Retracing his steps to the side of the forge, he once more tested the steel bar. Finding it cool enough, he thrust it into his pocket, picked up his bit for testing, and strode away to the laboratory, where through a window he could keep watch of the vault door.
CHAPTER V
A STRANGE TEST
On a work bench before the window in the laboratory there rested an instrument the like of which Johnny had never seen before entering the factory for work. The main body of it was a black drum about a foot long and ten inches in diameter. Out from this drum there ran a tube which, bending first this way, then that, passed into a bottle, then out of it into a second, then out again and so on until six or eight bottles had been included in its route.
“Let’s see,” said Johnny. “This one catches the carbon, this one, tungsten, this, water vapor, this, iron, and so on. Guess the thing’s all set for taking off the different known elements that are likely to be found in any steel. But how about those unknown elements? Here’s a wild shot in the dark.” Taking down three bottles from the wall, he poured a little from each into a fourth bottle. He then replaced the three bottles and, by the aid of two short tubes, inserted the bottle he had just filled into the circuit running from the drum. Repeating the operation with a new set of bottles he added a second bottle to the circuit.
“There,” he smiled, “if there are any strange atoms floating around, those ought to give them a home. Now for it!”
Pushing open a slide in the side of the drum he adjusted his bit of steel in a position between two electrical poles and directly before a small nozzle. He then shut the drum, turned on a switch which started a low snapping sound inside the drum, turned a valve which set a slight roar resounding within the drum, then sat back to watch.
Presently a greenish gas could be seen passing along inside the glass tube.
“Working!” he smiled. “Pretty slick arrangement! Electric spark sets fire to the metal, oxygen feeds the flame. Burn up anything that way. That gas was the hardest, most flexible steel in the world a moment ago.”
As he sat there watching the process go forward, hearing the hum and snap inside the drum, now and then catching the roll of thunder from the storm that raged outside, he thought of the three Shakespearean witches and their steaming caldron. He liked to think of himself as a modern wizard with his smoking electrical caldron.
But something caught his eye. The color of the liquid in one of the bottles of chemicals he had mixed at random was turning from white to a dull brown as the gas from burning steel passed through.