“Not impossible,” returned Craig, handing back the clipping. “Buffon tested the probability of the achievement of Archimedes in setting fire to the ships of Marcellus with mirrors and the sun’s rays. He constructed a composite mirror of a hundred and twenty-eight plane mirrors, and with it he was able to ignite wood at two hundred and ten feet. However, I shrewdly suspect that, even if this story is true, they are using hydrogen or acetylene flares over there. But none of these things would be feasible in your case. You’d know it.”
“Could it be some one who is projecting a deadly wireless force which causes the explosions?” I put in, mindful of a previous case of Kennedy’s. “We all know that inventors have been working for years on the idea of making explosives obsolete and guns junk. If some one has hit on a way of guiding an electric wave through the air and concentrating power at a point, munitions-plants could be wiped out.”
MacLeod looked anxiously from me to Kennedy, but Craig betrayed nothing by his face except his interest.
“Sometimes I have imagined I heard a peculiar, faint, whirring noise in the air,” he remarked, thoughtfully. “I thought of having the men on the watch for air-ships, but they’ve never seen a trace of one. It might be some power either like this,” he added, shaking the clipping, “or like that which Mr. Jameson suggests.”
“It’s something like that you meant, I presume, when you called it a ‘phantom destroyer’ a moment ago?” asked Kennedy.
MacLeod nodded.
“If you’re interested,” he pursued, hastily, “and feel like going down there to look things over, I think the best place for you to go would be to the Sneddens’. They’re some people who have seen a chance to make a little money out of the boom. Many visitors are now coming and going on business connected with the new works. They have started a boarding-house—or, rather, Mrs. Snedden has. There’s a daughter, too, who seems to be very popular.” Kennedy glanced whimsically at me.
“Well, Walter,” he remarked, tentatively, “entirely aside from the young lady, this ought to make a good story for the Star.”
“Indeed it ought!” I replied, enthusiastically.
“Then you’ll go down to Nitropolis?” queried MacLeod, eagerly. “You can catch a train that will get you there about noon. And the company will pay you well.”
“MacLeod, with the mystery, Miss Snedden, and the remuneration, you are irresistible,” smiled Kennedy.
“Thank you,” returned the detective. “You won’t regret it. I can’t tell you how much relieved I feel to have some one else, and, above all, yourself, on the case. You can get a train in half an hour. I think it would be best for you to go as though you had no connection with me—at least for the present.”
Kennedy agreed, and MacLeod excused himself, promising to be on the train, although not to ride with us, in case we should be the target of too inquisitive eyes.
For a few moments, while our taxicab was coming, Kennedy considered thoughtfully what the company detective had said. By the time the vehicle arrived he had hurriedly packed up some apparatus in two large grips, one of which it fell to my lot to carry.
The trip down to Nitropolis was uninteresting, and we arrived at the little station shortly after noon. MacLeod was on the train, but did not speak to us, and it was perhaps just as well, for the cabmen and others hanging about the station were keenly watching new arrivals, and any one with MacLeod must have attracted attention. We selected or were, rather, selected by one of the cabmen and driven immediately to the Snedden house. Our cover was, as Craig and I had decided, to pose as two newspaper men from New York, that being the easiest way to account for any undue interest we might show in things.
The powder-company’s plant was situated on a large tract of land which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, six feet high and constructed in a manner very similar to the fences used in protecting prison-camps in war-times. At various places along the several miles of fence gates were placed, with armed guards. Many other features were suggestive of war-times. One that impressed us most was that each workman had to carry a pass similar, almost, to a passport. This entire fence, we learned, was patrolled day and night by armed guards.
A mile or so from the plant, or just outside the main gate, quite a settlement had grown up, like a mushroom, almost overnight—the product of a flood of new money. Originally, there had been only one house for some distance about—that of the Sneddens. But now there were scores of houses, mostly those of officials and managers, some of them really pretentious affairs. MacLeod himself lived in one of them, and we could see him ahead of us, being driven home.
The workmen lived farther along the line, in a sort of company town, which at present greatly resembled a Western mining-camp, though ultimately it was to be a bungalow town.
Just at present, however, it was the Snedden house that interested us most, for we felt the need of getting ourselves established in this strange community. It was an old-fashioned farm-house and had been purchased very cheaply by Snedden several years before. He had altered it and brought it up to date, and the combination of old and new proved to be typical of the owner as well as of the house.
Kennedy carried off well the critical situation of our introduction, and we found ourselves welcomed rather than scrutinized as intruders.
Garfield Snedden was much older than his second wife, Ida. In fact, she did not seem to be much older than Snedden’s daughter Gertrude, whom MacLeod had already mentioned—a dashing young lady, never intended by nature to vegetate in the rural seclusion that her father had sought before the advent of the powder-works. Mrs. Snedden was one of those capable women who can manage a man without his knowing it. Indeed, one felt that Snedden, who was somewhat of both student and dreamer, needed a manager.
“I’m glad your train was on time,” bustled Mrs. Snedden. “Luncheon will be ready in a few moments now.”
We had barely time to look about before Gertrude led us into the dining-room and introduced us to the other boarders.
Knowing human nature, Kennedy was careful to be struck with admiration and amazement at everything we had seen in our brief whirl through Nitropolis. It was not a difficult or entirely assumed feeling, either, when one realized that, only a few short months before, the region had been nothing better than an almost hopeless wilderness of scrub-pines.
We did not have to wait long before the subject uppermost in our minds was brought up—the explosions.
Among the boarders there were at least two who, from the start, promised to be interesting as well as important. One was a tall, slender chap named Garretson, whose connection with the company, I gathered from the conversation, took him often on important matters to New York. The other was an older man, Jackson, who seemed to be connected with the management of the works, a reticent fellow, more given to listening to others than to talking himself.
“Nothing has happened so far today, anyhow,” remarked Garretson, tapping the back of his chair with his knuckle, as a token of respect for that evil spirit who seems to be exorcised by knocking wood.
“Oh,” exclaimed Gertrude, with a little half-suppressed shudder, “I do hope those terrible explosions are at last over!”
“If I had my way,” asserted Garretson, savagely, “I’d put this town under martial law until they WERE over.”
“It may come to that,” put in Jackson, quietly.
“Quite in keeping with the present tendency of the age,” agreed Snedden, in a tone of philosophical disagreement.
“I don’t think it makes much difference how you accomplish the result, Garfield,” chimed in his wife, “as long as you accomplish it, and it is one that should be accomplished.”
Snedden retreated into the refuge of silence. Though this was only a bit of the conversation,