The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moon Metal, by Garrett P. Serviss

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Title: The Moon Metal

Author: Garrett P. Serviss

Posting Date: August 25, 2012 [EBook #8199]
Release Date: May, 2005
First Posted: July 1, 2003

Language: English

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THE MOON METAL

By Garrett P. Serviss







CONTENTS

   I. SOUTH POLAR GOLD

  II. THE MAGICIAN OF SCIENCE

 III. THE GRAND TETON MINE

  IV. THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD

   V. WONDERS OF THE NEW METAL

  VI. A STRANGE DISCOVERY

 VII. A MYSTERY INDEED!

VIII. MORE OF DR. SYX'S MAGIC

  IX. THE DETECTIVE OF SCIENCE

   X. THE TOP OF THE GRAND TETON

  XI. STRANGE FATE OF A KITE

 XII. BETTER THAN ALCHEMY

XIII. THE LOOTING OF THE MOON

 XIV. THE LAST OF DR. SYX



THE MOON METAL


I

SOUTH POLAR GOLD

When the news came of the discovery of gold at the south pole, nobody
suspected that the beginning had been reached of a new era in the
world's history. The newsboys cried "Extra!" as they had done a
thousand times for murders, battles, fires, and Wall Street panics,
but nobody was excited. In fact, the reports at first seemed so
exaggerated and improbable that hardly anybody believed a word of
them. Who could have been expected to credit a despatch, forwarded by
cable from New Zealand, and signed by an unknown name, which contained
such a statement as this:

"A seam of gold which can be cut with a knife has been found within
ten miles of the south pole."

The discovery of the pole itself had been announced three years
before, and several scientific parties were known to be exploring the
remarkable continent that surrounds it. But while they had sent home
many highly interesting reports, there had been nothing to suggest the
possibility of such an amazing discovery as that which was now
announced.  Accordingly, most sensible people looked upon the New
Zealand despatch as a hoax.

But within a week, and from a different source, flashed another
despatch which more than confirmed the first. It declared that gold
existed near the south pole in practically unlimited quantity. Some
geologists said this accounted for the greater depth of the Antarctic
Ocean. It had always been noticed that the southern hemisphere
appeared to be a little overweighted. People now began to prick up
their ears, and many letters of inquiry appeared in the newspapers
concerning the wonderful tidings from the south. Some asked for
information about the shortest route to the new goldfields.

In a little while several additional reports came, some via New
Zealand, others via South America, and all confirming in every respect
what had been sent before. Then a New York newspaper sent a swift
steamer to the Antarctic, and when this enterprising journal published
a four-page cable describing the discoveries in detail, all doubt
vanished and the rush began.

Some time I may undertake a description of the wild scenes that
occurred when, at last, the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere
were convinced that boundless stores of gold existed in the unclaimed
and uninhabited wastes surrounding the south pole. But at present I
have something more wonderful to relate.

Let me briefly depict the situation.

For many years silver had been absent from the coinage of the
world. Its increasing abundance rendered it unsuitable for money,
especially when contrasted with gold. The "silver craze," which had
raged in the closing decade of the nineteenth century, was already a
forgotten incident of financial history. The gold standard had become
universal, and business all over the earth had adjusted itself to that
condition. The wheels of industry ran smoothly, and there seemed to be
no possibility of any disturbance or interruption. The common monetary
system prevailing in every land fostered trade and facilitated the
exchange of products. Travellers never had to bother their heads about
the currency of money; any coin that passed in New York would pass for
its face value in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, St. Petersburg,
Constantinople, Cairo, Khartoum, Jerusalem, Peking, or Yeddo. It was
indeed the "Golden Age," and the world had never been so free from
financial storms.

Upon this peaceful scene the south polar gold discoveries burst like
an unheralded tempest.

I happened to be in the company of a famous bank president when the
confirmation of those discoveries suddenly filled the streets with
yelling newsboys.  "Get me one of those 'extras'!" he said, and an
office-boy ran out to obey him. As he perused the sheet his face
darkened.

"I'm afraid it's too true," he said, at length. "Yes, there seems to
be no getting around it. Gold is going to be as plentiful as iron. If
there were not such a flood of it, we might manage, but when they
begin to make trousers buttons out of the same metal that is now
locked and guarded in steel vaults, where will be our standard of
worth? My dear fellow," he continued, impulsively laying his hand on
my arm, "I would as willingly face the end of the world as this that's
coming!"

"You think it so bad, then?" I asked. "But most people will not agree
with you. They will regard it as very good news."

"How can it be good?" he burst out. "What have we got to take the
place of gold? Can we go back to the age of barter? Can we substitute
cattle-pens and wheat-bins for the strong boxes of the Treasury? Can
commerce exist with no common measure of exchange?"

"It does indeed look serious," I assented.

"Serious! I tell you, it is the deluge!"

Thereat he clapped on his hat and hurried across the street to the
office of another celebrated banker.

His premonitions of disaster turned out to be but too well grounded.
The deposits of gold at the south pole were richer than the wildest
reports had represented them. The shipments of the precious metal to
America and Europe soon became enormous--so enormous that the metal
was no longer precious. The price of gold dropped like a falling
stone, with accelerated velocity, and within a year every money centre
in the world had been swept by a panic. Gold was more common than
iron. Every government was compelled to demonetize it, for when once
gold had fallen into contempt it was less valuable in the eyes of the
public than stamped paper. For once the world had thoroughly learned
the lesson that too much of a good thing is worse than none of it.

Then somebody found a new use for gold by inventing a process by which
it could be hardened and tempered, assuming a wonderful toughness and
elasticity without losing its non-corrosive property, and in this form
it rapidly took the place of steel.

In the mean time every effort was made to bolster up credit. Endless
were the attempts to find a substitute for gold. The chemists sought
it in their laboratories and the mineralogists in the mountains and
deserts. Platinum might have served, but it, too, had become a drug in
the market through the discovery of immense deposits. Out of the
twenty odd elements which had been rarer and more valuable than gold,
such as uranium, gallium, etc., not one was found to answer the
purpose. In short, it was evident that since both gold and silver had
become too abundant to serve any longer for a money standard, the
planet held no metal suitable to take their place.

The entire monetary system of the world must be readjusted, but in the
readjustment it was certain to fall to pieces. In fact, it had already
fallen to pieces; the only recourse was to paper money, but whether
this was based upon agriculture or mining or manufacture, it gave
varying standards, not only among the different nations, but in
successive years in the same country. Exports and imports practically
ceased. Credit was discredited, commerce perished, and the world, at a
bound, seemed to have gone back, financially and industrially, to the
dark ages.

One final effort was made. A great financial congress was assembled at
New York. Representatives of all the nations took part in it. The
ablest financiers of Europe and America united the efforts of their
genius and the results of their experience to solve the great
problem. The various governments all solemnly stipulated to abide by
the decision of the congress.

But, after spending months in hard but fruitless labor, that body was
no nearer the end of its undertaking than when it first assembled. The
entire world awaited its decision with bated breath, and yet the
decision was not formed.

At this paralyzing crisis a most unexpected event suddenly opened the
way.



II

THE MAGICIAN OF SCIENCE

An attendant entered the room where the perplexed financiers were in
session and presented a peculiar-looking card to the president,
Mr. Boon. The president took the card in his hand and instantly fell
into a brown study. So complete was his absorption that Herr Finster,
the celebrated Berlin banker, who had been addressing the chair for
the last two hours from the opposite end of the long table, got
confused, entirely lost track of his verb, and suddenly dropped into
his seat, very red in the face and wearing a most injured expression.

But President Boon paid no attention except to the singular card,
which he continued to turn over and over, balancing it on his fingers
and holding it now at arm's-length and then near his nose, with one
eye squinted as if he were trying to look through a hole in the card.

At length this odd conduct of the presiding officer drew all eyes upon
the card, and then everybody shared the interest of Mr. Boon. In shape
and size the card was not extraordinary, but it was composed of
metal. What metal? That question had immediately arisen in Mr. Boon's
mind when the card came into his hand, and now it exercised the wits
of all the others. Plainly it was not tin, brass, copper, bronze,
silver, aluminum--although its lightness might have suggested that
metal--nor even base gold.

The president, although a skilled metallurgist, confessed his
inability to say what it was. So intent had he become in examining the
curious bit of metal that he forgot it was a visitor's card of
introduction, and did not even look for the name which it presumably
bore.

As he held the card up to get a better light upon it a stray sunbeam
from the window fell across the metal and instantly it bloomed with
exquisite colors!  The president's chair being in the darker end of
the room, the radiant card suffused the atmosphere about him with a
faint rose tint, playing with surprising liveliness into alternate
canary color and violet.

The effect upon the company of clear-headed financiers was extremely
remarkable. The unknown metal appeared to exercise a kind of mesmeric
influence, its soft hues blending together in a chromatic harmony
which captivated the sense of vision as the ears are charmed by a
perfectly rendered song. Gradually all gathered in an eager group
around the president's chair.

"What can it be?" was repeated from lip to lip.

"Did you ever see anything like it?" asked Mr. Boon for the twentieth
time.

None of them had ever seen the like of it. A spell fell upon the
assemblage. For five minutes no one spoke, while Mr. Boon continued to
chase the flickering sunbeam with the wonderful card. Suddenly the
silence was broken by a voice which had a touch of awe in it:

"It must be the metal!"

The speaker was an English financier, First Lord of the Treasury,
Hon. James Hampton-Jones, K.C.B. Immediately everybody echoed his
remark, and the strain being thus relieved, the spell dropped from
them and several laughed loudly over their momentary aberration.

President Boon recollected himself, and, coloring slightly, placed the
card flat on the table, in order more clearly to see the name. In
plain red letters it stood forth with such surprising distinctness
that Mr. Boon wondered why he had so long overlooked it.

  "DR. MAX SYX."

"Tell the gentleman to come in," said the president, and thereupon the
attendant threw open the door.

The owner of the mysterious card fixed every eye as he entered. He was
several inches more than six feet in height. His complexion was very
dark, his eyes were intensely black, bright, and deep-set, his
eyebrows were bushy and up-curled at the ends, his sable hair was
close-trimmed, and his ears were narrow, pointed at the top, and
prominent. He wore black mustaches, covering only half the width of
his lip and drawn into projecting needles on each side, while a spiked
black beard adorned the middle of his chin.

He smiled as he stepped confidently forward, with a courtly bow, but
it was a very disconcerting smile, because it more than half resembled
a sneer. This uncommon person did not wait to be addressed.

"I have come to solve your problem," he said, facing President Boon,
who had swung round on his pivoted chair.

"The metal!" exclaimed everybody in a breath, and with a unanimity and
excitement which would have astonished them if they had been
spectators instead of actors of the scene. The tall stranger bowed and
smiled again:

"Just so," he said. "What do you think of it?"

"It is beautiful!"

Again the reply came from every mouth simultaneously, and again if the
speakers could have been listeners they would have wondered not only
at their earnestness, but at their words, for why should they
instantly and unanimously pronounce that beautiful which they had not
even seen? But every man knew he had seen it, for instinctively their
minds reverted to the card and recognized in it the metal referred
to. The mesmeric spell seemed once more to fall upon the assemblage,
for the financiers noticed nothing remarkable in the next act of the
stranger, which was to take a chair, uninvited, at the table, and the
moment he sat down he became the presiding officer as naturally as if
he had just been elected to that post. They all waited for him to
speak, and when he opened his mouth they listened with breathless
attention.

His words were of the best English, but there was some peculiarity,
which they had already noticed, either in his voice or his manner of
enunciation, which struck all of the listeners as denoting a
foreigner. But none of them could satisfactorily place him. Neither
the Americans, the Englishmen, the Germans, the Frenchmen, the
Russians, the Austrians, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Turks, the
Japanese, or the Chinese at the board could decide to what race or
nationality the stranger belonged.

"This metal," he began, taking the card from Mr. Boon's hand, "I have
discovered and named. I call it 'artemisium.' I can produce it, in the
pure form, abundantly enough to replace gold, giving it the same
relative value that gold possessed when it was the universal
standard."

As Dr. Syx spoke he snapped the card with his thumb-nail and it
fluttered with quivering hues like a humming-bird hovering over a
flower. He seemed to await a reply, and President Boon asked:

"What guarantee can you give that the supply would be adequate and
continuous?"

"I will conduct a committee of this congress to my mine in the Rocky
Mountains, where, in anticipation of the event, I have accumulated
enough refined artemisium to provide every civilized land with an
amount of coin equivalent to that which it formerly held in gold. I
can there satisfy you of my ability to maintain the production."

"But how do we know that this metal of yours will answer the purpose?"

"Try it," was the laconic reply.

"There is another difficulty," pursued the president. "People will not
accept a new metal in place of gold unless they are convinced that it
possesses equal intrinsic value. They must first become familiar with
it, and it must be abundant enough and desirable enough to be used
sparingly in the arts, just as gold was."

"I have provided for all that," said the stranger, with one of his
disconcerting smiles. "I assure you that there will be no trouble with
the people. They will be only too eager to get and to use the
metal. Let me show you."

He stepped to the door and immediately returned with two black
attendants bearing a large tray filled with articles shaped from the
same metal as that of which the card was composed. The financiers all
jumped to their feet with exclamations of surprise and admiration, and
gathered around the tray, whose dazzling contents lighted up the
corner of the room where it had been placed as if the moon were
shining there.

There were elegantly formed vases, adorned with artistic figures,
embossed and incised, and glowing with delicate colors which shimmered
in tiny waves with the slightest motion of the tray. Cups, pins,
finger-rings, earrings, watch-chains, combs, studs, lockets, medals,
tableware, models of coins--in brief, almost every article in the
fabrication of which precious metals have been employed was to be seen
there in profusion, and all composed of the strange new metal which
everybody on the spot declared was far more splendid than gold.

"Do you think it will answer?" asked Dr. Syx.

"We do," was the unanimous reply.

All then resumed their seats at the table, the tray with its
magnificent array having been placed in the centre of the board. This
display had a remarkable influence. Confidence awoke in the breasts of
the financiers. The dark clouds that had oppressed them rolled off,
and the prospect grew decidedly brighter.

"What terms do you demand?" at length asked Mr. Boon, cheerfully
rubbing his hands.

"I must have military protection for my mine and reducing works,"
replied Dr. Syx. "Then I shall ask the return of one per cent, on the
circulating medium, together with the privilege of disposing of a
certain amount of the metal--to be limited by agreement--to the public
for use in the arts. Of the proceeds of this sale I will pay ten per
cent. to the government in consideration of its protection."

"But," exclaimed President Boon, "that will make you the richest man
who ever lived!"

"Undoubtedly," was the reply.

"Why," added Mr. Boon, opening his eyes wider as the facts continued
to dawn upon him, "you will become the financial dictator of the whole
earth!"

"Undoubtedly," again responded Dr. Syx, unmoved. "That is what I
purpose to become. My discovery entitles me to no less. But, remember,
I place myself under government inspection and restriction. I should
not be allowed to flood the market, even if I were disposed to do
so. But my own interest would restrain me. It is to my advantage that
artemisium, once adopted, shall remain stable in value."

A shadow of doubt suddenly crossed the president's face.

"Suppose your secret is discovered," he said. "Surely your mine will
not remain the only one. If you, in so short a time, have been able to
accumulate an immense quantity of the new metal, it must be extremely
abundant. Others will discover it, and then where shall we be?"

While Mr. Boon uttered these words, those who were watching Dr. Syx
(as the president was not) resembled persons whose startled eyes are
fixed upon a wild beast preparing to spring. As Mr. Boon ceased
speaking he turned towards the visitor, and instantly his lips fell
apart and his face paled.

Dr. Syx had drawn himself up to his full stature, and his features
were distorted with that peculiar mocking smile which had now returned
with a concentrated expression of mingled self-confidence and disdain.

"Will you have relief, or not?" he asked in a dry, hard voice. "What
can you do? I alone possess the secret which can restore industry and
commerce. If you reject my offer, do you think a second one will
come?"

President Boon found voice to reply, stammeringly:

"I did not mean to suggest a rejection of the offer. I only wished to
inquire if you thought it probable that there would be no repetition
of what occurred after gold was found at the south pole?"

"The earth may be full of my metal," returned Dr. Syx, almost
fiercely, "but so long as I alone possess the knowledge how to extract
it, is it of any more worth than common dirt? But come," he added,
after a pause and softening his manner, "I have other schemes. Will
you, as representatives of the leading nations, undertake the
introduction of artemisium as a substitute for gold, or will you not?"

"Can we not have time for deliberation?" asked President Boon.

"Yes, one hour. Within that time I shall return to learn your
decision," replied Dr. Syx, rising and preparing to depart. "I leave
these things," pointing to the tray, "in your keeping, and,"
significantly, "I trust your decision will be a wise one."

His curious smile again curved his lips and shot the ends of his
mustache upward, and the influence of that smile remained in the room
when he had closed the door behind him. The financiers gazed at one
another for several minutes in silence, then they turned towards the
coruscating metal that filled the tray.



III

THE GRAND TETON MINE

Away on the western border of Wyoming, in the all but inaccessible
heart of the Rocky Mountains, three mighty brothers, "The Big Tetons,"
look perpendicularly into the blue eye of Jenny's Lake, lying at the
bottom of the profound depression among the mountains called Jackson's
Hole.  Bracing against one another for support, these remarkable peaks
lift their granite spires from 12,000 to nearly 14,000 feet into the
blue dome that arches the crest of the continent. Their sides, and
especially those of their chief, the Grand Teton, are streaked with
glaciers, which shine like silver trappings when the morning sun comes
up above the wilderness of mountains stretching away eastward from the
hole.

When the first white men penetrated this wonderful region, and one of
them bestowed his wife's name upon Jenny's Lake, they were intimidated
by the Grand Teton. It made their flesh creep, accustomed though they
were to rough scrambling among mountain gorges and on the brows of
immense precipices, when they glanced up the face of the peak, where
the cliffs fall, one below another, in a series of breathless
descents, and imagined themselves clinging for dear life to those
skyey battlements.

But when, in 1872, Messrs. Stevenson and Langford finally reached the
top of the Grand Teton--the only successful members of a party of nine
practised climbers who had started together from the bottom--they
found there a little rectangular enclosure, made by piling up rocks,
six or seven feet across and three feet in height, bearing evidences
of great age, and indicating that the red Indians had, for some
unknown purpose, resorted to the summit of this tremendous peak long
before the white men invaded their mountains. Yet neither the Indians
nor the whites ever really conquered the Teton, for above the highest
point that they attained rises a granite buttress, whose smooth
vertical sides seemed to them to defy everything but wings.

Winding across the sage-covered floor of Jackson's Hole runs the
Shoshone, or Snake River, which takes its rise from Jackson's Lake at
the northern end of the basin, and then, as if shrinking from the
threatening brows of the Tetons, whose fall would block its progress,
makes a detour of one hundred miles around the buttressed heights of
the range before it finds a clear way across Idaho, and so on to the
Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.

On a July morning, about a month after the visit of Dr. Max Syx to the
assembled financiers in New York, a party of twenty horsemen,
following a mountain-trail, arrived on the eastern margin of Jackson's
Hole, and pausing upon a commanding eminence, with exclamations of
wonder, glanced across the great depression, where lay the shining
coils of the Snake River, at the towering forms of the Tetons, whose
ice-striped cliffs flashed lightnings in the sunshine. Even the
impassive broncos that the party rode lifted their heads inquiringly,
and snorted as if in equine astonishment at the magnificent spectacle.

One familiar with the place would have noticed something, which, to
his mind, would have seemed more surprising than the pageantry of the
mountains in their morning sun-bath. Curling above one of the wild
gorges that cut the lower slopes of the Tetons was a thick black
smoke, which, when lifted by a passing breeze, obscured the precipices
half-way to the summit of the peak.

Had the Grand Teton become a volcano? Certainly no hunting or
exploring party could make a smoke like that. But a word from the
leader of the party of horsemen explained the mystery.

"There is my mill, and the mine is underneath it."

The speaker was Dr. Syx, and his companions were members of the
financial congress. When he quitted their presence in New York, with
the promise to return within an hour for their reply, he had no doubt
in his own mind what that reply would be. He knew they would accept
his proposition, and they did. No time was then lost in communicating
with the various governments, and arrangements were quickly perfected
whereby, in case the inspection of Dr. Syx's mine and its resources
proved satisfactory, America and Europe should unite in adopting the
new metal as the basis of their coinage. As soon as this stage in the
negotiations was reached, it only remained to send a committee of
financiers and metallurgists, in company with Dr. Syx, to the Rocky
Mountains. They started under the doctor's guidance, completing the
last stage of their journey on horseback.

"An inspection of the records at Washington," Dr. Syx continued,
addressing the horsemen, "will show that I have filed a claim covering
ten acres of ground around the mouth of my mine. This was done as soon
as I had discovered the metal. The filing of the claim and the
subsequent proceedings which perfected my ownership attracted no
attention, because everybody was thinking of the south pole and its
gold-fields."

The party gathered closer around Dr. Syx and listened to his words
with silent attention, while their horses rubbed noses and jingled
their gold-mounted trappings.

"As soon as I had legally protected myself," he continued, "I employed
a force of men, transported my machinery and material across the
mountains, erected my furnaces, and opened the mine. I was safe from
intrusion, and even from idle curiosity, for the reason I have just
mentioned. In fact, so exclusive was the attraction of the new
gold-fields that I had difficulty in obtaining workmen, and finally I
sent to Africa and engaged negroes, whom I placed in charge of
trustworthy foremen. Accordingly, with half a dozen exceptions, you
will see only black men at the mine."

"And with their aid you have mined enough metal to supply the mints of
the world?" asked President Boon.

"Exactly so," was the reply. "But I no longer employ the large force
which I needed at first."

"How much metal have you on hand? I am aware that you have already
answered this question during our preliminary negotiations, but I ask
it again for the benefit of some members of our party who were not
present then."

"I shall show you to-day," said Dr. Syx, with his curious smile, "2500
tons of refined artemisium, stacked in rock-cut vaults under the Grand
Teton."

"And you have dared to collect such inconceivable wealth in one
place?"

"You forget that it is not wealth until the people have learned to
value it, and the governments have put their stamp upon it."

"True, but how did you arrive at the proper moment?"

"Easily. I first ascertained that before the Antarctic discoveries the
world contained altogether about 16,000 tons of gold, valued at
$450,000 per ton, or $7,200,000,000 worth all told. Now my metal
weighs, bulk for bulk, one-quarter as much as gold. It might be
reckoned at the same intrinsic value per ton, but I have considered it
preferable to take advantage of the smaller weight of the new metal,
which permits us to make coins of the same size as the old ones, but
only one-quarter as heavy, by giving to artemisium four times the
value per ton that gold had. Thus only 4000 tons of the new metal are
required to supply the place of the 16,000 tons of gold. The 2500 tons
which I already have on hand are more than enough for coinage. The
rest I can supply as fast as needed."

The party did not wait for further explanations. They were eager to
see the wonderful mine and the store of treasure. Spurs were applied,
and they galloped down the steep trail, forded the Snake River, and,
skirting the shore of Jenny's Lake, soon found themselves gazing up
the headlong slopes and dizzy parapets of the Grand Teton. Dr. Syx led
them by a steep ascent to the mouth of the canyon, above one of whose
walls stood his mill, and where the "Champ! Champ!" of a powerful
engine saluted their ears.



IV

THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD

An electric light shot its penetrating rays into a gallery cut through
virgin rock and running straight towards the heart of the Teton. The
centre of the gallery was occupied by a narrow railway, on which a few
flat cars, propelled by electric power, passed to and fro.
Black-skinned and silent workmen rode on the cars, both when they came
laden with broken masses of rock from the farther end of the tunnel
and when they returned empty.

Suddenly, to an eye situated a little way within the gallery, appeared
at the entrance the dark face of Dr. Syx, wearing its most
discomposing smile, and a moment later the broader countenance of
President Boon loomed in the electric glare beside the doctor's black
framework of eyebrows and mustache. Behind them were grouped the other
visiting financiers.

"This tunnel," said Dr. Syx, "leads to the mine head, where the
ore-bearing rock is blasted."

As he spoke a hollow roar issued from the depths of the mountain,
followed in a short time by a gust of foul air.

"You probably will not care to go in there," said the doctor, "and, in
fact, it is very uncomfortable. But we shall follow the next car-load
to the smelter, and you can witness the reduction of the ore."

Accordingly when another car came rumbling out of the tunnel, with its
load of cracked rock, they all accompanied it into an adjoining
apartment, where it was cast into a metallic shute, through which,
they were informed, it reached the furnace.

"While it is melting," explained Dr. Syx, "certain elements, the
nature of which I must beg to keep secret, are mixed with the ore,
causing chemical action which results in the extraction of the
metal. Now let me show you pure artemisium issuing from the furnace."

He led the visitors through two apartments into a third, one side of
which was walled by the front of a furnace. From this projected two or
three small spouts, and iridescent streams of molten metal fell from
the spouts into earthen receptacles from which the blazing liquid was
led, like flowing iron, into a system of molds, where it was allowed
to cool and harden.

The financiers looked on wondering, and their astonishment grew when
they were conducted into the rock-cut store-rooms beneath, where they
saw metallic ingots glowing like gigantic opals in the light which Dr.
Syx turned on. They were piled in rows along the walls as high as a
man could reach. A very brief inspection sufficed to convince the
visitors that Dr. Syx was able to perform all that he promised.
Although they had not penetrated the secret of his process of reducing
the ore, yet they had seen the metal flowing from the furnace, and the
piles of ingots proved conclusively that he had uttered no vain boast
when he said he could give the world a new coinage.

But President Boon, being himself a metallurgist, desired to inspect
the mysterious ore a little more closely. Possibly he was thinking
that if another mine was destined to be discovered he might as well be
the discoverer as anybody. Dr. Syx attempted no concealment, but his
smile became more than usually scornful as he stopped a laden car and
invited the visitors to help themselves.

"I think," he said, "that I have struck the only lode of this ore in
the Teton, or possibly in this part of the world, but I don't know for
certain. There may be plenty of it only waiting to be found. That,
however, doesn't trouble me. The great point is that nobody except
myself knows how to extract the metal."

Mr. Boon closely examined the chunk of rock which he had taken from
the car. Then he pulled a lens from his pocket, with a deprecatory
glance at Dr. Syx.

"Oh, that's all right," said the latter, with a laugh, the first that
these gentlemen had ever heard from his lips, and it almost made them
shudder; "put it to every test, examine it with the microscope, with
fire, with electricity, with the spectroscope--in every way you can
think of! I assure you it is worth your while!"

Again Dr. Syx uttered his freezing laugh, passing into the familiar
smile, which had now become an undisguised mock.

"Upon my word," said Mr. Boon, taking his eye from the lens, "I see no
sign of any metal here!"

"Look at the green specks!" cried the doctor, snatching the specimen
from the president's hand. "That's it! That's artemisium! But it's of
no use unless you can get it out and purify it, which is my secret!"

For the third time Dr. Syx laughed, and his merriment affected the
visitors so disagreeably that they showed impatience to be
gone. Immediately he changed his manner.

"Come into my office," he said, with a return to the graciousness
which had characterized him ever since the party started from New
York.

When they were all seated, and the doctor had handed round a box of
cigars, he resumed the conversation in his most amiable manner.

"You see, gentlemen," he said, turning a piece of ore in his fingers,
"artemisium is like aluminum. It can only be obtained in the metallic
form by a special process. While these greenish particles, which you
may perhaps mistake for chrysolite, or some similar unisilicate,
really contain the precious metal, they are not entirely composed of
it. The process by which I separate out the metallic element while the
ore is passing through the furnace is, in truth, quite simple, and its
very simplicity guards my secret. Make your minds easy as to
over-production. A man is as likely to jump over the moon as to find
me out."

"But," he continued, again changing his manner, "we have had
business enough for one day; now for a little recreation." While
speaking the doctor pressed a button on his desk, and the room, which
was illuminated by electric lamps--for there were no windows in the
building--suddenly became dark, except part of one wall, where a broad
area of light appeared. Dr. Syx's voice had become very soothing when
next he spoke: "I am fond of amusing myself with a peculiar form of
the magic-lantern, which I invented some years ago, and which I have
never exhibited except for the entertainment of my friends. The
pictures will appear upon the wall, the apparatus being concealed."

He had hardly ceased speaking when the illuminated space seemed to
melt away, leaving a great opening, through which the spectators
looked as if into another world on the opposite side of the wall. For
a minute or two they could not clearly discern what was presented;
then, gradually, the flitting scenes and figures became more distinct
until the lifelikeness of the spectacle absorbed their whole
attention.

Before them passed, in panoramic review, a sunny land, filled with
brilliant-hued vegetation, and dotted with villages and cities which
were bright with light-colored buildings. People appeared moving
through the scenes, as in a cinematograph exhibition, but with
infinitely more semblance of reality. In fact, the pictures, blending
one into another, seemed to be life itself. Yet it was not an
earth-like scene. The colors of the passing landscape were such as no
man in the room had ever beheld; and the people, tall, round-limbed,
with florid complexion, golden hair, and brilliant eyes and lips, were
indescribably beautiful and graceful in all their movements.

From the land the view passed out to sea, and bright blue waves, edged
with creaming foam, ran swiftly under the spectator's eyes, and
occasionally, driven before light winds, appeared fleets of daintily
shaped vessels, which reminded the beholder, by their flashing wings,
of the feigned "ship of pearl."

After the fairy ships and breezy sea views came a long, curving line
of coast, brilliant with coral sands, and indented by frequent bays,
along whose enchanting shores lay pleasant towns, the landscapes
behind them splendid with groves, meadows, and streams.

Presently the shifting photographic tape, or whatever the mechanism
may have been, appeared to have settled upon a chosen scene, and there
it rested. A broad champaign reached away to distant sapphire
mountains, while the foreground was occupied by a magnificent house,
resembling a large country villa, fronted with a garden, shaded by
bowers and festoons of huge, brilliant flowers. Birds of radiant
plumage flitted among the trees and blossoms, and then appeared a
company of gayly attired people, including many young girls, who
joined hands and danced in a ring, apparently with shouts of laughter,
while a group of musicians standing near thrummed and blew upon
curiously shaped instruments.

Suddenly the shadow of a dense cloud flitted across the scene;
whereupon the brilliant birds flew away with screams of terror which
almost seemed to reach the ears of the onlookers through the wall. An
expression of horror came over the faces of the people. The children
broke from their merry circle and ran for protection to their
elders. The utmost confusing and whelming terror were evidenced for a
moment--then the ground split asunder, and the house and the garden,
with all their living occupants were swallowed by an awful chasm which
opened just where they had stood. The great rent ran in a widening
line across the sunlit landscape until it reached the horizon, when
the distant mountains crumbled, clouds poured in from all sides at
once, and billows of flame burst through them as they veiled the
scene.

But in another instant the commotion was over, and the world whose
curious spectacles had been enacted as if on the other side of a
window, seemed to retreat swiftly into space, until at last, emerging
from a fleecy cloud, it reappeared in the form of the full moon
hanging in the sky, but larger than is its wont, with its dry
ocean-beds, its keen-spired peaks, its ragged mountain ranges, its
gaping chasms, its immense crater rings, and Tycho, the chief of them
all, shooting raylike streaks across the scarred face of the abandoned
lunar globe.  The show was ended, and Dr. Syx, turning on only a
partial illumination in the room, rose slowly to his feet, his tall
form appearing strangely magnified in the gloom, and invited his
bewildered guests to accompany him to his house, outside the mill,
where he said dinner awaited them. As they emerged into daylight they
acted like persons just aroused from an opiate dream.



V

WONDERS OF THE NEW METAL

Within a twelvemonth after the visit of President Boon and his fellow
financiers to the mine in the Grand Teton a railway had been
constructed from Jackson's Hole, connecting with one of the Pacific
lines, and the distribution of the new metal was begun. All of
Dr. Syx's terms had been accepted. United States troops occupied a
permanent encampment on the upper waters of the Snake River, to afford
protection, and as the consignments of precious ingots were hurried
east and west on guarded trains, the mints all over the world resumed
their activity. Once more a common monetary standard prevailed, and
commerce revived as if touched by a magic wand.

Artemisium quickly won its way in popular favor. Its matchless beauty
alone was enough. Not only was it gladly accepted in the form of
money, but its success was instantaneous in the arts. Dr. Syx and the
inspectors representing the various nations found it difficult to
limit the output to the agreed upon amount. The demand was incessant.

Goldsmiths and jewellers continually discovered new excellences in the
wonderful metal. Its properties of translucence and refraction enabled
skilful artists to perform marvels. By suitable management a chain of
artemisium could be made to resemble a string of vari-colored gems,
each separate link having a tint of its own, while, as the wearer
moved, delicate complementary colors chased one another, in rapid
undulation, from end to end.

A fresh charm was added by the new metal to the personal adornment of
women, and an enhanced splendor to the pageants of society. Gold in
its palmiest days had never enjoyed such a vogue. A crowded reception
room or a dinner party where artemisium abounded possessed an
indescribable atmosphere of luxury and richness, refined in quality,
yet captivating to every sense. Imaginative persons went so far as to
aver that the sight and presence of the metal exercised a strangely
soothing and dreamy power over the mind, like the influence of
moonlight streaming through the tree-tops on a still, balmy night.

The public curiosity in regard to the origin of artemisium was
boundless. The various nations published official bulletins in which
the general facts--omitting, of course, such incidents as the singular
exhibition seen by the visiting financiers on the wall of Dr. Syx's
office--were detailed to gratify the universal desire for information.

President Boon not only submitted the specimens of ore-bearing rock
which he had brought from the mine to careful analysis, but also
appealed to several of the greatest living chemists and mineralogists
to aid him; but they were all equally mystified. The green substance
contained in the ore, although differing slightly from ordinary
chrysolite, answered all the known tests of that mineral. It was
remembered, however, that Dr. Syx had said that they would be likely
to mistake the substance for chrysolite, and the result of their
experiments justified his prediction. Evidently the doctor had gone a
stone's-cast beyond the chemistry of the day, and, just as evidently,
he did not mean to reveal his discovery for the benefit of science,
nor for the benefit of any pockets except his own.

Notwithstanding the failure of the chemists to extract anything from
Dr. Syx's ore, the public at large never doubted that the secret would
be discovered in good time, and thousands of prospectors flocked to
the Teton Mountains in search of the ore. And without much difficulty
they found it. Evidently the doctor had been mistaken in thinking that
his mine might be the only one. The new miners hurried specimens of
the green-speckled rock to the chemical laboratories for
experimentation, and meanwhile began to lay up stores of the ore in
anticipation of the time when the proper way to extract the metal
should be discovered.

But, alas! that time did not come. The fresh ore proved to be as
refractory as that which had been obtained from Dr. Syx. But in the
midst of the universal disappointment there came a new sensation.

One morning the newspapers glared with a despatch from Grand Teton
station announcing that the metal itself had been discovered by
prospectors on the eastern slope of the main peak.

"It outcrops in many places," ran the despatch, "and many small
nuggets have been picked out of crevices in the rocks."

The excitement produced by this news was even greater than when gold
was discovered at the south pole. Again a mad rush was made for the
Tetons. The heights around Jackson's Hole and the shores of Jackson's
and Jenny's lakes were quickly dotted with camps, and the military
force had to be doubled to keep off the curious, and occasionally
menacing, crowds which gathered in the vicinity and seemed bent on
unearthing the great secret locked behind the windowless walls of the
mill, where the column of black smoke and the roar of the engine
served as reminders of the incredible wealth which the sole possessor
of that secret was rolling up.

This time no mistake had been made. It was a fact that the metal, in
virgin purity, had been discovered scattered in various places on the
ledges of the Grand Teton. In a little while thousands had obtained
specimens with their own hands. The quantity was distressingly small,
considering the number and the eagerness of the seekers, but that it
was genuine artemisium not even Dr. Syx could have denied. He,
however, made no attempt to deny it.

"Yes," he said, when questioned, "I find that I have been deceived. At
first I thought the metal existed only in the form of the green ore,
but of late I have come upon veins of pure artemisium in my mine. I am
glad for your sakes, but sorry for my own. Still, it may turn out that
there is no great amount of free artemisium after all."

While the doctor talked in this manner close observers detected a
lurking sneer which his acquaintances had not noticed since artemisium
was first adopted as the money basis of the world.

The crowd that swarmed upon the mountain quickly exhausted all of the
visible supply of the metal. Sometimes they found it in a thin stratum
at the bottom of crevices, where it could be detached in opalescent
plates and leaves of the thickness of paper. These superficial
deposits evidently might have been formed from water holding the metal
in solution. Occasionally, deep cracks contained nuggets and wiry
masses which looked as if they had run together when molten.

The most promising spots were soon staked out in miners' claims,
machinery was procured, stock companies were formed, and borings were
begun. The enthusiasm arising from the earlier finds and the
flattering surface indications caused everybody to work with feverish
haste and energy, and within two months one hundred tunnels were
piercing the mountain.

For a long time nobody was willing to admit the truth which gradually
forced itself upon the attention of the miners. The deeper they went
the scarcer became the indications of artemisium! In fact, such
deposits as were found were confined to fissures near the surface. But
Dr. Syx continued to report a surprising increase in the amount of
free metal in his mine, and this encouraged all who had not exhausted
their capital to push on their tunnels in the hope of finally striking
a vein. At length, however, the smaller operators gave up in despair,
until only one heavily capitalized company remained at work.



VI

A STRANGE DISCOVERY

"It is my belief that Dr. Max Syx is a deceiver."

The person who uttered this opinion was a young engineer, Andrew Hall,
who had charge of the operations of one of the mining companies which
were driving tunnels into the Grand Teton.

"What do you mean by that?" asked President Boon, who was the
principal backer of the enterprise.

"I mean," replied Hall, "that there is no free metal in this mountain,
and Dr. Syx knows there is none."

"But he is getting it himself from his mine," retorted President Boon.

"So he says, but who has seen it? No one is admitted into the Syx
mine, his foremen are forbidden to talk, and his workmen are specially
imported negroes who do not understand the English language."

"But," persisted Mr. Boon, "how, then, do you account for the nuggets
scattered over the mountain? And, beside, what object could Dr. Syx
have in pretending that there is free metal to be had for the
digging?"

"He may have salted the mountain, for all I know," said Hall. "As for
his object, I confess I am entirely in the dark; but, for all that, I
am convinced that we shall find no more metal if we dig ten miles for
it."

"Nonsense," said the president; "if we keep on we shall strike it. Did
not Dr. Syx himself admit that he found no free artemisium until his
tunnel had reached the core of the peak? We must go as deep as he has
gone before we give up."

"I fear the depths he attains are beyond most people's reach," was
Hall's answer, while a thoughtful look crossed his clear-cut brow,
"but since you desire it, of course the work shall go on. I should
like, however, to change the direction of the tunnel."

"Certainly," replied Mr. Boon; "bore in whatever direction you think
proper, only don't despair."

About a month after this conversation Andrew Hall, with whom a
community of tastes in many things had made me intimately acquainted,
asked me one morning to accompany him into his tunnel.

"I want to have a trusty friend at my elbow," he said, "for, unless I
am a dreamer, something remarkable will happen within the next hour,
and two witnesses are better than one."

I knew Hall was not the person to make such a remark carelessly, and
my curiosity was intensely excited, but, knowing his peculiarities, I
did not press him for an explanation. When we arrived at the head of
the tunnel I was surprised at finding no workmen there.

"I stopped blasting some time ago," said Hall, in explanation, "for a
reason which, I hope, will become evident to you very soon. Lately I
have been boring very slowly, and yesterday I paid off the men and
dismissed them with the announcement, which, I am confident, President
Boon will sanction after he hears my report of this morning's work,
that the tunnel is abandoned. You see, I am now using a drill which I
can manage without assistance. I believe the work is almost completed,
and I want you to witness the end of it."

He then carefully applied the drill, which noiselessly screwed its
nose into the rock. When it had sunk to a depth of a few inches he
withdrew it, and, taking a hand-drill capable of making a hole not
more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, cautiously began boring in
the centre of the larger cavity. He had made hardly a hundred turns of
the handle when the drill shot through the rock! A gratified smile
illuminated his features, and he said in a suppressed voice:

"Don't be alarmed; I'm going to put out the light."

Instantly we were in complete darkness, but being close at Hall's side
I could detect his movements. He pulled out the drill, and for half a
minute remained motionless as if listening. There was no sound.

"I must enlarge the opening," he whispered, and immediately the faint
grating of a sharp tool cutting through the rock informed me of his
progress.

"There," at last he said, "I think that will do; now for a look."

I could tell that he had placed his eye at the hole and was gazing
with breathless attention. Presently he pulled my sleeve.

"Put your eye here," he whispered, pushing me into the proper position
for looking through the hole.

At first I could discern nothing except a smoky blue glow. But soon my
vision cleared a little, and then I perceived that I was gazing into a
narrow tunnel which met ours directly end to end. Glancing along the
axis of this gallery I saw, some two hundred yards away, a faint light
which evidently indicated the mouth of the tunnel.

At the end where we had met it the mysterious tunnel was considerably
widened at one side, as if the excavators had started to change
direction and then abandoned the work, and in this elbow I could just
see the outlines of two or three flat cars loaded with broken stone,
while a heap of the same material lay near them. Through the centre of
the tunnel ran a railway track.

"Do you know what you are looking at?" asked Hall in my ear.

"I begin to suspect," I replied, "that you have accidentally run into
Dr. Syx's mine."

"If Dr. Syx had been on his guard this accident wouldn't have
happened," replied Hall, with an almost inaudible chuckle.

"I heard you remark a month ago," I said, "that you were changing the
direction of your tunnel. Has this been the aim of your labors ever
since?"

"You have hit it," he replied. "Long ago I became convinced that my
company was throwing away its money in a vain attempt to strike a lode
of pure artemisium. But President Boon has great faith in Dr. Syx, and
would not give up the work. So I adopted what I regarded as the only
practicable method of proving the truth of my opinion and saving the
company's funds. An electric indicator, of my invention, enabled me to
locate the Syx tunnel when I got near it, and I have met it end on,
and opened this peep-hole in order to observe the doctor's
operations. I feel that such spying is entirely justified in the
circumstances. Although I cannot yet explain just how or why I feel
sure that Dr. Syx was the cause of the sudden discovery of the surface
nuggets, and that he has encouraged the miners for his own ends, until
he has brought ruin to thousands who have spent their last cent in
driving useless tunnels into this mountain. It is a righteous thing to
expose him."

"But," I interposed, "I do not see that you have exposed anything yet
except the interior of a tunnel."

"You will see more clearly after a while," was the reply.

Hall now placed his eye again at the aperture, and was unable entirely
to repress the exclamation that rose to his lips. He remained staring
through the hole for several minutes without uttering a
word. Presently I noticed that the lenses of his eye were illuminated
by a ray of light coming through the hole, but he did not stir.

After a long inspection he suddenly applied his ear to the hole and
listened intently for at least five minutes. Not a sound was audible
to me, but, by an occasional pressure of the hand, Hall signified that
some important disclosure was reaching his sense of hearing. At length
he removed his ear.

"Pardon me," he whispered, "for keeping you so long in waiting, but
what I have just seen and overheard was of a nature to admit of no
interruption. He is still talking, and by pressing your ear against
the hole you may be able to catch what he says."

"Who is 'he'?"

"Look for yourself."

I placed my eye at the aperture, and almost recoiled with the violence
of my surprise. The tunnel before me was brilliantly illuminated, and
within three feet of the wall of rock behind which we crouched stood
Dr. Syx, his dark profile looking almost satanic in the sharp contrast
of light and shadow. He was talking to one of his foremen, and the two
were the only visible occupants of the tunnel. Putting my ear to the
little opening, I heard his words distinctly:

--"end of their rope. Well, they've spent a pretty lot of money for
their experience, and I rather think we shall not be troubled again by
artemisium-seekers for some time to come."

The doctor's voice ceased, and instantly I clapped my eye to the
hole. He had changed his position so that his black eyes now looked
straight at the aperture. My heart was in my mouth, for at first I
believed from his expression that he had detected the gleam of my
eyeball. But if so, he probably mistook it for a bit of mica in the
rock, and paid no further attention. Then his lips moved, and I put my
ear again to the hole. He seemed to be replying to a question that the
foreman had asked.

"If they do," he said, "they will never guess the real secret."

Thereupon he turned on his heel, kicked a bit of rock off the track,
and strode away towards the entrance. The foreman paused long enough
to turn out the electric lamp, and then followed the doctor.

"Well," asked Hall, "what have you heard?"

I told him everything.

"It fully corroborates the evidence of my own eyes and ears," he
remarked, "and we may count ourselves extremely lucky. It is not
likely that Dr. Syx will be heard a second time proclaiming his
deception with his own lips. It is plain that he was led to talk as he
did to the foreman on account of the latter's having informed him of
the sudden discharge of my men this morning. Their presence within
ear-shot of our hiding-place during their conversation was, of course,
pure accident, and so you can see how kind fortune has been to us. I
expected to have to watch and listen and form deductions for a week,
at least, before getting the information which five lucky minutes have
placed in our hands."

While he was speaking my companion busied himself in carefully
plugging up the hole in the rock. When it was closed to his
satisfaction he turned on the light in our tunnel.

"Did you observe," he asked, "that there was a second tunnel?"

"What do you say?"

"When the light was on in there I saw the mouth of a smaller tunnel
entering the main one behind the cars on the right. Did you notice
it?"

"Oh yes," I replied. "I did observe some kind of a dark hole there,
but I paid no attention to it because I was so absorbed in the
doctor."

"Well," rejoined Hall, smiling, "it was worth considerably more than a
glance. As a subject of thought I find it even more absorbing than
Dr. Syx. Did you see the track in it?"

"No," I had to acknowledge, "I did not notice that. But," I continued,
a little piqued by his manner, "being a branch of the main tunnel, I
don't see anything remarkable in its having a track also."

"It was rather dim in that hole," said Hall, still smiling in a
somewhat provoking way, "but the railroad track was there plain
enough. And, whether you think it remarkable or not, I should like to
lay you a wager that that track leads to a secret worth a dozen of the
one we have just overheard."

"My good friend," I retorted, still smarting a little, "I shall not
presume to match my stupidity against your perspicacity. I haven't
cat's eyes in the dark."

Hall immediately broke out laughing, and, slapping me good-naturedly
on the shoulder, exclaimed:

"Come, come now! If you go to kicking back at a fellow like that, I
shall be sorry I ever undertook this adventure."



VII

A MYSTERY INDEED!

When President Boon had heard our story he promptly approved Hall's
dismissal of the men. He expressed great surprise that Dr. Syx should
have resorted to a deception which had been so disastrous to innocent
people, and at first he talked of legal proceedings. But, after
thinking the matter over, he concluded that Syx was too powerful to be
attacked with success, especially when the only evidence against him
was that he had claimed to find artemisium in his mine at a time when,
as everybody knew, artemisium actually was found outside the
mine. There was no apparent motive for the deception, and no proof of
malicious intent. In short, Mr. Boon decided that the best thing for
him and his stockholders to do was to keep silent about their losses
and await events. And, at Hall's suggestion, he also determined to say
nothing to anybody about the discovery we had made.

"It could do no good," said Hall, in making the suggestion, "and it
might spoil a plan I have in mind."

"What plan?" asked the president.

"I prefer not to tell just yet," was the reply.

I observed that, in our interview with Mr. Boon, Hall made no
reference to the side tunnel to which he had appeared to attach so
much importance, and I concluded that he now regarded it as lacking
significance. In this I was mistaken.

A few days afterwards I received an invitation from Hall to accompany
him once more into the abandoned tunnel.

"I have found out what that sidetrack means," he said, "and it has
plunged me into another mystery so dark and profound that I cannot see
my way through it. I must beg you to say no word to any one concerning
the things I am about to show you."

I gave the required promise, and we entered the tunnel, which nobody
had visited since our former adventure. Having extinguished our lamp,
my companion opened the peep-hole, and a thin ray of light streamed
through from the tunnel on the opposite side of the wall. He applied
his eye to the hole.

"Yes," he said, quickly stepping back and pushing me into his place,
"they are still at it. Look, and tell me what you see."

"I see," I replied, after placing my eye at the aperture, "a gang of
men unloading a car which has just come out of the side tunnel, and
putting its contents upon another car standing on the track of the
main tunnel."

"Yes, and what are they handling?"

"Why, ore, of course."

"And do you see nothing significant in that?"

"To be sure!" I exclaimed. "Why, that ore--"

"Hush! hush!" admonished Hall, putting his hand over my mouth; "don't
talk so loud. Now go on, in a whisper."

"The ore," I resumed, "may have come back from the furnace-room,
because the side tunnel turns off so as to run parallel with the
other."

"It not only may have come back, it actually has come back," said
Hall.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I have been over the track, and know that it leads to a
secret apartment directly under the furnace in which Dr. Syx pretends
to melt the ore!"

For a minute after hearing this avowal I was speechless.

"Are you serious?" I asked at length.

"Perfectly serious. Run your finger along the rock here. Do you
perceive a seam? Two days ago, after seeing what you have just
witnessed in the Syx tunnel, I carefully cut out a section of the
wall, making an aperture large enough to crawl through, and, when I
knew the workmen were asleep, I crept in there and examined both
tunnels from end to end. But in solving one mystery I have run myself
into another infinitely more perplexing."

"How is that?"

"Why does Dr. Syx take such elaborate pains to deceive his visitors,
and also the government officers? It is now plain that he conducts no
mining operations whatever. This mine of his is a gigantic
blind. Whenever inspectors or scientific curiosity seekers visit his
mill his mute workmen assume the air of being very busy, the cars
laden with his so-called 'ore' rumble out of the tunnel, and their
contents are ostentatiously poured into the furnace, or appear to be
poured into it, really dropping into a receptacle beneath, to be
carried back into the mine again. And then the doctor leads his gulled
visitors around to the other side of the furnace and shows them the
molten metal coming out in streams. Now what does it all mean? That's
what I'd like to find out. What's his game? For, mark you, if he
doesn't get artemisium from this pretended ore, he gets it from some
other source, and right on this spot, too. There is no doubt about
that. The whole world is supplied by Syx's furnace, and Syx feeds his
furnace with something that comes from his ten acres of Grand Teton
rock. What is that something? How does he get it, and where does he
hide it? These are the things I should like to find out."

"Well," I replied, "I fear I can't help you."

"But the difference between you and me," he retorted, "is that you can
go to sleep over it, while I shall never get another good night's rest
so long as this black mystery remains unsolved."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know exactly what. But I've got a dim idea which may take
shape after a while."

Hall was silent for some time; then he suddenly asked:

"Did you ever hear of that queer magic-lantern show with which Dr. Syx
entertained Mr. Boon and the members of the financial commission in
the early days of the artemisium business?"

"Yes, I've heard the story, but I don't think it was ever made
public. The newspapers never got hold of it."

"No, I believe not. Odd thing, wasn't it?"

"Why, yes, very odd, but just like the doctor's eccentric ways,
though. He's always doing something to astonish somebody, without any
apparent earthly reason. But what put you in mind of that?"

"Free artemisium put me in mind of it," replied Hall, quizzically.

"I don't see the connection."

"I'm not sure that I do either, but when you are dealing with Dr. Syx
nothing is too improbable to be thought of."

Hall thereupon fell to musing again, while we returned to the entrance
of the tunnel. After he had made everything secure, and slipped the
key into his pocket, my companion remarked:

"Don't you think it would be best to keep this latest discovery to
ourselves?"

"Certainly."

"Because," he continued, "nobody would be benefited just now by
knowing what we know, and to expose the worthlessness of the 'ore'
might cause a panic. The public is a queer animal, and never gets
scared at just the thing you expect will alarm it, but always at
something else."

We had shaken hands and were separating when Hall stopped me.

"Do you believe in alchemy?" he asked.

"That's an odd question from you," I replied. "I thought alchemy was
exploded long ago."

"Well," he said, slowly, "I suppose it has been exploded, but then,
you know, an explosion may sometimes be a kind of instantaneous
education, breaking up old things but revealing new ones."



VIII

MORE OF DR. SYX'S MAGIC

Important business called me East soon after the meeting with Hall
described in the foregoing chapter, and before I again saw the Grand
Teton very stirring events had taken place.

As the reader is aware, Dr. Syx's agreement with the various
governments limited the output of his mine. An international
commission, continually in session in New York, adjusted the
differences arising among the nations concerning financial affairs,
and allotted to each the proper amount of artemisium for coinage. Of
course, this amount varied from time to time, but a fair average could
easily be maintained. The gradual increase of wealth, in houses,
machinery, manufactured and artistic products called for a
corresponding increase in the circulating medium; but this, too, was
easily provided for. An equally painstaking supervision was exercised
over the amount of the precious metal which Dr. Syx was permitted to
supply to the markets for use in the arts. On this side, also, the
demand gradually increased; but the wonderful Teton mine seemed equal
to all calls upon its resources.

After the failure of the mining operations there was a moderate
revival of the efforts to reduce the Teton ore, but no success cheered
the experimenters. Prospectors also wandered all over the earth
looking for pure artemisium, but in vain. The general public, knowing
nothing of what Hall had discovered, and still believing Syx's story
that he also had found pure artemisium in his mine, accounted for the
failure of the tunnelling operations on the supposition that the
metal, in a free state, was excessively rare, and that Dr. Syx had had
the luck to strike the only vein of it that the Grand Teton
contained. As if to give countenance to this opinion, Dr. Syx now
announced, in the most public manner, that he had been deceived again,
and that the vein of free metal he had struck being exhausted, no
other had appeared. Accordingly, he said, he must henceforth rely
exclusively, as in the beginning, upon reduction of the ore.

Artemisium had proved itself an immense boon to mankind, and the new
era of commercial prosperity which it had ushered in already exceeded
everything that the world had known in the past. School-children
learned that human civilization had taken five great strides, known
respectively, beginning at the bottom, as the "age of stone," the "age
of bronze," the "age of iron," the "age of gold," and the "age of
artemisium."

Nevertheless, sources of dissatisfaction finally began to appear, and,
after the nature of such things, they developed with marvellous
rapidity. People began to grumble about "contraction of the currency."
In every country there arose a party which demanded "free money."
Demagogues pointed to the brief reign of paper money after the
demonetization of gold as a happy period, when the people had enjoyed
their rights, and the "money barons"--borrowing a term from
nineteenth-century history--were kept at bay.

Then came denunciations of the international commission for
restricting the coinage. Dr. Syx was described as "a devil-fish
sucking the veins of the planet and holding it helpless in the grasp
of his tentacular billions." In the United States meetings of
agitators passed furious resolutions, denouncing the government,
assailing the rich, cursing Dr. Syx, and calling upon "the oppressed"
to rise and "take their own." The final outcome was, of course,
violence. Mobs had to be suppressed by military force. But the most
dramatic scene in the tragedy occurred at the Grand Teton. Excited by
inflammatory speeches and printed documents, several thousand armed
men assembled in the neighborhood of Jenny's Lake and prepared to
attack the Syx mine. For some reason the military guard had been
depleted, and the mob, under the leadership of a man named Bings, who
showed no little talent as a commander and strategist, surprised the
small force of soldiers and locked them up in their own guard-house.

Telegraphic communication having been cut off by the astute Bings, a
fierce attack was made on the mine. The assailants swarmed up the
sides of the canyon, and attempted to break in through the foundation
of the buildings. But the masonry was stronger than they had
anticipated, and the attack failed. Sharp-shooters then climbed the
neighboring heights, and kept up an incessant peppering of the walls
with conical bullets driven at four thousand feet per second.

No reply came from the gloomy structure. The huge column of black
smoke rose uninterruptedly into the sky, and the noise of the great
engine never ceased for an instant. The mob gathered closer on all
sides and redoubled the fire of the rifles, to which was now added the
belching of several machine-guns. Ragged holes began to appear in the
walls, and at the sight of these the assailants yelled with
delight. It was evident that, the mill could not long withstand so
destructive a bombardment. If the besiegers had possessed artillery
they would have knocked the buildings into splinters within twenty
minutes. As it was, they would need a whole day to win their victory.

Suddenly it became evident that the besieged were about to take a hand
in the fight. Thus far they had not shown themselves or fired a shot,
but now a movement was perceived on the roof, and the projecting arms
of some kind of machinery became visible. Many marksmen concentrated
their fire upon the mysterious objects, but apparently with little
effect. Bings, mounted on a rock, so as to command a clear view of the
field, was on the point, of ordering a party to rush forward with axes
and beat down the formidable doors, when there came a blinding flash
from the roof, something swished through the air, and a gust of heat
met the assailants in the face. Bings dropped dead from his perch, and
then, as if the scythe of the Destroyer had swung downward, and to
right and left in quick succession, the close-packed mob was levelled,
rank after rank, until the few survivors crept behind rocks for
refuge.

Instantly the atmospheric broom swept up and down the canyon and
across the mountain's flanks, and the marksmen fell in bunches like
shaken grapes. Nine-tenths of the besiegers were destroyed within ten
minutes after the first movement had been noticed on the roof. Those
who survived owed their escape to the rocks which concealed them, and
they lost no time in crawling off into neighboring chasms, and, as
soon as they were beyond eye-shot from the mill, they fled with panic
speed.

Then the towering form of Dr. Syx appeared at the door. Emerging
without sign of fear or excitement, he picked his way among his fallen
enemies, and, approaching the military guard-house, undid the
fastening and set the imprisoned soldiers free.

"I think I am paying rather dear for my whistle," he said, with a
characteristic sneer, to Captain Carter, the commander of the
troop. "It seems that I must not only defend my own people and
property when attacked by mob force, but must also come to the rescue
of the soldiers whose pay-rolls are met from my pocket."

The captain made no reply, and Dr. Syx strode back to the works. When
the released soldiers saw what had occurred their amazement had no
bounds. It was necessary at once to dispose of the dead, and this was
no easy undertaking for their small force. However, they accomplished
it, and at the beginning of their work made a most surprising
discovery.

"How's this, Jim?" said one of the men to his comrade, as they stooped
to lift the nearest victim of Dr. Syx's withering fire. "What's this
fellow got all over him?"

"Artemisium! 'pon my soul!" responded "Jim," staring at the
body. "He's all coated over with it."

Immediately from all sides came similar exclamations. Every man who
had fallen was covered with a film of the precious metal, as if he had
been dipped into an electrolytic bath. Clothing seemed to have been
charred, and the metallic atoms had penetrated the flesh of the
victims. The rocks all round the battle-field were similarly
veneered. "It looks to me," said Captain Carter, "as if old Syx had
turned one of his spouts of artemisium into a hose-pipe and soaked 'em
with it."

"That's it," chimed in a lieutenant, "that's exactly what he's done."

"Well," returned the captain, "if he can do that, I don't see what use
he's got for us here."

"Probably he don't want to waste the stuff," said the
lieutenant. "What do you suppose it cost him to plate this crowd?"

"I guess a month's pay for the whole troop wouldn't cover the
expense. It's costly, but then--gracious! Wouldn't I have given
something for the doctor's hose when I was a youngster campaigning in
the Philippines in '99?"

The story of the marvellous way in which Dr. Syx defended his mill
became the sensation of the world for many days. The hose-pipe theory,
struck off on the spot by Captain Carter, seized the popular fancy,
and was generally accepted without further question. There was an
element of the ludicrous which robbed the tragedy of some of its
horror. Moreover, no one could deny that Dr. Syx was well within his
rights in defending himself by any means when so savagely attacked,
and his triumphant success, no less than the ingenuity which was
supposed to underlie it, placed him in an heroic light which he had
not hitherto enjoyed.

As to the demagogues who were responsible for the outbreak and its
terrible consequences, they slunk out of the public eye, and the
result of the battle at the mine seemed to have been a clearing up of
the atmosphere, such as a thunderstorm effects at the close of a
season of foul weather.

But now, little as men guessed it, the beginning of the end was close
at hand.



IX

THE DETECTIVE OF SCIENCE

The morning of my arrival at Grand Teton station, on my return from
the East, Andrew Hall met me with a warm greeting.

"I have been anxiously expecting you," he said, "for I have made some
progress towards solving the great mystery. I have not yet reached a
conclusion, but I hope soon to let you into the entire secret. In the
meantime you can aid me with your companionship, if in no other way,
for, since the defeat of the mob, this place has been mighty
lonesome. The Grand Teton is a spot that people who have no particular
business out here carefully avoid. I am on speaking terms with
Dr. Syx, and occasionally, when there is a party to be shown around, I
visit his works, and make the best possible use of my eyes. Captain
Carter of the military is a capital fellow, and I like to hear his
stories of the war in Luzon forty years ago, but I want somebody to
whom I can occasionally confide things, and so you are as welcome as
moonlight in harvest-time."

"Tell me something about that wonderful fight with the mob. Did you
see it?"

"I did. I had got wind of what Bings intended to do while I was down
at Pocotello, and I hurried up here to warn the soldiers, but
unfortunately I came too late. Finding the military cooped up in the
guard-house and the mob masters of the situation, I kept out of sight
on the side of the Teton, and watched the siege with my binocular. I
think there was very little of the spectacle that I missed."

"What of the mysterious force that the doctor employed to sweep off
the assailants?"

"Of course, Captain Carter's suggestion that Syx turned molten
artemisium from his furnace into a hose-pipe and sprayed the enemy
with it is ridiculous. But it is much easier to dismiss Carter's
theory than to substitute a better one. I saw the doctor on the roof
with a gang of black workmen, and I noticed the flash of polished
metal turned rapidly this way and that, but there was some intervening
obstacle which prevented me from getting a good view of the mechanism
employed. It certainly bore no resemblance to a hose-pipe, or anything
of that kind. No emanation was visible from the machine, but it was
stupefying to see the mob melt down."

"How about the coating of the bodies with artemisium?"

"There you are back on the hose-pipe again," laughed Hall. "But, to
tell you the truth, I'd rather be excused from expressing an opinion
on that operation in wholesale electro-plating just at present. I've
the ghost of an idea what it means, but let me test my theory a little
before I formulate it. In the meanwhile, won't you take a stroll with
me?"

"Certainly; nothing could please me better," I replied. "Which way
shall we go?"

"To the top of the Grand Teton."

"What! are you seized with the mountain-climbing fever?"

"Not exactly, but I have a particular reason for wishing to take a
look from that pinnacle."

"I suppose you know the real apex of the peak has never been trodden
by man?"

"I do know it, but it is just that apex that I am determined to have
under my feet for ten minutes. The failure of others is no argument
for us."

"Just as you say," I rejoined. "But I suppose there is no indiscretion
in asking whether this little climb has any relation to the mystery?"

"If it didn't have an important relation to the clearing up of that
dark thing I wouldn't risk my neck in such an undertaking," was the
reply.

Accordingly, the next morning we set out for the peak. All previous
climbers, as we were aware, had attacked it from the west. That seemed
the obvious thing to do, because the westward slopes of the mountain,
while very steep, are less abrupt than those which face the rising
sun. In fact, the eastern side of the Grand Teton appears to be
absolutely unclimbable. But both Hall and I had had experience with
rock climbing in the Alps and the Dolomites, and we knew that what
looked like the hardest places sometimes turn out to be next to the
easiest. Accordingly we decided--the more particularly because it
would save time, but also because we yielded to the common desire to
outdo our predecessors--to try to scale the giant right up his face.

We carried a very light but exceedingly strong rope, about five
hundred feet long, wore nail-shod shoes, and had each a metal-pointed
staff and a small hatchet in lieu of the regular mountaineer's
axe. Advancing at first along the broken ridge between two gorges we
gradually approached the steeper part of the Teton, where the cliffs
looked so sheer and smooth that it seemed no wonder that nobody had
ever tried to scale them. The air was deliciously clear and the sky
wonderfully blue above the mountains, and the moon, a few days past
its last quarter, was visible in the southwest, its pale crescent face
slightly blued by the atmosphere, as it always appears when seen in
daylight.

  "Slow westering, a phantom sail--
   The lonely soul of yesterday."

Behind us, somewhat north of east, lay the Syx works, with their black
smoke rising almost vertically in the still air. Suddenly, as we
stumbled along on the rough surface, something whizzed past my face
and fell on the rock at my feet. I looked at the strange missile, that
had come like a meteor out of open space, with astonishment.

It was a bird, a beautiful specimen of the scarlet tanagers, which I
remembered the early explorers had found inhabiting the Teton canyons,
their brilliant plumage borrowing splendor from contrast with the
gloomy surroundings. It lay motionless, its outstretched wings having
a curious shrivelled aspect, while the flaming color of the breast was
half obliterated with smutty patches. Stooping to pick it up, I
noticed a slight bronzing, which instantly recalled to my mind the
peculiar appearance of the victims of the attack on the mine.

"Look here!" I called to Hall, who was several yards in advance. He
turned, and I held up the bird by a wing.

"Where did you get that?" he asked.

"It fell at my feet a moment ago."

Hall glanced in a startled manner at the sky, and then down the slope
of the mountain.

"Did you notice in what direction it was flying?" he asked.

"No, it dropped so close that it almost grazed my nose. I saw nothing
of it until it made me blink."

"I have been heedless," muttered Hall under his breath. At the time I
did not notice the singularity of his remark, my attention being
absorbed in contemplating the unfortunate tanager.

"Look how its feathers are scorched," I said.

"I know it," Hall replied, without glancing at the bird.

"And it is covered with a film of artemisium," I added, a little
piqued by his abstraction.

"I know that, too."

"See here, Hall," I exclaimed, "are you trying to make game of me?"

"Not at all, my dear fellow," he replied, dropping his
cogitation. "Pray forgive me. But this is no new phenomenon to me. I
have picked up birds in that condition on this mountain before. There
is a terrible mystery here, but I am slowly letting light into it, and
if we succeed in reaching the top of the peak I have good hope that
the illumination will increase."

"Here now," he added a moment later, sitting down upon a rock and
thrusting the blade of his penknife into a crevice, "what do you think
of this?"

He held up a little nugget of pure artemisium, and then went on:

"You know that all this slope was swept as clean as a Dutch
housewife's kitchen floor by the thousands of miners and prospectors
who swarmed over it a year or two ago, and do you suppose they would
have missed such a tidbit if it had been here then?"

"Dr. Syx must have been salting the mountain again," I suggested.

"Well," replied Hall, with a significant smile, "if the doctor hasn't
salted it somebody else has, that's plain enough. But perhaps you
would like to know precisely what I expect to find out when we get on
the topknot of the Teton."

"I should certainly be delighted to learn the object of our journey,"
I said. "Of course, I'm only going along for company and for the fun
of the thing; but you know you can count on me for substantial aid
whenever you need it."

"It is because you are so willing to let me keep my own counsel," he
rejoined, "and to wait for things to ripen before compelling me to
disclose them, that I like to have you with me at critical times. Now,
as to the object of this break-neck expedition, whose risks you
understand as fully as I do, I need not assure you that it is of
supreme importance to the success of my plans. In a word, I hope to be
able to look down into a part of Dr. Syx's mill which, if I am not
mistaken, no human eye except his and those of his most trustworthy
helpers has ever been permitted to see. And if I see there what I
fully expect to see, I shall have got a long step nearer to a great
fortune."

"Good!" I cried. "_En avant_, then! We are losing time."



X

THE TOP OF THE GRAND TETON

The climbing soon became difficult, until at length we were going up
hand over hand, taking advantage of crevices and knobs which an
inexperienced eye would have regarded as incapable of affording a grip
for the fingers or a support for the toes. Presently we arrived at the
foot of a stupendous precipice, which was absolutely insurmountable by
any ordinary method of ascent. Parts of it overhung, and everywhere
the face of the rock was too free from irregularities to afford any
footing, except to a fly.

"Now, to borrow the expression of old Bunyan, we are hard put to it,"
I remarked. "If you will go to the left I will take the right and see
if there is any chance of getting up."

"I don't believe we could find any place easier than this," Hall
replied, "and so up we go where we are."

"Have you a pair of wings concealed about you?" I asked, laughing at
his folly.

"Well, something nearly as good," he responded, unstrapping his
knapsack. He produced a silken bag, which he unfolded on the rock.

"A balloon!" I exclaimed. "But how are you going to inflate it?"

For reply Hall showed me a receptacle which, he said, contained liquid
hydrogen, and which was furnished with a device for retarding the
volatilization of the liquid so that it could be carried with little
loss.

"You remember I have a small laboratory in the abandoned mine," he
explained, "where we used to manufacture liquid air for blasting. This
balloon I made for our present purpose. It will just suffice to carry
up our rope, and a small but practically unbreakable grapple of
hardened gold. I calculate to send the grapple to the top of the
precipice with the balloon, and when it has obtained a firm hold in
the riven rock there we can ascend, sailor fashion. You see the rope
has knots, and I know your muscles are as trustworthy in such work as
my own."

There was a slight breeze from the eastward, and the current of air
slanting up the face of the peak assisted the balloon in mounting with
its burden, and favored us by promptly swinging the little airship,
with the grapple swaying beneath it, over the brow of the cliff into
the atmospheric eddy above. As soon as we saw that the grapple was
well over the edge we pulled upon the rope. The balloon instantly shot
into view with the anchor dancing, but, under the influence of the
wind, quickly returned to its former position behind the projecting
brink. The grapple had failed to take hold.

"'Try, try again' must be our motto now," muttered Hall.

We tried several times with the same result, although each time we
slightly shifted our position. At last the grapple caught.

"Now, all together!" cried my companion, and simultaneously we threw
our weight upon the slender rope. The anchor apparently did not give
an inch.

"Let me go first," said Hall, pushing me aside as I caught the first
knot above my head. "It's my device, and it's only fair that I should
have the first try."

In a minute he was many feet up the wall, climbing swiftly hand over
hand, but occasionally stopping and twisting his leg around the rope
while he took breath.

"It's easier than I expected," he called down, when he had ascended
about one hundred feet. "Here and there the rock offers a little hold
for the knees."

I watched him, breathless with anxiety, and, as he got higher, my
imagination pictured the little gold grapple, invisible above the brow
of the precipice, with perhaps a single thin prong wedged into a
crevice, and slowly ploughing its way towards the edge with each
impulse of the climber, until but another pull was needed to set it
flying! So vivid was my fancy that I tried to banish it by noticing
that a certain knot in the rope remained just at the level of my eyes,
where it had been from the start. Hall was now fully two hundred feet
above the ledge on which I stood, and was rapidly nearing the top of
the precipice. In a minute more he would be safe.

Suddenly he shouted, and, glancing up with a leap of the heart, I saw
that he was falling! He kept his face to the rock, and came down feet
foremost. It would be useless to attempt any description of my
feelings; I would not go through that experience again for the price
of a battleship. Yet it lasted less than a second. He had dropped not
more than ten feet when the fall was arrested.

"All right!" he called, cheerily. "No harm done! It was only a slip."

But what a slip! If the balloon had not carried the anchor several
yards back from the edge it would have had no opportunity to catch
another hold as it shot forward. And how could we know that the second
hold would prove more secure than the first? Hall did not hesitate,
however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best
chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when
the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his
arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few
seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the
edge, looking down at me.

"Come on!" he shouted. "It's all right."

When I had pulled myself over the brink at his side I grasped his hand
and pressed it without a word. We understood one another.

"It was pretty close to a miracle," he remarked at last. "Look at
this."

The rock over which the grapple had slipped was deeply scored by the
unyielding point of the metal, and exactly at the verge of the
precipice the prong had wedged itself into a narrow crack, so firmly
that we had to chip away the stone in order to release it. If it had
slipped a single inch farther before taking hold it would have been
all over with my friend.

Such experiences shake the strongest nerves, and we sat on the shelf
we had attained for fully a quarter of an hour before we ventured to
attack the next precipice which hung beetling directly above us. It
was not as lofty as the one we had just ascended, but it impended to
such a degree that we saw we should have to climb our rope while it
swung free in the air!

Luckily we had little difficulty in getting a grip for the prongs, and
we took every precaution to test the security of the anchorage, not
only putting our combined weight repeatedly upon the rope, but
flipping and jerking it with all our strength. The grapple resisted
every effort to dislodge it, and finally I started up, insisting on my
turn as leader.

The height I had to ascend did not exceed one hundred feet, but that
is a very great distance to climb on a swinging rope, without a wall
within reach to assist by its friction and occasional friendly
projections. In a little while my movements, together with the effect
of the slight wind, had imparted a most distressing oscillation to the
rope. This sometimes carried me with a nerve-shaking bang against a
prominent point of the precipice, where I would dislodge loose
fragments that kept Hall dodging for his life, and then I would swing
out, apparently beyond the brow of the cliff below, so that, as I
involuntarily glanced downward, I seemed to be hanging in free space,
while the steep mountain-side, looking ten times steeper than it
really was, resembled the vertical wall of an absolutely bottomless
abyss, as if I were suspended over the edge of the world.

I avoided thinking of what the grapple might be about, and in my haste
to get through with the awful experience I worked myself fairly out of
breath, so that, when at last I reached the rounded brow of the cliff,
I had to stop and cling there for fully a minute before I could summon
strength enough to lift myself over it.

When I was assured that the grapple was still securely fastened I
signalled to Hall, and he soon stood at my side, exclaiming, as he
wiped the perspiration from his face:

"I think I'll try wings next time!"

But our difficulties had only begun. As we had foreseen, it was a case
of Alp above Alp, to the very limit of human strength and
patience. However, it would have been impossible to go back. In order
to descend the two precipices we had surmounted it would have been
necessary to leave our life-lines clinging to the rocks, and we had
not rope enough to do that. If we could not reach the top we were
lost.

Having refreshed ourselves with a bite to eat and a little stimulant,
we resumed the climb. After several hours of the most exhausting work
I have ever performed we pulled our weary limbs upon the narrow ridge,
but a few square yards in area, which constitutes the apex of the
Grand Teton. A little below, on the opposite side of a steep-walled
gap which divides the top of the mountain into two parts, we saw the
singular enclosure of stones which the early white explorers found
there, and which they ascribed to the Indians, although nobody has
ever known who built it or what purpose it served.

The view was, of course, superb, but while I was admiring it in all
its wonderful extent and variety, Hall, who had immediately pulled out
his binocular, was busy inspecting the Syx works, the top of whose
great tufted smoke column was thousands of feet beneath our
level. Jackson's Lake, Jenny's Lake, Leigh's Lake, and several
lakelets glittered in the sunlight amid the pale grays and greens of
Jackson's Hole, while many a bending reach of the Snake River shone
amid the wastes of sage-brush and rock.

"There!" suddenly exclaimed Hall, "I thought I should find it."

"What?"

"Take a look through my glass at the roof of Syx's mill. Look just in
the centre."

"Why, it's open in the middle!" I cried as soon as I had put the glass
to my eyes. "There's a big circular hole in the centre of the roof."

"Look inside! Look inside!" repeated Hall, impatiently.

"I see nothing there except something bright."

"Do you call it nothing because it is bright?"

"Well, no," I replied, laughing. "What I mean is that I see nothing
that I can make anything of except a shining object, and all I can
make of that is that it is bright."

"You've been in the Syx works many times, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever see the opening in the roof?"

"Never."

"Did you ever hear of it?"

"Never."

"Then Dr. Syx doesn't show his visitors everything that is to be
seen."

"Evidently not since, as we know, he concealed the double tunnel and
the room under the furnace."

"Dr. Syx has concealed a bigger secret than that," Hall responded,
"and the Grand Teton has helped me to a glimpse of it."

For several minutes my friend was absorbed in thought. Then he broke
out:

"I tell you he's the most wonderful man in the world!"

"Who, Dr. Syx? Well, I've long thought that."

"Yes, but I mean in a different way from what you are thinking of. Do
you remember my asking you once if you believed in alchemy?"

"I remember being greatly surprised by your question to that effect."

"Well, now," said Hall, rubbing his hands with a satisfied air, while
his eyes glanced keen and bright with the reflection of some passing
thought, "Max Syx is greater than any alchemist that ever lived. If
those old fellows in the dark ages had accomplished everything they
set out to do, they would have been of no more consequence in
comparison with our black-browed friend down yonder than--than my head
is of consequence in comparison with the moon."

"I fear you flatter the man in the moon," was my laughing reply.

"No, I don't," returned Hall, "and some day you'll admit it."

"Well, what about that something that shines down there? You seem to
see more in it than I can."

But my companion had fallen into a reverie and didn't hear my
question. He was gazing abstractedly at the faint image of the waning
moon, now nearing the distant mountain-top over in Idaho. Presently
his mind seemed to return to the old magnet, and he whirled about and
glanced down at the Syx mill. The column of smoke was diminishing in
volume, an indication that the engine was about to enjoy one of its
periodical rests. The irregularity of these stoppages had always been
a subject of remark among practical engineers. The hours of labor were
exceedingly erratic, but the engine had never been known to work at
night, except on one occasion, and then only for a few minutes, when
it was suddenly stopped on account of a fire.

Just as Hall resumed his inspection two huge quarter spheres, which
had been resting wide apart on the roof, moved towards one another
until their arched sections met over the circular aperture which they
covered like the dome of an observatory.

"I expected it," Hall remarked. "But come, it is mid-afternoon, and we
shall need all of our time to get safely down before the light fades."

As I have already explained, it would not have been possible for us to
return the way we came. We determined to descend the comparatively
easy western slopes of the peak, and pass the night on that side of
the mountain. Letting ourselves down with the rope into the hollow way
that divides the summit of the Teton into two pinnacles, we had no
difficulty in descending by the route followed by all previous
climbers. The weather was fine, and, having found good shelter among
the rocks, we passed the night in comfort. The next day we succeeded
in swinging round upon the eastern flank of the Teton, below the more
formidable cliffs, and, just at nightfall, we arrived at the
station. As we passed the Syx mine the doctor himself confronted
us. There was a very displeasing look on his dark countenance, and his
sneer was strongly marked.

"So you have been on top of the Teton?" he said.

"Yes," replied Hall, very blandly, "and if you have a taste for that
sort of thing I should advise you to go up. The view is immense, as
fine as the best in the Alps."

"Pretty ingenious plan, that balloon of yours," continued the doctor,
still looking black.

"Thank you," Hall replied, more suavely than ever. "I've been planning
that a long time. You probably don't know that mountaineering used to
be my chief amusement."

The doctor turned away without pursuing the conversation.

"I could kick myself," Hall muttered as soon as Dr. Syx was out of
earshot. "If my absurd wish to outdo others had not blinded me, I
should have known that he would see us going up this side of the peak,
particularly with the balloon to give us away. However, what's done
can't be undone. He may not really suspect the truth, and if he does
he can't help himself, even though he is the richest man in the
world."



XI

STRANGE FATE OF A KITE

"Are you ready for another tramp?" was Andrew Hall's greeting when we
met early on the morning following our return from the peak.

"Certainly I am. What is your programme for to-day?"

"I wish to test the flying qualities of a kite which I have
constructed since our return last night."

"You don't allow the calls of sleep to interfere very much with your
activity."

"I haven't much time for sleep just now," replied Hall, without
smiling. "The kite test will carry us up the flanks of the Teton, but
I am not going to try for the top this time. If you will come along
I'll ask you to help me by carrying and operating a light transit I
shall carry another myself. I am desirous to get the elevation that
the kite attains and certain other data that will be of use to me. We
will make a detour towards the south, for I don't want old Syx's
suspicions to be prodded any more."

"What interest can he have in your kite-flying?"

"The same interest that a burglar has in the rap of a policeman's
night-stick."

"Then your experiment to-day has some connection with the solution of
the great mystery?"

"My dear fellow," said Hall, laying his hand on my shoulder, "until I
see the end of that mystery I shall think of nothing else."

In a few hours we were clambering over the broken rocks on the
south-eastern flank of the Teton at an elevation of about three
thousand feet above the level of Jackson's Hole. Finally Hall paused
and began to put his kite together. It was a small box-shaped affair,
very light in construction, with paper sides.

"In order to diminish the chances of Dr. Syx noticing what we are
about," he said, as he worked away, "I have covered the kite with
sky-blue paper. This, together with distance, will probably insure us
against his notice."

In a few minutes the kite was ready. Having ascertained the direction
of the wind with much attention, he stationed me with my transit on a
commanding rock, and sought another post for himself at a distance of
two hundred yards, which he carefully measured with a gold tape. My
instructions were to keep the telescope on the kite as soon as it had
attained a considerable height, and to note the angle of elevation and
the horizontal angle with the base line joining our points of
observation.

"Be particularly careful," was Hall's injunction, "and if anything
happens to the kite by all means note the angles at that instant."

As soon as we had fixed our stations Hall began to pay out the string,
and the kite rose very swiftly. As it sped away into the blue it was
soon practically invisible to the naked eye, although the telescope of
the transit enabled me to follow it with ease.

Glancing across now and then at my companion, I noticed that he was
having considerable difficulty in, at the same time, managing the kite
and manipulating his transit. But as the kite continued to rise and
steadied in position his task became easier, until at length he ceased
to remove his eye from the telescope while holding the string with
outstretched hand.

"Don't lose sight of it now for an instant!" he shouted.

For at least half an hour he continued to manipulate the string,
sending the kite now high towards the zenith with a sudden pull, and
then letting it drift off. It seemed at last to become almost a fixed
point. Very slowly the angles changed, when, suddenly, there was a
flash, and to my amazement I saw the paper of the kite shrivel and
disappear in a momentary flame, and then the bare sticks came tumbling
out of the sky.

"Did you get the angles?" yelled Hall, excitedly.

"Yes; the telescope is yet pointed on the spot where the kite
disappeared."

"Read them off," he called, "and then get your angle with the Syx
works."

"All right," I replied, doing as he had requested, and noticing at the
same time that he was in the act of putting his watch in his
pocket. "Is there anything else?" I asked.

"No, that will do, thank you."

Hall came running over, his face beaming, and with the air of a man
who has just hooked a particularly cunning old trout.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "this has been a great success! I could almost
dispense with the calculation, but it is best to be sure."

"What are you about, anyhow?" I asked, "and what was it that happened
to the kite?"

"Don't interrupt me just now, please," was the only reply I received.

Thereupon my friend sat down on a rock, pulled out a pad of paper,
noted the angles which I had read on the transit, and fell to figuring
with feverish haste. In the course of his work he consulted a pocket
almanac, then glanced up at the sky, muttered approvingly, and finally
leaped to his feet with a half-suppressed "Hurrah!" If I had not known
him so well I should have thought that he had gone daft.

"Will you kindly tell me," I asked, "how you managed to set the kite
afire?"

Hall laughed heartily. "You though it was a trick, did you?" said
he. "Well, it was no trick, but a very beautiful demonstration. You
surely haven't forgotten the scarlet tanager that gave you such a
surprise the day before yesterday."

"Do you mean," I exclaimed, startled at the suggestion, "that the fate
of the bird had any connection with the accident to your kite?"

"Accident isn't precisely the right word," replied Hall. "The two
things are as intimately related as own brothers. If you should care
to hunt up the kite sticks, you would find that they, too, are now
artemisium plated."

"This is getting too deep for me," was all that I could say.

"I am not absolutely confident that I have touched bottom myself,"
said Hall, "but I'm going to make another dive, and if I don't bring
up treasures greater than Vanderdecken found at the bottom of the sea,
then Dr. Syx is even a more wonderful human mystery than I have
thought him to be."

"What do you propose to do next?"

"To shake the dust of the Grand Teton from my shoes and go to San
Francisco, where I have an extensive laboratory."

"So you are going to try a little alchemy yourself, are you?"

"Perhaps; who knows? At any rate, my good friend, I am forever
indebted to you for your assistance, and even more for your
discretion, and if I succeed you shall be the first person in the
world to hear the news."



XII

BETTER THAN ALCHEMY

I come now to a part of my narrative which would have been deemed
altogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth century
that witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepest
mysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands,
without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered and
before use had made them familiar, seemed no less than godlike.

For six months after Hall's departure for San Francisco I heard
nothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what he
was doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In the
meantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple being
caused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of artemisium on the
Tetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend when
he dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent of
the peak. At last one day I received this telegram at my office in New
York:

"SAN FRANCISCO, May 16, 1940.

"Come at once. The mystery is solved.

"(Signed) HALL."

As soon as I could pack a grip I was flying westward one hundred miles
an hour. On reaching San Francisco, which had made enormous strides
since the opening of the twentieth century, owing to the extension of
our Oriental possessions, and which already ranked with New York and
Chicago among the financial capitals of the world, I hastened to
Hall's laboratory. He was there expecting me, and, after a hearty
greeting, during which his elation over his success was manifest, he
said:

"I am compelled to ask you to make a little journey. I found it
impossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and, before opening
my experiments, I selected a site for a new laboratory in an
unfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. You
will be the first man, with the exception of my two devoted
assistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation of
the critical experiment."

"Then you have not yet completed your solution of the secret?"

"Yes, I have; for I am as certain of the result as if I had seen it,
but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death."

From the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory,
which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an elevation of
about six thousand feet above sea-level. With considerable surprise I
noticed a building surmounted with a dome, recalling what we had seen
from the Grand Teton on the roof of Dr. Syx's mill. Hall, observing my
look, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory proper
occupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. Hall led
the way into an apartment having but a single door and illuminated by
a skylight.

"This is my sanctum sanctorum," he said, "and you are the first
outsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably while I proceed to
unveil a little corner of the artemisium mystery."

Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was a
table, on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and
thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of
yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near
another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on
this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose
optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once
that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric
waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was
audible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment or
two, and then remarked:

"Now, keep your eyes on the lump of gold in the farther end of the
tube yonder.  The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about to
concentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which will
have the effect of making it a kind of kathode pole. I only use this
term for the sake of illustration. You will recall that as long ago as
the days of Crookes it was known that a kathode in an exhausted tube
would project particles, or atoms, of its substance away in straight
lines. Now watch!"

I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped in
a most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until, at
times, it was blinding, while, at the same moment, the interior of the
tube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicate
pinkish hue.

"Watch! Watch!" said Hall. "Look at the nearer end of the tube!"

"Why, it is becoming coated with gold!" I exclaimed.

He smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. The
pink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longer
visible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly through
the colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like a
mirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious whistling
sound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his hand
and gave it a flip, as if hot water had spattered it, and then the
light in the tube quickly died away, the vapor escaped, filling the
room with a peculiar stimulating odor, and I perceived that the end of
the glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowly
dripping from it.

"I carried it a little too far," said Hall, ruefully rubbing the back
of his hand, "and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardment
a few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. You
observed that the instant the air reached the kathode, as I for
convenience call the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased."

"But your anode, to continue your simile," I said, "is constantly
exposed to the air."

"True," he replied, "but in the first place, of course, this is not
really an anode, just as the other is not actually a kathode. As
science advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in a
new sense until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are now
dealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effects
than any at present described in the text-books and the transactions
of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the
theory of it. I am only concerned with its facts."

"But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see," I
said, "how it concerns Dr. Syx and his artemisium."

"Listen," replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnecting
his apparatus. "You no doubt have been told how one night the Syx
engine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only night
work it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started up
when a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantly
stopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, and
it will show you how I got my first clew to the mystery, although it
was rather a mere suspicion than a clew, for at first I could make
nothing out of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fortnight after
our discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full of
suspicions concerning Syx, because I thought that a man who would fool
people with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other.

"It was a glorious night, with a full moon, whose face was so clear in
the limpid air that, having found a snug place at the foot of a
yellow-pine-tree, where the ground was carpeted with odoriferous
needles, I lay on my back and renewed my early acquaintance with the
romantically named mountains and 'seas' of the Lunar globe. With my
binocular I could trace those long white streaks which radiate from
the crater ring, called 'Tycho,' and run hundreds of miles in all
directions over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects I
recalled the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by their
enigmatical aspect, have offered to a more or less confiding public
concerning them.

"In the midst of my meditation and moon gazing I was startled by
hearing the engine in the Syx works suddenly begin to run. Immediately
a queer light, shaped like the beam of a ship's searchlight, but
reddish in color, rose high in the moonlit heavens above the mill. It
did not last more than a minute or two, for almost instantly the
engine was stopped, and with its stoppage the light faded and soon
disappeared. The next day Dr. Syx gave it out that on starting up his
engine in the night something had caught fire, which compelled him
immediately to shut down again. The few who had seen the light, with
the exception of your humble servant, accepted the doctor's
explanation without a question. But I knew there had been no fire, and
Syx's anxiety to spread the lie led me to believe that he had narrowly
escaped giving away a vital secret. I said nothing about my
suspicions, but upon inquiry I found out that an extra and pressing
order for metal had arrived from the Austrian government the very day
of the pretended fire, and I drew the inference that Syx, in his haste
to fill the order--his supply having been drawn low--had started to
work, contrary to his custom, at night, and had immediately found
reason to repent his rashness. Of course, I connected the strange
light with this sudden change of mind.

"My suspicion having been thus stimulated, and having been directed in
a certain way, I began, from that moment to notice closely the hours
during which the engine labored. At night it was always quiet, except
on that one brief occasion. Sometimes it began early in the morning
and stopped about noon. At other times the work was done entirely in
the afternoon, beginning sometimes as late as three or four o'clock,
and ceasing invariably at sundown. Then again it would start at
sunrise and continue the whole day through.

"For a long time I was unable to account for these eccentricities, and
the problem was not rendered much clearer, although a startling
suggestiveness was added to it, when, at length, I noticed that the
periods of activity of the engine had a definite relation to the age
of the moon. Then I discovered, with the aid of an almanac, that I
could predict the hours when the engine would be busy. At the time of
new moon it worked all day; at full moon, it was idle; between full
moon and last quarter, it labored in the forenoon, the length of its
working hours increasing as the quarter was approached; between last
quarter and new moon, the hours of work lengthened, until, as I have
said, at new moon they lasted all day; between new moon and first
quarter, work began later and later in the forenoon as the quarter was
approached, and between first quarter and full moon the laboring hours
rapidly shortened, being confined to the latter part of the afternoon,
until at full moon complete silence reigned in the mill."

"Well! well!" I broke in, greatly astonished by Hall's singular
recital, "you must have thought Dr. Syx was a cross between an
alchemist and an astrologer."

"Note this," said Hall, disregarding my interruption, "the hours when
the engine worked were invariably the hours during which the moon was
above the horizon!"

"What did you infer from that?" "Of course, I inferred that the moon
was directly concerned in the mystery; but how? That bothered me for a
long time, but a little light broke into my mind when I picked up, on
the mountain-side, a dead bird, whose scorched feathers were bronzed
with artemisium, and sometime later another similar victim of a
mysterious form of death. Then came the attack on the mine and its
tragic finish. I have already told you what I observed on that
occasion. But, instead of helping to clear up the mystery, it rather
complicated it for a time. At length, however, I reasoned my way
partly out of the difficulty. Certain things which I had noticed in
the Syx mill convinced me that there was a part of the building whose
existence no visitor suspected, and, putting one thing with another, I
inferred that the roof must be open above that secret part of the
structure, and that if I could get upon a sufficiently elevated place
I could see something of what was hidden there.

"At this point in the investigation I proposed to you the trip to the
top of the Teton, the result of which you remember. I had calculated
the angles with great care, and I felt certain that from the apex of
the mountain I should be able to get a view into the concealed
chamber, and into just that side of it which I wished particularly to
inspect. You remember that I called your attention to a shining object
underneath the circular opening in the roof. You could not make out
what it was, but I saw enough to convince me that it was a gigantic
parabolic mirror. I'll show you a smaller one of the same kind
presently.

"Now, at last, I began to perceive the real truth, but it was so
wildly incredible, so infinitely remote from all human experience,
that I hardly ventured to formulate it, even in my own secret
mind. But I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurred
to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a
kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment,
and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of
flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretended
mine and the moon!"

"Hall!" I exclaimed, "you are mad!" My friend smiled good-naturedly,
and went on with his story.

"The instant the kite shrivelled and disappeared I understood why the
works were idle when the moon was not above the horizon, why birds
flying across that fatal beam fell dead upon the rocks, and whence the
terrible master of that mysterious mill derived the power of
destruction that could wither an army as the Assyrian host in Byron's
poem

  "Melted like snow in the glance of the Lord."

"But how did Dr. Syx turn the flying atoms against his enemies?" I
asked.

"In a very simple manner. He had a mirror mounted so that it could be
turned in any direction, and would shunt the stream of metallic atoms,
heated by their friction with the air, towards any desired point. When
the attack came he raised this machine above the level of the roof and
swept the mob to a lustrous, if expensive, death."

"And the light at night--"

"Was the shining of the heated atoms, not luminous enough to be
visible in broad day, for which reason the engine never worked at
night, and the stream of volatilized artemisium was never set flowing
at full moon, when the lunar globe is above the horizon only during
the hours of darkness."

"I see," I said, "whence came the nuggets on the mountain. Some of the
atoms, owing to the resistance of the air, fell short and settled in
the form of impalpable dust until the winds and rains collected and
compacted them in the cracks and crevices of the rocks."

"That was it, of course."

"And now," I added, my amazement at the success of Hall's experiments
and the accuracy of his deductions increasing every moment, "do you
say that you have also discovered the means employed by Dr. Syx to
obtain artemisium from the moon?"

"Not only that," replied my friend, "but within the next few minutes I
shall have the pleasure of presenting to you a button of moon metal,
fresh from the veins of Artemis herself."



XIII

THE LOOTING OF THE MOON

I shall spare the reader a recital of the tireless efforts, continuing
through many almost sleepless weeks, whereby Andrew Hall obtained his
clew to Dr. Syx's method. It was manifest from the beginning that the
agent concerned must be some form of etheric, or so-called electric,
energy; but how to set it in operation was the problem. Finally he hit
upon the apparatus for his initial experiments which I have already
described.

"Recurring to what had been done more than half a century ago by
Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means
of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in
an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could
transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether,
which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic object, like a
chunk of gold, imparted to it an intense charge of an apparently
electric nature. Upon thus charging a metallic body enclosed in a
vacuum, I observed that the energy imparted to it possessed the
remarkable power of disrupting its atoms and projecting them off in
straight lines, very much as occurs with a kathode in a Crookes's
tube. But--and this was of supreme importance--I found that the line
of projection was directly towards the apparatus from which the
impulse producing the charge had come. In other words, I could produce
two poles between which a marvellous interaction occurred.  My
transformer, with its concentrating mirror, acted as one pole, from
which energy was transferred to the other pole, and that other pole
immediately flung off atoms of its own substance in the direction of
the transformer.  But these atoms were stopped by the glass wall of
the vacuum tube; and when I tried the experiment with the metal
removed from the vacuum, and surrounded with air, it failed utterly.

"This at first completely discouraged me, until I suddenly remembered
that the moon is in a vacuum, the great vacuum of interplanetary
space, and that it possesses no perceptible atmosphere of its own. At
this a great light broke around me, and I shouted 'Eureka!' Without
hesitation I constructed a transformer of great power, furnished with
a large parabolic mirror to transmit the waves in parallel lines,
erected the machinery and buildings here, and when all was ready for
the final experiment I telegraphed for you."  Prepared by these
explanations I was all on fire to see the thing tried. Hall was no
less eager, and, calling in his two faithful assistants to make the
final adjustments, he led the way into what he facetiously named "the
lunar chamber."

"If we fail," he remarked with a smile that had an element of
worriment in it, "it will become the 'lunatic chamber'--but no danger
of that. You observe this polished silver knob, supported by a
metallic rod curved over at the top like a crane. That constitutes the
pole from which I propose to transmit the energy to the moon, and upon
which I expect the storm of atoms to be centred by reflection from the
mirror at whose focus it is placed."

"One moment," I said. "Am I to understand that you think that the moon
is a solid mass of artemisium, and that no matter where your radiant
force strikes it a 'kathodic pole' will be formed there from which
atoms will be projected to the earth?"

"No," said Hall, "I must carefully choose the point on the lunar
surface where to operate. But that will present no difficulty. I made
up my mind as soon as I had penetrated Syx's secret that he obtained
the metal from those mystic white streaks which radiate from Tycho,
and which have puzzled the astronomers ever since the invention of
telescopes. I now believe those streaks to be composed of immense
veins of the metal that Syx has most appropriately named artemisium,
which you, of course, recognize as being derived from the name of the
Greek goddess of the moon, Artemis, whom the Romans called Diana. But
now to work!"

It was less than a day past the time of new moon, and the earth's
satellite was too near the sun to be visible in broad daylight.
Accordingly, the mirror had to be directed by means of knowledge of
the moon's place in the sky. Driven by accurate clockwork, it could be
depended upon to retain the proper direction when once set.

With breathless interest I watched the proceedings of my friend and
his assistants. The strain upon the nerves of all of us was such as
could not have been borne for many hours at a stretch. When everything
had been adjusted to his satisfaction, Hall stepped back, not without
betraying his excitement in flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, and
pressed a lever. The powerful engine underneath the floor instantly
responded. The experiment was begun.

"I have set it upon a point about a hundred miles north of Tycho,
where the Yerkes photographs show a great abundance of the white
substance," said Hall.

Then we waited. A minute elapsed. A bird, fluttering in the opening
above, for a second or two, wrenched our strained nerves. Hall's face
turned pale.

"They had better keep away from here," he whispered, with a ghastly
smile.

Two minutes! I could hear the beating of my heart. The engine shook
the floor.

Three minutes! Hall's face was wet with perspiration. The bird
blundered in and startled us again.

Four minutes! We were like statues, with all eyes fixed on the
polished ball of silver, which shone in the brilliant light
concentrated upon it by the mirror.

Five minutes! The shining ball had become a confused blue, and I
violently winked to clear my vision.

"At last! Thank God! Look! There it is!"

It was Hall who spoke, trembling like an aspen. The silver knob had
changed color. What seemed a miniature rainbow surrounded it, with
concentric circles of blinding brilliance.

Then something dropped flashing into an earthen dish set beneath the
ball! Another glittering drop followed, and, at a shorter interval,
another!

Almost before a word could be uttered the drops had coalesced and
become a tiny stream, which, as it fell, twisted itself into a bright
spiral, gleaming with a hundred shifting hues, and forming on the
bottom of the dish a glowing, interlacing maze of viscid rings and
circlets, which turned and twined about and over one another, until
they had blended and settled into a button-shaped mass of hot metallic
jelly. Hall snatched the dish away, and placed another in its stead.

"This will be about right for a watch charm when it cools," he said,
with a return of his customary self-command. "I promised you the first
specimen. I'll catch another for myself."

"But can it be possible that we are not dreaming?" I exclaimed. "Do
you really believe that this comes from the moon?"

"Just as surely as rain comes from the clouds," cried Hall, with all
his old impatience. "Haven't I just showed you the whole process?"

"Then I congratulate you. You will be as rich as Dr. Syx."

"Perhaps," was the unperturbed reply, "but not until I have enlarged
my apparatus. At present I shall hardly do more than supply mementoes
to my friends. But since the principle is established, the rest is
mere detail."

Six weeks later the financial centres of the earth were shaken by the
news that a new supply of artemisium was being marketed from a mill
which had been secretly opened in the Sierras of California. For a
time there was almost a panic. If Hall had chosen to do so, he might
have precipitated serious trouble. But he immediately entered into
negotiations with government representatives, and the inevitable
result was that, to preserve the monetary system of the world from
upheaval, Dr. Syx had to consent that Hall's mill should share equally
with his in the production of artemisium. During the negotiations the
doctor paid a visit to Hall's establishment. The meeting between them
was most dramatic. Syx tried to blast his rival with a glance, but
knowledge is power, and my friend faced his mysterious antagonist,
whose deepest secrets he had penetrated, with an unflinching eye. It
was remarked that Dr. Syx became a changed man from that moment. His
masterful air seemed to have deserted him, and it was with something
resembling humility that he assented to the arrangement which required
him to share his enormous gains with his conqueror.

Of course, Hall's success led to an immediate recrudescence of the
efforts to extract artemisium from the Syx ore, and, equally of
course, every such attempt failed. Hall, while keeping his own secret,
did all he could to discourage the experiments, but they naturally
believed that he must have made the very discovery which was the
subject of their dreams, and he could not, without betraying himself,
and upsetting the finances of the planet, directly undeceive them. The
consequence was that fortunes were wasted in hopeless experimentation,
and, with Hall's achievement dazzling their eyes, the deluded
fortune-seekers kept on in the face of endless disappointments and
disaster.

And presently there came another tragedy. The Syx mill was blown up!
The accident--although many people refused to regard it as an
accident, and asserted that the doctor himself, in his chagrin, had
applied the match--the explosion, then, occurred about sundown, and
its effects were awful. The great works, with everything pertaining to
them, and every rail that they contained, were blown to atoms. They
disappeared as if they had never existed. Even the twin tunnels were
involved in the ruin, a vast cavity being left in the mountain-side
where Syx's ten acres had been. The force of the explosion was so
great that the shattered rock was reduced to dust. To this fact was
owing the escape of the troops camped near. While the mountain was
shaken to its core, and enormous parapets of living rock were hurled
down the precipices of the Teton, no missiles of appreciable size
traversed the air, and not a man at the camp was injured. But
Jackson's Hole, filled with red dust, looked for days afterwards like
the mouth of a tremendous volcano just after an eruption. Dr. Syx had
been seen entering the mill a few minutes before the catastrophe by a
sentinel who was stationed about a quarter of a mile away, and who,
although he was felled like an ox by the shock, and had his eyes,
ears, and nostrils filled with flying dust, miraculously escaped with
his life.

After this a new arrangement was made whereby Andrew Hall became the
sole producer of artemisium, and his wealth began to mount by leaps of
millions towards the starry heights of the billions.

About a year after the explosion of the Syx mill a strange rumor got
about. It came first from Budapest, in Hungary, where it was averred
several persons of credibility had seen Dr. Max Syx. Millions had been
familiar with his face and his personal peculiarities, through
actually meeting him, as well as through photographs and descriptions,
and, unless there was an intention to deceive, it did not seem
possible that a mistake could be made in identification. There surely
never was another man who looked just like Dr. Syx. And, besides, was
it not demonstrable that he must have perished in the awful
destruction of his mill?

Soon after came a report that Dr. Syx had been seen again; this time
at Ekaterinburg, in the Urals. Next he was said to have paid a visit
to Batang, in the mountainous district of southwestern China, and
finally, according to rumor, he was seen in Sicily, at Nicolosi, among
the volcanic pimples on the southern slope of Mount Etna.

Next followed something of more curious and even startling interest. A
chemist at Budapest, where the first rumors of Syx's reappearance had
placed the mysterious doctor, announced that he could produce
artemisium, and proved it, although he kept his process secret. Hardly
had the sensation caused by this news partially subsided when a
similar report arrived from Ekaterinburg; then another from Batang;
after that a fourth from Nicolosi!

Nobody could fail to notice the coincidence; wherever the doctor--or
was it his ghost?--appeared, there, shortly afterwards, somebody
discovered the much-sought secret.

After this Syx's apparitions rapidly increased in frequency, followed
in each instance by the announcement of another productive artemisium
mill. He appeared in Germany, Italy, France, England, and finally at
many places in the United States.

"It is the old doctor's revenge," said Hall to me one day, trying to
smile, although the matter was too serious to be taken humorously.
"Yes, it is his revenge, and I must admit that it is complete. The
price of artemisium has fallen one-half within six months. All the
efforts we have made to hold back the flood have proved useless. The
secret itself is becoming public property. We shall inevitably be
overwhelmed with artemisium, just as we were with gold, and the last
condition of the financial world will be worse than the first."

My friend's gloomy prognostications came near being fulfilled to the
letter. Ten thousand artemisium mills shot their etheric rays upon the
moon, and our unfortunate satellite's metal ribs were stripped by
atomic force. Some of the great white rays that had been one of the
telescopic wonders of the lunar landscapes disappeared, and the face
of the moon, which had remained unchanged before the eyes of the
children of Adam from the beginning of their race, now looked as if
the blast of a furnace had swept it. At night, on the moonward side,
the earth was studded with brilliant spikes, all pointed at the heart
of its child in the sky.

But the looting of the moon brought disaster to the robber planet. So
mad were the efforts to get the precious metal that the surface of our
globe was fairly showered with it, productive fields were, in some
cases, almost smothered under a metallic coating, the air was filled
with shining dust, until finally famine and pestilence joined hands
with financial disaster to punish the grasping world.

Then, at last, the various governments took effective measures to
protect themselves and their people. Another combined effort resulted
in an international agreement whereby the production of the precious
moon metal was once more rigidly controlled. But the existence of a
monopoly, such as Dr. Syx had so long enjoyed, and in the enjoyment of
which Andrew Hall had for a brief period succeeded him, was henceforth
rendered impossible.



XIV

THE LAST OF DR. SYX

Many years after the events last recorded I sat, at the close of a
brilliant autumn day, side by side with my old friend Andrew Hall, on
a broad, vine-shaded piazza which faced the east, where the full moon
was just rising above the rim of the Sierra, and replacing the rosy
counter-glow of sunset with its silvery radiance. The sight was
calculated to carry the minds of both back to the events of former
years. But I noticed that Hall quickly changed the position of his
chair, and sat down again with his back to the rising moon. He had
managed to save some millions from the wreck of his vast fortune when
artemisium started to go to the dogs, and I was now paying him one of
my annual visits at his palatial home in California.

"Did I ever tell you of my last trip to the Teton?" he asked, as I
continued to gaze contemplatively at the broad lunar disk which slowly
detached itself from the horizon and began to swim in the clear
evening sky.

"No," I replied, "but I should like to hear about it."

"Or of my last sight of Dr. Syx?"

"Indeed! I did not suppose that you ever saw him after that conference
in your mill, when he had to surrender half of the world to you."

"Once only I saw him again," said Hall, with a peculiar intonation.

"Pray go ahead, and tell me the whole story."

My friend lighted a fresh cigar, tipped his chair into a more
comfortable position, and began:

"It was about seven years ago. I had long felt an unconquerable desire
to have another look at the Teton and the scenes amid which so many
strange events in my life had occurred. I thought of sending for you
to go with me, but I knew you were abroad much of your time, and I
could not be certain of catching you. Finally I decided to go alone. I
travelled on horseback by way of the Snake River canyon, and arrived
early one morning in Jackson's Hole. I can tell you it was a gloomy
place, as barren and deserted as some of those Arabian wadies that you
have been describing to me. The railroad had long ago been abandoned,
and the site of the military camp could scarcely be recognized. An
immense cavity with ragged walls showed where Dr. Syx's mill used to
send up its plume of black smoke.

"As I stared up the gaunt form of the Teton, whose beetling precipices
had been smashed and split by the great explosion, I was seized with a
resistless impulse to climb it. I thought I should like to peer off
again from that pinnacle which had once formed so fateful a
watch-tower for me. Turning my horse loose to graze in the grassy
river bottom, and carrying my rope tether along as a possible aid in
climbing, I set out for the ascent. I knew I could not get up the
precipices on the eastern side, which we were able to master with the
aid of our balloon, and so I bore round, when I reached the steepest
cliffs, until I was on the southwestern side of the peak, where the
climbing was easier.

"But it took me a long time, and I did not reach the rift in the
summit until just before sundown. Knowing that it would be impossible
for me to descend at night, I bethought me of the enclosure of rocks,
supposed to have been made by Indians, on the western pinnacle, and
decided that I could pass the night there.

"The perpendicular buttress forming the easternmost and highest point
of the Teton's head would have baffled me but for the fact that I
found a long crack, probably an effect of the tremendous explosion,
extending from bottom to top of the rock. Driving my toes and fingers
into this rift, I managed, with a good deal of trouble, and no little
peril, to reach the top. As I lifted myself over the edge and rose to
my feet, imagine my amazement at seeing Dr. Syx standing within
arm's-length of me!

"My breath seemed pent in my lungs, and I could not even utter the
exclamation that rose to my lips. It was like meeting a
ghost. Notwithstanding the many reports of his having been seen in
various parts of the world, it had always been my conviction that he
had perished in the explosion.

"Yet there he stood in the twilight, for the sun was hidden by the
time I reached the summit, his tall form erect, and his black eyes
gleaming under the heavy brows as he fixed them sternly upon my
face. You know I never was given to losing my nerve, but I am afraid I
lost it on that occasion. Again and again I strove to speak, but it
was impossible to move my tongue. So powerless seemed my lungs that I
wondered how I could continue breathing.

"The doctor remained silent, but his curious smile, which, as you
know, was a thing of terror to most people, overspread his
black-rimmed face and was broad enough to reveal the gleam of his
teeth. I felt that he was looking me through and through. The
sensation was as if he had transfixed me with an ice-cold blade. There
was a gleam of devilish pleasure in his eyes, as though my evident
suffering was a delight to him and a gratification of his
vengeance. At length I succeeded in overcoming the feeling which
oppressed me, and, making a step forward, I shouted in a strained
voice,

"'You black Satan!'

"I cannot clearly explain the psychological process which led me to
utter those words. I had never entertained any enmity towards Dr. Syx,
although I had always regarded him as a heartless person, who had
purposely led thousands to their ruin for his selfish gain, but I knew
that he could not help hating me, and I felt now that, in some
inexplicable manner, a struggle, not physical, but spiritual, was
taking place between us, and my exclamation, uttered with surprising
intensity, produced upon me, and apparently upon him, the effect of a
desperate sword thrust which attains its mark.

"Immediately the doctor's form seemed to recede, as if he had passed
the verge of the precipice behind him. At the same time it became dim,
and then dimmer, until only the dark outlines, and particularly the
jet-black eyes, glaring fiercely, remained visible. And still he
receded, as though floating in the air, which was now silvered with
the evening light, until he appeared to cross the immense atmospheric
gulf over Jackson's Hole and paused on the rim of the horizon in the
east.

"Then, suddenly, I became aware that the full moon had risen at the
very place on the distant mountain-brow where the spectre rested, and
as I continued to gaze, as if entranced, the face and figure of the
doctor seemed slowly to frame themselves within the lunar disk, until
at last he appeared to have quitted the air and the earth and to be
frowning at me from the circle of the moon."

While Hall was pronouncing his closing words I had begun to stare at
the moon with swiftly increasing interest, until, as his voice
stopped, I exclaimed,

"Why, there he is now! Funny I never noticed it before. There's
Dr. Syx's face in the moon, as plain as day."

"Yes," replied Hall, without turning round, "and I never like to look
at it."









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