k-horse, or a big dog drew an improvised sled on wheels, loaded
with flour, bacon, blankets, pillows. Old men and young children
trudged on uncomplaining.

The telegraph wires were still, for the most part, working. All the
world knew what was happening. From all the big cities of the East a
similar exodus was proceeding. There was little bitterness and little
disorder.

It was not the airship raids from which these crowds were fleeing.
Something grimmer was happening. The murderous attack upon the
populace about the Capitol had been merely an incident. This later
development was the fulfilment of the Invisible Emperor's ultimatum.

Death was afield, death, invisible, instantaneous, and inevitable.
Death blown on the winds, in the form of the deadliest of unknown
gases.

* * * * *

In the Blue Room of the White House a score of experts had gathered.
Dick, too, with the chiefs of his staff, Stopford, and the army and
naval heads. Among them was the chief of the Meteorological Bureau,
and it was to him primarily that Tomlinson was reading a telegraphic
dispatch from Wilmington, South Carolina:

"The Invisible Death has reached this point and is working havoc
throughout the city, spreading from street to street. Men are dropping
dead everywhere. A few have fled, but--"

The sudden ending of the dispatch was significant enough. Tomlinson
picked up another dispatch from Columbia, in the same State:

"Invisible Death now circling city," he read. "Business section
already invaded. All other telegraphists have left posts. Can't say
how long--"

And this, too, ended in the same way. There were piles of such
communications, and they had been coming in for eighteen hours. At
that moment an orderly brought in a dozen more.

Tomlinson showed the head of the Meteorological Bureau the chart upon
the table. "We've plotted out a map as the wires came in, Mr. Graves,"
he said. "The Invisible Death struck the southeast shore of the United
States yesterday afternoon near Charleston. It has spread
approximately at a steady rate. The wind velocity--?"

"Remains constant. Seventy miles an hour. Dying down a little,"
answered Graves.

"The death line now runs from Wilmington, South Carolina, straight to
Augusta, Georgia," the Vice-president pursued. "Every living thing
that this gas has encountered has been instantly destroyed. Men,
cattle, birds, vermin, wild beasts. The gas is invisible and
ino