The Magnificent Possession - (2)

“Cripes,” he muttered to himself, “dis is gonna be a cinch. De whole woiks on the bottom floor, back window can be jimmied wid a toot’pick, no alarms, no nuttin.” He chuckled and walked away.
    Nor was “Slappy” alone with his ideas. Peter Q. Hornswoggle, as he walked away, found strange thoughts wandering through his massive cranium--thoughts which involved a certain amount of unorthodox action.
    And J. Throgmorton Bankhead was likewise active. Belonging to that virile class known as “go-getters” and being not at all scrupulous as to how he “go-got,” and certainly not intending to pay a million dollars for the secret of ammonium, he found it necessary to call on a certain one of his acquaintances.
    This acquaintance, while a very useful one, was a bit unsavory, and Bankhead found it advisable to be very careful and cautious while visiting him. However, the conversation that ensued ended in a pleasing manner for both of them.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Walter Sills snapped out of an uneasy sleep with startled suddenness. He listened anxiously for a while and then leaned over and nudged Taylor. He was rewarded by a few incoherent snuffles.
    “Gene, Gene, wake up! Come on, get up!”
    “Eh? What is it? What are you bothering--”
    “Shut up! Listen, do you hear it?”
    “I don’t hear anything. Leave me alone, will you?”
    Sills put his finger on his lips, and the other quieted. There was a distinct shuffling noise down below, in the laboratory.
    Taylor’s eyes widened and sleep left them entirely. “Burglars!” he whispered.
    The two crept out of bed, donned bathrobe and slippers, and tiptoed to the door. Taylor had a revolver and took the lead in descending the stairs.
    They had traversed perhaps half the flight, when there was a sudden, surprised shout from below, followed by a series of loud, threshing noises. This continued for a few moments and then there was a loud crash of glassware.
    “My ammonium!” cried Sills in a stricken voice and rushed headlong down the stairs, evading Taylor’s clutching arms.
    The chemist burst into the laboratory, followed closely by his cursing associate, and clicked the lights on. Two struggling figures blinked owlishly in the sudden illumination, and separated.
    Taylor’s gun covered them. “Well, isn’t this nice,” he said.
    One of the two lurched to his feet from amid a tangle of broken beakers and flasks, and, nursing a cut on his wrist, bent his portly body in a still dignified bow. It was Peter Q. Hornswoggle.
    “No doubt,” he said, eyeing the unwavering firearm nervously, “the circumstances seem suspicious, but I can explain very easily. You see, in spite of the very rough treatment I received after having made my reasonable proposal, I still felt a great deal of kindly interest in you two.
    “Therefore, being a man of the world, and knowing the iniquities of mankind, I just decided to keep an eye on your house tonight, for I saw you had neglected to take precautions against house-breakers. Judge my surprise to see this dastardly creature,” he pointed to the flat-nosed, plug-ugly, who still remained on the floor in a daze, “creeping in at the back window.
    “Immediately, I risked life and limb in following the criminal, attempting desperately to save your great discovery. I really feel I deserve great credit for what I have done. I’m sure you will feel that I am a valuable person to deal with and reconsider your answers to my earlier proposals.”
    Taylor listened to all this with a cynical smile. “You can certainly lie fluently, can’t you, P. Q.?”
    He would have continued at greater length and with greater forcefulness had not the other burglar suddenly raised his voice in loud protest. “Cripes, boss, dis fat slob here is only tryin’ to get me in bad. I’m just followin’ orders, boss. A fellow hired me to come in here and rifle the safe and I’m just oinin’ a bit o’ honest money. Just plain safe-crackin’, boss, I ain’t out to hurt no one.
    “Den, just as I was gettin’ down to de job--warmin’ up, so to say--in crawls dis little guy wid a chisel and blowtorch and makes for de safe. Well, natur’lly, I don’t like no competition, so I lays for him and then--”
    But Hornswoggle had drawn himself up in icy hauteur. “It remains to be seen whether the word of a gangster is to be taken before the word of one, who, I may truthfully say, was, in his time, one of the most eminent members of the great--”
    “Quiet, both of you,” shouted Taylor, waving the gun threateningly. “I’m calling the police and you can annoy them with your stories. Say, Walt, is everything all right?”
    “I think so!” Sills returned from his inspection of the laboratory. “They only knocked over empty glassware. Everything else is unharmed.”
    “That’s good,” Taylor began, and then choked in dismay.
    From the hallway, a cool individual, hat drawn well over his eyes, entered. A revolver, expertly handled, changed the situation considerably.
    “O. K.,” he grunted at Taylor, “drop the gat!” The other’s weapon slipped from reluctant fingers and hit the floor with a clank.
    The new menace surveyed the four others with a sardonic glance. “Well! So there were two others trying to beat me to it. This seems to be a very popular place.”
    *       *       *       *       *
    Sills and Taylor stared stupidly, while Hornswoggle’s teeth chattered energetically. The first mobster moved back uneasily, muttering as he did so, “For Pete’s sake, it’s Mike the Slug.”
    “Yeah,” Mike rasped, “Mike the Slug. There’s lots of guys who know me and who know I ain’t afraid to pull the trigger anytime I feel like. Come on, Baldy, hand over the works. You know--the stuff about your fake gold. Come on, before I count five.”
    Sills moved slowly toward the old safe in the corner. Mike stepped back carelessly to give him room, and in so doing, his coat sleeve brushed against a shelf. A small vial of sodium sulphate solution tottered and fell.
    With sudden inspiration, Sills yelled, “My God, watch out! It’s nitroglycerine!”
    The vial hit the floor with the smashing tinkle of broken glass, and involuntarily, Mike yelled and jumped in wild dismay. And as he did so, Taylor crashed into him with a beautiful flying tackle. At the same time, Sills lunged for Taylor’s fallen weapon to cover the other two. For this, however, there was no longer need. At the very beginning of the confusion, both had faded hurriedly into the night from whence they came.
    Taylor and Mike the Slug rolled round and round the laboratory floor, locked in desperate struggle while Sills hopped over and about them, praying for a moment of comparative quiet that he might bring the revolver into sharp and sudden contact with the gangster’s skull.
    But no such moment came. Suddenly Mike lunged, caught Taylor stunningly under the chin, and jerked free. Sills yelled in consternation and pulled the trigger at the fleeing figure. The shot was wild and Mike escaped unharmed. Sills made no attempt to follow.
    A sluicing stream of cold water brought Taylor back to his senses. He shook his head dazedly as he surveyed the surrounding shambles.
    “Whew!” he said, “What a night!”
    Sills groaned, “What are we going to do now, Gene? Our very lives are in danger. I never thought of the possibility of thieves, or I would never have told of the discovery to the newspapers.”
    “Oh well, the harm’s done; no use weeping over it. Now listen, the first thing we have to do now is to get back to sleep. They won’t bother us again tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll go to the bank and put the papers outlining the details of the process in the vault (which you should have done long ago). Staples will be here at 3 p.m.; we’ll close the deal, and then, at last, we’ll live happily ever after.”
    The chemist shook his head dolefully. “Ammonium has certainly proved to be very upsetting so far. I almost wish I had never heard of it. I’d almost rather be back doing ore analysis.”
    AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE!
    As Walter Sills rattled cross-town towards his bank, he found no reason to change his wish. Even the comforting and homely jiggling of his ancient and battered automobile failed to cheer him. From a life characterized by peaceful monotony, he had entered a period of bedlam, and he was not at all satisfied with the change.
    “Riches, like poverty, has its own peculiar problems,” he remarked sententiously to himself as he braked the car before the two-story, marble edifice that was the bank. He stepped out carefully, stretched his cramped legs, and headed for the revolving door.
    He didn’t get there right away, though. Two husky specimens of the human race stepped up, one at each side, and Sills felt a very hard object pressing with painful intensity against his ribs. He opened his mouth involuntarily, and was rewarded by an icy voice in his ears, “Quiet, Baldy, or you’ll get what you deserve for the damn trick you pulled on me last night.”
    Sills shivered and subsided. He recognized Mike the Slug’s voice very easily.
    “Where’s the details?” asked Mike, “and make it quick.”
    “Inside jacket pocket,” croaked Sills tremulously.
    Mike’s companion passed his hand dexterously into the indicated pocket and flicked out three or four folded sheets of foolscap.
    “Dat it, Mike?”
    A hasty appraisal and a nod, “Yeh, we got it. All right. Baldy, on your way!” A sudden shove and the two gangsters jumped into their car and drove away rapidly, while the chemist sprawled on the sidewalk. Kindly hands raised him up.
    “It’s all right,” he managed to gasp. “I just tripped, that’s all. I’m not hurt.” He found himself alone again, passed into the bank, and dropped into the nearest bench, in near-collapse. There was no doubt about it; the new life was not for him.
    But he should have been prepared for it. Taylor had foreseen a possibility of this sort of thing happening. He, himself, had thought a car had been trailing him. Yet, in his surprise and fright, he had almost ruined everything.
    He shrugged his thin shoulders and, taking off his hat, abstracted a few folded sheets of paper from the sweatband. It was the work of five minutes to deposit them in a vault, and see the immensely strong steel door swing shut. He felt relieved.
    “I wonder what they’ll do,” he muttered to himself on the way home, “when they try to follow the instructions on the paper they did get.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “If they do, there’s going to be one heck of an explosion.”
    Sills arrived home to find three policemen pacing leisurely up and down the sidewalk in front of the house.
    “Police guard,” explained Taylor shortly, “so that we have no more trouble like last night.”
    The chemist related the events at the bank and Taylor nodded grimly. “Well, it’s checkmate for them now. Staples will be here in two hours and until then, the police will take care of things. Afterwards,” he shrugged, “it will be Staples’ affair.”
    “Listen, Gene,” the chemist put in suddenly, “I’m worried about the ammonium. I haven’t tested its plating abilities and those are the most important things, you know. What if Staples comes, and we find that all we have is pigeon milk.”
    “Hmm,” Taylor stroked his chin, “you’re right there. But I’ll tell you what we can do. Before Staples comes, let’s plate something--a spoon, suppose--for our own satisfaction.”
    “It’s really very annoying,” Sills complained fretfully. “If it weren’t for these troublesome hooligans, we wouldn’t have to proceed in this slipshod and unscientific manner.”
    “Well, let’s eat dinner first.”
    *       *       *       *       *
    After the mid-day meal, they began. The apparatus was set up in feverish haste. In a cubic vat, a foot each way, a saturated solution of Ammonaline was poured. An old, battered spoon was the cathode and a mass of ammonium amalgam (separated from the rest of the solution by a perforated glass partition) was the anode. Three batteries in series provided the current.
    Sills explained animatedly, “It works on the same principle as ordinary copper plating. The ammonium ion, once the electric current is run through, is attracted to the cathode, which is the spoon. Ordinarily it would break up, being unstable, but this is not the case when it is dissolved in Ammonaline. This Ammonaline is itself very slightly ionized and oxygen is given off at the anode.
    “This much I know from theory. Let us see what happens in practice.”
    He closed the key while Taylor watched with breathless interest. For a moment, no effect was visible. Taylor looked disappointed.
    Then Sills grasped his sleeve. “See!” he hissed. “Watch the anode!”
    Sure enough, bubbles of gas were slowly forming upon the spongy ammonium amalgam. They shifted their attention to the spoon.
    Gradually, they noticed a change. The metallic appearance became dulled, the silver color slowly losing its whiteness. A layer of distinct, if dull, yellow was being built up. For fifteen minutes, the current ran and then Sills broke the circuit with a contented sigh.
    “It plates perfectly,” he said.
    “Good! Take it out! Let’s see it!”
    “What?” Sills was aghast. “Take it out! Why, that’s pure ammonium. If I were to expose it to ordinary air, the water vapor would dissolve it to NH₄OH in no time. We can’t do that.”
    He dragged a rather bulky piece of apparatus to the table. “This,” he said, “is a compressed-air container. I run it through calcium chloride dryers and then bubble the perfectly dry oxygen (safely diluted with four times its own volume of nitrogen) directly into the solvent.”
    He introduced the nozzle into the solution just beneath the spoon and turned on a slow stream of air. It worked like magic. With almost lightning speed, the yellow coating began to glitter and gleam, to shine with almost ethereal beauty.
    The two men watched it with beating heart and panting breath. Sills shut the air off, and for a while they watched the wonderful spoon and said nothing.
    Then Taylor whispered hoarsely, “Take it out. Let me feel it! My God!--it’s beautiful!”
    With reverent awe, Sills approached the spoon, grasped it with forceps, and withdrew it from the surrounding liquid.
    What followed immediately after that can never be fully described. Later on, when excited newspaper reporters pressed them unmercifully, neither Taylor nor Sills had the least recollection of the happenings of the next few minutes.
    What happened was that the moment the ammonium-plated spoon was exposed to open air, the most horrible odor ever conceived assailed their nostrils!--an odor that cannot be described, a terrible broth of Hell that plunged the room into sheer, horrible nightmare.
    With one strangled gasp, Sills dropped the spoon. Both were coughing and retching, tearing wildly at their throats and mouths, yelling, weeping, sneezing!
    Taylor pounced upon the spoon and looked about wildly. The odor grew steadily more powerful and their wild exertions to escape it had already succeeded in wrecking the laboratory and had upset the vat of Ammonaline. There was only one thing to do, and Sills did it. The spoon went flying out the open window into the middle of Twelfth Avenue. It hit the sidewalk right at the feet of one of the policemen, but Taylor didn’t care.
    “Take off your clothes. We’ll have to burn them,” Sills was gasping. “Then spray something over the laboratory--anything with a strong smell. Burn sulphur. Get some liquid bromine.”
    *       *       *       *       *
    Both were tearing at their clothes in distraction when they realized that someone had walked in through the unlocked door. The bell had rung, but neither had heard it. It was Staples, six-foot, lion-maned Steel King.
    One step into the hall ruined his dignity utterly. He collapsed in one tearing sob and Twelfth Avenue was treated to the spectacle of an elderly, richly-dressed gentleman tearing uptown as fast as his feet would carry him, shedding as much of his clothes as he dared while doing so.
    The spoon continued its deadly work. The three policemen had long since retired in abject rout, and now to the numbed and tortured senses of the two innocent and suffering causes of the entire mess came a roaring and confused shouting from the street.
    Men and women were pouring out of the neighboring houses, horses were bolting. Fire engines clanged down the street, only to be abandoned by their riders. Squadrons of police came--and left.
    Sills and Taylor finally gave up, and clad only in trousers, ran pell-mell for the Hudson. They did not stop until they found themselves neck-deep in water, with blessed, pure air above them.
    Taylor turned bewildered eyes to Sills. “But how could it emit that horrible odor? You said it was stable and stable solids have no odors. It takes vapor for that, doesn’t it?”
    “Have you ever smelled musk?” groaned Sills. “It will give off an aroma for an indefinite period without losing any appreciable weight. We’ve come up against something like that.”
    The two ruminated in silence for a while, wincing whenever the wind brought a vagrant waft of ammonium vapor to them, and then Taylor said in a low voice, “When they finally trace the trouble to the spoon, and find out who made it, I’m afraid we’ll be sued--or maybe thrown in jail.”
    Sills’ face lengthened. “I wish I’d never seen the damned stuff! It’s brought nothing but trouble.” His tortured spirit gave way and he sobbed loudly.
    Taylor patted him on the back mournfully. “It’s not as bad as all that, of course. The discovery will make you famous and you’ll be able to demand your own price, working at any industrial lab in the country. Then, too, you’re a cinch to win the Nobel Prize.”
    “That’s right,” Sills smiled again, “and I may find a way to counteract the odor, too. I hope so.”
    “I hope so, too,” said Taylor feelingly. “Let’s go back. I think they’ve managed to remove the spoon by now.”