Fortenay's appearance was a source of instant consternation to Dr. Weigand's staff, who had been at their business long enough to know public-relations trouble when they saw it. Promptly they shifted the problem of Fortenay's disposition upward through the chain of seniority to Dr. Weigand himself.
The old oceanographer, in answer to their frantic calls over his bathysphere telephone, unscrewed the circular hatch of his quartz-glass ball and put out his head much after the fashion of a bearded and bifocaled bear peering from his winter den. He made a desperate attempt to close the hatch when he recognized Fortenay, but Fortenay was not to be denied.
"Hold everything!" said Fortenay, in effect. "I am here, in the interests of God and country and twenty million newspaper readers, to investigate this investigation."
Dr. Weigand protested the interruption of his work, and Fortenay invoked the power of the press. Worse, he threatened the good doctor with the personal wrath of Fortenay. His logic was wonderfully cogent.
Dr. Weigand's project depended largely upon government subsidy, and Congress controlled such subsidies. The people controlled Congress, and Fortenay controlled public opinion.
"I'll have them screaming for your head on a pike," Fortenay swore. And Dr. Weigand, who had lived long enough to understand that Fortenay could do just that, reluctantly surrendered.
Fortenay was a tyrannical little heel, but he possessed a certain amount of physical courage. "I'm going down with you, Wiggy," he said, "and see this Lost World shanty for myself."
And Fortenay went down, because he was confident that he would come up again....
Their descent into Bartlett Deep would have been enthralling to Dr. Weigand without Fortenay's company, and deadly dull to Fortenay without the doctor's. As it developed, Dr. Weigand could only moon like a distracted bruin on his leather bathysphere seat and peer miserably out at the marine wonders rising past his eyes, while Fortenay occupied himself with assessing the oceanographer's motives in pursuing an investigation so hare-brained.
For Fortenay did not believe for a minute that it was an artifact which Dr. Weigand had discovered, but a natural and therefore profitless formation. His suspicions were confirmed when he learned that the bathysphere could descend no more than a mile into the six-mile basin of Bartlett Deep without being crushed—to borrow a simile from Fortenay's ready stock—like an eggshell under the mounting pressure of water above.