Evening star., 1902-01-04

Understand, but he suppiled the capital ana
acted as fence, and got hold of most of
| the profits.
II rebeiled, of course, but what could /
do? I've often wondered since what 1
| ought to have done. The prison blocked
every road but one. In short, succumbed
and went to work, and nice work it was,
There was no sort of lawless implement
that / didn't handle. Molds and dies for
and checks, electric drills and blowpipes
for safe cracking-I had them ALL l did
good work, too, and L am ashamed to say
that 1t wasn't very long before the scien-
tific side of the work began to eclipse the
moral, in my mind 1 had plenty of time
for private experimenting besides, and
Kearnahan bought the costliest apparatus
for me without a kick. He said I was
worth $4,000 year to him, and, in fact, l
believe that some of the cleverest robberies
OF that period owed their success to me.
But the more 1 came to know of my
master the more loathed him. He never
made any pretensions to piety, even in his
public life. you know; he posed as a sport,
but his private life was thing to turn the
stomach of a beast. He wallowed in every
sort of vice. and how he managed to keep
his wits so clear l can't imagine He used
to come to my laboratory and talk--Lord!
l sicken to think of itl''
You never seem to have heard OF the
thing called States evidence remarked.
Yes, but 1 had no direct proof, and he
mad 1t all straight against me. Besides. 1
knew that the influence of his ring ex-
tended even to the courts, in a greater or
less degree. Well, 1T was cowardice, con-
tess, but l daren't risk it. As l got to
know the breadth and depth of that mans
unholy power I was half-cowed, and 1
tried to think of nothing but science-till
new stimulus came to me-"
Glenny stopped and was silent for half a
minute The winking candle glittered on
that strange yellow effigy, and queer ref1ec-
tionS danced on the dark walls.
=. except for it's intellectual interests. my
ilfe has been bare and graceless to an un-
imaginable degree" he went on at last II
hardly realized its coloriessness myself till
a woman came into tiff you believe me
Tor the first time. Kearnahan never knew
OF my acquaintance with the Lesoirs. He
wasn't in their class, and would have felt
1t PROCLAMATION to mention Helen's name in
ms brutal presence. She was the brightest
snlng that ever touched my existence
MAN, You must remember what my life had
oeen-the slums and the gutter and the
thieves hangout till I was twenty, and
nothing but retorts and crucibles after
that!
II couldn't see her often but she came to
care for mel know she did Them had
been going in sort of golden dream
then seemed to wake up to the horror of
my position. L was nothing better than
save, chained down to crime I would
have cut my throat sooner than have drag.
geo Helen into the net that held me- but re.
Delllon meant the prison that WouId shnt
me Off from her forever
tfied hard to break the cords 7 plot
teo ana Planned till l almost went gray
m put could find no opening for escape
ihose waiting years of Imprisonment
couldn't dodge them. concluded that 7
had better lie low for awhile and wait for
an opportunity. To go up for trial meant
never to see her again l knew that. And
now I've lost her. forever and to all eterni-
y. he ended his sentence with sort of
dry gasp. >''' u
Wen, l turned back hard to work. and
hnr l.
OF the reach of the jar and vibration of a
CITY. L was working upon the production OF
low temperatures, for we had an idea that
ny the use of liquid air in some way steel
so go e. a oe mace as brittle as glass, and a
SAFE door could be cracked with a hammer
II was interesting, but I presently Stun
pieoe upon a discovery that promised greater
tnings yet nothing less than the production
Of the Absolute Zero.
fhat, you must know Is the ternpera.
ture at which all heat is absent. r. ia
ABOUT 2Io degrees centigrade, and has never
even Deen approached by science hmm
OF matter at the Aboslute Zero would be
dead, as no created substance has avar
been absolutely deprived Of energy of anv
sort. lts atoms would only hold together
ny mere inertia, and would be liable tn he
broken up by any shock. 1 specufated q
good deal as to what form matter would
assume in such a state It would he s;nn-
ply matter, deprived of all it's attrihntes
ana no more iron or earth than flesh oT.
water. could not even decide whether II
would be visible or not -
Il had the underground coll hri,+ 90 .
as far from vibration as possible ana
moved the engine shed to a greater dis
lance You wouldn't understand INV ey
pei. teriInents II l described them. but I worked
lor TWO or three months before l saw INV
way clear. l had already obtained tom,
peratures lower than had ever been before
optained. Liquid air l employed largely
nu. liqa1a air was boiling oil compared to
n,ft txr a,,s.l
tremendous pressure and cold.
TWO months ago 1 arranged my appara
.us Tor the great attempt. That stone
trough In the floor was the cooling box'
it, locked the lid and started the menbinn m
cry For an hour l watched the self-regis-
ter'ns thermometers go down. Down they
"ent-2,o degrees go degrees 26J degrees
oxnnr, n,tu onen tney ceased to work 1 let the
experiment go on for an hour more. and
tnen held an electric bulb over the glass
WINDOW In the lid and peeped in.
just Tor a moment saw the nile
ot ot tT pElces KS exactly as I had left them Then
at the flash of light they seemed to move
to expand, to turn pale and before re,
ailzed the transformation they were white
as marble, and considerably larger. I
raised the I'D, but the gush of white va
por and awful cold that came out drove
me hurriedly up the shaft in the lift. When
the place had warmed little | returned
Instead of the bricks I found half a dozen
otoNho VI Soliu ice, Drlck-Snaped, but near
ly third larger.
mad half expected something of the
sort 1t had been a success. The ravs
of the electric lamp had broken up the
atoms of dead matter into new mo-
lecuiar arrangement, which happened to he
that of water. The increase in bulk sim
ply represented the difference in the sne
cific gravities of the old and the new
compounds
1t was certainly the greatest scientific
feat OF the century, and my state Of ey
citement and triumph is hard to describe.
moreover, the practical possibilities of the
thlng were enormous, unlimited If bricks
could be turned to water. stones could he
turned to diamonds; it was only a oues
ton of finding the right sort of shocl, to
apply to the deadened matter So devot-
ed myself to the problem of ascertaininp
what sort of shocks produced certain re-
suits, and L worked at 1t for weeks. I
had the terminals of an induction coil run
into the cold box, and used sparks of dif
1erent intensities as agents. But 7 could
not arrive at any accurate results: the
chilled matter seemed to take one turn
as readily as another. Lumps of rock
changed to ice or carbon readily some
times to lead. sometimes to air and once
l nearly blew up the whole place by sud
denly producing several thousand feet OF