In Jeopardy

by Van Tassel Sutphen

My opportunity quickly came. Yardley determined to go abroad; the pretense was that he needed a change to divert his mind and blunt the keen edge of his grief. But I managed to keep a straight face when he mumbled out his excuses and explanations.

Yardley Hildebrand had it in mind to build an adequate library at the "Hundred"; the villain had his cultivated tastes, and he wanted something which should be unique of its kind. Since my regular profession was that of an architect he naturally consulted me. I sketched out my ideas, and they met with his approval; he offered me the commission, and I accepted with alacrity. Then he sailed away, leaving me to carry out the plans—those in my sketchbook and some others that I had not taken the trouble to show him.

Modern physicists are just now beginning to talk about the invisible heat and light rays composed of high frequency vibrations. But long before Crooks gave the X-ray to the world I had discovered and had succeeded in isolating what I choose to call the Sigma ray. Some fine day it will be rediscovered, and the lucky man will get a new lot of capital letters to tack onto his name; and perhaps a ribbon for his buttonhole, and a pension from his grateful government. I shall not care; the Sigma ray has repaid me a thousandfold for the trouble I took to establish its existence; as a lethal agent it stands without a peer, instantaneously destructive to all forms of organic life.

Naturally, I do not propose to state the formula by means of which I was enabled to construct a filter capable of segregating my beloved Sigma ray from ordinary sunlight. Ah, that statement is illuminating, is it not! Suffice it to say that my filter looks like common glass. It may be moulded so as to resemble the familiar bullseye lens; and, if desirable, it can be colored. Now do you begin to appreciate the significance of the stained glass window on the right of the great fireplace in the library of "Hildebrand Hundred," the one depicting the Israelitish spies carrying their clusters of purple grapes?

If you choose to make an interesting experiment, arrange for the erection of a staging or an extension ladder outside the "Spy" window, so as to bring your eye on a level with the third grape in the upper row of the largest bunch. You will find that the line of your view, through this particular bullseye, impinges upon the head of any person who may chance to be sitting in the swivel-chair before the big, teakwood desk. As the chair is immovably secured to the floor by steel bolts passing through its mushroom base, it is evident that the relationship of the chair and of that particular bullseye will remain fixed; at any rate, one would have to go to some trouble to disturb it.

But the mere haphazard introduction of the Sigma ray into the room would not suit my purpose; my revenge would not be complete unless I could see it in operation. And so it was necessary to arrange some sort of clockwork mechanism to spring the trap. I confess to being somewhat grandiose in my conceptions, and accordingly I decided to press into my service no less an agency than the solar system itself.

If you will go into the library of "Hildebrand Hundred" on any month of the year outside of June you will see that the direct rays of the sun never reach the upper part of the "Spy" window; consequently, the Sigma ray is not brought into being. But, as the summer solstice approaches, the sun continues to rise higher and higher in the heavens until, in the three or four days around the twenty-first of June, it has reached its ultimate altitude with reference to the zenith. For the few minutes immediately before or after high noon on any of the aforesaid days the sun is in such a position that its beams will pass through the purple bullseye lens that forms the third grape in the upper row of the largest cluster. And in passing through it will become decomposed into the Sigma ray, and will fall on the head of him who sits at the great desk, exercising the authority of his lordship over "Hildebrand Hundred."

This is all plain and straightforward, I think. It is unfortunately true that any innocent person who chances to be occupying the seat perilous at the fateful moment will have to bear the weight of the vengeance intended for the guilty. But that risk is really remote, since the great desk and chair are the natural appanage of the Master of the "Hundred"; it will not be usual for anyone else to trespass upon that prerogative. And what more natural procedure than that the Master of the "Hundred," after a tour of his hay fields on a hot June day, should go to the cool of his library and finish up his office business at his desk?

True, there are other contingencies. The Master may come to the room and yet choose to sit elsewhere. Or he may forestall the hammer stroke of doom through the chance of rising from his chair to select a book from a distant shelf; or, finding his match-safe empty, he may go over to the chimney-breast on the hunt for a vesta.

Or again, he may be away from home during the three or four days of fate, or lying ill in an upstairs room. Finally, should the period of danger be cloudy and overcast the sun may not shine at all, and the whole business must go over for another year. But my patience is very long; I have learned how to wait.