Adrift in the Unknown; or, Queer Adventures in a Queer Realm

Produced by Al Haines.

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*

I. Lost, Strayed, or Stolen? II. An Uninvited Guest III. Professor Quinn's Feat IV. The Plutocrats Reconciled V. Traveling Sunward VI. A Landing Effected VII. Facing a Mercurial Storm VIII. The Mercurials IX. Learning the Word-Box X. How We were Catalogued XI. The Dilemma of Mr. Meigs XII. Condemned to Death XIII. A Threatening Calamity XIV. Plan to Steal a Building XV. Surveying our own Planet XVI. How Ill-Luck Overtook Me XVII. A Change of Heart XVIII. How We Outwitted the King XIX. 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 _eclat_ 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.

"What's the matter with the whole solar system?" inquired Quinn, with gentle irony. He turned to me. "Observe, Mr. Munn, how extravagant are the ideas inspired by monopoly! These gentlemen are hardly started on their journey into space before they forget the business interests, the friends and the environment they are leaving behind and begin planning the commercial conquest of the stars!" He shook his head forebodingly. "Your regeneration," he added to the millionaires, "calls for a landing on some barren world, some outcast of the solar system, where you will have nothing to do but think over the evil of your past and learn something of the duty you owe your fellow-men."

Popham, Markham, and Meigs were visibly annoyed by the professor's remarks. Withdrawing as far as the limits of the steel structure would allow, they put their heads together and held a brief but animated conversation in tones so low that the professor and I could not overhear.

"Think of that, professor!" I muttered. "And yet there are people who find fault with a respectable burglar."

"Softly, Mr. Munn," returned Quinn. "Before we are done with this journey I am fain to believe that all of you will have a different outlook upon life, and a higher regard for your duties of citizenship."

Just then, Popham turned from his friends and stepped toward the professor. His manner was truculent--probably just such a manner as he was accustomed to use in facing a board of obstinate directors.

"If you will not return us to our native planet, Professor Quinn," said he sharply, "then we shall stand upon our rights. We are unalterably opposed to landing upon any orb whose diameter measures less than----"

At that instant a most astounding thing happened. The car ducked sideways, throwing the whole structure out of plumb.

Loose articles began to drop from shelves and other places and to slide across the floor to the lowest point. By a quick movement I saved the lamp and braced myself in an upright position.

Cries of terror went up from Markham, Meigs, and Popham.

"Where's Gilhooly?" shouted the professor.

He was answered by a wild yell from overhead.

"He's in the storeroom!" cried Quinn. "Follow me with that lamp, Munn--quick!"

The professor rushed for the stairway and I made after him with what speed I could.

*Chapter V.*

*Traveling Sunward.*

There never lived a man, I suppose, who did not, at some time or other in his career, submit his veracity to question. A reformed burglar, therefore, although animated by the most disinterested motives, can scarcely hope to escape the shafts of the incredulous.

Although well-grounded in the science of cracksmanship, and with some store of legal learning as to alibis and so forth, my mind was as empty of astronomical lore as a drained bottle. The professor's sayings were jotted down in a sort of commonplace book at a later day when leisure offered.

Memory may have played me false in some few minor points, but in all of major importance this narrative is to be taken with the same sincerity in which it is written. I ask no more of the reader than that; and if he is not averse to strolling through unfrequented ways touching elbows with a man who has a past, we shall get along famously.

To return, then, to the steel car, and the obliquity it suddenly presented to the direction of its course. Startling disclosures had somewhat obscured Gilhooly, and he had vanished from the lower room without being missed.

For a man of sixty-five, the professor was very agile, and he took the winding iron stairway two steps at a time. I gained the storeroom close behind him, and there we found Gilhooly, crooning to himself and working like mad.

He was not working in the dark, but had possessed himself of my bull's-eye lantern, which I had left on descending from the loft some time before. Mounted on a pile of packing cases, he was engaged in painting a large steel cube, taking his pigment from an open cask with a whitewash brush.

"My anti-gravity compound!" exclaimed the professor in an irritated tone. "There are several blocks on the floor, as you can see: Gilhooly began painting that one, and it rose as insulation proceeded, lodging to the left of the dome and tilted the car."

"This is the shabbiest lot of coaches I ever saw in my life," said Gilhooly, dabbing away with the brush. "I won't own a road with such rolling stock."

The three men downstairs had followed Quinn and me. After some coaxing, Meigs got Gilhooly to descend from his perch and give up the whitewash brush.

Thereupon the cube was pried over until it rested directly under another block in the point of the dome, and the professor finished the insulation begun by the railway magnate.

"Gilhooly will have to be watched," said Quinn, "or he will play havoc with the materials I have stored up here. He has wasted at least a quart of that anti-gravity mixture, and it is worth its weight in gold. Nay, it is worth more than that, for after this supply is exhausted there will be none to be had for love or money.

"Our rate of speed has been multiplied by two, and we are rushing through space with frightful rapidity. There is my telescope"--and the professor pointed to the instrument which stood beneath a window in the sloping roof of the car. "Suppose Gilhooly had demolished that! Or what if he had wrecked the oxygen vat, or the anti-temperature reservoir! Gentlemen, I shudder to think of what might have happened."

The professor sank down on a copper tank and brushed his perspiring brow with a bandanna handkerchief. I placed the lamp on a box beside the bull's-eye lantern and reclined on a bale of something or other that lay conveniently near.

Meigs and Popham dropped down on a packing case with Gilhooly moored between them, and Markham took up his station on an overturned cask.

The loft of the car, stored as it was with odds and ends of science, together with a supply of provisions made ready for us by the farsighted and wonderful man who was conducting this select party into the unknown, was an object of deep solicitude and interest.

Out of a desire to tag the various materials understandingly, I lifted the lid of my curiosity and let out a few questions.

"If I mistake not," said I, "you mentioned this anti-temperature material once before. What is it, professor?"

"A liquid," he answered amiably. "As a discovery, it is outranked only by my anti-gravity compound. An ounce of the fluid in a bath renders the bather impervious to heat or cold, keeping in the animal caloric and keeping out all other extremes of temperature. Some of the mixture was incorporated into the paint with which this car is coated.

"Yonder is the water receptacle," and the professor nodded toward a large tank opposite him. "With economy, the supply in that reservoir will last us several months. The food I have provided is of the ready-prepared kind, mostly in tins, with an alcohol lamp for the brewing of tea, coffee, and chocolate. During this hegira into infinity I have omitted nothing, gentlemen, which will minister to your comfort."

"You are a very able man, professor," acknowledged Popham. "How long have you been planning this little excursion?"

"Ever since I began erecting what the Harlemites were pleased to call my castle," smiled Quinn. "The plan was conceived at the time the success of the manipulations of yourself and your friends seemed assured."

"It was your purpose to foil the speculative gentlemen," I struck in, "and so come to the aid of a long-suffering public?"

"You hit off the matter finely, Mr. Munn," replied the professor. "That was my purpose."

"Could not your anti-temperature mixture have been donated to the poor with beneficial results?"

"It is altogether too expensive for general use. I will not conceal from you gentlemen the fact that we are falling sunward. If we make landfall on a planet where the heat is several hundred degrees beyond our earthly powers of endurance, the mixture in question will preserve us."

"Falling sunward!" exclaimed Markham. "It was hard upon midnight when we left the earth. If my school-day learning is not at fault, the sun, at the hour of our departure, was on the opposite side of our planet. How, then, does it happen that we are falling toward the great luminary?"

"Bravo!" cried the professor, vastly pleased. "I am glad to see, Mr. Markham, that your intellect has not suffered a total eclipse by the demands of commercial supremacy. Night is the result of one of the Earth's hemispheres being turned from the sun, and, other things being equal, we should now be falling toward the outer limits of our solar system; but, if I may use the term, the castle was not aimed for a direct fall from the earth's crust. We dropped at a very sharp angle, and the influence of the sun has attracted us still farther out of a straight course. I trust you follow me?"

The three millionaires understood the situation, but, judging from the expression of their faces, the knowledge brought keen disappointment.

"There are only two planets between the earth and the sun," observed Markham, "Mercury and Venus, if I remember rightly."

"Both insignificant," grumbled Popham.

"Venus is about the size of our own planet, gentlemen," said the professor. "However, it has long been supposed that there is another group of planets between Mercury and the sun, among them a little world called Vulcan, which----"

"That does not interest us," cut in Meigs. "Sunward the planets are smaller, but they get larger as you go the other way."

"Larger," expounded the professor, "but less dense."

"As I was about to tell you, a moment ago," pursued Popham, "Meigs, Markham, and I have decided that either Saturn or Mars would about fill the bill so far as we are concerned. There are lights on Mars, which, as we figure it, presupposes electricity; and electricity means civilization to a degree that affords us a promising prospect. Then, again, there are canals on Mars, and, if canals, certainly water transportation. Transportation problems of any sort will interest Gilhooly; indeed, we are prone to think they would bring him back to his normal poise. Saturn, on the other hand, has rings, and such a condition might afford opportunities to wide-awake men such as are unknown anywhere else in the solar system. Take us either to Mars or to Saturn, Professor Quinn, as you may find it most convenient. We demand it!"

"It is impossible to do anything of that kind, Mr. Popham," returned the professor decidedly. "The influence of the sun upon our course is too powerful."

"Are we to understand, then," cried Markham, "that we are compelled to put up with either Mercury or Venus?"

"Even there, gentlemen, we have no choice. We are in the grip of circumstances and must perforce accept whatever fate throws our way. Possibly we shall become a satellite of the sun, revolving around and around it--Quinn's Planet, the smallest of any in the great system."

Although I felt drowsy, I aroused myself with an effort and kept sharp eyes on the professor's face. I do not think he was in earnest, but merely talking to see what effect his remarks would have on the three millionaires.

"Corner, corner, corner," babbled Gilhooly; "make a corner, corner everything."

Markham dropped his face in his hands, Meigs bowed his head, and I saw a shiver run through Popham.

"Egad," muttered Popham, "this castle of yours, Quinn, is little short of a steel tomb. Inasmuch as we are safely interred, what's the use of living? Gilhooly is the only fortunate one among us, for his reason is shattered and he cannot realize what he is facing."

"You are talking less like a man, now, Popham," reproved Quinn, "than like a driveling idiot. While there's life there's hope. How many brilliant minds have been overthrown as a result of your manipulations of stock in Wall Street? How many bright futures have been wrecked by an adverse trend of the speculative market? Were those unfortunates any better off because thrust into madhouses and unable to realize the fate that had overtaken them? For shame, sir!"

"You are perfectly sure, are you, professor," I struck in, attempting to give a more pleasant twist to the conversation, "that we shall come out all right in the end?"

"I have my plans, Mr. Munn," he answered, not unkindly, "and the success or failure of them will depend largely upon the mental attitude of these gentlemen."

This was too deep for me, and I cast about for some equally important question which would bring a less indefinite response.

"Anyhow," said I, "we have plenty of food for a long journey? It would be a fearful thing to have a famine so--so many miles from a base of supplies."

"The food supply, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "is adequate. There will be no famine."

"And the water, the oxygen, the----"

"I have looked after everything necessary to our safety and comfort."

I had confidence in Quinn. He had shown that he was an able man, and that his promises were to be taken at face value. With a sigh of relief, I settled back in tolerable comfort.

Meigs took the role of questioner out of my hands at this point, and, although I was eager to hear all that was said, "tired nature's sweet restorer" got the better of my curiosity and I fell asleep on the bale.

*Chapter VI.*

*A Landing Effected.*

It is not my purpose to cumber this narrative with the smaller details of our journey, novel and thrilling though some of them proved to be. It is with our experiences on the planet which finally claimed us that this account has mostly to do, so I shall glide over intermediate incidents in a somewhat cursory manner.

Our faculties, keyed to an understanding of earthly conditions only, found themselves continually at bay; and at nothing did they stand more aghast than at the lightning-like speed with which we shot through space.

The energy developed by the two insulated cubes gave to our steel car the stupendous velocity of one hundred miles per second, six thousand miles per minute, three hundred and sixty thousand miles per hour! Human reason might well falter at the threshold of such immensity.

Yet while I slept peacefully on that bale in the storeroom, these figures were verified by the professor and J. Archibald Meigs, who happened to be the only two who were wide awake. It has been my lasting regret that they did not rouse me so that I might also have had a view of the noble spectacle for the first time unrolled to earthly eyes.

We passed the moon, a dreary, burned-out world, and the professor was able to check off two hundred and forty thousand miles of our sunward plunge. We had traveled a little more than half an hour at our ultimate velocity; taking this into consideration, and noting the exact minute when we crossed the centre of the satellite's orbit, the professor was able to do some figuring and so test his theories as to speed.

The car skimmed through ether less than five hundred miles above the lunar crust. Quinn was doubly pleased, for he not only proved that our velocity was substantially as he had supposed, but also discovered that the moon's attraction, so powerful on the tides of our mother sphere, could not swerve the car by a hair's breadth from its direct course, or overcome the influence of the sun.

Meigs told me later that the marvelous beauty of the satellite, gleaming against the black void with ghostly radiance, was probably worth the trip and its attendant inconveniences. He and Quinn had looked their fill on the hemisphere which is never seen from the earth.

After this the hours literally flew past, the novelty of our journey precluding any such thing as monotony. In fact, we hardly allowed ourselves a sufficient amount of time for rest and refreshment.

A lookout was kept continually at the eye-piece of the telescope to signal the approach of any asteroid with which we might possibly come into collision. Only once did this danger threaten us, and then, as may be supposed, it was the professor who proved our salvation.

The lever in the wall of the lower or living room of the car communicated with screens, ingeniously arranged for shutting off the power of the anti-gravity cubes. By lessening our speed, the professor suffered the asteroid to cross our course, our car ducking through the luminous trail that swept out behind it.

Night reigned around us constantly. Our car caught the rays of the sun, it is true, but the lack of an atmosphere caused the light to be thrown back into space and lost.

The castle was nothing less than a small planet, attended by five satellites which, held to our vicinity by the car's attraction, circled around us continually. These satellites were the four knotted handkerchiefs containing the tribute I had levied upon the plutocrats, and also the revolver which had assisted me in the work.

These objects went through varied phases exactly as more pretentious satellites would have done. It would be difficult to describe my feelings as I watched them from the car windows.

I am prone to think, at the present writing, that this lost booty, waxing and waning under my eyes, planted in my nature those first seeds of regret which finally grew into a reformation.

I recall a conversation that I had with Markham while I sat with my eye at the lower end of the telescope, watching for stray asteroids.

The millionaires had given me to understand that I was not in their set. Circumstances over which they had no control had brought us together within the narrow confines of the car, but no social barriers had been leveled. Occasionally the novelty of our situation, and the consequent excitement, would cause one or other of the wealthy gentleman to forget the gulf that yawned between us.

This attitude of the magnate afforded me a good deal of innocent enjoyment. They had left social prestige, no less than their bank accounts, behind them, and what little collateral they had had upon their persons was now "satelliting" about the car. The line they drew between themselves and me, in their thoughtful moments, was a distinction without much of a difference.

Markham, I remember, was munching a sandwich, contrived out of two crackers and a slice of tinned beef.

"Did you never reflect, Mr. Munn," said he, "upon the evil of your past?"

"When a man writes books which are mainly drawn from his own experience, Mr. Markham," said I, "he has to go into his past pretty exhaustively."

"Ah, yes, I was forgetting about the books. Were you not horrified with the results of your retrospection?"

"Horrified? Well, yes, here and there. I lost a big haul once through the breaking of a jimmy, and I was horrified to think how any dealer in burglar's kits could have foisted such an unreliable instrument upon a well-meaning cracksman."

Markham stared at me dazedly.

"I have set down the experience in Chapter One of 'Forty Ways for Cracking Safes,'" I proceeded, "and one of the first of my ten rules for success in any safe-cracking job was this: Be sure that your kit is reliable, and without flaws."

"Mr. Munn, Mr. Munn!" whispered Markham hoarsely. "Think of the people from whom you have taken property dishonestly."

"I never think of them but to wish that I had been able to relieve them of more."

"This is awful!" muttered Markham. "You really exult over what you have done."

He would have started down the iron stairs had I not restrained him with a word.

"Let me ask you something, Mr. Markham," said I. "Last fall, bread went to ten cents a loaf because the wheat market was cornered--and a man by the name of Markham did the cornering. The people who had to put up that extra five cents missed it more than did those from whom I took five hundred dollars."

Markham coughed. "Any asteroids in sight?" he inquired absently.

"I wonder if _you_ ever did any reflecting?" I asked tartly.

"What do you think of Quinn?" and Markham looked away as I took my eye from the telescope and gave him an expressive wink.

"I don't think," I continued, "that you ever wrote a book called 'Forty Ways to Starve the Poor.' You have material enough for a pretty effective volume on the subject, but you haven't my nerve."

"No," he returned slowly, "I haven't your nerve. It requires unalloyed impudence and a mind incapable of clear thinking to liken the results of high finance with those of your own petty and highly criminal proceedings. You are too bright a man, Mr. Munn, to allow yourself to be led afield by sophistries of that kind."

"Mr. Markham, Mr. Markham!" I breathed, in horrified protest.

"You have bolstered up your nefarious business with false ideals," he went on, "and you are unregenerate and lost!"

"This is awful!" I murmured.

"When we get to where we are going," pursued Markham, either failing to note my sarcasm or else hoping to ride it down, "I trust you will hold your criminal instincts in check. If there are any people there, don't give them any false ideals or implant the notion that your standards belong to the rest of us."

"I would not so belittle my ideals," I returned bluntly.

"Sir," he cried sharply, "am I to understand that you set yourself up as being any better than Mr. Popham, Mr. Gilhooly, Mr. Meigs, or myself?"

"What you understand doesn't concern me in the least," I answered airily. "What you don't understand, it strikes me, is the matter that ought to claim your attention."

"Confound you, sir! Your overwhelming ignorance is equalled only by your colossal egotism. I am sorry that I allowed myself to be beguiled into any talk with you."

"Our regrets are mutual," said I, "for your conversation is demoralizing. You are a past master in successful trickery--trickery of the sort that ought to be stamped out. If the law was as quick to deal with you as with me----"

"Hold!" fumed Markham, plunging for the stairs, "I have heard enough."

I have said that I was a hard man, in those times. I could call a spade a spade with never a thought that my angle of vision was distorted. I have regretted expressing my views in this frank fashion to Markham, yet I believe that there was injustice in his remarks no less than in mine.

Being the only person in the car who possessed a watch, the professor appointed me official time-keeper. It was my duty to bulletin the hour, with its equivalent in days such as we were accustomed to, upon a blackboard in the lower room; I had also to enter this information upon a book, which the professor called the "log-book."

Every ten hours we had a class in astronomy, with the professor as instructor and with every man save Gilhooly and the lookout as students. The railway magnate's aberration continued; all we could do was to watch him solicitously and prevent him from doing any injury to himself or to our paraphernalia.

The class learned that the nearest planet with an atmosphere, and supposedly habitable, was Venus, which, at inferior conjunction, is distant some twenty-five million miles from Terra, as Quinn called our own planet. Counting out the delays at starting, and in maneuvring to escape the asteroid, our instructor asserted that we should reach Venus in something like seventy-five hours.

Markham, Meigs, and Popham, on consulting the bulletin board and finding that seventy hours had passed, began to brush their clothes and tidy themselves against the hour of landing. But they were destined to disappointment.

Unable to locate Venus at the point where he had hoped to find it, the professor decided that it was nearing superior conjunction and was somewhere on the other side of the sun. Meigs made a deplorable display of temper.

Quinn was a mighty poor astronomer, he said sneeringly, if he could find himself so far wide of the mark on such a simple matter. Meigs further added--with a good deal of childishness as I thought--that the role of a derelict was distasteful to him: a derelict, he argued, was nothing more than a tramp, and he objected to being a tramp, even a celestial tramp.

I was out of patience with the man. Admiration for the professor had taken fast hold of me and I would not have him sneered at or maligned.

A war of hot words was on between myself and the Wall Street broker when Quinn interfered.

"True," said he, "we have missed Venus by a few millions of miles, but we are aimed directly at the orbit of another world, and I can so manipulate the lever as to wait for it, if necessary, and drop upon its surface when it overtakes us."

"What world is that?" said Popham, pricking tip his ears.

"Mercury," answered the professor. "It is the smallest orb in our solar system and measures some three thousand miles in diameter."

"I thought Venus was rather contracted for men with such large schemes as ourselves," remarked Meigs, shaking his head, "but this other planet seems to be smaller still."

"I wonder if they have coal mines there?" murmured Popham meditatively.

"And if they grow wheat and cotton?" added Meigs.

"If Mercury is inhabited," spoke up Markham eagerly, "food will certainly be as necessary there as on the earth. I don't know, gentlemen, but it strikes me we might fall into worse places."

"Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "What a pity it will be if the Mercurials prove to have traction interests!"

"How long before we shall reach this planet you speak of, professor?" inquired Popham.

"Well," answered Quinn thoughtfully, "Mercury is rather slow. It travels along its orbit at the rate of thirty miles per second, while we are moving at one hundred miles. At a rough estimate, I should say we can effect a juncture with the planet in ten hours, although an extra hour may be required for maneuvres to secure a landing."

The ten hours that followed were hours of great anxiety and feverish labor. Believing that my nerves were the steadiest, the professor placed me at the telescope to act as pilot while he served as engineer and manipulated the lever.

The responsibilities of my position so worked upon me that I had no time for the glories of the planet we were endeavoring to intercept. Through the telescope I saw huge mountains and broad plains, but they were blurred over with a reddish light and the lesser details of topography were lost.

When five hours were gone, the professor left the lever and came upstairs to have a look through the telescope for himself.

"You have done very well indeed, Mr. Munn," he was pleased to say, "but I think that I had better take this post from now on, while you go below and station yourself at the switch board. The slightest mismanagement, when the critical moment arrives, might hurl us against Mercury with a force that would result in annihilation.

"The lever turns in a half circle, as you may know. The arc is divided into spaces, numbered from zero to ninety. I will call down to you the number to which you must throw the lever; you will repeat the number back to me, and instantly obey my order."

"Trust me, sir," said I.

But the professor was loath to let me go without still further impressing upon me the importance of the work before us.

"In order to alight safely, Mr. Munn," he continued, "we must graduate the power of the anti-gravity cubes to the Mercurial atmosphere. By proceeding intelligently in the matter, we shall make the car weigh slightly more than the atmosphere we encounter; then, when we are about to land, we will let the car just counterbalance the 'pull' of the planet and there will not be the slightest jar."

"I understand, professor," I answered and went downstairs.

Markham, Meigs, and Popham ascended to the upper chamber, this position bringing them a few feet nearer the goal of our desires as well as giving them a point of vantage from which to watch events. Gilhooly was the only one besides myself in the lower room; he was kneeling on the divan writing imaginary stock quotations on the steel wall with the point of his finger.

For four hours or more the professor called out for slight variations in the speed of the car, but in the main the lever was held on the number, 90, which gave a maximum velocity. The tension of the minutes ushering in the last hour of the ten is beyond my power to describe.

Once in my evil days I manipulated the tumblers of a combination and pulled open a vault door. Behind the door stood two men with revolvers. For two seconds I stared agape at the trap which I had sprung upon myself; and when I got away I had a bullet in my shoulder.

Intensify my feelings fourfold as I stood looking into the leveled revolvers of those two men, then spread out the two seconds to cover a half hour. In this way only can I describe my state of mind while we fought for a safe landing on the planet Mercury.

Cries of wonder and apprehension echoed to me from overhead. Above them I heard the shrill voice of the professor:

"Zero."

"Zero," I repeated, throwing the lever clear over.

There followed a jolt as the screens covered the cubes and shut off their energy. Instantly there came the sickening sensation of a fall, accompanied by a rush of displaced air that roared and bellowed all about the car.

"Forty-five!" shrieked Quinn.

"Forty-five!" I yelled, throwing the lever half over.

Then we caught ourselves with a suddenness that threw me to my knees. We were moving upward again--I could feel the steel floor rising under me.

"Twenty!" came down from above.

"Twenty," I answered hoarsely, struggling erect and shifting the lever.

I felt that we were still rising, but slowly. The professor was juggling with an unknown atmosphere, and on the success of his judgment depended our lives.

"Fifteen!"

"Fifteen!" and over went the lever for five degrees.

We were swinging stationary in mid-air. From the window by the switch board I looked outward and downward with bulging eyes.

A dazzling glow covered peak and plain, and I turned away that my sight might not be blinded to the lever numbers.

"Ten!" cried the professor.

"Ten it is!" and I threw the switch to the number given.

Then again we dropped, but slowly, very slowly.

"Five!"

I repeated the order, and again the air rushed against the blunt base of the car, yet not so fiercely as before. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a grip of fingers about my throat, and I was hauled from the lever and thrown back on the floor.

Gilhooly had a knee on my breast and was strangling me with fingers of steel. The fire of an insane purpose gleamed in his eyes, and he seemed possessed of the strength of a dozen demons.

I struggled, but I might as well have tried to rise under the thousand-tons pressure of a hydraulic press.

"Ten!" cried Quinn.

I did not answer--I could not, for my tongue was lolling between my lips.

"Ten!" screamed Quinn. "_Ten--or we're lost!_"

A groan, hardly audible, escaped my gasping throat. I heard a frantic clamor above and then there was such a jar and crash as I hope I shall never experience again.

All tangible life slipped away from me, and I collapsed into an unconsciousness that I felt might be death itself.

*Chapter VII.*

*Facing A Mercurial Storm.*

That our lives were preserved and the car saved from destruction was due to two circumstances, one of them most peculiar and of far-reaching importance.

The lesser of the two circumstances was this: the car had not dropped to the plain, but had had its downward rush intercepted by an elevation, so that the force of our fall was just about half what might have been expected.

As to the other and more vital circumstance, the fall itself was not what it would have been on our own sphere. The "pull" of gravity on Mercury, as we afterward discovered, has only one-third the power it has on Terra. To this phenomenon were due many wonderful things, as the reader will discover before we have gone very far.

I was not the first of our party to open his eyes after the landing, for when I sat up and stared about me I saw the professor moving around the steel chamber and ministering to the others.

Gilhooly was creeping toward the divan on all fours, muttering something about "a great slump in the market" and chuckling over the way in which he had "got out from under."

J. Archibald Meigs was groaning and trying to lift himself on his elbow; Augustus Popham was on his knees, wobbling erratically and apparently undecided whether to say his prayers or to try and get up; Hannibal Markham was flattened out along the floor, the professor kneeling over him and chafing his temples.

"What sort of a navigator are you, Quinn?" asked Meigs crossly. "By gad, it is more dangerous to make port with you than it is to sail through space."

"Don't blame the professor for a fault of mine, Meigs," I spoke up warmly.

The broker looked at me with something like contempt.

"I blame him for placing an incompetent and irresponsible person at such an important post as the switch board," said Meigs. "He should have known that a man who holds your distorted views on the subject of personal property is not to be trusted."

"That's right," added Popham, lifting himself to the divan.

"Gilhooly made an attack on me," said I. "He bore me down and came within one of strangling me."

"Quinn is the cause of Gilhooly's abnormal condition," persisted Meigs, who was bound to have Quinn at fault for every evil that overtook us.

I got up, rather more wrathful than the situation demanded. The fall had jarred my temper no less than my body, and I was in a mood to have the business out with Meigs at close quarters.

"Softly, Mr. Munn!" cautioned the professor. "It is well to have a deaf ear for these gentlemen at times. Help me lift Mr. Markham to the divan."

The professor's words dispelled my anger. Without another word to Meigs I went over and assisted in getting the food trust magnate into a more comfortable position.

Markham was not long in recovering, and when we took stock of ourselves we found that we were not much the worse for our shaking up. Quinn called to me to go upstairs with him and see if any havoc had been wrought there.

We found that no particular damage had been done to the instruments or other material. When we descended to the lower chamber, after an absence of fifteen or twenty minutes, Meigs had the key in the steel door and was standing at the entrance with Popham and Markham on either side of him.

"Where did you get that key?" demanded the professor, one hand groping in his pocket.

Heretofore he had been careful to keep the key upon his person. Small wonder that he was now surprised to find it in the possession of Meigs.

"I found it on the floor," replied the broker with a good deal of dignity. "Probably you lost it out of your pocket when you fell from the stairs a few minutes ago."

"What are you intending to do?" asked the professor quietly.

"Professor Quinn, sir," returned Meigs with elaborate condescension, "we have reached the parting of the ways. While we were traveling through space, I and my friends could do nothing less than bear with your company, and with that of the rogue at your side; but now that we are safely moored on Mercury, and can debark, we see fit to withdraw ourselves and renounce further intercourse with you."

"Ah!" murmured Quinn, a slow smile hovering about his thin lips.

The smile caused some acerbity to manifest itself in the three gentlemen at the door. They drew themselves up haughtily.

"Quinn," went on the broker sharply, "you lured us into your castle and abducted us from our native orb, with small regard for the feelings of our relatives or friends, and no consideration whatever for the business interests with which we were engaged; so----"

"Your business interests had my every consideration," interrupted the professor.

Meigs took no notice of the remark.

"So," he continued, "remembering these wrongs, we feel that we can no longer associate with you. As for Munn"--here he turned a fastidious eye in my direction--"he is utterly impossible to men of our social standing. This planet, you tell us, is three thousand miles in diameter. May we request that you and Munn take one end of the diameter and leave the other end to us?"

The professor laughed softly and seated himself.

"Sit down, Mr. Munn," said he. "We have been ostracized by our fellow-exiles. Let us see how well they get along without us."

"We bid you farewell," finished Meigs loftily.

Thereupon he turned the key, threw open the door--and dropped on the threshold as though he had been shot! Markham and Popham cried aloud, threw their arms across their faces and reeled back.

A blast as from a furnace drove in at the opening, filling the chamber like a draft from Hades. I could scarcely breathe in the stifling atmosphere.

"Hurry, Munn!" cried Quinn. "Drag Meigs away from the door or he'll be burned to a crisp!"

The broker was already smoking when I caught his ankles and jerked him inside. The professor slammed the door.

Presently the air within the car readjusted itself to normal conditions. Meigs, red as a beet and breathing heavily, was little the worse for his warm experience.

"I fancy, Mr. Meigs," cooed the professor, "that you will wish to avail yourself of one of my anti-temperature baths before cutting loose from myself and Mr. Munn. There is plenty of water left for all of us, and I will go aloft, set up the collapsible tub, and make the bath ready. We have alighted in the tropics, evidently, and at the period of mid-summer. The temperature is about five hundred degrees, fahrenheit."

With that the professor took the key from the door to keep Gilhooly from making a dash outside, and started for the storeroom. I followed him, the three disgruntled gentlemen gazing after us mutely.

The professor and I were the first to fortify ourselves with the anti-temperature bath. After dipping our bodies, we rinsed our clothing in the liquid.

Aside from a pleasant, cooling sensation the bath gave no evidence of its potent qualities. There was no hardening of the skin, as I fancied there might be, no change in its ruddy color, no inconvenience.

When we went down again we sent the other three gentlemen aloft, the professor instructing them as to the necessity of making their clothing as well as their bodies proof against the climate. In due course, Popham, Meigs, and Markham once more showed themselves.

Gilhooly, of course, had also to be made immune; and he struggled against it so fiercely that we were obliged to hold him in the tub while the professor poured three buckets of the mixture over him.

He was not disrobed, and when sufficiently drenched he leaped from the tub and fled, raving, to the lower chamber.

"Now," said the professor, "we are prepared to fare forth. You gentlemen"--he addressed himself to Markham, Meigs, and Popham--"may go with Mr. Munn and me, or keep by yourselves, as you may elect. But it will be well to make this car our headquarters. Here we have food and drink, also a stronghold in case of attack by the Mercurials--if there happen to be any."

"How can there be any life in such an over-heated atmosphere?" inquired Markham.

"Nature is a great leveler of barriers," replied Quinn. "She is able to adjust life to its environment, you may be sure, just as easily as she can bridge the social chasm that separates a thief from a trust magnate."

His eyes twinkled.

"Such a bridge," he added, "would not prove much of a tax on her resources. For my own part, I do not think the chasm either so wide or so deep as you gentlemen appear to imagine."

I chuckled at that, and Meigs and his two companions grew duly resentful.

"As for Mr. Gilhooly," continued Quinn, "we cannot take him with us on our tour of observation. It will be best to leave him locked in the car. I will close the trap leading into the store-room and I do not think it will be possible for him to work much damage in the room below."

"I don't know what good it will do me to go out with your exploring expedition," said Popham dejectedly; "in a country as hot as this there can be no earthly use for coal."

"Or wearing apparel," added Meigs listlessly. "Cotton couldn't grow in such a temperature. And as for wheat!" He shook his head wearily.

Cotton and wheat were the abc of his Wall Street experience. Beyond those commodities he groped in the dark.

"What sort of food can be grown on such a sun-baked planet?" grumbled Markham.

The railway man was shouting something about watered stock, and his babbling was wafted up to us.

"Gilhooly," added Markham, "is the only fortunate man in the party. Realization will blast the hopes and mayhap prove the death of the rest of us, while he--he cannot realize!"

"You gentlemen lose courage too quickly," said the professor. "In my lectures on Venus I told you how that planet was inclined to the plane of its orbit. The axis of Mercury has a still greater inclination; in fact, the orb leans on itself as though about to fall. Its days are of about the same length as the days of Terra--only three minutes longer--but its years, owing to its contracted orbit, are much shorter. In eighty-eight days Mercury makes its round, so that each season is only twenty-two days in length.

"At the poles of Mercury, in what answers to the polar regions of our own earth, there must be a more tempered climate----"

"Then let us get there, by all means," cut in Popham.

"In whatever we do," answered Quinn, "we must make haste slowly."

"Let's get out and look around, anyhow," cried Meigs. "It may happen, after all, that we have a world to conquer here, and I have not the patience to remain longer in this steel cell of yours."

"Very good," returned the professor. "We will make our preparations and go forth."

He shut off the flow of oxygen from the tank and then followed the rest of us to the under apartment, closing a steel door over the trap at the head of the stairs and locking it. Gilhooly, imagining himself a conductor, was walking around the edge of the circular divan collecting tickets from imaginary passengers.

"Sing Sing!" he called out as the professor unlocked the door at the entrance and pulled it open.

"Here's where you get off, Munn," said Meigs maliciously.

"Here's where we all get off," returned the professor, smiling.

Thereupon we passed hastily into the blinding glare of the Mercurial day. For several minutes our eyes rebelled at the brightness; when finally they became inured to it, we looked around us upon a desolation that struck dismay to our hearts.

We saw then that our car had alighted upon an elevation which was nothing less than the rim of an extinct volcano of vast proportions. From ridge to ridge across the abysmal crater at least half a mile could be measured.

It was beyond the power of our eyes to penetrate to the black depths of the great pit.

"Listen!" cried the professor, his voice resounding so thunderously as almost to deafen us--some trick of the atmosphere.

We stood silently, our ears alert, and heard a confused babel of sound proceeding apparently out of the very core of the volcano.

"Sub-Mercurial fires may be at work down there," whispered the professor, nodding toward the crater.

Even the whisper sounded unpleasantly loud to us.

"What a world!" came from Augustus Popham in bellowing tones. "With fire within and without, what chance is there for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"

Some of Meigs' peevishness had got into the coal man, and he rent the air with it. We remained mule after this outburst, I with my gaze hopefully on the professor and the professor blinking at the sun.

In a little time I allowed my own eyes to falter zenithward, and the glory of the sun in Mercury's mid-heaven has ever since been one of the treasured memories of my life. Its disk was six times its diameter as viewed from Earth, and the grandeur of its flaming surface is beyond the powers of my feeble pen to make known.

I was oppressed and held captive by a feeling of awe and wonder. There was a red tinge to the atmosphere, caused by a reflection from the red of the planet's brick-like crust; through this warm color pulsed the golden streamers--yellow and scarlet overhead, fading to faintest orange on the horizon.

"Think you, Mr. Popham," murmured the professor, his voice awakening us as from a trance, "that all yon splendor, which has been in these skies for ages upon ages, was created for the enjoyment of no living thing? If so, you are wrong. There are now, as there have always been, beings with an intelligence capable of appreciating all this magnificent profusion of light and color. But enough. We have looked down into the crater and up into the heavens; suppose we turn our eyes another way and see what there is to offer."

He faced about as he spoke, and gazed down the bare rocky slope of the volcano and off across an equally bare and forbidding plain.

"No trees, no water, no life of any kind," muttered Meigs querulously.

"There is a bright spot over there," said Quinn, shading his eyes and pointing.

Our eyes followed his finger and encountered a glittering object on a slight elevation. As we gazed, the object, whatever it was, slowly vanished.

"We might investigate that," suggested Popham excitedly. "Perhaps it was a Mercurial wearing a sort of armor to protect him from the heat. It may be that there are people here, and that they live underground."

He would have started forthwith, but the professor stretched out a hand and detained him.

"Just a moment," said Quinn. "Before we get too far from the car, let me make sure that all of you are sufficiently immune from the heat. Do you feel that you are fully protected in that respect, gentlemen?"

So far as I was personally concerned, I had not felt the slightest inconvenience from the sun's rays. I declared as much, and the others likewise so expressed themselves.

"There's another one of the things!" spoke up Meigs, pointing in another direction.

We were just able to detect a glow on another low elevation when it also flashed into thin air. Then we began looking for the little hills, and counted no less than a dozen within our range of vision.

Some of the hills were capped with the mysterious gleam, which dazzled for a time and then twinkled out.

The professor was perplexed, as I could see plainly.

"We'll examine one of those hills," said Meigs, "and find out what this means."

The top of the volcano, where we were standing, was perhaps five hundred feet from the plain. As Meigs spoke, he leaped for a rock a yard or so below him.

To the astonishment of all of us, he rose in the air like a human balloon, soared over the rock by a score of feet, and alighted several rods down the slope.

It was a titanic jump, but Meigs had regained a foothold with the lightness of a piece of down. He was a large man, was Meigs, his ponderosity exceeding two hundred pounds, Fairbanks.

He was as much surprised at his agility as we were, and began to essay various feats. He leaped straight upward, gaining a maximum height of a dozen yards and returning lightly and easily to his original position.

Next he coupled his leap with an aerial somersault, and carried on with an abandon much beneath the dignity of a Wall Street broker, as it struck me. In fact, he acted like a schoolboy out for a holiday, and so full of animal spirits he hardly knew what to do with himself.

"You'd think he belonged to a circus," observed the disgusted Popham. "I'll go down there and put a stop to the performance."

"And I'll go along and help," added Markham, visibly distracted because of the broker's folly.

They started down the steep with rod-long steps; and presently one would have thought they wore seven-league boots from the amount of speed they developed.

Instead of putting a stop to the broker's performance they joined in. By and by they were playing leapfrog, every bound taking them forward half a hundred feet.

"Gravity here is far from having the force it has on Terra," remarked the professor. "Exertion comes easy and gives most astonishing results. Those men, Mr. Munn, are not used to such activity, yet their marvelous gymnastics do not seem to tire them in the least. Suppose that we ourselves make a test of the Mercurial gravity?"

I needed no second bidding, and Quinn and I took the descent as buoyantly as thistle-down before the wind. Somehow the lightness of our heels got into our heads, and the staid professor and myself began cavorting like a pair of ten-year-olds.

The delightful freedom of movement, was as novel as it was exhilarating. Liberty of muscle bred license of mind; had we been smoking opium we could not have acted more outrageously.

Nor was there any fatigue apparent. I felt that I could have run a hundred miles in as many minutes and never paused for breath.

Carried away by the wonderful effects of diminished gravity, we forgot all about our projected investigation of the little hills. In the midst of a game of tag we were suddenly brought to our senses with a round turn.

A pall had fallen over the landscape. The sun was blotted out by inky clouds, and a tremendous wind began to blow.

"We must get back to the car!" cried Quinn.

His voice, great in volume though it was, was all but drowned in the shriek and roar of the blast. The lightness that had afforded us so much enjoyment in still air now became a source of grave danger, for we could not keep our feet in the fury of the tempest.

"Merciful powers!" roared Popham, as he and Meigs were driven against each other with a terrific impact.

Although sorely put to it to keep myself from being blown away, I managed to cling to a rock and watch the weird gyrations of the two millionaires. Their collision had caused them to lose their footing, and, clinging desperately to each other, they were hurled back and forth, touching the ground now and then, only to rebound from it like rubber balls. And all the time this ground-and-lofty tumbling was going on both men were whooping frantically for some one to come to their aid.

I was too hard beset to think of leaving my place of temporary refuge, and it was only when I saw the professor and Markham, their right hands clasped, staggering toward the two men, that I made up my mind to join them. Three of us, in a chain, might be able to do something toward rescuing Popham and Meigs.

Breathing deep, like a swimmer about to plunge through a whirlpool, I cast myself adrift and allowed the wind to drive me in the direction of the professor and Markham. No matter how strongly I braced backward against the blast, every time I lifted a foot I was hurled onward and almost overturned. Finally, more by good luck than anything else, I came close enough to catch the professor's hand.

"Popham and Meigs will be killed if we can't get to them!" shouted Markham.

There were eddies in the wind, like those in the swift current of a stream, and Popham and Meigs had become entangled in them. Had they been blown off on a straightaway course, they would long since have been too far away for us to do anything toward laying hands on them and getting them upright.

The professor had taken note of the gyratory movements of our hapless companions, and he called upon Markham and me to plant ourselves as firmly as possible and remain in our present positions. This was easier said than done; yet, by calling upon every ounce of our reserve strength, we contrived, after a fashion, to keep our places.

Popham and Meigs were bounding and leaping through the arc of a great circle. All we had to do was to remain where we were and wait for them.

They came to us in mid-air, and we had literally to reach up and pull them down. For a space the five of us were tangled in an indiscriminate heap, our united weight offering greater resistance to the wind and giving us an opportunity to rest and collect our scattered wits.

"Join hands," cried the professor, "and we'll get under the lee of that rock. Careful, now! We must not get separated again."

By desperate work we succeeded in getting to our feet and clasping hands; then, hurled and buffeted, we gained the rock and fell breathless under the leeward side of it.

"What a place, what a place!" groaned Popham.

"I wish Venus hadn't been out of our course," wailed Meigs. "Certainly we couldn't have been any worse off there than here."

"No wonder nothing can grow on this sun-scorched world," growled Markham. "Even if plants could stand the heat such a wind would pull them up by the roots."

"What are we to do now?" demanded Popham. "You got us into this, Quinn, and you've got to get us out of it."

"Now's a good time for you three to go off to the other side of the planet," I remarked. "Whenever there's danger, you suddenly realize that you can't get along without the professor. Oh, you're a fine lot of nabobs, you are."

"Peace, Mr. Munn," called the professor. "We have enough to occupy our minds without wasting time in useless bickering. I was at fault, for I knew what terrible gales visit this planet, and that they come suddenly. It was a mistake to venture so far from the car."

"A mistake," breathed Meigs, with some heat, "that came near having tragic consequences. Popham and I were knocked about like a couple of footballs."

"What's to be done, what's to be done?" cried Popham impatiently. "The gale is increasing, and who knows but this rock may be plucked up bodily and rolled over us? We can't stay here."

"That is true," said the professor. "We must get back to the car."

"There's no telling what will become of us if we try that," called Markham.

"And there's no telling what will become of us if we remain here," answered the professor. "If we form a chain, it is quite possible that we may succeed in getting back to our refuge."

"Even the car may not be able to stand up against this wind," clamored Meigs.

"We shall have to take our chances with it, nevertheless," went on Quinn. "If we should get separated, each of us must make the best preparations he can to weather the gale, and then, when it has blown itself out, hunt for the car. That must be our rendezvous during the time we are here."

The professor got up slowly, bracing himself against the fierce swirl that came around the side of the rock.

"Come," he called; "it is now or never."

I could see that the gale had increased alarmingly. Its force seemed irresistible, and yet I knew that we could not remain where we were.

We clasped hands again, but were unable to cling together, being lifted high and thrown helter-skelter in all directions. Lightning flashed--such lightning as I have never seen before or since.

It snapped and crackled overhead and ran like trailing serpents over the rocks. We were in a sea of flame.

And the thunder! It seemed to split the heavens and crack open the lava-like hills. Rain came; yet not rain, for it turned to damp vapor in the red-hot atmosphere. The Mercurial elements were at war--wind, steam, thunder, and lightning all marshaling their hosts and charging to conflict.

To regain the steel car was impossible. We were lost in the fearsome fury of darkness and storm, driven helplessly and with smashing force across the vast plain.

I was hurled against something which I gripped with convulsive energy. The something gripped me in return.

"Help!" I cried, bereft of my wits and eager only for rescue.

"Munn!" shouted a voice. "Is this you?"

"Quinn!" I exclaimed.

"We must hang together." said Quinn.

And then, tightly locked in each other's arms, we were lifted high on a billow of fog and driven relentlessly I know not how far.

When the blast released us, we fell to the rocks and rolled over and over; then the surface beneath us gave way and we dropped.

The distance we fell could be only a matter of guesswork, and even guesswork was out of the question in the disordered state of our minds at that moment. Suffice to say the fall did not render us unconscious, and we struck on something that vibrated under the impact of our bodies. We were still in blank darkness, and the turmoil of the tempest no longer beat about us, but could be heard crashing somewhere overhead.

"Thank Heaven!" murmured the professor, withdrawing himself from me. "Are you alive, Mr. Munn?"

"I believe so," I answered. "What has happened to us, professor?"

"We have been flung into some sort of a shelter, it seems to me," he replied.

"But we are not on stable ground," he added. "We are sitting on an object that is descending with us, descending rapidly and--ah, wonder of wonders!"

Abruptly we fell into broad day, surrounded by such sights and sounds that I thought myself dealing with the mysteries of a disordered dream.

*Chapter VIII.*

*The Mercurials.*

Professor Quinn and I were sitting on a large box constructed of metal that was polished to dazzling brilliancy. So far as our purposes were concerned, this box was nothing less than an elevator; we had fallen upon it and it had carried us down into the wonderful interior of the planet.

Now, truly, we were in another world--a world that teemed with life--a smiling and pleasant region underlying a most barren and inhospitable shell. The scoriated exterior of the planet was the husk; here was the kernel.

It was a white world, extending league on league in every direction and roofed with a lofty vault that sparkled as with stars. From every hand came a bee-like hum, proving that we were in a hive of industry and life.

Houses spread out before us in rows, queerly shaped structures that looked as though they might have been built of alabaster, and so diminutive that the tallest scarcely came more than head high. Back of the houses were fields thickly covered with nodding blossoms that looked like snow; through the fields ran waterways dividing each into small squares.

So intent were we on the background of this strange picture that we failed to take account of what was going on in our immediate vicinity.

Suddenly a weird creature hopped to the top of the box and stood between my companion and myself, regarding us fixedly. This, I supposed, was one of the Mercurials. If he considered the professor and myself objects of curiosity and surmise, we were no less keen in so regarding him.

He stood twenty-three or twenty-four inches high; his head was an ivory billiard ball, and his trunk a larger spheroid; from his middle downward hung a red kirtle. He had one eye at the front of the head and an ear at the back; the olfactory organ was missing, but there was a mouth opening perpendicularly under the eye.

The upper spheroid rested directly on the lower; and at each side of the lower one, corresponding to the shoulders, were two tentacle-like arms, sinuous as whips and ending in hands that were made up of a palm and seven digits. Queerest of all, there were two more arms set in the breast and back.

From the creature's shoulder was suspended a round object like a canteen. For all of five minutes Quinn and I eyed this surprising figure and were eyed in return.

"Can you talk English?" asked the professor at last.

It was a foolish question, such as I was far from expecting from the professor, but something had to be said, and I suppose that was as good as anything else. As the professor began speaking the head whirled squarely around, presenting the ear.

After my companion was done, the head spun back again, and the breast arm caught the canteen while the fingers of a shoulder arm began manipulating a set of keys. The result was language, with all the variations of tone and accent. But it was an unknown tongue, if an expression of that kind may be allowed in such a case.

Since the word-box was as ineffective as our own speech, we fell back with more success on the language of signs. At this the Mercurial had the better of us, for he could make signs with four hands.

The professor signified that we were hungry, and the Mercurial signified that we were to descend from the box. This we did, and found ourselves in the centre of a group of Mercurials whose word-boxes were chattering like so many magpies.

The Mercurial with whom we were already on gesticulating terms played off some orders on his own canteen, and two of the others advanced upon the box from which we had just descended. Pulling out a slide in the side of the receptacle, they exposed two ewers of steaming food, and we were motioned to fall to.

We stood not upon the order, but obeyed instantly, using a pair of small paddles which were thrust into our hands. I had no idea what the food might be, but it was tender and of good flavor.

"A bright little people," observed the professor as he ate.

"Seemingly," I responded.

"Nature has denied them the power of speech, yet see how they have surmounted the difficulty. I must give that talking machine of theirs a close inspection. We are in a most wonderful country, Mr. Munn."

"The little I have seen of it already quite dazes me," said I. "What a pickpocket a man could make of himself with all those hands!"

Quinn gave me a reproachful look, and I hastily apologized for even mentioning a branch of my profession.

"Do you understand now," said he, turning the subject very pleasantly, "what those bright objects were which we saw on the tops of the low hills?"

"No," said I.

"They were ovens," he answered. "Food is put in them and sent up to the hot surface of the planet. When properly cooked it is lowered again."

Association with this learned man was a liberal education in itself. I can never be sufficiently thankful to fate for causing our paths to cross.

"You think, then," said I, "that we were blown to the top of one of the hills and fell into a shaft used by the traveling ovens?"

"Nothing else could have happened."

The professor gave a start and looked worried.

"Dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "I was quite forgetting our friends. While we are here feasting and taking our ease, they are battling with the storm, and are no doubt in peril of their lives. How very, very thoughtless we are, Mr. Munn."

I was not greatly exercised over the matter. The trust magnates believed that there was a figurative gulf between myself and them, and I was more than willing that this gulf should grow from the symbol to the reality.

"I doubt if we can return to the outside of the planet at present, professor," said I, "and even if we were able to do so, what could we accomplish in the face of that tremendous storm?"

"True, very true," said he.

"That oven," said I, by way of taking his mind from the plutocrats, "must have been very warm when we landed on it and descended to these regions."

"We should have been grilled, sir," returned the professor, "but for the fact that we are coated, and our clothing impregnated, with my anti-temperature fluid."

"These Mercurials appear to stand the heat pretty well," I remarked.

"Covered, as we are, with the anti-temperature compound," he returned, "it is impossible for us to judge, even approximately, of the degree of heat that obtains in these sub-Mercurial regions. Naturally it must be very much less than prevails on the surface of the planet, and yet, even at that, if left unprotected we should probably be shriveled to cinders."

"Hardly, professor," I ventured to protest. "Those fields"--and I waved my paddle toward the open country--"are growing rank with a white herb, which is evidently cooked in these ovens and served for food. Quite likely we are eating of it now, and very good eating I find it. However, the point I wish to make is this: If the heat was so intense as you surmise, those fields would be wilted and dried up."

"Nature, Mr. Munn," answered the professor, "adapts itself to every condition. On our own planet we see how life and comfort are rendered possible in every zone from the farthest north to the tropics; and this same adaptability of intelligent creatures to their environment, we may be sure, proceeds throughout the universe. These one-eared, one-eyed, diminutive creatures are formed in the manner best calculated to afford them comfort and happiness amid these surroundings. And, as with them, so with the products of their husbandry."

"You could argue a squirrel out of a tree, professor," said I, with whole-souled admiration. "I am sorry I did not take a course of scientific training, for it would have helped me immensely in my business. A burglar should be an all-around man. If I ever return to Terra----"

"So long as you feel as you do regarding your odious profession, Mr. Munn," broke in the professor, compressing his lips, "you will never return to Terra."

"A return is possible?" I asked, hiding the wonder his words aroused.

"Anything is possible."

"How about the millionaires? Are they to return provided the means are at hand?"

"Provided they experience a change of heart. In their present state of delusion, they are mere firebrands of destruction. Before they ever again take part in mundane affairs, they must be taught to see things differently. I wonder what has become of them?"

The professor's brow clouded with anxiety.

"Don't fret about them, professor," said I. "They are not overeager for our society. Let them have a taste of shifting for themselves without your knowledge and resourcefulness to shield them from everything that goes wrong. It will do them a world of good."

"Perhaps you are right, Mr. Munn," my companion answered musingly. "If I could know they had survived the storm, I should feel tolerably easy in my mind. These little Mercurials appear to be a friendly people, and if our comrades escaped that frightful tempest they must sooner or later fall into the hands of these dwellers of the under-world."

"I suppose," I ventured, seeking to draw my companion's mind from the plutocrats, "that this Mercurial under-world is another illustration of the way Nature takes care of her proteges. After baking the outside shell of the planet to a degree that makes all life impossible, she thoughtfully scoops out the interior so that these small creatures will have a place to go."

"You have stated the case correctly, Mr. Munn," and the professor's face lighted up as he swept his gaze over the country immediately adjacent. "These ovens," he proceeded, "are a remarkable example of adapting means to an end. The fierce heat of the surface does the cooking."

"Popham will find little pleasure in that," I laughed.

"Like the rest of us," answered the professor grimly, "he will have to accustom himself to new conditions."

"Everything must be different here from the surroundings with which we have been familiar all our lives. I wonder what form of property is considered most valuable to these Mercurials?"

The professor frowned. My mind was running in its old groove despite its novel environment.

"That query was inspired by an unworthy motive, Mr. Munn," said Quinn severely.

I bowed humbly. "Every man his own way," said I. "I cannot help trying to adjust myself along the line of the principles I know best. Nevertheless I am of an intensely curious disposition, and those talk-boxes fill me with wonder."

"The Mercurials are dumb, it seems," answered the professor, "and they have to resort to purely mechanical means for an exchange of ideas. Language appears to flow readily enough from the little boxes."

"If any one of them ever lost his four hands," I observed, "he would not only find it impossible to help himself but would be unable to tell others what to do to help him. Nature has been prodigal with them in the matter of hands, and in this, no doubt, showed her usual wisdom."

"I am glad to see your thoughts taking a philosophical trend, Mr. Munn," said the professor. "It argues well for your future."

By that time we had emptied the receptacle of food, and as we dropped our paddles and drew back, the word-boxes of a hundred Mercurials shrieked despairingly. The pygmies clustered about the empty basins, glared into them, and then turned their menacing eyes on the professor and myself.

"Goodness me, Mr. Munn," exclaimed the professor. "We have probably eaten the food supply of the entire district. If we do not have a care, our voracious appetites are like to prove our undoing. Look, there come more of the Mercurials. They're after their supper, I'll warrant, and they are going to be disappointed."

I looked in the direction indicated by the professor, and saw a long line of billiard balls rolling our way.

It was a procession, headed by a pompous little Mercurial whose trunk and arms were gorgeously gilded. With two of his hands he carried a metal plate and spoon, and with the other two he wielded a silver baton about the size of a match.

Plates and paddles were also carried by the rest of the advancing Mercurials, their word-boxes chanting a sort of quickstep. The sight of the professor and myself, towering mountain-like over the throng about us, brought the procession to an abrupt halt with a squeak of dismay.

The gentleman in the red kirtle went forward and held converse with the gentleman of the gilt torso. Before they got through, their word-boxes were fairly roaring, and stricken groans went up from every talk-machine in the line.

The advent of two leviathans like my companion and myself must have had a demoralizing effect, but that seemed as nothing in comparison with the harrowing results of our voracity.

The leader raised his baton. Silence fell. The leader then advanced to where we were standing and circled around us, examining us critically with his solitary eye.

The survey finished, he tried his word-box on us, the professor answering in all the languages of our home planet, living and dead, of which he was master. But in vain; we could not come to an understanding.

The begilded gentleman finally gave over and whirled on the underling in the red kirtle. His fingers flew over the keys of his canteen, and speech of a swift and commanding kind was poured out.

A skurrying about of the oven tenders resulted. From somewhere a fresh supply of uncooked food was brought and placed in the huge metal box.

While this was going forward, Quinn suddenly seized my arm, a troubled look crossing his face.

"What is the matter, professor?" I asked.

"Matter enough, Mr. Munn!" he answered. "The lever was left on Number Five!"

His thoughts were up with the steel car. I was surprised at this, for it appeared to me that there was more than enough to claim our full attention right in our immediate vicinity.

"And what of that, sir?" I asked.

"The anti-gravity cubes lighten the car by five degrees," he answered excitedly. "Thus buoyed, and in its elevated position, I doubt if the car should hold its own against the fury of the storm!"

"You think it has been blown----"

"Aye! Blown to the uttermost parts of Mercury and perhaps wrecked and lost--lost with all our scientific apparatus and other paraphernalia!"

"But----"

"And that is not all," went on the professor. "The lever should have been thrown to zero and then removed to prevent Gilhooly from tampering with it. Who knows what that mad railway magnate may take it into his head to do? Suppose he were to grasp the lever and give the cubes their full power. He would be launched into the void, sir, and we should be marooned on this sun-baked planet, compelled to live out our lives with these one-eyed quadrumana, devastating the country of its food supply--our presence a curse instead of a blessing!"

I had already imagined a possible return to Terra, and from this it, seemed that the professor had not lost sight of that contingency.

"What is to be done?" I asked, catching some of his excitement.

"We must return to the outer shell--we must find the car--we must go back on the oven when they send it up!"

As he finished speaking, Quinn ran frantically to the metal box and leaped to its top. I followed, clumsily upsetting a half dozen Mercurials who chanced to gel in my way.

The oven was loaded by that time and ready for its return to the intense heat; nay, more, the chef in the red kirtle already had his hand on a wheel which presumably released the lifting power.

Our movements, however, had acted as a check on proceedings.

"We've got to go back!" cried the professor, forgetting in his stress of feeling that his words were lost on the throng around us. "Don't attempt to stop us, don't! We'll return----"

The Mercurials began leaping to the box from all sides in a veritable swarm. Carried away by the excitement of the moment, I sank to my knees and swept my arms about me, throwing them back pell-mell.

The professor also resorted to violence. In the midst of it all, I caught a glimpse of the gilded gentleman aiming his baton.

A moment more and there was a lurid flash, which enveloped my companion and myself in a billow of violet fire. Every atom of strength was drawn from my limbs, and I fell limply to the ground with the professor on top of me.

*Chapter IX.*

*Learning The Word-Box.*

It was not the violet fire that did the work for the professor and me. Rather it was some chemical, known to the Mercurials, and which manifested its presence by an overpowering odor.

Long after we had regained consciousness, the drug-like smell clung to our clothes and sapped our strength. Shackles of iron could not have been more effective in making us prisoners.

Cords were made fast to our feet, and we were dragged by a small army of Mercurials down the principal street of their city and out into one of the white, irrigated fields.

Had a dwelling been found large enough, I presume we should have been comfortably housed, but we were of such stupendous proportions that there were no walls capable of containing us.

When we reached the field, a ring a foot high was reared about us. As the odor lessened and my strength increased I tried to roll over this low barrier, but received such a shock that I was only too glad to roll back to the professor's side again.

"It is of no use, Mr. Munn," said the professor, who had been watching my attempt. "These Mercurials are possessed of ways and means beyond our earthly powers to combat. We must accept the situation with all the philosophy we can muster."

This great man, who could remain unshaken under any fate that befell him, was a constant source of strength and inspiration to me. While we lay forsaken by our captors and couched on the strange white herbage of that underground field, our discourse drifted along many channels.

I remember that I asked him a question concerning a matter that had long been weighing upon my mind.

"How is it, professor," said I, "that your anti-gravity compound remains in a liquid state in an open cask? I should think its inherent energy would cause it to fly upward _en masse_."

"I can demonstrate that by means of an algebraic formula," said he. "Are you acquainted with algebra?"

"No," I answered humbly.

"Then," he went on disappointedly, "I fear you will have to remain in ignorance. You must rest content with the evidence of your senses, since an explanation in terms you can understand is impossible."

And thus the matter rested. When we were so far recovered as to be able to rise, we made an attempt to step over the ring that hemmed us in, but were shocked by the same unseen power I had already encountered, and driven back.

"See with what weapons nature has provided these people!" murmured the professor. "Throughout the universe everywhere you will find, Mr. Munn, that Nature takes care of her own. Ah, here comes Captain Goldman! Retainers follow, and they are bringing--now, what are they bringing? Why, as I live, they have manufactured a couple of large word-boxes. Evidently we are to be taught the use of them."

The professor was right. Ever since our disastrous attempt to regain the surface we had been tabooed by the inhabitants of the country.

"Captain Goldman," as my companion referred to the little man who had used his mysterious baton with such telling effect, was crossing the fields toward us, followed by six of his countrymen bearing the talking machines. As a precautionary measure, the captain carried his weapon.

Arriving at the ring, Captain Goldman reversed the baton and with the black tip of it cut an imaginary doorway for himself in the air. He then stepped through and joined us, without shock or resistance.

Thus, by means to us inexplicable, he broke the power of the circle at a given point. The others followed him through the entrance he had cleared.

Wielding the baton with two of his hands, Captain Goldman began manipulating his word-box with the other two. He was not addressing us, however, but those who had come with him.

Three of his followers advanced to me with one of the machines, while the remaining three conveyed a machine to the professor. At once our instruction in the art of mechanical speech began.

It is not my intention to burden the readers with the details of our lessons, although a few remarks under this head may not be out of place. As to the word-box itself, it had seven keys. This made it somewhat difficult for a five-fingered creature to operate with any great degree of fluency, although the professor did get so he could peg out his ideas at a remarkable rate.

There are but six syllables in the Mercurial language, each syllable being represented by a corresponding key. The way these syllables were fingered gave the words. As they could be combined and repeated and combined again, the vocabulary of the boxes was practically unlimited. The syllable notes were of resonant quality and of such divergent timber as to be quickly and easily recognized. The syllable for Key 1 was synonymous with our personal pronoun "I," and was the most assertive and determined note in the whole gamut of the box.

The seventh key emitted a sound so utterly unlike the other sounds as to be in a class by itself. It was used for spacing between words, for exclamatory purposes and for the audible expression of laughter and grief.

It was likewise the expletive or swear-key; for these small egotists had all the passions of other mortals, and Key 7 acted as a sort of safety valve. The manner in which the key was used gave it its versatility.

Day by day our lessons proceeded, the professor learning with a rapidity that was marvelous. He was well along in the polysyllables while I was struggling with the basic tones and acquiring some facility in spacing and in the expression of the feelings.

Our ears kept pace with our fingers, and in a fortnight the professor was so eloquent with his word-box that he could now and then play off a metaphor, or some other frill, to the great delight of himself and his auditors.

Next to a wonderful jimmy invented by a cracksman named "Cricket" Doniphan, whom I knew well, and who, at that period, was doing time in Stillwater, I take off my hat to that Mercurial word-box as the most marvelous contrivance ever evolved by a thinking mind. I have a very good memory, and when sufficiently proficient with the keys I practiced by repeating passages from "Forty Ways of Cracking Safes," which, as distinguished from "The Sandbagger's Manual," I considered my _chef d'oeuvre_. I could not discover that my terse English, faulty enough though it was, lost anything in force from translation into the Mercurial tongue. (The word "tongue" is used with reservations, for, of course, tongue that language was not.)

Difficulty was experienced in getting a suitable Mercurial equivalent for the good English word "cracksman." Finally, however, I hit upon three quick touches of the swear-key, which made the word intelligible in my own ears if not to any one's else.

Soon I began to observe a little throng gathering across my side of the prison ring, listening intently as I practiced. From day to day the throng increased.

Over on the other side of the ring Professor Quinn was absorbed in cutting all manner of scientific capers with his word-box. "The Mutability of Newtonian Law" formed his staple theme, and he was able to put it through the keys with amazing variations.

But no crowd gathered to listen to the professor. The Mercurials were all on my side of the compound. Thus it was clear to me that my brand of science was more attractive to the little people than the professor's. While "The Mutability of Newtonian Law" languished for an audience, "The Sandbagger's Manual" was fast acquiring one that taxed the capacity of the word-box.

The professor, for a long time, had been so wrapped up in his attempt to master the Mercurial language that he had paid little heed to me and my efforts. The attention my work was securing, however, finally caused him to sit up and take notice. Halting his weighty remarks, he laid aside his talk machine, came over to my side of the circle, and stood behind me, listening. The first I knew of his presence was the reaching of two angry hands over my head and the snatching away of the instrument on which I was, at that moment, reciting the ten rules for a cracksman's success.

My audience was as greatly put out as I was myself. While I was leaping to my feet and whirling around, my listeners were clamoring on their word-boxes for me to proceed.

Professor Quinn, white-faced and in a greater temper than I had ever before seen him, held my talking apparatus over his head and seemed of a mind to clash it down on the earth at his feet.

"I say, professor," I called restrainingly, "don't do anything rash."

"Mr. Munn," he gasped, his voice thick with suppressed emotion, "is my confidence in you to be destroyed utterly? I singled you out as one of the worthiest of all those brought from Terra, and yet I find you busily inculcating false ideas of personal property into the keen minds of these Mercurials! For shame, sir! Would you demoralize this planet? Would you turn these law-abiding people into thieves?"

"Professor," I answered, "your ideas and mine do not harmonize on this matter of property rights."

"While I admit, Mr. Munn," he answered, "that conditions on our own planet in a measure condoned your actions, yet I maintain that you have no right to air your ideas in Njambai. Here the conditions are of an altogether different sort. So far as I have been able to learn, this orb has not fallen under the noxious spell of the monopolists. You have no excuse for instructing the Mercurials in the alpha and omega of your contemptible profession."

"Contemptible?" I repeated. "That is a hard term, professor. Besides, they seem to be fond of the instruction. Everybody listens to me, while you haven't had so much as a corporal's guard to enjoy that astronomical stuff you have been playing off on your concertina."

"Your line, perhaps, is more attractive than mine," and the shadow of a smile curled about his thin lips, "for the notion of getting something for nothing has a direct appeal to every thinking being. On the other hand, my thesis on 'The Mutability of Newtonian Law' requires profound thought before it can be assimilated. Yet, be that as it may, I shall not allow you to degrade these people with the unworthy ideas that have been coming from your word-box. I can destroy this machine, sir, and I shall do so unless you promise never again to let an ignoble thought come out of it. What do you say?"

"Your mere command is enough, professor," I replied. "It is not necessary to couple it with a threat."

His face softened, and he at once returned to me my talk-producer.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Munn," said he. "I have confidence in your word, and know that I can trust you."

Thereupon he went back to his own side of the ring, and I applied myself assiduously to undoing any evil my ill-considered practicing may have wrought. I told the Mercurials that my utterances had been in the nature of a fairy story, and I gave the lie to my convictions by declaring that the reasoning, as in all fairy tales, was unsound.

From that hour my audiences vanished. The professor, although his talk was profound and somewhat wearying, seemed to the Mercurials as more worth while, and they flocked to hear him. We began acquiring a knowledge of the country, and of its people and institutions, with our very first lesson. In two weeks we had gathered most of the information that follows:

Their planet they called Njambai; their country was Baigol. Baigol was one of four kingdoms comprising the under-world of Njambai. The other three kingdoms were Baijinkz, Baigossh, and Baigadd--all derived from the root word "bai," signifying planet.

There were only two places on Njambai where water was able to collect and defy the absorbing power of the sun. These places were at the two ends of the planet's axis, corresponding to the polar regions of Earth. Here there were seas feeding rivers that ran through the under-world and irrigated the fields.

The kingdoms of Baijinkz and Baigossh lay on the shores of these seas, the former at the north and the latter at the south. They were the only kingdoms on the outer shell of Njambai, and levied tribute from the interior kingdoms of Baigol and Baigadd for water rights.

The distribution of light and heat throughout the nether kingdoms was by a system of gigantic reflectors, located at either end of a radius drawn through the equator. There was one stupendous reflector on either side of the planet, measuring no less than twenty _spatli_ across--a _spatl_ being the equivalent of a geographical mile.

These reflectors, we were told, followed the sun as it moved through the heavens, and reflected heat and light to countless other reflectors ingeniously placed to acquire and radiate the solar energy.

The heat thus secured was further intensified by the planet's shell, which, forming the vault of the nether kingdoms, constantly diffused warmth.

The king was Golbai, the nine hundred and twenty-fifth of his line. The name of the pompous gentleman whom the professor had christened "Captain Goldman" was Ocou.

Names of people, places, and things, as here given, are simply a rude equivalent as nearly as can be rendered into English.

From my wording the astute reader will probably discover more than the six basic syllables of the Baigol language. The flexibility of the word-box will account for this, and the inconsistency is only seeming and not real.

Baigol had one half the inner sphere, and Baigadd the other half. These two kingdoms were not on the best of terms, owing to a wretched piece of business carried out by Gaddbai, king of the other country, which will be adverted to later.

The four kingdoms were connected by a railway, if such the mode of transportation could be called. The roadbed was a "V"-shaped groove, and the wheels of the cars were solid spheres with axles pierced through their diameter. On these axles the carriages were supported.

For a people so wonderfully progressive the Baigols were strangely backward in their motive power, their trains being dragged by hand--relays of the small creatures taking them in charge.

Owing to the diminished force of gravity, large weights were easily handled, and a fair rate of speed was developed by the train haulers. But it was a very primitive method of transportation.

The trunk line connecting the nether kingdoms was known as the Baigadd and Baigol Interplanetary System. When two weeks of our enforced stay in Baigol had passed, a startling rumor was wafted from the word-boxes of the other kingdom to the effect that the management of the line had secured a wonderful new traction power of tremendous speed and unlimited endurance.

The kingdom of Baigol was agog with excitement, for the president, vice-president, and board of directors of the Interplanetary were to take a trial spin over the road in a special equipped with their new motive power.

We had not yet been allowed to leave the mysterious circle which imprisoned us, but we could stand erect, and so overtop the fields and houses that we were able to see the railway station.

Billiard balls came rolling in from every direction, clustering about the right of way and clambering to roof tops and other elevations that would afford an unobstructed view of the centre of excitement.

At last, far off, the professor and I heard a thunderous shout:

"Toot, t-o-o-t! Ting-a-ling-a-ling!"

No word-box could have been the source of that echoing cry. The professor gave a gasp and clutched my arm convulsively.

"Do you recognize that voice?" he asked hoarsely. "Merciful powers, Mr. Munn, how could such a thing happen? Look! Look!"

Over the fields beyond the city, leaping along at fifty-foot bounds and dragging behind him a train of queer-looking cars crowded with officials of the system, came no less a person than Emmet Gilhooly!

The professor threw himself at the barrier that hedged us round. He could not pass, although he struggled frantically.

"Take it coolly, professor," I urged, grasping and holding him upright.

"But this is outrageous, Mr. Munn!" he cried. "Poor Gilhooly! Is _he_ the new traction power the other kingdom has been talking about? How does he happen to be here? And why are they treating him like that? This must be stopped! Where's my word-box?"

His eyes swept the ground. Glimpsing his talking machine he dived for it and began working the keys like mad.

No one paid any attention to the furious language that went up under his frenzied fingers, however. Leviathan in harness absorbed the entire attention of all the Baigols, and with another "Toot, toot! Ting-a-ling-a-ling!" the railway magnate galloped out of sight.

It was a sad spectacle indeed. I was almost as completely unmanned by it as was Professor Quinn.

*Chapter X.*

*How We Were Catalogued.*

Let it not be supposed that we had given no thought to our companions in exile during our two weeks' probation in Baigol. The professor and I had talked of them frequently, wondering whether they were alive or dead, and, if alive, where they were and what they were doing.

Our story had been punched out of our word-boxes for the benefit of the Baigols, but had not seemed to make much of an impression on Ocou, or on others who came to see us.

Now the sight of Gilhooly would add corroborative detail, and we harped on that key until Ocou promised to communicate directly with King Golbai, and find out what his wishes were in the matter.

As for the professor, he wanted to go roaming the four kingdoms looking for the other exiles, first visiting Baigadd and appropriating the motive power of the B.&B.I. system.

The most we could get from Ocou was a promise to learn his majesty's pleasure in our affairs; and while we were abiding the king's decision, other events took place which were of prime importance to us.

Ocou had a queer-looking machine borne to our "home circle," which was the humorous fashion in which the professor referred to our prison ring.

The machine was an upright shaft measuring some three feet in height. To its base was attached a golden cord several yards long and terminating in a small silver disk.

Professor Quinn and I were consumed with curiosity while this contrivance was being set up and made ready. We put a question through our word-boxes, but were only smiled at mysteriously.

Presently I was made to sit down, Turk fashion, while one of Ocou's attendants came to me and passed the silver disk over my head. One end of Ocou's baton had a black tip, the other a white.

As the disk passed over my head, Ocou rested the white tip of the baton on the pedestal. Instantly a slide flew out of the shaft's top bearing a painted ideograph.

The professor and I were not "up" in the Baigol ideographs, and were very much surprised at the actions of Ocou and his companions when they looked at the slide. They recoiled, stared at me suspiciously, and moved about me with caution.

I grabbed my word-box.

"What's the matter, anyhow?" I asked.

"We have just discovered that you are a robber," said Ocou.

"I am no robber here," I answered, "no matter what I was in the place I came from."

"Once a robber always a robber," retorted Ocou, "unless you touch the Bolla."

"Wel