“Mean?” shrieked Hawkins, turning white and trembling in every limb.
“Yes, mean!” I repeated, shaking him. “Does it mean that——”
“It means that the cursed stuff has over-heated itself, after all. Lord! Lord! However did it happen? Something must have been impure. Something——”
“Never mind something. What will it do?”
“It—it—oh, my God, Griggs! It'll blow this house into ten thousand pieces within two minutes! Why—why, there's power enough in that little vat to demolish the Brooklyn Bridge, according to my calculations. There's enough explosive force in that much Hawkinsite to wreck every office building down-town!”
“And we're shut in here with it!”
“Yes! Yes! But let us——”
“Here! Suppose I turn the water into the thing?”
“Don't!” shouted the inventor wildly, battering at the door with his fists. “It would send us into kingdom come the second it touched! Don't stand there gaping, Griggs! Help me smash down this door! We must get out, man! We must get the women out! We must warn the neighborhood! Smash her, Griggs! Smash her! Smash the door!”
“Hawkins,” I said, resignedly, as a vicious “sizzzz” announced the evolution of a great puff of red gas, “we can never do it in two minutes. Better not attract the rest of the household by your racket. They may possibly escape. Stop!”