"Ah!" The Baron's elbow was on his desk and his head rested in his hand. "Then it is what that Italian fellow said he had discovered in 1914. 'Ultra-red rays,' he called them. What was his name, now?"
"Never heard of him," said Von Wetten.
From the background where Herr Haase stood among the other furniture came a cough. "Oliver," suggested Herr Haase mildly.
The Baron jerked a look at him. "No, not Oliver," he said. "Ulivi that was it; Ulivi! I remember at the time we were interested, because, if the fellow could do what he claimed." He broke off. "Tell me," he demanded of Von Wetten. "You are a soldier; I am only a diplomat. What would this machine mean in war in this war, for instance? Supposing you were in command upon a sector of the front; that in the trenches opposite you were the English; and you had this machine? What would be the result?"
"Well!" Von Wetten deliberated. "Pretty bad for the English, I should think," he decided.
"But how, man how?" persisted the Baron. "In what way would it be bad for them?"
Von Wetten made an effort; he was not employed for his imagination. "Why," he hesitated, "because I suppose the cartridges would blow up in the men's pouches and in the machine-gun belts; and then the trench-mortar ammunition and the hand grenades; well, everything explosive would simply explode! And then we'd go over to what was left of them, and it would be finished."
He stopped abruptly as the vision grew clearer. "Aber," he began excitedly.
The old Baron lifted a hand and quelled him.
"The machine you saw this morning, which you tested, will do all this?" he insisted.