Arnbush put down the empty glass, and regarded the chemist, across the table, with a growing wonder.
“You have found it!” he said.
It was the comment of one who finds a treasure; the comment of one who, after a doubtful search, looks down on a heap of gold-pieces gleaming under the broken lid-boards of a chest.
“You have found it!”
It was the supreme expression of a victory immense and final. He had now within his hand the ruin of his enemies. And the stimulated ego in the man exulted. He would destroy their victory over him beyond the wildest conceptions of disaster. They were now trapped and huddled, and the weapon was in his hand.
His revenge stood out a shining figure before his face!
No need now for the trust fund in a death testament. He should live to see it. And he put the eager query, foremost in his mind.
“Is it difficult to manufacture?”
The chemist had been sitting with his elbow on the table, his jaw bedded in the fork of his hand, his pale eyes behind the myopic lenses on Arnbush.
It was a strange reflective watching, as of one who was beyond the common motives of a normal life; as of one who sat at a window, before a world that it no longer interested him to enter, or out of which he had been ejected—and who, being thus, had found a medium for vicarious influence.