in castle.

Suddenly Alan burst out, "I know what father's secret was! I can piece
it together now, from little things that were meaningless when I was a
kid. He invented the electro-microscope. You know that. The infinitely
small fascinated him. I remember he once said that if we could see far
enough down into smallness, we would come upon human life!"

Alan's low, tense voice was more vehement than I had ever heard it
before. "It's clear to me now, George. That little fragment of golden
quartz which he wanted me to be so careful of contained a world with
human inhabitants! Father knew it, or suspected it. And I think the
chemical problem on which he was working aimed for some drug. I know it
was a drug they were compounding, Polter said so once, a radioactive
drug; I remember listening at the door. A drug, George, capable of
making a human being infinitely small!"

I did not answer when momentarily Alan paused. So strange a thing. My
mind whirled with it; struggled to encompass it. And like the
meaningless individual pieces of a puzzle, dropping so easily into place
when the key piece is fitted, I saw Polter stealing that fragment of
gold; abducting Dr. Kent--perhaps because Polter himself was not fully
acquainted with the secret. And now, Polter up here with a fabulously
rich "gold mine." And Babs, abducted by him, to be taken--where?

It set me shuddering.

"That's what it was," Alan reiterated. "And Polter, here now with what
he calls a 'mine.' It isn't a mine, it's a laboratory! He's got father
too, hidden God knows where! And now Babs. We've got to get them,
George! The police can't help us! It's just you and me, to fight this
thing. And it's diabolical!"

CHAPTER II

We soared over the divided channel of the St. Lawrence, between Orleans
and the mainland. Montmorency Falls in a moment showed dimly white
through the murk to our left, a great hanging veil of ice higher than
Niagara. Further ahead, the lights of the little village of St. Anne de
Beaupre were visible with the gray-black towering hills behind them.

"Swing left, George. Over the mainland. That's St. Anne. We pass this
side of it. Put the mufflers on. This damn thing roars like a tower
siren."

I cut in the muffler and switched off our wing-lights. It was illegal
but we were past all thought of that. We were both desperate; the slow
prudent process of acting within the law had nothing to do with this
affair. We both knew it.

Our