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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moon Metal, by Garrett P. Serviss
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+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
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOON METAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Joris Van Dael, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moon Metal, by Garrett P. Serviss
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