ff, but that don't help much for they have
done too good a job. It has us pretty well bluffed."

Again Dr. Bird rubbed his head.

"Telephone Admiral Buck, and then phone Bolton and tell him exactly what
I told you to: that you will be away indefinitely. When he gets through
exploding, tell him that you are going with me and that possibly, just
barely possibly, we might be on the trail of that gold shipment."

"On the trail of the gold!" gasped Carnes. "Surely, Doctor, you don't
think--"

"Once in a while, old dear," replied the Doctor with a chuckle, "which
is more than anyone in the Secret Service does. You might tell Bolton
that I said that, but hang up quickly if you do. I don't want the wires
of my telephone melted off. No, Carnesy, I have no miraculous
inspiration as to where that gold is coming from; I just have a plain
old-fashioned hunch, and that hunch is that we are going to have lots of
fun and more than our share of danger before we see Washington again.
After you get through bearding Bolton in his den, you might call the
Chief of the Air Corps and ask him to have a bomber held at Langley
Field subject to my orders. If he squawks any, I'll talk to him."

He turned to a telephone which stood on his desk and lifted the
receiver.

"Get Mr. Lambertson on the wire," he said. "He is the chief technician
of the Pyrex Glass Works at Corning, New Jersey."

* * * * *

The _U.S.S. Minneconsin_ steamed out of New York harbor and headed down
toward the lower bay. On her forward deck rested a huge globe. The
bottom quarter of the sphere was made of some dark opaque substance but
the upper portion was transparent as crystal. Through the walls could be
seen a quantity of apparatus resting on the opaque bottom portion. Two
mechanics from the Bureau of Standards were making final adjustments of
one of the pieces of apparatus, which resembled a tank fitted with a
piston geared to an electric motor. From the tank, tubes ran to four
hollow pipes, an inch and a half in diameter, which ran through the skin
and extended thirty inches from the outer skin of the twenty-foot
sphere. Dr. Bird stood near talking with the executive officer of the
ship and from time to time giving a brief word of direction to the
mechanics.

"It's safer than you might think, Commander," he said. "In the first
place, that globe is not made of ordinary glass; it is made of
vitrilene, a new semi-malleable glass which