“The Emperor!” I cried weakly.
Ivanovitch glanced over his shoulder. “Merely a fancy of our Chief’s, Clayton. Come, how do you wish to die?”
“I can’t believe you mean that, Ivanovitch. Surely there is some way that I can get you to spare my life!” I said: “I have money and will give it all to you. I will join your organization, anything.”
He laughed again. “We are singing a different tune now, eh?” He took from his pocket one of the air revolvers that I had seen before and fitted it into the palm of his hand. Then he turned to the other and spoke to him in Russian. The fellow straightened up with another leer, drew a heavy revolver from his pocket and pointed it at me. Then he leaned back against the wall again, crossing his feet.
Ivanovitch drew a key from another pocket and fitted it into the lock of my door. My heart leaped with hope, but I still turned upon him a woebegone face and shrank back into the cell as though in terror.
The door swung open. “Come out,” said Ivanovitch contemptuously. “I won’t hurt you—either now or later. But I have orders to show this little plaything to you and see if you prefer that way. Come out, I say!”
I drew away from the far wall of my cell and crept through the doorway like a dog with his tail between his legs. Nevertheless, the Russian retreated before me, keeping his distance warily. When the door of my cell had closed behind me I drooped against the wall of the outer room and stood waiting. “What—what are you going to do to me?” I begged. I hated myself in doing it, but it was for the sake of the others, and I had shown my hand too often in the past. To quiet his fear of me was my only hope of getting near him. The other Russian was still covering me with the heavy revolver, and Ivanovitch left me and went to the boxed-in machine. He pulled over a switch or something on the side of it—and instantly the room was filled with a blinding glare of light. But such light! It glowed now green, now purple, now crimson, until I half closed my eyes to shut out the brightness of it. It came from the cylinder in the center of the room, and the latter glowed iridescent with all the colors of the spectrum, like a living thing from some celestial sphere. I could only look at it for a moment, and the others too were shading their eyes. At the same time I was conscious of an intense heat from the cylinder.
I was dimly aware that Ivanovitch was speaking. The other man handed him the cap he wore, and Ivanovitch stepped forward and flung it into the top of the cylinder. Then he stepped over and turned off the switch again and the glare faded slowly and went out.
“You see?” he said to me, pointing to the thing.
I looked at the floor within the cylinder where the cap must have fallen. There was nothing there.