Still the die was cast. I was to obtain, somehow, an interview with the inventor, who was so unlike others of his species that he invented for his own satisfaction, and not to sell his discovery. I was to offer whatever I liked. And if, as was probable, he refused, try and induce him to take me for a cruise, and learn what I could as fortune favored me.
It was as foolish a scheme for them to suggest as for me to undertake; but everything about the vessel was so secret and mysterious, that even if I could bring back the vaguest idea of how this craft was propelled it would be of inestimable value.
It was to the wild coast of Normandy that I was speeding, clad in a rusty black gown and a still rustier mantle that libelled nature in the manner it distorted me; and the day was as wild and boisterous as I could wish for the first act of the play, comedy, or tragedy, as Fate decreed.
The gray eve was fading to a dirty twilight, and inky clouds scurried across the gloomy sky, as I alighted some four kilometres from the Chateau de Lorme, and, setting my face resolutely to the wind, started to walk the distance.
The wind, howling and biting from the sea, brought with it merciless sheets of hail and sleety rain; and after the first ten minutes I realized that I could get no wetter, and so I mechanically battled onward, my wretched, ill-shapen garments streaming with water, and flapping miserably around me.
Saints! what a walk! A dozen times I was for relinquishing the whole thing and turning back in despair, but something kept me struggling on until more than half the distance had been traversed, and then it was better to press forward than to return.
On and on, the sharp hailstones stinging my cheeks, until I felt it must be seclusion for a month before I dared appear in Paris again, and then a turn of the road brought me before a house standing on the edge of the cliff, an enormous mansion shrouded in blackness, and apparently deserted.
Night had fallen, and everywhere was darkness and solitude. An avenue of trees led to the door, and while I walked under their shelter I had an opportunity of gaining my breath before I grasped the heavy iron knocker, and, with determined hand, knocked until the house seemed to shake with the echoes.
"Well?" at last came a gruff shout above my head. "Well, what is it?"
"I want shelter," I cried, irritably, and not with feigned annoyance, for I was shivering with the damp and cold, and wished I had never left Paris.