ther effect than
to put out the blaze. You might place it under a steam hammer and crush
the bottle to powder, yet no explosion would follow. It is as harmless
as water in its present condition."

"How, then," said the Minister, "do you deal with it?"

Again the man hesitated.

"I am almost afraid to tell you," he said; "and if I could not
demonstrate to your entire satisfaction that what I say is true, it
would be folly for me to say what I am about to say. If I were to take
this bottle and cut a notch in the cork, and walk with it neck
downwards along the Boulevard des Italiens, allowing this fluid to fall
drop by drop on the pavement, I could walk in that way in safety
through every street in Paris. If it rained that day nothing would
happen. If it rained the next or for a week nothing would happen, but
the moment the sun came out and dried the moisture, the light step of a
cat on any pavement over which I had passed would instantly shatter to
ruins the whole of Paris."

"Impossible!" cried the Minister, an expression of horror coming into
his face.

"I knew you would say that. Therefore I ask you to come with me to the
country, where I can prove the truth of what I allege. While I carry
this bottle around with me in this apparently careless fashion, it is
corked, as you see with the utmost security. Not a drop of the fluid
must be left on the outside of the cork or of the bottle. I have wiped
the bottle and cork most thoroughly, and burned the cloth which I used
in doing so. Fire will not cause this compound, even when dry, to
explode, but the slightest touch will set it off. I have to be
extremely careful in its manufacture, so that not a single drop is left
unaccounted for in any place where it might evaporate."

The Minister, with his finger-tips together and his eyes on the
ceiling, mused for a few moments on the amazing statement he had heard.

"If what you say is true," he began at last, "don't you think it would
be more humane to destroy all traces of the experiments by which you
discovered this substance, and to divulge the secret to no one? The
devastation such a thing would cause, if it fell into unscrupulous
hands, is too appalling even to contemplate."

"I have thought of that," said the inventor; "but some one else--the
time may be far off or it may be near--is bound to make the discovery.
My whole ambition, as I told you in my letter, is to have my name
coupled with this discovery. I wish it