We settled down to listen. Tom threw some coal, with a lavish hand, into the small firepot of the great Dutch stove.
“Now this is cosy. Go ahead, Dick, with your yarn.”
Dorothy beside me on the big settle gave my hand one squeeze, and echoed Tom’s words. “Go ahead, Dick.”
All the lights had been lowered, save for a single bracket lamp, which shone on Regnier’s melancholy but expressive face. As he began, the storm changed its key, and came in steady, driving force rather than in great gusts.
“It really began that night at Mrs. Hartnell’s,” he said reflectively. “I was tremendously impressed by that second letter which came out from beneath the visible one and, try as I would, I could not shake off a feeling that the message was true; that the man who wrote possessed some strange and awful power, which would make it possible for him to do what he threatened. When I left you that night, I could not sleep. I looked at the problem from every side, and finally analyzed it down to this. If ‘the man’ is to do this, he must either be a great scientist himself, or have obtained his secret from some great scientist. I went further. I made up my mind that the most probable line of work to produce such a destroying agent would be along the lines of radio-active experiments. In consequence, I went directly to work, and with the help of two assistants, I reviewed all the literature of radio-active matter which had appeared in the last five years, and made a digest of the papers, their subjects and their authors. Then came my time of sailing for abroad, and I took the digest with me. I spent most of my time on the way over in a systematic sorting out of the men who had made the greatest advances, and who would be the most likely to obtain some great result. I finally narrowed my choice down to five. One of the five was Heidenmuller. He had published his last paper in the Zeitschrift fur Physicalische Chemie in April, 19—, and had published nothing since. As soon as I landed I hastened to get a file of the magazine, and found that in a somewhat deeply technical paper he had spoken of the possibility that a radio-active agent, powerful enough to give an ultimate resolution of any metal, might be obtained. That was enough for me; I started straight for London and Heidenmuller. As you know, I found him dead, but I heard the story of his death and I knew by that time that if he had possessed the secret, he must have passed it on to some one else. So I went to work. I did not look up Swenton because I found that Heidenmuller’s first assistant, Griegen, had gone as wireless operator on one of the big yachts then at Cowes. So I went down there, chartered a small yacht, and spent a week hunting for Griegen. I think I wrote you from there,” he said to Dorothy.
“You did,” she replied.
Regnier went on. “Well, to cut that short, I hired Griegen to come back to London with me, to make a thorough search of Heidenmuller’s laboratories, which I had hired just as they stood. We hunted for two days without avail when, one afternoon, I went down to the city to do some errands. I came back to my lodgings to find Griegen there greatly excited. He had found the secret panel in the inner locked room which you found empty, but when he discovered it the drawers held pamphlets and manuscripts. He had not examined them, as I had given him strict orders not to do so, and his training in the German army had made him ready to obey the orders of his superiors absolutely. I felt that I was on the road to victory, and I wished to read those papers alone, so I told Griegen I should go up there at once, and that he might be free for the evening. After dinner, I was delayed for an hour or two, and reached the laboratory only as darkness was setting in. In my excitement, I must have forgotten to lock the door after me. I went at once to the inner room, turned on the incandescents, which I had had installed, found the panel easily, pressed the spring, opened the little door whose lock Griegen had already broken, and saw before me a set of four drawers. They were filled with manuscripts. I began at the top and read the titles one by one. Through three drawers filled with the record of various researches in radio-active matter and energy I passed. I opened the fourth. There was what I sought. Written in crabbed German script, on the top first page of the series, was the title. Translated, it read thus: ‘A determination of a new type of radio-active energy which effects the ultimate decomposition of matter.’ I seized the papers eagerly and, as I knelt there, began the preamble. I had hardly read a dozen words, when the lights suddenly went out. I started up, the manuscript in my hands, but, as I rose, I was struck down and half stunned by a blow in the head. To my dazed brain a giant seemed towering far above me, as the room opened to immeasurable distances, and I heard what seemed a sonorous voice, but what was probably the low tones of the man who stopped all war. ‘It is not safe to have the secret in other hands than mine. For this mission was I doomed,’ and I smelt a strange odor, faintly recalling some of the anaesthetics which belong to the higher orders of the methane series. Then I knew no more.
“I woke here in Holland, without memory of my name, without the slightest knowledge of where I was. Here I have remained, till you came to bring me back to life and to my senses once more.”
He ended, and as fitting climax to his strange tale, the lamp flickered out, and the continuous long roll of the storm surged in once more in the fierce tattoo of its full fury.
We sat silent for some time, our only light the red ends of our cigars. Then Tom spoke.