to be the final word of power. Control--
control--that was all that lacked.

"Reduced to its simplest terms, it meant this: the doctor had something as
much greater than radium as radium is greater than the pitchblende of
which a thousand tons are melted down to the one ounce of extract. And the
incredible energies of this he proposed to divide into departments of
activity. One manifestation should be light, a light that would illuminate
the world. Another was to make motive power so cheap that the work of the
world could be done in an hour out of the day. Some idea he had of healing
properties. Yes; he was to cure mankind. Or kill, kill as no man had ever
killed, did he choose. The armies and navies of the powers would be at his
mercy. Magnetism was to be his slave. Aerial navigation, transmutation of
metals, the screening of gravity--does this sound like delirium? Sometimes
I think it was.

"That night he turned over to me the key of the large chest and his
ledger. The latter he bade me read. It was a complete jumble. You have
seen it.... We were up a good part of the night with our pet volcano. It
was suffering from internal disturbances. 'So,' the doctor would say
indulgently, when a particularly active rock came bounding down our way.
'Little play-antics-to-exhibit now that the work iss finished.'

"In the morning he insisted on my leaving him alone and going down to give
the orders. I took the ledger, intending to send it aboard. It saved my
life possibly: Solomon's bullet deflected slightly, I think, in passing
through the heavy paper. Slade has told you about my flight. I ought to
have gone straight up the arroyo.... Yet I could hardly have made it.... I
did not see him again, the doctor. My last glimpse ... the old man--I
remember now how the grey had spread through his beard--he was growing
old--it had been ageing labour. He stood there at his laboratory door and
the mountain spouted and thundered behind.

"'We will a name-to-suit-properly gif it,' he said, as I left him. 'It
shall make us as the gods. We will call it celestium.'

"I left him there smiling. Smiling happily. The greatest force of his
age--if he had lived. Very wise, very simple--a kind old child. May I
trouble you for a light? Thanks."

X

THE DOOM

"Nothing remained but to search for his body. I was sure they had killed
him and taken the chest. I had little expectation of finding him, dead or
alive. None after I saw the stream