Dampier's English was good. He'd been educated in England and the United States. But when he got excited he fairly surpassed himself and became heart-breakingly colloquial. Where most foreigners would have broken down into their mother-tongue, he relapsed into gutter slang or worse. I've left that out. It doesn't read as well as it sounds, and besides, nice old ladies like to read these magazines. If only they knew the truth—the real inside truth about some of the yarns that have been told in these pages! I've seen the originals—things that a newspaper wouldn't print for fear of being laughed out of a year's circulation—and with proofs! They happen, believe me. Only I'd never been in one before.
Dampier began with true professional dignity. "Gentlemen," he said, "you have treated me honorably. I shall do the same to you. I shall tell you all! When I am finished, judge then if I have done right to assassinate this monster of the devil!
"Monsieur Crandall recognized in me that Pierre Dampier who vanished from the world of science five years ago. It was Wilhelm Nebel who made me to flee like the wild goose. Nebel—the chief of munitions, the millionaire, the so great diplomat, whose hands reach out to every country, regardless of boundaries or the hatred of races. Even in France I was not safe! The finger of Nebel was in the pie of our government. He twisted it—poof! Spies of the police investigate me. They ask questions. They give me the degrees. But I tell them nothing. They can find nothing. It is all here—here in the grey material!" He tapped his bristling skull. "And when they have gone, I take my books, my papers, what money I can get, and take it on the lam to these United States!"
He stopped for breath and glared at us triumphantly. "I scram," he repeated. "I vanish from the sight of men. Here I am Leon the retired hair-dresser, the man with the big radio. Pierre Dampier is forgotten. But not by the accursed Nebel!
"Here in America is a free country where only the dogs, the automobiles, the husbands must have licenses. There are no foolish papers to carry about, no questions to answer to the police. I can hide like a rat in the mousecheese, and be safe. But not from this son-of-an-unpardonableness Nebel! His men are everywhere. He sees everything. Only here I can protect myself. Here I can kill before I am killed!
"But I see in your eye that I am beating about the gas-works, Monsieur. What is it that the old man Dampier has wrested from Nature, that is of so great value to the famous Nebel? What is the secret for which he has lammed himself here to hide like a flea in the chemise of your charming Maryland? Why is he willing to sail down the great river, to fry on the heated seat, so long as Nebel shall die? I will tell you, gentlemen!"
He drew himself up to every inch of his five feet two. He thrust out a pipe-stem arm and pointed an accusing finger at the mechanism that squatted in the middle of the floor.
"There, gentlemen, is the weapon that will make France supreme! The instrument of defense that makes offense impossible! The weapon that will end war!"
We looked at him, and at it, and at each other. It didn't look like the sort of thing you'd lug out on a battlefield to chase the enemy away. It had even less resemblance to the kind of fortress that I'd heard France was building along the Middle-European border. I began to wonder if, after all, that glint in Dampier's eyes was the holy light of pure science.
"What is it?" Bill asked.