Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 04.djvu/45

A few clays afterwards I received an invitation from Hall to accompany him once more into the abandoned tunnel, "I have found out what that side-track means, " he said, "and it has plunged me into another mys- tery so dark and profound that I cannot see my way through it. I must beg you to say no word to any one concerning the thing I am about to show you." I gave the required promise, and we entered the tunnel, which nobody had visited since our former adventure. Having extinguished our lamp, my companion opened the peep-hole, and a thin ray of light streamed through from the tunnel on the op- posite side of the wall. He applied his eye to the hole. "Yea," he said, quickly stepping back and push- ing me into his place, "they are still at it. Look, and tell me what you see." "I see," I replied, after placing my eye at the aperture, "a gang of men unloading a car which has just come out of the side tunnel, and putting its contents upon another car standing on the track of the main tunnel." "Yes, and what are they handling?" "Why, ore, of course." "And do you see nothing significant in that?" "To be sure!" I exclaimed. "Why, that ore—-" "Hush! hush!" admonished Hall, putting his hand over my mouth; "don't talk so laud. Now go on, in a whisper." "The ore," I resumed, "may have come back from the furnace-room, because the side tunnel turna off so. as to run parallel with the other." "It not only may have come back, it actually has come back," said Hall. "How can you be sure?" "Because I have been over the track, and know that it leads to a secret apartment directly under the furnace in which Dr. Syx pretends to melt the ore !" For a minute after hearing this avowal I was speechless. "Are you serious?" I asked at length. Dr. Syx is a Systematic Deceiver " T^ ERFECTLY aeriolls - Eun vour finger along I—* the rock here. Do you perceive a seam? M. Two days ago, after seeing what you have just witnessed in the Syx tunnel, I carefully cut out a section of the wall, making an aperture large enough to crawl through, and, when I knew the workmen were asleep, I crept in there and examined both tunnels from end to end. But in solving one mystery I have run myself into another infinitely more perplexing." *> "How is that?" "Why does Dr. Syx take such elaborate pain's to deceive hi3 visitors, and also the government of- ficers? It is now plain that he conducts no min- ing operations whatever. This mine of his is a gigantic blind. Whenever inspectors or scientific curiosity seekers visit his mill his mute workmen assume the air of being very busy, the cars laden with his so-called 'ore* rumble out of the tunnel, and their contents are ostentatiously poured into the furnace, or appear to be poured into it, really dropping into a receptacle beneath, to be carried hack into the mine again. And then the doctor leads his gulled visitors around to the other side of thB furnace and shows them the molten metal coming out in streams, Now what does it ail mean? That's what I'd like to find out. What's his game? For, mark you, if he doesn't get artemisium from this pretended ore, he gets it from some other source, and right on this spot, too. There is no doubt about that. The whole world is supplied by Syx's furnace, and Syx feeds his furnace with something that comes from his ten acres of Grand Teton rock. What is that something? How does he get it, and where doe3 he hide it? These are the things I should like to find out," "Well," I replied, "I fear I can't help you." "But the difference between you and me," he re- torted, "is that you can go to sleep over it, while I shall never get another good night's rest so long as this black mystery remains unsolved," "What will you do?" "I don't know exactly what. But I've got a dim idea which may take shape after a while." Hall was silent for some time; then he suddenly asked: "Did you ever hear of that queer magic-lantern show with which Dr. Syx entertained Mr. Boon and the members of the financial commission in the early days of the artemisium business?" "Yes, I've heard the story, but I don't think it was ever made public. The newspapers never got hold of it." "No, I believe not. O'dd thing, wasn't it?" "Why, yes, very odd, but just like the doctor's eccentric ways, though. He's always doing some- thing to astonish somebody, without any apparent earthly reason. But what put you in mind of that?" "Free artemisium put me in mind of it," replied Hall, quizzically. "I don't see the connection," "I'm not sure that I do either, but when yoii are dealing with Dr. Syx nothing is too improbable to be thought of." Andrew Hall is Meditating HALL thereupon fell to musing again, while we returned to the entrance of the tunnel. After he had made everything secure, and slipped the key into his pocket, my companion re- marked : "Don't you think it would be best to keep this latest discovery to ourselves?" "Certainly." "Because," he continued, "nobody would be bene- fitted just now by knowing what we know, and to expose the worthlessness of the 'ore' might cause a panic. The public is a queer animal, and never gets scared at just the thing you expect will alarm it, but always at something else." We had shaken hands and were separating when Hall stopped me. "Do you believe in alchemy?" he asked. "That's an odd question from you," I replied. "I thought alchemy was exploded long ago." "Well," he said, slowly, "I suppose it has been exploded, but then, you know, an explosion may sometimes be a kind of instantaneous education, old things but revealing new ones."