what you like.” They would simply be mad not to take advantage of such an offer.
From the outside the factory in Balttin seemed to him to be positively enormous; he was rather startled when, instead of a porter, he came upon a military sentry. He asked for Mr. Carson (of course that was not the fellow’s real name!); but the soldier passed him on without a word to his N.C.O. The latter said little more and led Prokop to the officer. “We’ve never heard of Engineer Carson here,” said the latter, “and what might the gentleman want with him?” Prokop announced that, strictly speaking, he wished to see Mr. Thomas. This made such an impression on the officer that he sent for the commandant.
The commandant, a very fat and asthmatic per-
158
