enchman faced us, his face livid with rage. "You call me a
prestidigitator, a fraud--you shall suffer for that! Sacrebleu! Ventre
du Saint Gris! No man ever insults the honour of Poissan. Francois,
water on the electrodes!"

The assistant dashed a few drops of water on the electrodes. The sickish
odour increased tremendously. I felt myself almost going, but with an
effort I again roused myself. I wondered how Craig stood the fumes, for
I suffered an intense headache and nausea.

"Stop!" Craig thundered. "There's enough cyanogen in this room already.
I know your game--the water forms acetylene with the carbon, and that
uniting with the nitrogen of the air under the terrific heat of the
electric arc forms hydrocyanic acid. Would you poison us, too? Do you
think you can put me unconscious out on the street and have a society
doctor diagnose my case as pneumonia? Or do you think we shall die
quietly in some hospital as a certain New York banker did last year
after he had watched an alchemist make silver out of apparently
nothing!"

The effect on Poissan was terrible. He advanced toward Kennedy, the
veins in his face fairly standing out. Shaking his forefinger, he
shouted: "You know that, do you? You are no professor, and this is no
banker. You are spies, spies. You come from the friends of Morowitch, do
you? You have gone too far with me."

Kennedy said nothing, but retreated and took his coat and hat off the
window ledge. The hideous penetrating light of the tongues of flame from
the furnace played on the ground-glass window.

Poissan laughed a hollow laugh.

"Put down your hat and coat, Mistair Kennedy," he hissed. "The door has
been locked ever since you have been here. Those windows are barred, the
telephone wire is cut, and it is three hundred feet to the street. We
shall leave you here when the fumes have overcome you. Francois and
I can stand them up to a point, and when we reach that point we are
going."

Instead of being cowed Kennedy grew bolder, though I, for my part, felt
so weakened that I feared the outcome of a hand-to-hand encounter with
either Poissan or Francois, who appeared as fresh as if nothing had
happened. They were hurriedly preparing to leave us.

"That would do you no good," Kennedy rejoined, "for we have no safe full
of jewels for you to rob. There are no keys to offices to be stolen from
our pockets. And let me tell you--you are not the only man in New York
who knows the secret of th