Tintin and the Calculus Affair

Author : Hergé

Language : English

The story is set in the 1950s, several months after Tintin and his friends have returned from the Moon. Tintin and Captain Haddock are on a stroll in the countryside around Marlinspike, but are suddenly caught out by an approaching thunderstorm and rush back to the manor.

Events take a mysterious turn during the storm. Inside Marlinspike, several items of glass within the house mysteriously break for no apparent reason. Then, Jolyon Wagg, an annoyingly gregarious and impolite insurance salesman, turns up uninvited to seek shelter. He claims that all the windows of his car have somehow blown to bits.

Once the storm passes, Wagg leaves, but gunshots are heard from outside, and Wagg is found hiding in the bushes. Another man is also found injured but then disappears. In the midst of the mystery, Professor Calculus, returns to the house that night with bullet holes in his hat. Calculus, somewhat apathetic to the whole series of events, leaves the following day to attend a conference on nuclear physics in Geneva.

When he is gone, things grow calmer. Tintin suspects that the strange events may have been connected with Calculus, and suggests to Haddock that they have a look inside his laboratory. They find a strange sonic device and are surprised by an eastern European wearing a trenchcoat and a mask. The intruder escapes after punching and knocking out Haddock. However, Snowy bites off the trenchcoat's pocket, and two items fall out: a key and a box of balcanic cigarettes with the name of the Hotel Cornavin (where Calculus is staying in Geneva) scrawled onto it. Concerned that Calculus is in danger, Tintin and Haddock decide to follow him to Switzerland.

In Geneva, Tintin and Haddock miss Calculus at his hotel by seconds, delayed by two men dressed in the same trenchcoats as the man in the lab. They track Calculus to Nyon, at the home of Professor Topolino, an expert in ultrasonics. On the way to Nyon their taxi is forced into a nearby lake by the same 2 men from the hotel, but they manage to get out and reach Topolino's house. Calculus's umbrella is there but he is not and Topolino is found bound and gagged in his own cellar. Topolino claims that it was Calculus's doing but after being shown his photograph, he realises that an impostor posing as Calculus attacked him. Tintin determines that Calculus has now been kidnapped. The same two men who had earlier impeded Tintin and Haddock's efforts to find Calculus in Geneva blow up Topolino's house in an attempt to kill them all, but they survive nonetheless.

Tintin and Haddock conclude that the sonic device that they found in the laboratory was responsible for the breakages at Marlinspike. However, the breaking of glass is just the beginning. Calculus also discovered how to turn the device into a weapon which could destroy metal, including buildings, tanks etc. Concerned of the consequences of such a thing, he had decided to talk it over with Topolino, whom he consulted by letter while developing the device. But Topolino's manservant, a Bordurian named Boris, learned of this and informed his country's intelligence service.

It soon dawns on them that rival teams of agents from both Syldavia and Borduria have knowledge of the device and its potential. Abducted at first by Bordurians, Calculus is dramatically seized by Syldavian agents in spite of Tintin and Haddock's efforts to rescue him, which are thwarted from a long distance by none other than Wagg: while pursuing the Syldavians across Lake Geneva into France, Haddock tries to contact the police by radio; he instead gets through to Wagg who turns down all pleas to contact the authorities, thinking that the whole thing is a wind-up on Haddock's part. Later, when Nestor, the Marlinspike butler, tells Haddock that Calculus's lab has been robbed, Wagg again interrupts the call, dismissing the whole thing of as no importance, and preventing Haddock from getting any details on the investigation.

After being pursued by Tintin and Haddock through the French countryside, the Syldavians escape in a plane, with Calculus as their prisoner. However, the plane is forced down over Bordurian territory, and tension between the two nations increases. Tintin and Haddock set off for Borduria in hope of finding their friend again.

Throughout the story, the two have been followed continuously by Bordurian spies, and their location comes to the attention of the Bordurian Chief of Secret Police, the notorious Colonel Sponsz (who had been informed by the 2 men in Geneva), who arranges for them to be picked up at the airport of the Bordurian capital, Szohod, assigned two minders who restrict their movements, and taken to a luxury hotel which is full of secret listening devices. Sponsz presumably hopes to prevent them from rescuing Calculus and get information from them that will coerce him into giving the plans of the sonic device to the Bordurians.

Meanwhile, at a secret meeting of Bordurian military officials, the capability of Calculus's device is revealed: Bordurian scientists have discovered its potential to destroy glass and clay, and are conducting research using the original prototype to use it as a weapon of mass destruction.

Escaping from the hotel into the nearby Szohod Opera House, Tintin and Haddock have a run-in with Bianca Castafiore, whom by chance, Sponsz visits in her dressing room to congratulate upon her performance. Tintin and Haddock hide in Bianca's closet, overhearing the conversation between Sponsz and Castafiore (an ironic twist of events given that it was he who tried to listen to theirs at the hotel). Sponsz reveals Calculus's location, a prison in the fortress of Bakhine, and the pressure on him to surrender his plans. If he does give them up, then he will be handed over to two officials from the Red Cross, to whom he must swear that he went to the Bordurians of his own accord and gave them his plans voluntarily.

Overhearing all this, Tintin and Haddock disguise themselves as the two officials and seize Calculus, escaping from Borduria in a car and later a tank. Realising the catastrophic potential of his invention, Calculus burns his plans. Courtesy : wikipedia.org

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