The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1917-11-24

lie Hdu SOIVeO the problem of utiliZ-
ing solar energy, although he had not
succeeded in making his process vaIu-
able commercially.
Unfortunately, like many men of
genius, MacBeard had one disastrous
failing. He had trained himself intel
lectually at the expense of his moral
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 kIeptomania, and let
him resign. But it was not klepto-
mania; it was theft. MacBeard's ca
reer was finished. The only club that
would admit him to membership was
the 1nTentors'-and that only because
the furious chickering's of its members
had compelled the passage of a rule
that there should be no bIackbalIing.
| 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
MIN with frenzy. He wanted to make
lasting mark upon the world.
| His first idea was to use his solar
energy plant to produce simultaneous
eruptions of the volcanoes in Italy and
Iceland, Japan and California upon an
unprecedented scale. A lava desert
should cover all the titled fields and
cities, burying man a thousand feet
uAder its surface and ObIiterating civil
| lization.
The science and art Of nineteen
twentieths 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 its ruins as a superman, a
god.
However, his scheme had several
drawbacks. 1t was utterly beyond his
financial means. He could not fore
see exactly the results of it. There
were disturbing possibilities, and he
was not the man to act without mathe-
NAUTICAL exactitude.
His vengeance must take other forms.
He wanted less academic plan, one
which reeked less of the midnighr
lamp. He wanted q more concrete
personal triumph. He wanted to lead
an army to victory, not to sit back
and watch the working out of blind
forces that he had set in motion
Besides, destruction must be fol-
lowed by construction, to satisfy his
scientific mind.
His second thought was to produce
a race of men, somewhere in the ice
should grow to maturity in q few
years; race organized for war, a pri-
NAL blend of man and tiger. 1t had
been done with the plants
But he was too old. He would be
seventy before this plan could be car
ried to perfection. And then it was
improbable that the details would
work out as he anticipated. His final
idea came through Masterman.
MaSterman was one of the MANY
men whom he had broken in his days
OF power. But Masterman was of a
different caliber from the rest. Mas
| teri.san had tried to come back, and
had almost succeeded.
: MacBeard. at first contemptuous of
the old dreamer. came at last to watch
+. Amsterdam uneaSily. He knew that
the old captain was crazed upon the
subject of deep-sea life; but he knew.
too, the facts that underlay his letters
to the newspapers.
: He had sent paper embodying this
subject to the magazine of the Inyen-
1 tors club. Unfortunately, Hatfield
had won the ballot for the etiitorship
that month. Masterman's scholarly
contribution had been consigned tn tbe
waste basket, and the articles in the
magazine had been as follows: "a
King in Masquerade" liking James
e as Universal Man." Shakespeare and
: the JIM cipher" Bacon and the NIL
e Cipher" What Civilization Owes to
g James L.
e When. Masterman's proxy ballot Won
c the editOrship during his absence thf
e printers, instead of inserting his latest
d paper, as he had requested. used- 5
h quantity OF his old, unpublished ma
teriaI.
d Secretly MacBeard had known tina
n the .carapaoe which Masterman has
s brought back from the North was no
L that of stegosaurus. His attack upo,
e Nasterman had been inspired by eny,
and hatred He had examined tn,
a relic. and admitted to himself thar i
D. was that of an unknown deep-wate
animal.