Accompanied by Mr. Holz, Prokop returned to the laboratory; everybody whom he encountered stopped and then took to flight, some at times even taking shelter in a ditch. He again threw himself into his work as if possessed, mixed materials together which nobody would have dreamed of associating, armed with a blind certainty that he could convert them into explosives. He filled flasks, matchboxes, tins for preserved food, everything that came into his hands. The table, window-ledges and the floor were covered with them and he went on until he simply had nowhere to put the stuff. In the afternoon the Princess appeared, veiled and wrapped up to the eyes in her cloak. He ran towards her and would have taken her in his arms, but she repulsed him. “No, no, today I’m ugly. Please go on working; I’ll watch you.”
She sat down on the edge of a chair directly opposite to the frightful arsenal of explosives. Prokop with set lips was rapidly weighing and mixing something which hissed and smelt bitter. Then he filtered it with the greatest care. She watched him, her hands motionless, her eyes burning. Both were thinking that the royal heir was to arrive that day.
Prokop was looking for something on a shelf on which were ranged various acids. She stood up, raised her veil, put her arms round his neck and placed her dry, closed lips against his mouth. They swayed about between the rows of bottles containing unstable oxozobenzol and terribly powerful fulminates, dumb and convulsed, but again she pushed him away and sat down, covering her face with her hands. Prokop set to work again still more quickly, like a baker making bread, and this time it was to be the most diabolical substance which man ever prepared, a violent and frightfully sensitive oil, the incarnation of swiftness and inflammability. And now here it was, transparent as water and fluid as ether; a terrible and incalculable destructive agent. He looked round to see where he had placed the flask containing this nameless substance. She laughed, took it out of his hand and held it clasped in her hands on her lap.
Outside Mr. Holz suddenly cried “Stop” to somebody. Prokop ran out. Oncle Rohn was standing extremely near the explosive trap.
Prokop went up to him. “What do you want?”
“Minna,” said Oncle Charles sweetly, “she’s not well and so—”
Prokop made a face. “Come and fetch her,” he said and led him in.
“Ah, Oncle Charles!” The Princess greeted him kindly. “Come and look, this is frightfully interesting.”
Oncle Rohn looked carefully at her and about the room and was evidently relieved. “You shouldn’t have come, Minna,” he said reproachfully.
“Why not?” she objected innocently.
He looked helplessly at Prokop. “Because … because you are feverish.”
“I’m better now,” she said quietly.
“But still you shouldn’t …” said le bon prince, frowning seriously.
“Mon Oncle, you know that I always do what I want to,” she said, making an end to this family scene. At that moment Prokop was removing from a chair a little box containing some explosives. “Do sit down,” he said politely to Rohn.
Oncle Charles did not seem to be pleased at the situation. “I’m not … stopping you in your work?” he asked of Prokop aimlessly.
“Not in the least,” said Prokop, rolling some substance in his fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“Making explosives. Please, that bottle,” he said, turning to the Princess.
She gave it him and added openly and provocatively, “Do you—?” Oncle Rohn recoiled as if he had been struck but soon gave himself up to contemplating the rapid, though extremely cautious, way in which Prokop was pouring some drops of a yellow liquid on to a piece of clay.
He coughed and asked: “How do you ignite that?”
“By shaking it,” answered Prokop shortly, continuing to pour out the liquid.
Oncle Charles turned to the Princess. “If you are frightened, Uncle,” she said dryly, “you needn’t wait for me.” He sat down resignedly and tapped with his stick on a tin box which had once contained Californian peaches. “What does that contain?”
“That’s a hand-grenade,” explained Prokop. “Hexani trofenyl methylnitramin. Feel the weight of it.”
Oncle Rohn become flurried. “Wouldn’t it perhaps be better to be a little more careful?” he asked, twisting in his fingers a matchbox which he had picked up from the desk.
“Certainly,” agreed Prokop and took it out of his hand. “That’s chlorargonat. Not to be played with.”
Oncle Charles frowned. “All this gives me a rather disturbed feeling,” he said sharply.
Prokop threw the box down on the table. “What? And I also had a disturbed feeling when you threatened to send me to a fortress.”
“… I can say,” said Rohn, accepting the reproach, “that all that … made no impression on me.”
“But it made an enormous impression on me,” said the Princess.
“Are you afraid that he will do something?” said le bon prince, turning to her.
“I hope that he will do something,” she said optimistically. “Do you think that he’s not capable of it?”
“I have no doubt about it,” said Rohn. “Shall we go now?”
“No. I should like to help him.”
Just then Prokop was breaking a metal spoon in his fingers. “What’s that for?” she asked him curiously.
“I’ve run out of nails,” he said gruffly. “I’ve nothing to fill the bombs with.” He looked round in search of something made of metal. Then the Princess stood up, blushed, hastily peeled off one of her gloves and removed a gold ring from her finger. “Take this,” she said softly, her eyes cast down. He took it, wincing; it was almost a ceremony … as if they were being betrothed. He hesitated, weighing the ring in his hand; she raised her eyes to him in urgent and burning inquiry. Then he nodded seriously and placed the ring at the bottom of a tin box.
Oncle
