“Inside this sealed lead covering,” he explained, “is a glass tube hermetically sealed. The lead, of course, absorbs the rays, which otherwise would render the radium extremely dangerous to handle. You perhaps remember the story—if not, it may possibly be of interest. Radium, you know, was discovered in 1898 by Monsieur and Madame Curie; but the action of radium on human tissues was unknown until 1901, when Professor Becquerel of Paris, having incautiously carried a tube in his waistcoat pocket, there appeared on the skin within two weeks the severe inflammation which has become known as the famous 'Becquerel burn.' Since that time, I may add, active investigation into the action of radium has been carried on, resulting in the establishment in Paris in 1906 of the Laboratoire Biologique du Radium.”
The doctor from Selkirk reached out, and, obtaining a smiling permission, picked up the lead cylinder from the other's hand. The reporter sucked noisily on the butt of his cigar.
“And d'ye mean to say that's worth one hundred thousand dollars?” he demanded helplessly.
“Fully!” replied the foreigner gravely. “I should consider myself very fortunate if I had the means and the opportunity of purchasing it at that price. There are only a few grains there, it is true, and yet even that is a very appreciable percentage of the world's entire output for a single year. The Austrian Government, when it bought the radium-producing pitchblende mines at Joachimsthal, you know, acquired what is practically a world's monopoly of radium. And since the annual production of ore from those mines is but about twenty-two thousand pounds, and that from those twenty-two thousand pounds only something like forty-six grains of radium are obtained, it is not difficult to understand the enormous price which it commands.”
The little lead cylinder passed from hand to hand. It came last to the Hawk. He examined it with no more and no less interest than had been displayed by the others, and returned it to its owner, who replaced it in the black handbag.
“Look here,” said the reporter impulsively, “I don't want to nose into personal affairs; but, if it's a fair question, what are you going to do with the stuff?”
It was the doctor from Selkirk who spoke before the foreigner had time to reply.
“I was being tempted to ask the same question myself,” he said quickly. “I am a physician—Doctor Moreling is my name—and from what you have said I imagine that possibly you are a medical man yourself?”
“And you are quite right,” the other answered cordially. “I am Doctor Meunier, and I come from Paris.”
“What!” exclaimed the Selkirk physician excitedly. “Not Doctor Meunier, the famous cancer specialist and surgeon of the Salpêtrière Hospital!”