Adventure, June 1911 — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

238 “I discovered one solitary, isolated, single iay—a ray so deadly in its undreamed of power, so malignant, so tremendous in its consequences when used alone that it will make the whole world sick with horrified. wonder and dismay when the knowledge is given to it! A thin, pale purple ray—in reality a flaming sword—the swiftest mes- senger of death ever sent from heaven or hell or from the cankered mind of him who also has discovered it! He who has known of it, improved on it, welded it to his colossal purpose, sold it to his allies for thirty pieces of silver! “This is Ostermann’s secret! This is how he will destroy England—how he hopes to _pave the way for that attacking army which may even now be awaiting the signal to empty its numbers into London and seize a victory on the heels of panic! First he sows the seeds, and as the sun in the heavens shines down and brings.to life the seeds we sow, so Ostermann, flashing like a meteor through the skies, will with his purple ray shine on the seeds he has scattered broad- cast upon the earth, and each of those curiously shaped, curiously innocent-looking little white stones there will burst forth and shoot out tongues of fire! Ingenious, isn’t it?”’ Algy licked his lips. They were burning and parched as though a fever gripped him. Perhaps it did—the fever of an almost in- sane and helpless anger against Alsopp . Ostermann. “Ingenious!”’ he cried bitterly, his eyes wet. “Ingenious! The Man of Hell himself couldn’t have invented anything more monstrous—or used it worse! Ostermann! We're helpless! We’re in Ostermann’s power!” ‘We've done the one and only thing we could have done without capturing the man himself. Thanks to poor Darien we’ve been able to do something!” “YOU mean reaping his harvest? Or at least reaping a patch or two of it?” cried Brett with a cackle of laughter shaking his voice. ‘““We’ve reaped most of it, I hope,” said Schlesinger slowly. “Those bombs must have taken days and days to fashion and cost thousands of pounds each. It is not likely on the face of it that our enemies—no matter how rich and envious and ambitious —would supply Ostermann with a larger Adventure quantity than necessary. I am relying on the theory that Ostermann does not allow for any possible hitch occurring. He has sown every ‘Seed of Destruction’ he had aboard his air-ship and, for a space at least, we are safe.” “The toss-up is whether he has any emer- gency store of them somewhere handy to fall back on.” “Not in England!” said Schlesinger grimly. “Why not?” = The. ray would explode the emergency store at the same time it was blowing up the others! I doubt whether he’d even risk keeping one aboard his air-ship while he was - working the ray apparatus! Thanks to that : poor fellow Darien, I think we have him hip and thigh over this little job, eh?” Schlesinger clasped his thin fingers and a flame of triumphal pride shot from his hidden eyes. “Thanks also to your wonderful” beni Schlesinger!” cried Algy, grasping the’ folded hands and pressing them with boy- ish gratitude and hero-worship. “If you hadn’t figured what those beastly little pebbles meant and had delayed sending out every bobby in London—and every village out of it where they possess a bobhy—to hunt all out, we’d have been preparing to die at any. moment! They ought to let you loose in the Mint for this, with a couple of sacks!” “We're not out of the wood yet, sonny!” - said the detective, smiling. ‘‘We can not be certain that we have even picked up half Even as he spoke the ground beneath them quivered, a dull roar filled the little room with thunder, a horrible, sickening sound of tremendous explosion shook the world, and for a long, long, unending cen- tury that was but a minute of time it was as though the universe had fallen and were crashing about their ears. Stunned and pale they clung to each other—the man and the boy—fearful and shaking. Then they dashed to the window and tore the blind aside. Peering out, they saw the eastern sky just cutting a thread of opal-tinted pink, fore- telling dawn. Upon the river below, the wharis were tinging slowly’ with the reflection of the thread, and beyond the river, hovering like a fog-clogged cloud, shapeless and ‘distant, CoOMmiclooOoks (C@