Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1917-12-19


the learned he was mentioned in the
same breath with Faraday, Sir Isaac
Newton and Lavoisier. Hatfield of the
March Hares' club had once honored
him by publicly comparing him with
James I.
He had discovered the secret of cold
light, and had received a fortune from
one of the largest electrical companies
for destroying his papers. This en-
abled him to free himself from the
poverty in which he had lived.
He had bisected an ion-upon a
blackboard; a thing considered theo-
retically impossible.
He had solved the problem of utiliz-
ing solar energy, although he had not
succeeded in making his process valu-
able commercially.
Unfortunately, like many men of
genius, MacBeard had one disastrous
failing. He had trained himself intel
faculties. He had never learned to
control his primal gutter-urchin pro-
pensities.
He was thief.
He did not steal big things, but little
ones, and everyone knows that this is
more damning socially.
They called it kleptomania, and let
him resign. But it was not k1epto-
mania it was theft. MacBeard's ca
reer was finished. The only club that
would admit him to membership was
the Inventors'-and that only because
had compelled the passage of rule
that there should be no blackballing.
Anyone could join the Inventors club,
but only inventors wanted to.
MacBeard, embittered, brooded over
his wrongs. They assumed monstrous
proportions in his mind. He was al
ready approaching fifty; he believed
that at death the soul perishes with
the body, and the thought of his gil
gantic brain being obliterated filled
him with frenzy. He wanted to make
q lasting mark upon the world.
His first idea was to use his solar
energy plant to produce simultaneous
eruptions of the volcanoes in Italy aid
Iceland, Japan and California upon an
unprecedented scale. A lava desert
should cover all the TILED fields and
cities, burying man a thousand feet
under it's surface and obliterating civil
lizatiOn.
The science and art of nineteen
tventieths of the world would disap-
pear. MacBeard not only hated the
world, which had made him an out
cast, but he despised it intellectually
as beyond redemption. He wanted TO
bestride it's ruins as a superman,
god.
However, his scheme had several
drawbacks. 1t was utterly beyond ms
financial means. He could not fore
see exactly the results of it. There
were disturbing possibilities. and ne
was not the man to act without maine
NAUTICAL exactitude.
His vengeance must take other forms.
He wanted a less academic plan, one
which reeked less of the m1dnlgnt
lamp. He wanted a more concrete
personal triumph. He wanted to lead
an army to victory, not to sit PACK
and watch the working out or pInd
forces that he had set in motion.
Besides, destruction must De ioi-
lowed by construction, to satisfy MS
scientific mind.
His second thought was to produce
race of men, somewhere in the ice
hound wastes of Greenland, tnat
should grow to maturity in a few
years; a race organized for war, pri-
NAL blend of man ana tiger. 1t mao
been done with the plants.
But he was too old. He would De
seventy before this plan could be car
ried to perfection. And then 1t was
imnrobable that the details wouio
work out as he anticipated. His nnai
idea came through Masterman.
Masterman was one OF the many
mon whom he had broken in his days
of mower. But Masterman was OF
different caliber from the rest. MAS
terman had tried to come back, anu
had almost succeeded.
MacBeard, at first contemptuous OF
tho old dreamer, came at last TO Wa1cii
Masterman uneasily. He kne" tha'