Waldron smiled grimly, as though in derision of what he seemed to think his partner's chimerical hopes, but made no answer. Together they entered the administration building. Five minutes later, Herzog, their servile experimenter, stood bowing and cringing before them.
"Got it, Herzog?" demanded Flint, while Waldron lighted still another of those costly cigars—each one worth a good mechanic's daily wage.
"Yes, sir, I believe so, sir," the scientist replied, depreciatingly. "That is, at least, on a small scale. Two weeks was the time you allowed me, sir, but—"
"I know. You've done it in eleven days," interrupted, the Billionaire. "Very well. I knew you could. You'll lose nothing by it. So no more of that. Show us what you've done. Everything all ready?"
"Quite ready, sir," the other answered. "If you'll be so good as to step into the electro-chemical building?"
Flint very graciously signified his willingness thus to condescend; and without delay, accompanied by the still incredulous Waldron, and followed by Herzog, he passed out of the administration building, through a covered passage and into the electro-chemical works.
A variety of strange odors and stranger sounds filled this large brick structure, windowless on every side and lighted only by broad skylights of milky wire-glass—this arrangement being due to the extreme secrecy of many processes here going forward. The partners had no intention that any spying eyes should ever so much as glimpse the work in this department; work involving foods, fuels, power, lighting, almost the entire range of the vast network of exploiting media they had already flung over a tired world.
"This way, gentlemen," ventured Herzog, pointing toward a metal door at the left of the main room. He unlocked this, which was guarded by a combination lock, like that of a bank vault, and waited for them to enter; then closed it after them, and made quite sure the metal door was fast.
A peculiar, pungent smell greeted the partners' nostrils as they glanced about the inner laboratory. At one side an electric furnace was glowing with graphite crucibles subjected to terrific heat. On the other a dynamo was humming. Before them a broad, tiled bench held a strange assortment of test tubes, retorts and complex apparatus of glass and gleaming metal. The whole was lighted by a strong white light from above, through the milk-hued glass—one of Herzog's own inventions, by the way; a wonderful, light-intensifying glass, which would bend but not break; an invention which, had he himself profited by it, would have brought him millions, but which the partners had exploited without ever having given him a single penny above his very moderate salary.
"Is that it?" demanded Flint, a glitter lighting up his morphia-contracted pupils. He jerked his thumb at a complicated nexus of tubes, brass cylinders, coiled wires and glistening retorts which stood at one end of the broad work-bench.