A STRANGE TEST
On a work bench before the window in the laboratory there rested an
instrument the like of which Johnny had never seen before entering the
factory for work. The main body of it was a black drum about a foot long
and ten inches in diameter. Out from this drum there ran a tube which,
bending first this way, then that, passed into a bottle, then out of it
into a second, then out again and so on until six or eight bottles had
been included in its route.
“Let’s see,” said Johnny. “This one catches the carbon, this one,
tungsten, this, water vapor, this, iron, and so on. Guess the thing’s all
set for taking off the different known elements that are likely to be
found in any steel. But how about those unknown elements? Here’s a wild
shot in the dark.” Taking down three bottles from the wall, he poured a
little from each into a fourth bottle. He then replaced the three bottles
and, by the aid of two short tubes, inserted the bottle he had just
filled into the circuit running from the drum. Repeating the operation
with a new set of bottles he added a second bottle to the circuit.
“There,” he smiled, “if there are any strange atoms floating around,
those ought to give them a home. Now for it!”
Pushing open a slide in the side of the drum he adjusted his bit of steel
in a position between two electrical poles and directly before a small
nozzle. He then shut the drum, turned on a switch which started a low
snapping sound inside the drum, turned a valve which set a slight roar
resounding within the drum, then sat back to watch.
Presently a greenish gas could be seen passing along inside the glass
tube.
“Working!” he smiled. “Pretty slick arrangement! Electric spark sets fire
to the metal, oxygen feeds the flame. Burn up anything that way. That gas
was the hardest, most flexible steel in the world a moment ago.”
As he sat there watching the process go forward, hearing the hum and snap
inside the drum, now and then catching the roll of thunder from the storm
that raged outside, he thought of the three Shakespearean witches and
their steaming caldron. He liked to think of himself as a modern wizard
with his smoking electrical caldron.
But something caught his eye. The color of the liquid in one of the
bottles of chemicals he had mixed at random was turning from white to a
dull brown as the gas from burning steel passed through.
“Catching something!” he ejaculated. “Wonder what it may be?”
For ten more minutes he sat watching. Then, when all the gas had
apparently passed off he turned the valve, threw out the switch, and sat
there lost in thought.
It was interesting, this experiment. This instrument had always
fascinated him. He felt that it might be that he had made a discovery.
But thus far he could go, no farther. Of chemical analysis he knew
nothing. Already he had made a vow with himself that, as soon as his debt
of honor was paid, he would begin somewhere, somehow, a study of those
sciences which were so closely related to industry—chemistry, metallurgy,
engineering, mechanics, physics.
But now he was stuck. He had never really been given permission to work
in the laboratory alone at night and he was loath now to admit he had
done so.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “probably nothing to it, anyway. I’ll just label
you and put you up here for the present.” He scrawled a few words on a
label, pasted it to the bottle containing the dull brown liquid, then set
it upon an upper shelf.
“Some day,” he smiled, “perhaps I’ll have the nerve to tell Mr. Brown
about it, but not now.” Brown was the head of the laboratory.
He went out into the aisle and began walking slowly up and down before
the vault. He was sleepy and tired. This night work was telling on him.
“Wish it was over with,” he muttered. “Anyway,” he smiled, “I’ve got
something to show them this time,” and he patted the steel bar in the
right-hand pocket of his blouse.
* * * * * * * *
“You say someone drove the traveling crane down the loading-room and
helped you chase that man!” the manager exclaimed next day after Johnny
had told the story of his queer night’s adventures. “That seems
incredible!”
“Maybe so, but it’s true!”
“There are only three men in our employ who can run that crane and they,
I am sure, were not there.”
Johnny smiled. “Can’t explain it; all I know is, it’s true.”
“I’ll put a double guard on the place. Can’t have things going on like
that.”
Johnny smiled again. He had told of the double struggle with the
snake-like adversary, of the chase, of the ride on the traveling crane,
and the recovery of one steel bar, but had not mentioned the “white fire”
nor the steel test he had made. “What’s the use?” he had asked himself.
“Who’d understand a thing like that ‘white fire’?”
“Well,” said his employer, “I’m glad you recovered one of the bars; I
only wish you had secured the other. One may do us all the harm
possible.”
“You never saw such a man,” Johnny half-apologized. “Like an eel, he was,
a regular contortionist. I’ve handled a lot of fellows, but never one
like him.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Mr. McFarland reassured him. “You did better work
than many persons twice your age might have done. Well,” after a moment’s
thought, “you keep that bar until this evening, then, when you go to
work, give it to Marquis and have him put it in the vault. Your work will
be as before until further orders.”
Johnny was disappointed. He had hoped to be relieved from this task,
which would grow doubly monotonous since it was definitely known that the
remaining bar of steel had been carried from the factory. He managed to
conceal his disappointment, however, and went his way, to sleep the day
through with the bar of steel beneath his pillow.
He did not return the bar to Marquis, the day keeper of the vault, as he
had been instructed to do. When Johnny arrived he found the vault locked,
its keeper gone.
“Well, old precious one,” he smiled, patting the bar of metal, “it’s one
more night in my company for you, whether you like it or not.”
It was that same night, in the long, silent hours just following
midnight, that something happened that was destined to change the entire
course of Johnny Thompson’s life. He was sleepy—sleepier than usual, for
his sleep had been broken into that day.
“If only I had another shaving off that steel bar,” he thought to
himself, “I’d do that experiment again, and try for a different result.”
As if expecting the miracle to repeat itself, he walked to the forge-room
and placed the bar of steel on the little heap of coals at the center of
the same forge that had burned so mysteriously the previous night.
Then with a laugh, which told plainer than words that he thought he was
kidding himself, he turned and strolled away down the aisle among the
forges.
No room held such an endless fascination for him as this forge-room. In
the day, especially toward evening when the outer light was failing, when
the forge fires burned brightly, and the white hot metal on the dies
glowed at each stroke of the massive hammers, when the whang-whang-whang
of steel on steel raised a mighty clamor, then it was a place to conjure
about. But even now, in the dead still of the night, the powerful hammers
resting from their labor, the long line of forges with fires burned out
spoke to him of solemn grandeur and dormant power.
He had just made the length of the room and had turned about when from
his lips there escaped a muffled cry.
Instantly he broke into a run. Once more, as on the previous night, the
forge on which the steel bar lay was a mass of white and red fire.
By the time he had reached the spot, the bar of metal was a glowing white
mass from end to end.
His first thought was to seize the tongs and drag the bar from the forge
to the floor; his second was a bolder one. It caused his heart to thump
loudly, his breath to come quickly.
Dared he do it?
He put his hand to an electric switch by the side of the trip-hammer
nearest the forge. The answer was a snap and a spark.
“Current’s on,” he murmured. “I could do it. Old McPherson taught me how
when I was in the salvage department—but dare I?”
To the lower surface of the hammer was attached a nickel-steel die. To
the surface on which it fell was bolted another. The two matched. A
white-hot bit of steel placed upon the lower die at just the right spot,
then struck; then moved and struck again; moved and struck two times
more, would be no longer a clumsy bar of steel, but a rough-finished
connecting-rod for an automobile. The white-hot bar of steel before him
was just the right length and thickness. Dared he do it?
As in a dream, he seized the metal with the tongs, lifted it, swung it
about to the proper position on the nickel-steel plate, touched a pedal
with his foot, heard the whang of steel on steel, saw the hammer rise
again, moved the white-hot metal, touched the pedal, heard the whang
again; twice more repeated the operation, then tossed the bit of metal,
still glowing white-hot, upon the sanded floor; a perfect connecting-rod
as to shape—but as to composition? His breath came hard. Had the bit of
metal been spoiled in the heating and the forging? And, if it had, how
could he ever square himself?
To quiet his wildly beating heart he took a turn about the factory, then
returned to the forge-room. He was just re-entering the forge-room when
something caught his eye. What was it? Had his eye deceived him, or had
he caught sight of a furtive figure dodging behind the sheet-metal press
over at the right? In a moment he would investigate, but first he must
make sure that the newly forged connecting-rod of priceless steel was
safe.
Quickly his heart beat as he lifted the now thoroughly cooled steel, and
allowed it to fall upon the cement floor.
“Sounds like real steel,” he exulted.
He picked it up and examined it closely. “Not a flaw. And real steel—the
best steel on earth—and I forged it! But how?” He paused, a puzzled look
overspreading his face. “How shall I tell them I heated it? What good
will one forging do with no means of forging more?”
“Oh, well!” he murmured, at last, “I’ll tell them, anyway. And now,”
dropping the connecting-rod in his pocket, “the next thing is something
else. I wonder what it will be!”
He left the forge-room and walked cautiously toward the sheet-metal
press.
As he neared it, a dark object, like some wild animal leaping from its
hiding-place among the crags, leaped out, and away.
Who was this? Was it his contortionist-enemy returned in hopes of
retrieving the lost bar, or was it some other intruder?
Johnny did not waste time on idle questions, but sprang away in hot
pursuit.