en men, the body of the wheelbarrow was lifted into the car.
With a few final words of instruction to the colonel, Dr. Bird and his
companions entered the car and were whisked away to the city.

A spectacle of destruction and ruin awaited them. Fully one-fourth of
the city had sunk thirty feet into the ground. The sinking was not
even nor uniform. The sunken ground was rolled into huge waves while
buildings which had collapsed lay in confused heaps on all sides. From
a dozen places in the area, columns of fire rose in the air.

* * * * *

Dr. Bird wasted little time on the scene before him. His car skirted
the edge of the huge hole and took the road toward the Charleston
airport, which was in a section which had suffered little. In half an
hour the army transport roared into the air carrying Dr. Bird's
precious load of yellow powder. Four hours later they dropped to a
landing at Langley Field.

"Now, Carnes," said the doctor as they debarked from the plane, "there
is work ahead. It may be too late to do much to-night, but we have no
time to waste. Get Bolton on the wire and tell him that we have
positive evidence that Saranoff is still alive and still up to his
devil's tricks. Start every man of the secret service and every
Department of Justice agent that can be spared on the trail. He can't
live underground all the time, and you ought to get on his tracks
somehow. I'm going up to the laboratory and see what I can do with
this stuff. Report to me there to-morrow morning."

Carnes hurried away. Bolton, the chief of the United States Secret
Service, had long ago recovered from any professional jealousy he had
ever felt of Dr. Bird. The doctor's message that Ivan Saranoff, the
arch-enemy of society, the head of the Young Labor party, the
unofficial chief of the secret Soviet forces in the United States, was
alive and again in the field against law and order was enough to set
in motion every force that he controlled. Waving aside precedent and
crashing his way past secretaries, he set in motion not only the
agents of the Department of Justice but also the post-office forces
and the specialized but highly efficient Military and Naval
Intelligence Divisions. The telephone and telegraph wires from
Washington were kept busy all night carrying orders and bringing in
reports. But despite all this activity, it was with a disappointed
face that Operative Carnes sought the doctor in the morning.