satellite was too near the sun to be visible in broad daylight.
Accordingly, the mirror had to be directed by means of knowledge of
the moon's place in the sky. Driven by accurate clockwork, it could be
depended upon to retain the proper direction when once set.
With breathless interest I watched the proceedings of my friend and
his assistants. The strain upon the nerves of all of us was such as
could not have been borne for many hours at a stretch. When everything
had been adjusted to his satisfaction, Hall stepped back, not without
betraying his excitement in flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, and
pressed a lever. The powerful engine underneath the floor instantly
responded. The experiment was begun.
"I have set it upon a point about a hundred miles north of Tycho,
where the Yerkes photographs show a great abundance of the white
substance," said Hall.
Then we waited. A minute elapsed. A bird, fluttering in the opening
above, for a second or two, wrenched our strained nerves. Hall's face
turned pale.
"They had better keep away from here," he whispered, with a ghastly
smile.
Two minutes! I could hear the beating of my heart. The engine shook
the floor.
Three minutes! Hall's face was wet with perspiration. The bird
blundered in and startled us again.
Four minutes! We were like statues, with all eyes fixed on the
polished ball of silver, which shone in the brilliant light
concentrated upon it by the mirror.
Five minutes! The shining ball had become a confused blue, and I
violently winked to clear my vision.
"At last! Thank God! Look! There it is!"
It was Hall who spoke, trembling like an aspen. The silver knob had
changed color. What seemed a miniature rainbow surrounded it, with
concentric circles of blinding brilliance.
Then something dropped flashing into an earthen dish set beneath the
ball! Another glittering drop followed, and, at a shorter interval,
another!
Almost before a word could be uttered the drops had coalesced and
become a tiny stream, which, as it fell, twisted itself into a bright
spiral, gleaming with a hundred shifting hues, and forming on the
bottom of the dish a glowing, interlacing maze of viscid rings and
circlets, which turned and twined about and over one another, until
they had blended and settled into a button-shaped mass of hot metallic
jelly. Hall snatched the dish away, and placed another in its stead.
"This will be about right for a watch charm when it cools," he said,
with a return of his customary self-command. "I promised you the first
specimen. I'll catch another for myself."
"But can it be possible that we are not dreaming?" I exclaimed. "Do
you really believe that this comes from the moon?"
"Just as surely as rain comes from the clouds," cried Hall, with all
his old impatience. "Haven't I just showed you the whole process?"
"Then I congratulate you. You will be as rich as Dr. Syx."
"Perhaps," was the unperturbed reply, "but not until I have enlarged
my apparatus. At present I shall hardly do more than supply mementoes
to my friends. But since the principle is established, the rest is
mere detail."
Six weeks later the financial centres of the earth were shaken by the
news that a new supply of artemisium was being marketed from a mill
which had been secretly opened in the Sierras of California. For a
time there was almost a panic. If Hall had chosen to do so, he might
have precipitated serious trouble. But he immediately entered into
negotiations with government representatives, and the inevitable
result was that, to preserve the monetary system of the world from
upheaval, Dr. Syx had to consent that Hall's mill should share equally
with his in the production of artemisium. During the negotiations the
doctor paid a visit to Hall's establishment. The meeting between them
was most dramatic. Syx tried to blast his rival with a glance, but
knowledge is power, and my friend faced his mysterious antagonist,
whose deepest secrets he had penetrated, with an unflinching eye. It
was remarked that Dr. Syx became a changed man from that moment. His
masterful air seemed to have deserted him, and it was with something
resembling humility that he assented to the arrangement which required
him to share his enormous gains with his conqueror.
Of course, Hall's success led to an immediate recrudescence of the
efforts to extract artemisium from the Syx ore, and, equally of
course, every such attempt failed. Hall, while keeping his own secret,
did all he could to discourage the experiments, but they naturally
believed that he must have made the very discovery which was the
subject of their dreams, and he could not, without betraying himself,
and upsetting the finances of the planet, directly undeceive them. The
consequence was that fortunes were wasted in hopeless experimentation,
and, with Hall's achievement dazzling their eyes, the deluded
fortune-seekers kept on in the face of endless disappointments and
disaster.
And presently there came another tragedy. The Syx mill was blown up!
The accident--although many people refused to regard it as an
accident, and asserted that the doctor himself, in his chagrin, had
applied the match--the explosion, then, occurred about sundown, and
its effects were awful. The great works, with everything pertaining to
them, and every rail that they contained, were blown to atoms. They
disappeared as if they had never existed. Even the twin tunnels were
involved in the ruin, a vast cavity being left in the mountain-side
where Syx's ten acres had been. The force of the explosion was so
great that the shattered rock was reduced to dust. To this fact was
owing the escape of the troops camped near. While the mountain was
shaken to its core, and enormous parapets of living rock were hurled
down the precipices of the Teton, no missiles of appreciable size
traversed the air, and not a man at the camp was injured. But
Jackson's Hole, filled with red dust, looked for days afterwards like
the mouth of a tremendous volcano just after an eruption. Dr. Syx had
been seen entering the mill a few minutes before the catastrophe by a
sentinel who was stationed about a quarter of a mile away, and who,
although he was felled like an ox by the shock, and had his eyes,
ears, and nostrils filled with flying dust, miraculously escaped with
his life.
After this a new arrangement was made whereby Andrew Hall became the
sole producer of artemisium, and his wealth began to mount by leaps of
millions towards the starry heights of the billions.
About a year after the explosion of the Syx mill a strange rumor got
about. It came first from Budapest, in Hungary, where it was averred
several persons of credibility had seen Dr. Max Syx. Millions had been
familiar with his face and his personal peculiarities, through
actually meeting him, as well as through photographs and descriptions,
and, unless there was an intention to deceive, it did not seem
possible that a mistake could be made in identification. There surely
never was another man who looked just like Dr. Syx. And, besides, was
it not demonstrable that he must have perished in the awful
destruction of his mill?
Soon after came a report that Dr. Syx had been seen again; this time
at Ekaterinburg, in the Urals. Next he was said to have paid a visit
to Batang, in the mountainous district of southwestern China, and
finally, according to rumor, he was seen in Sicily, at Nicolosi, among
the volcanic pimples on the southern slope of Mount Etna.
Next followed something of more curious and even startling interest. A
chemist at Budapest, where the first rumors of Syx's reappearance had
placed the mysterious doctor, announced that he could produce
artemisium, and proved it, although he kept his process secret. Hardly
had the sensation caused by this news partially subsided when a
similar report arrived from Ekaterinburg; then another from Batang;
after that a fourth from Nicolosi!
Nobody could fail to notice the coincidence; wherever the doctor--or
was it his ghost?--appeared, there, shortly afterwards, somebody
discovered the much-sought secret.
After this Syx's apparitions rapidly increased in frequency, followed
in each instance by the announcement of another productive artemisium
mill. He appeared in Germany, Italy, France, England, and finally at
many places in the United States.
"It is the old doctor's revenge," said Hall to me one day, trying to
smile, although the matter was too serious to be taken humorously.
"Yes, it is his revenge, and I must admit that it is complete. The
price of artemisium has fallen one-half within six months. All the
efforts we have made to hold back the flood have proved useless. The
secret itself is becoming public property. We shall inevitably be
overwhelmed with artemisium, just as we were with gold, and the last
condition of the financial world will be worse than the first."
My friend's gloomy prognostications came near being fulfilled to the
letter. Ten thousand artemisium mills shot their etheric rays upon the
moon, and our unfortunate satellite's metal ribs were stripped by
atomic force. Some of the great white rays that had been one of the
telescopic wonders of the lunar landscapes disappeared, and the face
of the moon, which had remained unchanged before the eyes of the
children of Adam from the beginning of their race, now looked as if
the blast of a furnace had swept it. At night, on the moonward side,
the earth was studded with brilliant spikes, all pointed at the heart
of its child in the sky.
But the looting of the moon brought disaster to the robber planet. So
mad were the efforts to get the precious metal that the surface of our
globe was fairly showered with it, productive fields were, in some
cases, almost smothered under a metallic coating, the air was filled
with shining dust, until finally famine and pestilence joined hands
with financial disaster to punish the grasping world.
Then, at last, the various governments took effective measures to
protect themselves and their people. Another combined effort resulted
in an international agreement whereby the production of the precious
moon metal was once more rigidly controlled. But the existence of a
monopoly, such as Dr. Syx had so long enjoyed, and in the enjoyment of
which Andrew Hall had for a brief period succeeded him, was henceforth
rendered impossible.
XIV
THE LAST OF DR. SYX
Many years after the events last recorded I sat, at the close of a
brilliant autumn day, side by side with my old friend Andrew Hall, on
a broad, vine-shaded piazza which faced the east, where the full moon
was just rising above the rim of the Sierra, and replacing the rosy
counter-glow of sunset with its silvery radiance. The sight was
calculated to carry the minds of both back to the events of former
years. But I noticed that Hall quickly changed the position of his
chair, and sat down again with his back to the rising moon. He had
managed to save some millions from the wreck of his vast fortune when
artemisium started to go to the dogs, and I was now paying him one of
my annual visits at his palatial home in California.
"Did I ever tell you of my last trip to the Teton?" he asked, as I
continued to gaze contemplatively at the broad lunar disk which slowly
detached itself from the horizon and began to swim in the clear
evening sky.
"No," I replied, "but I should like to hear about it."
"Or of my last sight of Dr. Syx?"
"Indeed! I did not suppose that you ever saw him after that conference
in your mill, when he had to surrender half of the world to you."
"Once only I saw him again," said Hall, with a peculiar intonation.
"Pray go ahead, and tell me the whole story."
My friend lighted a fresh cigar, tipped his chair into a more
comfortable position, and began:
"It was about seven years ago. I had long felt an unconquerable desire
to have another look at the Teton and the scenes amid which so many
strange events in my life had occurred. I thought of sending for you
to go with me, but I knew you were abroad much of your time, and I
could not be certain of catching you. Finally I decided to go alone. I
travelled on horseback by way of the Snake River canyon, and arrived
early one morning in Jackson's Hole. I can tell you it was a gloomy
place, as barren and deserted as some of those Arabian wadies that you
have been describing to me. The railroad had long ago been abandoned,
and the site of the military camp could scarcely be recognized. An
immense cavity with ragged walls showed where Dr. Syx's mill used to
send up its plume of black smoke.
"As I stared up the gaunt form of the Teton, whose beetling precipices
had been smashed and split by the great explosion, I was seized with a
resistless impulse to climb it. I thought I should like to peer off
again from that pinnacle which had once formed so fateful a
watch-tower for me. Turning my horse loose to graze in the grassy
river bottom, and carrying my rope tether along as a possible aid in
climbing, I set out for the ascent. I knew I could not get up the
precipices on the eastern side, which we were able to master with the
aid of our balloon, and so I bore round, when I reached the steepest
cliffs, until I was on the southwestern side of the peak, where the
climbing was easier.
"But it took me a long time, and I did not reach the rift in the
summit until just before sundown. Knowing that it would be impossible
for me to descend at night, I bethought me of the enclosure of rocks,
supposed to have been made by Indians, on the western pinnacle, and
decided that I could pass the night there.
"The perpendicular buttress forming the easternmost and highest point
of the Teton's head would have baffled me but for the fact that I
found a long crack, probably an effect of the tremendous explosion,
extending from bottom to top of the rock. Driving my toes and fingers
into this rift, I managed, with a good deal of trouble, and no little
peril, to reach the top. As I lifted myself over the edge and rose to
my feet, imagine my amazement at seeing Dr. Syx standing within
arm's-length of me!
"My breath seemed pent in my lungs, and I could not even utter the
exclamation that rose to my lips. It was like meeting a
ghost. Notwithstanding the many reports of his having been seen in
various parts of the world, it had always been my conviction that he
had perished in the explosion.
"Yet there he stood in the twilight, for the sun was hidden by the
time I reached the summit, his tall form erect, and his black eyes
gleaming under the heavy brows as he fixed them sternly upon my
face. You know I never was given to losing my nerve, but I am afraid I
lost it on that occasion. Again and again I strove to speak, but it
was impossible to move my tongue. So powerless seemed my lungs that I
wondered how I could continue breathing.
"The doctor remained silent, but his curious smile, which, as you
know, was a thing of terror to most people, overspread his
black-rimmed face and was broad enough to reveal the gleam of his
teeth. I felt that he was looking me through and through. The
sensation was as if he had transfixed me with an ice-cold blade. There
was a gleam of devilish pleasure in his eyes, as though my evident
suffering was a delight to him and a gratification of his
vengeance. At length I succeeded in overcoming the feeling which
oppressed me, and, making a step forward, I shouted in a strained
voice,
"'You black Satan!'
"I cannot clearly explain the psychological process which led me to
utter those words. I had never entertained any enmity towards Dr. Syx,
although I had always regarded him as a heartless person, who had
purposely led thousands to their ruin for his selfish gain, but I knew
that he could not help hating me, and I felt now that, in some
inexplicable manner, a struggle, not physical, but spiritual, was
taking place between us, and my exclamation, uttered with surprising
intensity, produced upon me, and apparently upon him, the effect of a
desperate sword thrust which attains its mark.
"Immediately the doctor's form seemed to recede, as if he had passed
the verge of the precipice behind him. At the same time it became dim,
and then dimmer, until only the dark outlines, and particularly the
jet-black eyes, glaring fiercely, remained visible. And still he
receded, as though floating in the air, which was now silvered with
the evening light, until he appeared to cross the immense atmospheric
gulf over Jackson's Hole and paused on the rim of the horizon in the
east.
"Then, suddenly, I became aware that the full moon had risen at the
very place on the distant mountain-brow where the spectre rested, and
as I continued to gaze, as if entranced, the face and figure of the
doctor seemed slowly to frame themselves within the lunar disk, until
at last he appeared to have quitted the air and the earth and to be
frowning at me from the circle of the moon."
While Hall was pronouncing his closing words I had begun to stare at
the moon with swiftly increasing interest, until, as his voice
stopped, I exclaimed,
"Why, there he is now! Funny I never noticed it before. There's
Dr. Syx's face in the moon, as plain as day."
"Yes," replied Hall, without turning round, "and I never like to look
at it."