Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1924-06-06
CHAPTER VII.
Ira MacBeard.

ira MacBe0rQ was one OF LnOSG raI
men who are recognized by their con
temporaries as master minds. To tn
public he was unknown, but amOnl
the learned he was mentioned in tn
same breath with Faraday, Sir Isaa
Newton and Lavoisier. Hatfield of tn,
March Hares' club had once honore,
him by publicly comparing him witt
James /.
He had discovered the secret of COLI
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 9
! 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 Yalu-
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 kleptomania, and let
him resign. But it was not klepto-
mania 1t was theft MacBeard's ca
reer was finished. The only club that
would admit him to membership was
the Inventors'-and that only because
the furious chickering's of it's members
had compelled the passage of a 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
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 gi-
gantic brain being obliterated filed
him with frenzy. He wanted to make
a lasting mark upon the world.
His first idea was to use his solar
energy plant to produce simultaneous
of the volcanoes in Italy and
Japan and California upon an
scale. A lava desert !
should cover all the titled fields and !
titles, burying man a thousand feet |
lnder its surface and obliterating civil
ization.
The science and art of nineteen
wentieths of the world would disap- t
,ear. MacBeard not only hated the
world, which had made him an out
asst, but he despised it intellectually
s beyond redemption. He wanted to
estride its ruins as a superman,
cd.
However, his scheme had several
rawbacks. 1t was utterly beyond his
means. He could not fore
ee exactly the results of it. There
Tere disturbing possibilities, and he
'as not the man to act without mathe-
latical exactitude.
His vengeance must take other forms.
lie wanted q less academic plan, one
'hich reeked less of the midnight
mp. He wanted a more concrete,
ersonal triumph. He wanted to lead
n army to victory, not to sit back
nd watch the working out Of blind
,rces that he had set in motion.
Besides, destruction must be fol-
wed by construction, to satisfy his
,ientific mind.
His second thought was to produce
race of men, somewhere In the ice :
)und wastes of Greenland, that :
lould grow to maturity in few +
,ars; a race organized for war, pri- !
al blend of man and tiger. 1t had !
zen done with the plants.
But he was too old. He would be I
venty before this plan could be car
ed to perfection. And then it was
probable that the details would
ork out as he anticipated. His final
ca came through Masterman.
was one of the many
en- whom he had broken in his days
power. But Masterman was of a
nerent caliber from the rest. Mas
rman had tried to come back, and |
d almost succeeded. i
at first contemptuous Of
e old dreamer, came at last to watch /
lsterman uneasily. he knew that
3 old captain was crazed upon the
bject of deep-sea life; but he knew,
}, the facts that underlay his letters
the newspapers.
he had sent paper embodying this
Dject to the magazine of the Inyen- :
s. club. Unfortunately, Hatfield
d won the ballot for the editorship
It month. Masterman's scholarly 5
had been consigned to the
ste basket, and the articles in the
gazine had been as follows: "a
lg in Masquerade" 'King James 1 :
Universal Man." Shakespeare and
JIM cipher" Bacon and the NIL s,
her" "What Civilization Owes to
mes L"
When Masterman's proxy ballot won al
editorship during his absence, the OF
nters, instead of inserting his latest al