“My dear Sant,” he exclaimed joyfully. “Who would have thought of meeting you here? I am alone in Paris. I know no one and am bored to death. What have you got on hand now? I thought you were in New York.”
“I certainly didn’t expect to meet you here,” I replied. “What has brought you over?”
“Come and have some lunch, and I’ll tell you all about it,” he replied, and we repaired to an adjoining café, where Captain A— promptly ordered lunch in a private room.
“We’ve got a new thing on hand in the submarine line,” he told me as soon as the waiter had left the room. “You know we have been trying some experiments in German waters lately, and the Hun destroyers have been so confoundedly active that our fellows have had to pass a lot of their time sitting on the bottom. As a consequence, some of the crew have suffered terribly for want of fresh air. We have a very good system of purifying the atmosphere, but it is not sufficient owing to the long periods the boats have to stay under water, and a number of men have collapsed and died from suffocation. Indeed, one boat only escaped with more than half her crew totally incapacitated.”
I was keenly on the alert. Was I, I wondered, coming to grips at last with our problem?
“Well,” Captain A— went on, “we have been offered a new apparatus, which, if half of what the inventor tells us is true, will enable us to give the Hun a very bad time. We are assured that by its help a boat can stay under water for five days without the slightest risk.”
“Five days!” I repeated incredulously. “Why, it’s impossible!”
“So I thought,” he rejoined, “but when Engström and Linner vouch for anything, you’ve got to listen.”
“Engström and Linner!” I gasped. Things were getting “warm” indeed.
“Yes,” he replied. “Mr Engström is in Paris now with his invention, and we are going to test it off Havre.”