"But, Uncle Frederick dead, the War Lord is moving heaven and earth to flog the firm into submission." There was suppressed rage in the tone of the young man's voice.
"Let me finish," demanded the Baroness. "Convinced that I would refuse to be the tool of his ambition, the War Lord persuaded your Uncle to ignore me as his legitimate successor, and the testament appoints Bertha sole heir and, again ignoring me, the War Lord her guardian and executor."
"Gott!" cried Franz.
The Baroness went on: "His position as supreme overlord of the Krupp business he made perfectly clear to us."
"Us? You mean the heads of the business?"
"I referred to the child and myself. He talked to the directors afterwards." The discrowned Cannon Queen told Franz the story of the Imperial interview. "He is the master," she said in conclusion, "Bertha his pawn, myself nobody."
"And we, the heads of the business, and our workmen, his slaves," added the chief electrician gloomily.
These two people, suddenly confronted by the unexpected—a wife shorn of her rights and wounded in her holiest maternal sentiments; an honest man commandeered to debase his genius and become an accessory to murder most foul—sat for a while in silence, brooding over their misfortune and the disasters threatening mankind as a consequence.
At last the Baroness roused herself. "And what did they want with you at the conference, Franz?"
"I was admitted after the War Lord had left to be closeted with the Director-General," replied the engineer, "and the directors seemed to me extraordinarily perturbed—far more than the master's death warrants among equals. Herr Braun acted as spokesman. He said the War Lord wanted the firm to experiment with a new steel lining for guns intended for foreign countries.