While he was doing so I ran the
wires across the floor, and around the edge of the room to the door.

"There," he said, taking the wires from me. "Now I'll complete the job
by carrying them into the next room. And while I'm doing it, go over
the wires again and make sure they are absolutely concealed."

That night six men gathered in Kennedy's laboratory. In my utter
ignorance of what was about to happen I was perfectly calm, and so
were all the rest, except Gregory. He was easily the most nervous of
us all, though his lawyer Asche tried repeatedly to reassure him.

"Mr. Close," began Kennedy, "if you and Mr. Lawrence will sit over
here on this side of the room while Dr. Gregory and Mr. Asche sit on
the opposite side with Mr. Jameson in the middle, I think both of
you opposing parties will be better suited. For I apprehend that at
various stages in what I am about to say both you, Mr. Close, and you
Dr. Gregory, will want to consult your attorneys. That, of course,
would be embarrassing, if not impossible, should you be sitting near
each other. Now, if we are ready, I shall begin."

Kennedy placed a small leaden casket on the table of his lecture hall.
"In this casket," he commenced solemnly, "there is a certain substance
which I have recovered from the dust swept up by a vacuum cleaner in
the room of Mrs. Close."

One could feel the very air of the room surcharged with excitement.
Craig drew on a pair of gloves and carefully opened the casket. With
his thumb and forefinger he lifted out a glass tube and held it
gingerly at arm's length. My eyes were riveted on it, for the bottom
of the tube glowed with a dazzling point of light.

Both Gregory and his attorney and Close and Lawrence whispered to each
other when the tube was displayed, as indeed they did throughout the
whole exhibition of Kennedy's evidence.

"No infernal machine was ever more subtle," said Craig, "than the
tube which I hold in my hand. The imagination of the most sensational
writer of fiction might well be thrilled with the mysteries of this
fatal tube and its power to work fearful deed. A larger quantity of
this substance in the tube would produce on me, as I now hold it,
incurable burns, just as it did on its discoverer before his death.
A smaller amount, of course, would not act so quickly. The amount in
this tube, if distributed about, would produce the burns inevitably,
providing I remained near enough for a long-enough time."

Craig pause