Adrift in the Unknown
OR,
Queer Adventures in a Queer Realm
By WILLIAM WALLACE COOK
Author of "The Paymaster's Special," "A Deep-sea Game,"
"In the Web," "His Friend the Enemy," etc.
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
A CARNIVAL OF ACTION
ADVENTURE LIBRARY
Splendid, Interesting, Big Stories
For the present the Adventure Library will be devoted to the publication of stories by William Wallace Cook.
The fact that one man wrote all of these stories in no way detracts from their interest, as they are all very different in plot and locality.
For example, the action in one story takes place in "The Land of Little Rain;" another deals with adventure on the high seas; another is a good railroad story; others are splendid Western stories; and some are mystery stories. All of them, however, are stories of vigorous adventure drawn true to life, which gives them the thrill that all really good fiction should have.
Copyright 1904-1906
By Frank A. Munsey Co.
Adrift in the Unknown
(Printed In the United States of America)
CONTENTS
- [Lost, Strayed, or Stolen?]
- [An Uninvited Guest]
- [Professor Quinn's Feat]
- [The Plutocrats Reconciled]
- [Traveling Sunward]
- [A Landing Effected]
- [Facing a Mercurial Storm]
- [The Mercurials]
- [Learning the Word-Box]
- [How We were Catalogued]
- [The Dilemma of Mr. Meigs]
- [Condemned to Death]
- [A Threatening Calamity]
- [Plan to Steal a Building]
- [Surveying our own Planet]
- [How Ill-Luck Overtook Me]
- [A Change of Heart]
- [How We Outwitted the King]
- [Back to Earth]
ADRIFT IN THE UNKNOWN.
CHAPTER I.
LOST, STRAYED, OR STOLEN?
There could be no more fitting introduction to this most amazing narrative from the pen of James Peter Munn than that article in the Morning Mercury.
Munn, it is no breach of confidence to inform the reader, was a reformed burglar; although the author of two books which achieved large sales and were most favorably received by the reviewers—"Forty Ways of Cracking Safes" and "The Sandbagger's Manual"—Mr. Munn developed small skill with the pen, so that the breathless interest aroused by his revelations hangs more upon the matter than the style. The Mercury article should do its mite toward preparing the reader for what is to come.
In the first place, the story was what newspaper men call a "scoop."
The article in the first edition ran as follows:
QUINN'S CASTLE VANISHES.
AND SO DOES QUINN! WITH HOUSE AND BELONGINGS. THE HARLEM SAGE DISAPPEARS IN A SINGLE HOUR. LEAVING NOT A TRACE BEHIND.
What happened to Professor Quinn last night? And what happened to the strange steel structure known locally among Harlem residents as Quinn's Castle?
For Quinn and his castle were snuffed out like a candle-gleam some time between the hours of eleven o'clock and midnight. Patrolman Casey, who travels a beat in that part of Harlem, avers that he passed the castle at eleven o'clock, and that it was there; he passed its site again at twelve, and it was not there.
Considerably exercised, Patrolman Casey made search for the castle, and although he beat up the country for a dozen blocks in all directions, he failed to find it. And what is more, Patrolman Casey declares that he took the pledge when he went on the force and has been a total abstainer ever since.
Corroboration of the officer's report is not lacking. Certain residents of the vicinity state that they saw the professor's weird dwelling yesterday evening; its windows were aglow and it appeared evident that the professor was entertaining friends. The first gray dawn this morning showed a bare lot with the steel house missing.
Is it another case of Aladdin's palace dissolving into thin air at the "presto!" of some wonder worker? Or is it a plain case of larceny undertaken on a gigantic scale? A golden opportunity offers itself to a sleuth of the Sherlock Holmes school; and for such a person the Mercury presents the following facts:
First, the so-called castle was projectile-shaped, of boiler-plate construction, and measured some twenty feet in diameter, tapering to a point thirty feet above ground. It was covered with a sort of paint that gave it the appearance of frosted silver.
Second, there is much low shrubbery surrounding the site of the castle, and if the castle had been blown down and rolled from the ridge it stood on into the river there would have been left evidences in plenty of such disaster.
(Note: The castle certainly weighed five tons, possibly five times that. Nothing short of a cyclone could have budged it, and there was hardly a breath of air stirring the whole night long.)
Third, Professor Quinn, ever since he erected his steel house and moved into it, has been regarded as mildly insane. Like Abou-ben-Adhem, he desired to be entered on the angelic scroll as one who loved his fellow-men.
Last summer he read before the Astronomical Society a paper entitled "The Mutability of Newtonian Law," and was laughed out of that honorable body for his inconsistencies. Although adverted to as "The Harlem Sage," Professor Quinn is no Merlin, nor does he possess the ring of Gyges that rendered its wearer invisible.
Yet where is he? And where is his castle? Until some Vidocq appears and solves the mystery, echo can only answer "Where?"
So much for the article in the first printing of the paper. The bright young man who stood sponsor for the "scoop" had meanwhile been very busy with fresh details, and the second edition contained the following addenda:
It has just been learned that Mr. Emmet Gilhooly, the multimillionaire and president of the railroad combine, was a guest of Professor Quinn last night, and must have been in the castle at the very moment it faded into oblivion.
Mr. Gilhooly did not return to his home and has not since been heard from. His relatives are distracted and leading railroad men of the country are in a panic.
His absence from affairs at the present moment jeopardizes the traction interests of the entire country, and may prove a deathblow to the success of the gigantic pool he was forming.
This was startling news indeed, and sped hither and yon throughout the city, the country, and the civilized world. Appalling as the information was, nevertheless it proved merely a fractional part of the truth.
The bright reporter on the Mercury made further discoveries, which were printed in the third edition rushed from the presses of his paper.
Not only was Mr. Emmet Gilhooly a guest of Professor Quinn in the steel castle last night, but so also were Hon. Augustus Popham, the coal baron; J. Archibald Meigs, of Wall Street, late manipulator of the corner in wheat and now engineering a corner in cotton, and Hannibal Markham, well known as the instigator of a plot to control the food supply of the United States.
What has become of these four millionaires and Napoleons of finance? They have gone with Quinn and his castle, disappearing as utterly as though the earth had opened and swallowed them.
Fabulous rewards were offered by the relatives of the missing millionaires for any information relative to the fate that had overtaken them. Foul play was suspected, and the financial world stood aghast and dumbly wondered what was to happen to the business of the country if it really developed, beyond all peradventure, that Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham had been eliminated from commercial affairs.
The influence of these four was vast and far-reaching, and they were scheming to make their grip on the republic's resources even more secure and relentless. If their plans carried, no man could eat, or clothe himself, or warm his body and drive his manufacturing engines, or travel from place to place and ship the product of his mills without paying tribute to Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham. Should those schemes, titanic in conception, be worked out to their manifest conclusion, four men would hold the destiny of industrial America in the hollow of their hands. Prosperity would wait upon their pleasure, or at a mere nod would be paralyzed and leave the country stranded on the reefs of disaster.
It seemed an odd fatality that, at the very time these commanders-in-chief of industry were plotting to make their power complete, they should have vanished as utterly as though they had been engulfed by a tidal wave and swept into the broad regions of the Atlantic. A few facts were brought to light through the probing of skilled detective minds, but these facts were in nowise clues to the fate that had overtaken the millionaires.
Popham's confidential aide reluctantly admitted that his chief had accepted an invitation from Quinn, and had gone to his "castle" for an interview. Quinn professed to have made some discovery or other which, he declared, would make coal a useless commodity so far as human needs were concerned. Popham, while laughing at Quinn's pretensions, was nevertheless secretly worried. Anything that threatened the success of the coup which was being engineered by himself and his three confreres was to be dealt with decisively and without loss of time.
In the case of Meigs, Markham, and Gilhooly there was no confidential aide to offer testimony, for these bright, particular stars of high finance had placed a limit on the confidence reposed in their secretaries. Nevertheless, the probing minds at work on the case developed the extraordinary fact that these men, no less than Popham, had visited Quinn at the latter's request. A spirit of scoffing investigation animated them, but they were prepared to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears whatever Quinn had to show and to say. If anything that militated against their projected coup was brought before them, they would proceed to lay the spectre forthwith.
Strangely enough, the shrewdest of the detectives failed to connect the disappearance of the millionaires with the comprehensive plans they were forming, and which could not be carried out except by the plotters in person.
Other rich men of the country, who were wont to trim their sails in accordance with whatever wind blew from the offices of The Four, in Wall Street, were already shifting affairs to lay a course that would give them the best headway against the projected new order. This sudden disappearance of the powers to which the lesser rich looked for guidance left them becalmed in an uncharted sea.
The middle class, long accustomed to being mulcted right and left, accepted the astonishing situation with equanimity. So far as they were concerned, Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham were abstract generalities—merely names to conjure with. For years the middle class had paid for the conjuring, and had been taught to look calmly into the eyes of what they had come to believe was the inevitable. If their annual outing to the seashore or the mountains cost too much, they could stay at home; if the butcher, the baker, and the grocer ran prices too high, some of the luxuries could be cut out; if anthracite went to $20 a ton, they would heat fewer rooms; and if clothing became too expensive, there would be fewer suits and gowns to wear. By a little self-denial, the middle class also could trim their sails to any gale that blew. They were used to it.
With the poor it was different. They were already down to bed-rock in the way of self-denial. No sooner had it drifted through their brains that the influence of Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham had been blotted out than they lifted their voices in praise of the blessed event. Their situation had been bad enough, and any change among the vaguely understood causes presiding over their affairs could hardly be for the worse.
The detectives, feeling that they were at work on a particularly complex case, hampered themselves by looking for complex causes. At first, they believed it was a matter of sequestration and that presently a ransom in seven or eight figures would be called for. However, a delving into Quinn's past failed to reveal any lawless actions that would point to a ransom in his present line of endeavor. The detectives, growing more complex as the ambiguities closed them in, overlooked entirely the simplicity of Quinn's character.
Anyhow, one analytical mind would demand of another, what had Quinn's intentions to do with the disappearance? That was a positive reality. And, although it was surmised, it was not definitely known that Quinn himself had had anything to do with it.
Such was the situation confronting the country and with which the police department of New York City was called upon to deal. But the keenest reasoning, inductive or deductive, was powerless to find even a clue.
The tremendous mystery might have remained a mystery until this day, had it not been for the narrative of James Peter Munn, now for the first time given to the world.
CHAPTER II.
AN UNINVITED GUEST.
I used to be one of those who claimed that the world owed him a living, and I went out with a drill and a "jimmy" to collect it.
Where was the difference, I argued, between the man who cracks your strong box and removes a few paltry bills or coins, and the nabob who skulks behind a "trust" and takes his tax on the necessities of life?
This was pure sophistry, of course, but I became wedded to it in early life, and that I escaped a suit of stripes and measurement on the Bertillon system, is due entirely to my experiences with Professor Quinn.
'Twas a blessed night that sent me to his castle with the view of mulcting it of treasures I felt to be there. Quinn was a queer one. I do not mean to say that he was unhinged, as some thought, but he was queer in his outlook upon life, and in resources which fall under the head of "ways and means."
His castle claimed my professional attention. For why should a man build a big steel vault and live in it unless he had portable property worth a burglar's while? I reconnoitered the place for a week before I considered myself possessed of sufficient knowledge for my undertaking. In view of what transpired at the time of my visit, a brief description of the castle, taken from my memorandum book, will prove of interest.
The structure was cigar-shaped, twenty-nine feet from base to apex and twenty feet in diameter through its largest part. It was divided into two stories by means of a steel floor, leaving head-room of ten feet in the lower story.
Four windows pierced the circular walls of the nether room, and two gave light to the room above; these six openings being guarded on the outer sides with latticework of steel.
The door was an oblong piece of boiler plate—the entire building was a shell composed of plates riveted together—hinged heavily and provided with a strong lock. As I had yet to find a lock which I could not pick, if given time enough, my designs naturally centred about the door.
I had hit upon the somewhat early hour of ten in the evening for my call at the professor's. Unless business kept him abroad I knew that he was usually in bed long before that time. If he chanced to be out, so much the better for the success of my foray.
After the patrolman had passed, I crept through the bushes and was soon busy with the lock on the steel door. It yielded with much less resistance than I had anticipated, and I was quickly within, flashing my bull's-eye lantern about me.
A circular seat upholstered in leather ran around the wall, and a table bearing an unlighted oil lamp stood in the centre of the floor. I had barely completed a hasty survey when a crunch of footsteps on the graveled walk without smote on my ears.
Without loss of a moment I snapped the lantern shut and darted up the iron stairway to the room above. It is needless to say that I was very much put out because of the interruption. I was a hard man in those days, and such an occurrence was apt to anger me and make me say things.
Lying flat on the floor with my face to the stair opening, I had a fairly good view of the circular chamber below. The professor had been abroad and not in bed, for he appeared now, ushering in callers.
Four gentlemen, all of distinguished mien and important bearing, followed the owner of the castle, and began glancing about with ill-concealed amusement.
"Gad, but this is an odd place!" exclaimed one.
This gentleman wore a frock coat and silk hat, but what caught my eye was a four-carat spark in his scarf, a massive seal on his fob, and a scintillating gem on the third finger of his left hand.
"Odd, perhaps," returned the professor, "but most suitable to my purposes, Mr. Gilhooly, as I hope to show you before many minutes have passed. Be seated, sir. And the rest of you gentlemen; you will find the divan most comfortable."
Gilhooly? I went hot and cold at that name. Nearly everybody in New York was just then talking about the man who was scheming to make railroad travel too expensive for ordinary mortals. He was a millionaire several times over, and in the breast of his frock coat I knew there must be a bulky wallet.
At once, and while I watched and listened to those in the room below, my mind busied itself with details of a more comprehensive operation than I had at first contemplated.
The professor's four guests had seated themselves on the circular divan. After my eyes had finished with Gilhooly they turned on the other three, and my first impressions were more than confirmed.
Each of the quartet was a Croesus, and dressed and strutted the part. Fine birds, indeed, and I hugged myself to think how opportunity had come knocking at my door.
Six-shooter in hand, I could descend upon this covey, compel a readjustment of values between them and myself, then back through the steel door, lock it behind me, and make off.
The professor, intent on other things no doubt, had turned his key in the lock and had failed to discover that the bolt was already thrown; therefore my presence in the castle was entirely unsuspected—manifestly an advantage.
"You have asked us to come here, Professor Quinn," spoke up one as the professor turned higher the wick of the lamp he had just lighted, "and here we are. You say you have discovered something whose value to science and the industrial world is beyond compute, and that you wish to interest capital. Well"—and the speaker surveyed his three companions with a large smile—"here is the capital."
"I shall come at my discovery in due course, Mr. Popham," said the professor, who was a wiry little man with a bald head and bead-like black eyes. "I thank you for coming here. Emmet Gilhooly, Augustus Popham, J. Archibald Meigs, and Hannibal Markham are stars of the first magnitude in the skies of speculation, and I esteem myself fortunate in arousing their interest."
A faintness seized me as these names, each an "open sesame" to the world of finance, fell glibly from the professor's tongue. I was all but cheek by jowl with representatives of billions.
Augustus Popham turned his head to give Emmet Gilhooly a plebeian wink. Gilhooly smiled behind his smooth white hand. J. Archibald Meigs leaned over to whisper something to Hannibal Markham, who was affixing a pair of gold eyeglasses to his Roman nose, whereupon both gentlemen suppressed a titter.
A doubt of the sincerity of all four broke over me. They were there to have sport with this bald little man with the beady eyes and the bee in his bonnet. I chuckled grimly as I thought of how the tables would presently be turned. I do not know whether the professor was as keen as I to detect these evidences of insincerity. If he was, he gave no sign.
"I am sixty-five," said he, "and my life work has been the discovery which I am about to bring to your august attention. Perhaps some of you gentlemen have read my paper on 'The Mutability of Newtonian Law'?"
The gentlemen acknowledged that they had not. Professor Quinn seemed disappointed.
"If you had read that," he continued, "you would have prepared yourselves for an understanding of my theory and the demonstration of it which I am about to give. Let me ask you this: When an apple leaves its parent branch, why is it that it falls downward instead of upward?"
The Napoleons of finance stared at one another. J. Archibald Meigs went so far as to tap a suggestive finger against his forehead.
"Gravity," said the professor. "It is that which draws every atom on the surface of the earth directly toward the earth's centre; it is that which chains our feet to this planet and keeps us from falling through interstellar space; it is even that which keeps our little world from flying apart and dissipating itself in dust throughout the great void. It is a simple proposition simply stated, and I trust you follow me?"
They did follow him, and so signified.
"In the paper I read before the Astronomical Society," pursued the professor, "I made bold to declare that it was possible to insulate a body against the force of gravitation. In other words, to make it so immune from Newtonian law that it would spurn the earth and fall from it at a speed even greater than the drawing power of gravity.
"Can you not comprehend what this means?" cried Quinn, waxing eloquent. "It means a new force in the industrial world—a power that feeds on nothing save a law that transcends that of gravitation. In point of fact, it falls little short of perpetual motion.
"Without the expenditure of even a pound of coal, this new force can turn the wheels of every railroad train on the globe! With its own inherent energy it can give life to the machinery of flour mills, cotton mills, iron foundries; it can——"
Augustus Popham got up hurriedly and put on his hat.
"A rattle-brained idea, sir!" he exclaimed. "I have no mind to remain here and listen to such talk."
Popham's coal mines ravaged the earth's crust in a thousand and one places. The idea that human industry could get along without his coal was too much for him.
Before he could reach the door, Professor Quinn was in front of him, barring his way.
"Remember, Mr. Popham," said the professor, "if I were to take away your mines I should yet give you something in their place worth incalculably more. Hear me out, sir. I beg of you."
"Theories are cheap things," muttered Popham, as he again seated himself. "An ounce of proof is worth a pound of theory."
"Exactly," cried Quinn, "and the ounce of proof shall be forthcoming."
With that he pulled the table from the centre of the room, revealing an iron chain some three feet in length, attached at its lower end to a staple in the floor by means of a clevis and pin.
The chain was not lying loosely, but was rigidly upright, its upper end wound about a white block—a six-inch cube, as I judged.
Climbing to the table top, the professor stepped thence to the cube, poising himself for a moment on one foot. Then he sprang to the floor again.
"This cube," he explained, laying one hand on the block with an affectionate gesture, "is of steel, and has been treated with my insulating compound. To all appearance it is falling upward with a force sufficient to draw the chain rigidly to its full extent and to support my weight."
"Poppycock!" muttered the coal baron.
"A trick!" exclaimed Meigs.
The other two remained silent. They were bewildered, perhaps impressed.
"Let us see whether it is a trick or no," went on Quinn. "Pray come forward, gentlemen, and lay hold of the chain. There is no danger in the little experiment with which I am going to amuse you, and I think it will dispel your doubts."
The gentlemen hesitated, but finally came forward, got down with some difficulty, and grasped the chain as directed.
"Hold tight!" exclaimed the professor, and drew the pin from the clevis.
Thus released the cube rose to the ceiling, lifting the four gentlemen with it. They hung in mid-air until Quinn drew the table under them, and they dropped to its top, each in turn, and so reached the floor.
Bewilderment was written large in the faces of the quartet, their credulity struggling against the evidence of their senses.
"You are a good magician, sir," averred Popham, brushing the damp from his forehead with a handkerchief.
"You could make your fortune as an entertainer," declared Gilhooly.
J. Archibald Meigs chewed briskly on an unlighted cigar, while Hannibal Markham kept his eyes on the cube and dangling chain like one fascinated.
"It is the fate of a man who makes startling discoveries to be classed among disciples in black art," observed Quinn calmly. "What is the hour, Mr. Gilhooly?" he asked.
The head of the railway pool consulted his repeater.
"Eleven-fourteen," he replied.
"And high time I was going," added Popham.
"Just a few moments more," said the professor.
Turning to the wall behind him, he caught a small lever and turned it over as far as it would go. The castle vibrated slightly, communicating a perceptible swaying motion to the pendent chain.
"What's this?" cried Markham, jumping up.
"Do not be alarmed, my friends," cried Quinn, whirling around.
His face was pallid as death, and his beady eyes gleamed like coals. Then, wonder of wonders, the white cube settled to the floor.
"Ha!" shouted Popham. "Your anti-gravity compound is not very long lived, it seems to me."
"You will find differently, to your cost!" returned the professor through his teeth. "Augustus Popham, I, Kenward Quinn, arraign you, and Emmet Gilhooly, and J. Archibald Meigs, and Hannibal Markham as foes of the human race! You are leeches who would suck the life-blood from the veins of the poor——"
With steady forefinger, Quinn had transfixed each of the plutocrats as he called his name. Markham was already on his feet, and the other three were not slow in following him.
"What's this, what's this?" gasped Gilhooly.
"An insult!" muttered Popham.
"The old addle-pate is not accountable for what he says or does," remarked J. Archibald Meigs.
"We had best leave this steel trap of his while there is yet time," counseled Markham.
"While there is yet time!" repeated Quinn, with a wild laugh. "A pretty set of conspirators you are, on my soul! Markham, there, would raise the price of food until the poor would go hungry; you, Meigs, would so manipulate the cost of clothing that they would not have the wherewithal to cover their nakedness; Popham would make fuel a luxury of the rich; and Gilhooly would so boost passenger and freight rates as to quadruple to the consumer the tremendous cost of the necessities of life. Deny me if you can, if you dare!"
Quinn looked like a Nemesis as he confronted the four men and lashed them with his scorpion whip of words.
"Fiddlededee!" exclaimed Popham.
"We deserve it," said Meigs, "for it was the height of folly for us to come here, in the first place."
"Is this why you brought us here?" asked Markham, "to air your own particular ideas on sociology and to make us the victims of your abuse?"
The professor threw back his head and straightened his shoulders. It was the real thing in dignity that he showed those plutocrats, and my nerves tingled with admiration. I was sorry I had come to the castle with designs oh Quinn's portable property, and doubly glad that I could force tribute from these four who were badgering him.
"I am not unjust," averred the professor, "and such a thing as abuse is farthest from my mind; but I love the plain people, the bone and sinew of this glorious republic, and it arouses my indignation when the right to live and let live is trampled upon by any one man, or set of men."
"Platitudes!" sneered Popham.
"To call a truth a platitude is witless argument," answered Quinn serenely.
"Be that as it may," said Meigs, "we were not invited here for a debate but to witness a demonstration of what you were pleased to term a revolutionizing discovery."
"You have seen me overcome the force of gravity," went on the professor, "and to astute minds like yours further explanation seems uncalled for. In destroying gravity I produce a power equalled by no other force in the world. The 'pull' of an insulated block the size of that one"—and here he waved his hand toward the cube—"is equal to the strength of a hundred horses. Develop that 'pull' horizontally instead of vertically, and we have a locomotive that runs continuously without the consumption of a pound of coal. That," cried the professor, his voice ringing with triumph, "is the apotheosis of power!"
Gilhooly, judging from his manner, was the victim of uncomfortable thoughts; Meigs wore a startled look, and Markham seemed half convinced. Popham, alone, was brusque and uncompromising.
"I think we had better get out of here," again suggested Markham. His half convictions appeared to arouse some small amount of apprehension.
"I'm of the same opinion," spoke up Meigs.
"Wait a little," suggested Popham, and I saw a gleam in his eyes that meant a stroke of some kind. Once more he faced Quinn. "I have no patience with your harebrained theories," he went on, "and I have seen charlatans work greater wonders than what you are pleased to call your 'demonstration.' But it is a business principle of mine to buy up these promising theories if they happen to run counter to any pet scheme I am trying to put through. Sir, rather than be annoyed further with this chimerical idea of yours, I will pay five thousand dollars, spot cash, just to have you give over your notions and quit experimenting."
Professor Quinn laughed.
"Five thousand dollars!" he exclaimed; then added, as though to himself, "He would have me sell the welfare and happiness of the people for five thousand dollars!"
"I will add another five thousand to Popham's offer." put in Gilhooly, "not because I am afraid your discoveries will upset the transportation interests of the country, but simply to clear the commercial atmosphere and keep your visionary ideas from affecting the price of stocks."
"Let me add another five thousand," said Meigs. "I don't see how your invention, even if it is all you claim for it, could affect me or my interests one way or the other, but I will add my contribution simply because Popham has taken the initiative."
"Count me in for the same amount," supplemented Markham, "on the condition that Professor Quinn signs over to the four of us all his right, title and interest in his non-gravity invention, and covenants to leave that field entirely alone in future."
Quinn seemed to enjoy these propositions, and it was apparent at a glance that he had no intention of accepting twenty thousand dollars and renouncing his discoveries.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you are already half convinced that I am no dreamer, for you are financiers, and, while twenty thousand dollars is no more to you than twenty cents is to me, it is not your habit to give your money away. I repeat that you are inclined to have faith in me, and before many minutes I shall have made your belief in my abilities complete."
"Am I to understand that you decline our offer?" demanded Popham.
"Most decidedly!"
"Then there is nothing more to be said. Come on, gentlemen," and Popham started toward the door.
"A moment more, if you please," requested the professor.
"Not another second!" cried Popham. "Our offer is withdrawn; and, if your so-called discoveries amount to anything, we shall find other means for making them ineffective."
I had been interested in proceedings to an extent that had all but caused me to forget my purpose. The plutocrats were about to leave the castle in a temper, and if I wrested tribute from them it must be now or never.
Starting up, I drew my revolver and ran hastily down the iron stairs.
CHAPTER III.
PROFESSOR QUINN'S FEAT.
My unexpected advent upon the scene proved as startling as I had anticipated. Even the professor was dashed.
Stepping in front of the steel door, I toyed menacingly with the revolver and surveyed the plutocrats with a grim humor I made no attempt to conceal.
At that period of my life, inspired by the sophistry to which I have already adverted, I was a cool and dangerous man.
"Pardon me for entering unannounced," said I blindly. "You have listened to Professor Quinn's theory and witnessed its demonstration. I am but an humble philosopher, yet I have a theory of my own which I should also like to expound and to demonstrate."
"Who are you, sir?" demanded Quinn.
"I am a bird of like feather with these, your guests," said I facetiously, "albeit my methods are more direct if less extensive. My name is James Peter Munn; my specialty is robbery of the out-and-out variety, for I have the courage of my convictions, and do not hide behind a technicality.
"I do not wish to intrude my presence here longer than necessary to accomplish my designs, and if these amiable gentlemen will aid me"—I indicated the amiable gentlemen with my revolver point—"I will take my departure quietly from the castle. But"—and here I scowled blackly—"some trust or other will be minus its guiding power in case any resistance is attempted."
The threat was sufficient, and the usual sunny smile returned to my face as I added:
"Mr. Gilhooly will advance to the table, spread his handkerchief upon it, and lay thereon his watch and fob, the ring on his finger, the kohinoor in his tie, and the wallet in the breast of his coat. It is my theory that one thief has the right to take from another property that does not belong to either of them. It is Mr. Gilhooly's privilege to give the first demonstration."
Fidelity to truth forces me to chronicle the above speech. The éclat with which I made it is far from me now as I pen it verbatim.
There are speeches in life which we could wish unsaid, and this one of mine I would give much to consign to the limbo of things unspoken. Reformation has worked wonders in me since that evil time.
I will say for Mr. Gilhooly that he was alacrity itself in carrying out my command. His hands trembled a little as he placed his belongings on the handkerchief and knotted the four corners over the plunder as I requested.
The professor, smiling strangely, sank down on the divan and watched proceedings with twinkling eyes. His manner filled me with a foreboding I tried not to manifest.
"Evidently this amuses you!" cried Gilhooly, in anger, his snapping eyes on the professor.
"Your inference is correct, Mr. Gilhooly," answered Quinn. "I am profoundly amused. It is all so unexpected, so dramatic, and so—useless."
"By gad, sir," cried Popham, "I see more in this than a desire on your part to interest capital in a fake discovery. There is a plot here, gentlemen," and he turned to the other three. "Our folly in allowing ourselves to be lured to this place was stupendous. I make no doubt but that there is a plot here between this man Quinn and this thief. Quinn gets us in the thief's power, and the thief does the rest."
"A pretty scheme!" snapped Meigs.
"Clever, very clever," put in Markham.
"And successful, too," growled Gilhooly with a regretful look at the plunder on the table. "But there will be a reckoning. When we are once clear of this place we can set the police at work."
I was surprised at the way Quinn took this talk. He continued to smile and was in no way ruffled.
"You're wrong there," cried I, hot and indignant. "Professor Quinn had nothing to do with my being here. I've had my eye on this castle for a long while, and I let myself in, just before you came, hoping to make a haul and get clear. You interrupted me, and I stowed myself away upstairs. From what I saw and heard, I must say that it is a pleasure for me to turn my back on Professor Quinn's property and to give my entire attention to you four."
"Mr. Munn," said Quinn, "how long have you been engaged in this business?"
"For some years now, sir," I answered.
"You were honest—once?"
"Every man is born honest, if it comes to that. I used to work in an iron foundry, but the works were taken over by a combination and a lot of us were thrown out of employment. There was nothing for me to do but beg—and I'm above that. This came handiest, and I went into it. I like the business. Matching one's wits against the law keeps one constantly in the midst of alarms, so to speak, and I like excitement. And I have ability, for never yet have I worn the stripes or learned the lock-step. I have written some on the subject of my vocation, in the hope of beguiling others into the work."
"A dangerous man!" muttered Gilhooly.
"What are we coming to?" clamored Popham. "Here is a thief who is actually proud of his profession, and who actually writes books about it!"
"Merciful heavens!" gasped Meigs, in horror. "I feel sorry for my country when it produces such men."
"We—we are tottering on the verge of chaos!" added Markham, in a stage whisper.
I laughed at all this, for I enjoyed it hugely.
"Spare yourselves any needless worry about me, gentlemen," said I. "Look to home, and you will probably find enough there to fret your consciences."
Professor Quinn continued to take pleasure out of the queer situation.
"I can honor a man like Munn," said he, "where I am tempted to despise men like you, Gilhooly, Meigs, Markham, and Popham. As Munn said, he has the courage of his convictions. He does not take from the poor, for in the very nature of things he cannot. His loot comes from those who are able to lose it, while you are vampires, and sapping the very lifeblood of the nation. You are all criminally deluded, although, perhaps, doing what you conscientiously believe to be exactly right. Would to Heaven," and here the professor grew suddenly sincere and intensely earnest, "that something would conspire to open your eyes to the exact truth. But I have despaired of that, and I am trying, in my own feeble way, to meet the present emergency."
"You are either a fool or a madman!" cried Popham.
"A rattle-brained zealot!" chimed in Meigs.
"You are the one who should see things differently," said Markham. "You preach a doctrine which you fail to apply personally."
"Enough of this talk, gentlemen," I interposed. "My situation is precarious and I must ask you to hurry a little."
"Sir," shouted Popham, leveling a forefinger at me, "I shall see you properly jailed for this. Why, you miserable footpad, I can——"
"Save your breath," I interrupted tartly, meeting his forefinger with the muzzle of the pepper box. "Lead is no respecter of persons. One of you has called me a dangerous man. I am all of that, and desperate. Mr. Popham, you saw how Mr. Gilhooly carried out my orders. You will proceed in the same manner, and without further loss of time. In five minutes I must be out of here."
He started to argue the point with me, and I allowed my forefinger to flex, ever so slightly, upon the trigger.
That was enough. A man values his life in a direct ratio with what he considers his importance; therefore, the esteem in which these four millionaires held themselves must have been overwhelming.
The Honorable Augustus Popham finally yielded up his personal property with the same readiness that had characterized his friend. Hannibal Markham followed him, and after Markham came J. Archibald Meigs.
I had a pleasant word for each as I marshaled the four bundles, strung them on the fingers of my left hand and backed toward the door, which was a few paces behind me.
"When a good general beats a retreat," said I, preparing to pull open the door and let myself out, "he places as many obstacles in the path of the pursuing force as possible. When I leave, therefore, I shall lock this door on the outside."
I was watched by the plutocrats in philosophical silence; by the professor, with a geniality that nothing seemed able to shake.
I had spared Quinn because he was a friend of the poor, as I had discovered. And I had been poor myself some fifteen minutes back.
"Good-by," said I airily.
"Au revoir," answered the professor. "Look well where you step."
I threw open the door with a laugh. The laugh faded into a shout of terror.
I threw out my hands, revolver and packets of loot falling through the door, and I only barely saving myself with one foot over the threshold.
The horror that gripped me then is such a horror as comes to a man but once in a lifetime. My brain sickened and chilled, my heart all but stopped its beating, and my limbs grew rigid.
In the black of the fearsome night—not the atmospheric blue-black I had been accustomed to, but the ebony dark of Erebus—I saw a wild greenish star below, a huge disk whose gleaming nimbus danced on my sight in quivering lines.
Half crazed, I flung back into the room and fell groveling to the floor, my ears echoing with the professor's merriment and the startled exclamations of the four men I had robbed—all to no purpose.
Presently I sat up, rubbing forehead and eyes.
The professor stood in the open door, gloating over the vista below.
"Come!" he called, beckoning to the huddled quartet at the other side of the room. "Come, Gilhooly, Meigs, Popham, and Markham—come, look down upon the scene of your feverish activities. You were plutocrats there, more powerful than kings! Here you are no more than shoulder high with me, and yon muddled thief on the floor! You have been snatched from the scene of your pernicious labors—exiled into planetary space where you will be powerless to work further evil. I have not lived in vain; for this, this is the triumph of my career."
Slowly Meigs disentangled himself from the mute group by the opposite wall and crept on all fours to the threshold that overlooked the void and the greenish star.
He recoiled with a yell; then, maddened by what he had seen, he leaped erect and tried to hurl himself out into space.
"Fool!" cried the professor, laying hold of him and struggling to keep him back. "Would you become a satellite of this twenty-by-thirty planet? We are beyond the atmosphere of the earth—look! See the four packets of loot and the thief's revolver."
He pointed through the door and the bulging handkerchiefs and my six-shooter were abreast of us, hanging in space, turning slowly, weirdly—a sight to upset the strongest mind.
Gilhooly jumped forward, gave vent to a maniacal laugh, then crumpled down on the floor.
"Bid up for the G.H.&D.," he mumbled, "bid to the limit! I must have that road—I will have it."
"Brace up, Meigs!" said the professor sharply, pulling the key from the outer side of the lock, slamming the door, fastening it, and putting the key in his pocket. "Take care of Gilhooly, man! His mind falters! Heavens, are you all mad? Are your keen minds, unshaken in the contemplation of vast deals for the enslavement of the poor, so quick to break? I had thought better of you than this!"
Meigs, white as the spotless linen that covered his breast, advanced upon the professor. He tried to speak, but without success. At last, with a supreme effort, the words came:
"Madman, what have you done?"
"That is better," returned the professor, smiling as he looked at Meigs and noted how Markham and Popham ranged themselves at his side; "much better. You were engaged in plots back there on the earth, and the success of those plots would have proved a great calamity. I have saved the world from the calamity!"
"Your—your castle has risen from the earth?" asked Meigs.
"It has fallen off the earth. As you and I and the others happened to be inside, we fell with it!"
Sudden rage convulsed Meigs. He crouched downward, his eyes ablaze and his fingers working convulsively.
"Scoundrel!" he screamed, and launched himself at the professor's throat like a tiger.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLUTOCRATS RECONCILED.
Looking back now at that dreadful hour when the realization of our awful predicament burst upon us, I wonder that I preserved my own equilibrium.
The first shock came near to throwing me off my poise, but after that I gained the whip hand of my wits by swift and sure degrees.
I verily believe the professor would have been strangled by Meigs, aided and abetted by Popham and Markham, had I not rushed to his rescue. I had muscles of iron, and after I had caught Meigs by the nape of the neck and thrown him backward, I planted myself between Quinn and his foes.
"Leave the professor alone," said I. "You men show mighty poor judgment, it strikes me, in trying to lay violent hands on him."
"He deserves death," babbled Meigs. "He had no business shooting us into space in this summary manner."
Fear and anger had made Meigs childish. He measured our dilemma in terms so common a smile came to my lips.
"Judgment, poor judgment!" sniffed Popham. "Look at Gilhooly, and then talk about poor judgment, if you can."
In truth, the railway magnate presented a sorry spectacle. His clothing was in wild disorder, his hair was rumpled about his head, and he was hopping back and forth with two fingers in the air.
He was under the impression that he was dealing in railroad stocks, completing the huge transaction that had made him the talk of two continents.
"This professor ought to be flayed alive," declared Markham. "Where are we going, and when will we get there?"
"Now," said I. "you are striking the keynote. Who knows where we are going if the professor doesn't? And who knows when we shall arrive there if it is out of his power to tell? We need the professor, for if we are to be saved it will be his knowledge that does it."
"But what will my family think?" whimpered Meigs. "And my business interests!"
He threw up his hands and fell back in his seat with a groan. Then abruptly he straightened up again.
"This is a dream! By gad, it must be! The whole affair is too outrageously unreal for any sane man to believe."
Gilhooly gave a maudlin chuckle.
"I was dead sure I'd get that last block of X.Y.&Z. stock! That road is the last span in my network of ties and rails. Ha! Now we'll see! Now!"
Meigs shivered. Gilhooly's maunderings struck sharply at his desire to coddle himself with a myth.
"It's awful to have Gilhooly like that," spoke up Augustus Popham. "If he had not been thrown out of balance, his wide knowledge of matters relating to transportation might have proved of inestimable service to us now."
Professor Quinn laughed. It was an eerie laugh, and it shook me to hear it.
"Oh, you!" cried Markham reproachfully, whirling on Quinn. "After causing this disaster and overthrowing as brilliant a mind as there ever was in Wall Street, you have the heart to indulge in levity. Look here: how far are we from the earth at the present moment?"
"That is a difficult matter to estimate, even approximately," answered Quinn calmly. "Ordinarily, gravity exerts a force that can be measured definitely on the earth's surface. A body falling freely from rest acquires a velocity which is equal to the product of thirty-two and one-fifth feet and the number of seconds during which the motion has lasted. What is the time now?"
Three gentlemen reached for their watches, failed to find them, and turned hard looks on me. I appreciated their dilemma and drew from my vest an open-face timepiece that was personal property and honestly come by.
"It is twelve-fifteen," said I.
Quinn took a pencil and notebook from his pocket and did some figuring.
"We might be a little more than two miles from our native planet," said he, "but——"
"Only two miles!" cried the three exiles in chorus.
"You can take us back, sir," said Popham, who had been pacing the floor nervously. "Shut off the power of this infernal machine and let us drop back to where we belong. Two miles is no great matter. Your castle is a slow freight compared with some of Gilhooly's express trains."
"I cannot take you back, sir," returned the professor, "and I would not if I could. You did not hear me out. The law of velocity, recited for your benefit a moment ago, does not measure the speed of this car."
"No?" murmured Markham.
"Decidedly not. The earth sweeps along in its orbit at the rate of eighteen miles to the second, while some aerolites and meteoroids attain a speed of twenty and thirty miles to the second. In building this car, I equipped it with an anti-gravity block geared up to fifty miles to the second. The lever on the wall"—and here Quinn turned and pointed to it—-"is thrown so as to give us the maximum."
"In other words," said Popham feebly, "we are sailing skyward at a rate of—of three thousand miles per—per minute?"
"Presumably. As we left my city lot in New York at about eleven-fifteen, it follows that we have been one hour on the way."
"And should be one hundred and eighty thousand miles from home," faltered Meigs.
"About that," answered the professor calmly. "I do not know just how much our progress was impeded by the atmospheric envelope of the earth, but I think we may call our distance from the mother orb some one hundred and eighty thousand miles, in round numbers."
These startling figures came near to unsettling the three gentlemen again. In that flight through space we were confronting immensities well-nigh beyond our puny comprehension. And the professor was not yet done.
"In the storeroom overhead," he continued, "I have a supply of cubes and insulating compound which I can combine and give tremendous added velocity to the car."
"I am sure we are traveling fast enough," said Meigs, leaning back on the divan hopelessly dejected.
"If you are now ready to listen to reason," proceeded Quinn. "I will tell you how Mr. Munn here saved your lives by rescuing me from your mad attack."
"Our lives, forsooth!" exclaimed Markham bitterly. "Of what value is life to us, situated as we are?"
"That is one way to look at it, of course," rejoined Quinn caustically. "But I did not exile you into planetary space for the purpose of wiping you out of existence."
"You might as well have done so," said Popham severely. "That is what this harum-scarum plot of yours amounts to in the long run."
"You may not care to learn how I am preserving you at the present moment," continued Quinn, "nor how I shall do so in the future, yet I will tell you so that you may understand how much you owe to Mr. Munn's foresight and courage."
I was beginning to entertain a high regard for Quinn in spite of what he had done. He may have been laboring under terrible delusions, but his resource certainly commanded respect.
"To my forethought," he continued, "is due the fact that you are breathing oxygen at this moment; and had I not invented a liquid which fortifies animate or inanimate bodies against heat and cold, our rush through the atmosphere of the earth would have incinerated this car and its contents—nay, would have caused it to explode and settle back on our native planet in impalpable powder."
These were things that none of us, aside from the professor, had so much as taken thought of. My respect for him was growing into something like awe, and I fancied I detected traces of the same sentiment in the other three.
"There are roving bodies in space," Quinn went on, noting with apparent satisfaction the interest he had aroused, "with which we might come into collision. I have a good telescope at the observatory window upstairs, and while I cannot guide this car, I can at least increase or slacken its speed so as to dodge any other derelict that may come into dangerous proximity with us."
"Hadn't you better be up there on the look-out?" queried Markham in some trepidation.
He was manifesting an interest in his personal safety that pleased the professor.
"There is not much danger at present," returned Quinn. "When we have plunged farther into the interstellar void, it will be well to stand watch and watch about at the telescope."
"Will it not be possible to land on some other planet, Mars, for instance?" queried Popham with sudden hope.
"I should prefer Mars," added Meigs, reflecting the hope shown in his friend's face. "They have been signaling from Mars, and perhaps we can find out what they want over there."
Quinn shook his head.
"We are in the hands of fate, gentlemen," said he. "We may drop into some port, but what that port will be is beyond my power even to surmise."
"The moon isn't so far off," suggested Markham.
"Only two hundred and forty thousand miles," said Quinn.
"We should be there in less than two hours from the time of starting," remarked Meigs, after a mental bout with the figures.
"If I wished," said Quinn, "I could increase our speed; traveling at the rate we are, however, something will have to be deducted for the resistance of the earth's atmosphere. If we drop on a planet it must be a planet with an atmosphere. The moon has none, and consequently is a dead world. Besides, fate might not throw us into its vicinity, or——"
"Just a minute, sir," interposed Markham, "for I am a man who likes to understand thoroughly every situation with which he is called upon to deal. You invited us to your castle, not, I am constrained to believe, to have us victimized by Munn, here, nor to have us invest in any of your discoveries, but to snatch us away from the scene of our labors. Is that correct, Professor Quinn?"
"Entirely so, Mr. Markham," replied Quinn.
"Evidently," proceeded Markham, "your plot has cost you some time and labor. You had first to find your gravity-resisting compound——"
"The plot followed as a result of my discovery," smiled the professor. "I did not first evolve the plot and then go searching for means to get you off the earth. When I had made the discovery, it remained for me to give it to the world—or to better the world by taking you four gentlemen away from it. Had I given the public the benefit, you shrewd men of affairs might have devised means for setting it aside, or for controlling it. Not being a business man myself, I feared to take chances. For that reason the present enterprise appealed to me."
"You have planned so well in the smaller details that I wonder you overlooked the main point."
"And that is——"
"What you are going to do with us, now that your plan has succeeded."
The professor tossed his hands deprecatingly as though that was really the most insignificant part of his startling scheme.
"We can't go bobbing around through interstellar space," grumbled Popham. "I don't relish the idea of being cribbed, cabined and confined in a steel room indefinitely. I should go mad from the very thought."
"It's awful to contemplate," said Meigs, casting a melancholy glance through the iron latticework at one of the windows.
The bags of loot were in that vicinity, at the moment, and his glance swerved reproachfully to me.
"We shall make a landing, I have no doubt," said the professor soothingly, "somehow and somewhere."
"By gad, sir," cried Popham, bringing his fist emphatically down on the table, "I don't like such a hit-and-miss way of doing things. Whenever I set out to accomplish anything, the goal is always clear in my mind; yet, here I am, through no desire of my own, afloat in the great void, without a single aim or a remote prospect. If we are going to land anywhere—and you remain firm in your decision not to take us back to our native planet—I demand that you make landfall on some orb that is worth while."
"Very good, Popham," approved Meigs. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, that was the very idea Markham had in mind when he began questioning the professor. Eh, Markham?"
"It was," replied Markham. "A full knowledge of where we are going is necessary to a thorough understanding of our—er—most remarkable situation. Now, there are worlds larger than the one we have recently left. Personally, I am predisposed in favor of a large planet—one on which there are traction interests, fuel supplies, and products of the soil similar to those we have been accustomed to."
Under the spell of Markham's words, Popham began to glow and expand. Meigs, all attention, pressed a little closer.
"The bigger the planet the bigger our field of operations!" cried Popham. "What's the matter with Jupiter?"
"Or Saturn?" echoed Meigs.
"Or Neptune?" put in Markham.