Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 04.djvu/53

Rh as if I had seen it, but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death." A Visit to the Hall Laboratory. Experimenting With a Gold Cathode FROM the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory, which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an eleva- tion of about six thousand feet above sea-level. With considerable surprise I noticed a building sur- mounted with a dome, recalling what we had seen from the Grand Teton on the roof of Dr. Syx's mill. Hail, observing my look, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory proper occupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. Hall led the way into an apartment having but a single door and illuminated by a skylight. "This is my sanctum sanctorum," he said, "and you are the first outsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably while I proceed to unveil a little cor- ner of the artemisium mystery." Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was a table, on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus finished with a con- cave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this ap- paratus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was audible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment or " twq, and then remarked: "Now, keep your eyes on the lump of gold in the farther end of the tube yonder. The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about to concentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which will have the effect of making it a kind of cathode pole. I only use this term for the sake of illus- tration. You will recall that as long ago as the days of Crookes it was known that a cathode in an exhausted tube would proj'ect partieles, or atoms, of its substance away in straight lines. Now watch!" I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped in a most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until, at times, it was blinding, while, at the same moment, the interior of the tube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicate pinkish hue. "Watch! Watch!" said Hall. "Look at the nearer end of the tube!" "Why, it's becoming coated with gold!" I ex- claimed. Continuation of the Experiment HE smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. The pink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longer visible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly through the colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like a mirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious whistling sound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his hand and gave it a Sip, as if hot water had scattered it, and then thp light in the tube quickly died away, the vapor escaped, filling the room with a peculiar stim- ulating odor, and I perceived that the end of the glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowly dripping from it. "I carried it a little too far," said Hall, ruefully rubbing the hack of his hand, "and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardment a few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. You observed that the instant the air reached the cathode, as I for convenience call the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased." "But your anode, to continue your simile," I said, "is constantly exposed to the air." "True," he replied, "but in the first place, of course, this is not really an anode, j'ust as the other is not really a cathode. As science advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in a new sense until a fresh nomenclature can be in- vented. But we are now dealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effects than any at present described in the text-books and the tran- sactions of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the theory of it. I am only concerned with its facts." "But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see," I said, "how it concerns Dr. Syx and his artemisium." "Listen," replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnecting his apparatus. "You no doubt have been told how one night the Syx engine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only night work it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started up when a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantly stopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, and it will show you how I got my first clew to the mystery, although it was rather a mere sus- picion than a clew, for at first I could make nothing out of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fort- night after our discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full of suspicions concerning Syx, because I thought that a man who would fool people with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other. The Suspicious Actions of Dr. Syx Explained «TT was a glorious night, with a full moon, 1 whose face was so clear in the limpid air that, A. having found a snug place at the foot of a yel- low-pine-tree, where the ground was carpeted with odiferous needles, I lay on my back and renewed my early acquaintance with the romantically named mountains and 'seas' of the Lunar globe. With my binocular I could trace those long white streaks which radiate from the crater ring, called 'Tycho,' and run hundreds of miles in all directions over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects I re- called the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by their enigmatical aspects, have offered to a more or less confiding public concerning them. "In the midst of my meditation and moon gazing I was startled by hearing the engine in the Syx works suddenly begin to run. Immediately a queer light, shaped like the beam of a ship's searchlight, but reddish in color, rose high in the moonlit heav- ens above the mill. It did not last more than a minute or two, for almost instantly the engine was