as all pitted
already with little craters from his experiments; and some,
especially the mine stuff, I threw into the lake. The garden's on the
edge of the lake, you know. Well, he got out his machine thing like a
photographic camera, rather, on a tripod turned it this way and that
until it pointed to my explosives, and pop! off they went like a lot
of fireworks. Pretty neat, I thought."

"Ah!" The Baron's elbow was on his desk and his head rested in his
hand. "Then it is what that Italian fellow said he had discovered in
1914. 'Ultra-red rays,' he called them. What was his name, now?"

"Never heard of him," said Von Wetten.

From the background where Herr Haase stood among the other furniture
came a cough. "Oliver," suggested Herr Haase mildly.

The Baron jerked a look at him. "No, not Oliver," he said. "Ulivi
that was it; Ulivi! I remember at the time we were interested,
because, if the fellow could do what he claimed." He broke off. "Tell
me," he demanded of Von Wetten. "You are a soldier; I am only a
diplomat. What would this machine mean in war in this war, for
instance? Supposing you were in command upon a sector of the front;
that in the trenches opposite you were the English; and you had this
machine? What would be the result?"

"Well!" Von Wetten deliberated. "Pretty bad for the English, I should
think," he decided.

"But how, man how?" persisted the Baron. "In what way would it be bad
for them?"

Von Wetten made an effort; he was not employed for his imagination.
"Why," he hesitated, "because I suppose the cartridges would blow up
in the men's pouches and in the machine-gun belts; and then the
trench-mortar ammunition and the hand grenades; well, everything
explosive would simply explode! And then we'd go over to what was
left of them, and it would be finished."

He stopped abruptly as the vision grew clearer. "Aber," he began
excitedly.

The old Baron lifted a hand and quelled him.

"The machine you saw this morning, which you tested, will do all
this?" he insisted.

Von Wetten was staring at the Baron. Upon the question he let his
monocle fall and seemed to consider. "I, I don't see why not," he
replied.

The Baron nodded thrice, very slowly. Then he glanced up at Herr
Haase. "Then miracles are worked by machinery, after all," he said.
Then he turned again to Von Wetten.

"Well?" he said. "And the man? We are forgetting the man; I think we
generally do, we Germans. What is the difficulty a