astellan?"

Castellan looked at the three men all armed. The Chancellor and the
Field Marshal wore their swords, and the Kaiser had a revolver in his
hip pocket. The Chancellor and the Field Marshal straightened up as the
Kaiser spoke, and their hands moved instinctively towards their sword
hilts. The Kaiser looked at the model of the _Flying Fish_ in his hand.
His face was, as usual, like a mask. He saw nothing, thought of nothing.
For the moment he was not a man: he was just the incarnation of an
idea.

"Field Marshal, you are a soldier," said Castellan, "and I see that your
hand has gone to your sword-hilt. Swords, of course, are the emblems of
military rank, but there is no use for them now."

"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed the Count, clapping his right hand on
the hilt. After what he had seen he honestly believed that this Irishman
was a wizard of science who ought not to be trusted in the same room
with the Kaiser. Castellan went back to his machine and said:

"Draw your sword, sir, and see."

And then the keys began to click.

The Field Marshal's sword flashed out of the sheath. A second later the
Chancellor's did the same, and the Kaiser's right hand went back towards
his hip pocket.

Castellan got up and said:

"Your Majesty has a revolver. Be good enough, as you value your own
safety, to unload it, and throw the cartridges out of the window."

"But why?" exclaimed the Kaiser, pulling a Mauser repeating pistol out
of his hip-pocket. "Who are you, that you should give orders to me?"

"Only a man, your Majesty," replied Castellan, with a bow and a smile;
"a man who could explode every cartridge in that pistol of yours at once
before you had time to fire a shot. You have seen what has happened
already."

William the Second had seen enough. He walked to one of the windows
opening on the enclosed gardens, threw it open, dropped the pistol out,
and said:

"Now, let us have the proof of what you say."

"In a moment, your Majesty," replied Castellan, going back to his
machine, and beginning to work the keys rapidly. "I am here, an unarmed
man; let their Excellencies, the Chancellor and the Field Marshal,
attack me with their swords if they can. I am not joking. I am staking
my life on the success or failure of this experiment."

"Does your Majesty consent?" said the Field Marshal, raising his sword.

"There could be no better test," replied the Kaiser. "Mr Castellan makes
an experiment on which h