_In the Laboratory_
Not until the man's struggles had ceased, and he lay unconscious,
panting, and blue in the face, did Dick release him. Then he looked
about him.
Save for the workman, he was alone in a rotunda, open to the sky, and,
as he had supposed, the whole upper portion of the dome had been flung
back, leaving an immense aperture into which the sun was shining,
flecking the interior with shafts of light. The temperature, despite
the opening of the dome, must have been in excess of a hundred and
twenty-five degrees.
There was nothing except an immense central shaft, up which ran a
hollow pole of glass, cut off by the invisible paint at the summit of
the dome. The inside of this glass pole was glowing with colored
fires, and it was from this that the intolerable heat came, though its
function Dick could not imagine.
One thing was clear: It was growing hotter each moment. To remain in
that rotunda meant death within a brief period of time.
_And there was no way out!_ Dick glared around him, searching the
glass walls in vain. No semblance of a stairway or ladder, even. Yet
the workman must have entered by some ingress--if only Dick could
discover it!
He began running round the interior of the dome in the brilliant
sunshine, searching frantically for that ingress. And it was growing
hotter! The sweat was pouring down his face beneath the invisible
garment.
Dick was vaguely aware that the silence switch had been thrown in the
room, for his feet made no sound, but the knowledge was latent in his
mind. Two or three times he circumnavigated the interior of the dome,
like a rat in a trap.
Then suddenly he saw a section of the flooring rise in a corner, and a
workman in a blue blouse appear out of the trap door.
* * * * *
He stood there, his face muscles working as he shouted for his
companion, but no sound came from his lips. He looked about him, and
saw the unconscious man beside the window. He started in his
direction.
With a shout, Dick hurled himself toward him. And he checked himself
even as he was about to leap. For he realized that the second workman
neither saw nor heard him.
Yet some subconscious impression of danger must have reached his mind,
for the workman stopped too, instinctively assuming an attitude of
defense. Dick gathered a dozen links of his wrist-chain in his right
hand, leaped and struck.
The workman crumpled to the floor, a little thread of blood creeping
from his right temple.
It was the thing upon which Dick looked back afterward with less
satisfaction than any other, leaving the two unconscious men in that
room of death. Yet there was nothing else he could have done. He ran
to the trap, and saw a ladder leading down. In a moment he had swung
himself through and closed the trap behind him.
The material that lined the walls below must have had almost perfect
insulating qualities, for the temperature here was no hotter than in
the Bahamas on a hot summer day. Dick scrambled down the ladder and
found himself in a machine-shop. Nobody was there, and tools of all
sorts were lying about, as well as machinery whose purpose he did not
understand. A pair of heavy pliers and a vise were sufficient to rid
Dick of his wrist and ankle chains in a minute or two. With a knife he
slashed the cords of invisible stuff that bound him. He stood up,
cramped, but free.
He picked up an iron bar that was lying loose on a table beside a
machine, and advanced to the staircase in one corner of the shop. As
he approached it, another workman came running up.
* * * * *
Dick stood aside in an embrasure in the wall partly occupied by a
machine. The man passed within two feet of him and never saw him. Only
then did Dick quite realize that he was actually invisible.
The moment the man had passed him, Dick ran to the staircase. He
descended one flight; he was half way down another when a yell of pain
and imprecation came to his ears. He knew that voice: it was Luke
Evans's!
With three bounds Dick reached the bottom of the stairs. He saw a
large room in front of him. No mistaking the nature of this room; it
was an ordinary laboratory, fitted out with the greatest elaboration,
and divided into two parts by paneling. And sight and sound were on.
In the part nearer Dick three men were grouped about a large dynamo,
which was sending out a high, musical note as it spun. Levers and
dials were all about it, and above it was the base of the glass tube
that Dick had seen above. In the other part were five or six men.
Three of them were testing some substance at a table; three more were
gathered about old Luke Evans, whose silver chains had been removed
and replaced by ropes, which bound his limbs, and also bound him to a
heavy chair, which seemed to be affixed to the ground. One of the
three had a piece of metal in a pair of long-handled pliers. It was
white hot, and a white electric spark that shot to and fro between two
terminals close by, showed where it had been heated.
Dick started; he recognized one of the three men as Von Kettler. He
moved slowly forward, very softly, his feet making no sound on the
fiber matting that covered the floor.
* * * * *
"Did that feel good, American swine?" asked Von Kettler softly, and
Dick saw, with horror, a red weal on the old man's forehead. "Now you
are perhaps in a more gracious mood, Professor? The unknown isotope in
that black gas of yours--you are disposed to give us the chemical
formula?"
"I'll see you in hell first," raved old Luke Evans, writhing in his
chair.
Von Kettler turned to the man holding the white-hot metal, and nodded.
But at that moment a door behind Evans's chair opened, and Fredegonde
Valmy appeared in the entrance. Von Kettler turned hastily, snatched
the pliers from the man's hand, and laid the metal in a receptacle.
But the girl had seen the action. She looked at the weal on Luke's
forehead, and clenched her hands; her eyes dilated with horror.
"You have been torturing him, Hugo!" she cried.
"Freda, what are you doing in here? Oblige me by withdrawing
immediately!" cried Von Kettler.
"Where is Captain Rennell?" the girl retorted. "I will know!"
"He is upstairs, watching the approaching Yankee fleet, and waiting to
see its destruction," returned the other.
"You are lying to me! He has been killed, and this old man has been
tortured!" cried Fredegonde. "I tell you, Hugo Von Kettler, you are no
longer a half-brother of mine! I am through with you!"
"Unfortunately," sneered Von Kettler, "it is not possible to dispose
of a family relationship so easily."
* * * * *
"It is cheap to sneer," the girl retorted. "But you sang a very
different song when you were in the penitentiary, in terror of death,
and you begged me to come and throw you the invisible robe through the
bars. You promised me then that you would abandon this mad enterprise
and come away with me. You swore it!"
"I have sworn allegiance to my Emperor, and that comes first,"
retorted Von Kettler. "Oblige me by retiring."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," cried the girl hysterically. "When
you used me as a tool in your enterprises in Washington, you played
upon my patriotism for my conquered country. I thought I was
undertaking a heroic act. I didn't dream of the villainy, the
cold-blooded murder that was to be wrought.
"You've kept me here virtually a prisoner," she went on, with rising
violence, "an attendant upon that old madman, your Emperor, and his
sham court, while more murder is being planned. Where is Captain
Rennell, I say?" She stamped her foot. "I demand that he and this old
man be set at liberty at once. Hugo," she pleaded, "come away with me.
Don't you see what the end must be? This is no heroic enterprise, it
is wholesale murder that will arouse the conscience of civilized
mankind against you! Order that the vortex-ray be turned off," she
went on, looking through the opening in the partition toward the
dynamo. "That gas--you cannot be so vile as to send it forth again, to
destroy the American ships?"
"My dear Freda," retorted the young man coolly, "the vortex-ray is
already charged with the gas, and at a height of twenty thousand feet
it is now creating a vacuum that will send the gas upon the wings of a
hurricane straight up the Atlantic seaboard. It will obliterate every
living thing on board the battleships, from men to rats, and this time
we mean to reach New York.
"As for that swine Rennell," he went on, "you heard His Majesty
announce his intention of sending him back to Washington with the
information of our irresistible power. Of course I know you are in
love with him, and that these qualms of conscience are due to that
circumstance."
* * * * *
But Dick hardly heard the latter part of Von Kettler's remarks.
Suddenly the significance of the dynamo and the superheated room above
had come home to him. He had read of such a project years before, in
some newspaper, and had forgotten about it until that moment.
By sending a high-tension current almost to the limits of the earth's
atmosphere, the article had said, a vortex or vacuum could be set up
which would create a hurricane.
The tremendous pressure of the in-rushing air would make a veritable
cyclone, which, taking the course of the prevailing winds, would rush
forth on a mission of widespread disaster.
And on this hurricane would go the deadly gas, infinitely diluted, and
yet deadly to all life in its infinitesimal proportion to the
atmosphere.
And the American fleet was now approaching the Bahama shores.
Dick forgot Luke Evans, everything else, as the significance of that
mechanism in the next room came home to him. He ran like a madman
through the space in the partition, and, raising the bar aloft,
brought it thudding down upon the dials, twisting and warping them.
He struck at the hollow pole, but, glass or not, it defied all his
efforts. He seized a heavy lever and flung it into reverse--and two
others.
Yelling, the three attendants broke and ran. Out of the laboratory the
six came running, collided with the three. Behind them Dick could see
Fredegonde Valmy, a knife in her hand, slashing at Luke Evans's bonds.
Dick swung his bar and brought it crashing down on a head, felling the
man like a log. He saw Von Kettler pull one of the glass rods from
his pocket and fire blindly. The discharge struck a second attendant,
and the man dropped screeching, his clothes ablaze.
Somebody yelled, "He's there! Look at his eyes!" and pointed at Dick's
face.
* * * * *
Dick leaped aside and swung the rod again, felling a third man. The
others turned and ran. Von Kettler in the van, broke through the door
behind Luke Evans's chair, and disappeared.
Dick ran back to where the old man was standing beside the girl, the
discarded ropes at his feet. He flung his hood back. "Luke, don't you
know me?" he shouted.
It was creditable to Luke Evans's composure that, though Dick must
have presented the aspect of nothing more than a face floating in the
air, he retained his composure.
"Sure I know you, Rennell," replied the old man. "And you and me's
going to best them devils yet."
"But the fleet--it's approaching Abaco," Dick cried. "I've got to warn
them."
Fredegonde seized him by the arm.
"Come with me," she cried. "If they find you here, they'll kill you."
Dick hesitated only a moment, then followed the girl as she dashed for
another door on the same side of the laboratory as that by which Von
Kettler and his men had fled. They dashed down the staircase, and a
corridor disclosed itself at the bottom. The girl stopped.
"There is a private way--the Emperor's," she panted. "He had it
constructed--in case of necessity. I got the keys. I was
planning--something desperate--to stop these murders; I didn't know
what."
Dick seized her by the arm. "What keys?" he demanded. "The key to the
place where President Hargreaves is?"
"Yes, but--"
"We must get him. Where is he?"
"In a cell beneath the throne room. That's overhead. But they'll
catch us--"
"Which is the key?" asked Dick.
The girl produced three or four keys, fumbled with them, handed one to
Dick. "This way!" she cried.
* * * * *
They ran along the corridor. Two guards appeared, moving toward them
under the electric lights. At the sight of the girl running, and Luke
Evans, they stopped in surprise.
Dick had pulled the hood back over his head. He ran toward them,
wielding the iron bar. A mighty swing sent the two toppling over, one
unconscious, the other bruised and yelling loudly.
"Here! Here!" gasped Fredegonde, stopping before a door.
Dick fitted the key to the lock and turned it. Inside, upon a quite
visible bed, sat President Hargreaves, unchained. He looked up
inquiringly as the three entered.
"Mr. President," said Dick, throwing back his hood, "I'm an American
officer, and I want to save you. There's not much chance, but, if
you'll come with me--"
Hargreaves got up and smiled. "I'm not a military man, sir," he
answered, "but I'm ready to take that chance rather than--"
He did not complete the sentence. Shouts echoed along the corridor
behind them. Dick replaced his hood, handed the keys back to the girl.
"Take Mr. Hargreaves to any place of temporary safety you can," he
said. "And Mr. Evans. I'll hold them!"
"It's right here. This door!" panted the girl, indicating a door at
the end of the passage.
The three ran toward it. Dick turned. Five or six guards with Von
Kettler at their head, were running toward him. They saw the three
fugitives and set up a shout.
Dick had a quick inspiration. He dashed back into the cell, seized the
light bed, and dragged it through the doorway into the passage, just
in time to send Von Kettler and two others sprawling. He brought down
the bar upon the head of one of them, shouting as he did so.
Then he became aware that the passage was flooded with sunshine.
Fredegonde had got the door open.
He darted back, passed through in the wake of the three, and slammed
it shut. Fredegonde turned the key. Instantly Dick found himself with
his three companions upon the prairie. Not a vestige of the buildings
was apparent anywhere, except for the patches of brown earth.