the world itself would dissolve. I cannot tell what the magnitude of the result might be, for I have not dared to risk the experiment."
"Oh, this is too frightful to think about," she cried. "You must destroy the machine, Professor, and you must never make another."
"What! And give up the hope that my name will descend to posterity?"
"Professor Seigfried, when once this machine becomes known to the world, there will be no posterity for your name to descend to. With the present hatred of nation against nation, with different countries full of those unimprisoned maniacs whom we call Jingoes—men preaching the hatred of one people against another—how long do you think the world will last when once such knowledge is abroad in it?"
The Professor looked longingly at the machine he had so slowly and painfully constructed.
"It would be of much use to humanity if it were but benevolently employed. With the coal fields everywhere diminishing, it would supply a motive force for the universe that would last through the ages."
"Professor Seigfried," exclaimed Jennie earnestly, "when the Lord permits a knowledge of that machine to become common property, it is His will that the end of the world shall come."
The Professor said nothing, but stood with deeply wrinkled brow, gazing earnestly at the mechanism. In his hand was the hammer-head which he had previously given to the girl; his arm went up and down as if he were estimating its weight; then suddenly, without a word of warning, he raised it and sent it crashing through the machine, whose splintering glass fell with a musical tinkle on the floor.
Jennie gave a startled cry, and with a low moan the Professor struggled to his chair and fell, rather than sat down, in it. A ghastly pallor overspread his face, and the girl in alarm ran again to the cupboard, poured out some brandy and offered it to him, then tried to pour it down his throat, but his tightly set teeth resisted her efforts. She chafed his rigid hands, and once he opened his eyes, slowly shaking his head.
"Try to sip this brandy," she said, seeing his jaws relax.
"It is useless," he murmured with difficulty. "My life was in the instrument, as brittle as the glass. I have—"
He could say no more. Jennie went swiftly downstairs to the office of a physician, on the first floor, which she had noticed as she came up.
The medical man, who knew of the philosopher, but was not personally acquainted with him, for the Professor had few friends, went up the steps three at a time, and Jennie followed him more slowly. He met the girl at the door of the attic.
"It is useless," he said. "Professor Seigfried is dead; and it is my belief that in his taking away Austria has lost her greatest scientist."
"I am sure of it," answered the girl, with trembling voice; "but perhaps after all it is for the best."
"I doubt that," said the doctor. "I never feel so like quarrelling with Providence as when some noted man is removed right in the midst of his usefulness."
"I am afraid," replied Jennie solemnly, "that we have hardly reached a state of development that would justify us in criticizing the wisdom of Providence. In my own short life I have seen several instances where it seemed that Providence intervened for the protection of His creatures; and even the sudden death of Professor Seigfried does not shake my belief that Providence knows best."
She turned quickly away and went down the stairs in some haste. At the outer door she heard the doctor call down, "I must have your name and address, please."
But Jennie did not pause to answer. She had no wish to undergo cross-examination at an inquest, knowing that if she told the truth she would not be believed, while if she attempted to hide it, unexpected personal inconvenience might arise from such a course. She ran rapidly to the street corner, hailed a fiacre and drove to a distant part of the city; then she dismissed the cab, went to a main thoroughfare, took a tramcar to the centre of the town, and another cab to the Palace.
CHAPTER XVII.
JENNIE ENGAGES A ROOM IN A SLEEPING CAR.
Jennie had promised Professor Seigfried not to communicate with the Director of Police, and she now wondered whether it would be breaking her word, or not, if she let that official know the result of her investigation, when it would make no difference, one way or the other, to the Professor. If Professor Seigfried could have foreseen his own sudden death, would he not, she asked herself, have preferred her to make public all she knew of him? for had he not constantly reiterated that fame, and the consequent transmission of his name to posterity, was what he worked for? Then there was this consideration: if the Chief of Police was not told how the explosion had been caused, his fruitless search would go futilely on, and, doubtless, in the course of police inquiry, many innocent persons would be arrested, put to inconvenience and expense, and there was even a chance that one or more, who had absolutely nothing to do with the affair, might be imprisoned for life. She resolved, therefore, to tell the Director of the Police all she knew, which she would not have done had Professor Seigfried been alive. She accordingly sent a messenger for the great official, and just as she had begun to relate to the impatient Princess what had happened, he was announced. The three of them held convention in Jennie's drawing-room with locked doors.
"I am in a position," began Jennie, "to tell you how the explosion in the Treasury was caused and who caused it; but before doing so you must promise to grant me two favours, each of which is in your power to bestow without inconvenience."
"What are they?" asked the Director of Police cautiously.
"To tell what they are is to tell part of my story. You must first promise blindly, and afterwards keep your promise faithfully."
"Those are rather unusual terms, Miss Baxter," said the Chief; "but I accede to them, the more willingly as we have found that all the gold is still in the Treasury, as you said it was."
"Very well, then, the first favour is that I shall not be called to give testimony when an inquest is held on the body of Professor Carl Seigfried."
"You amaze me!" cried the Director; "how did you know he was dead? I had news of it only a moment before I left my office."
"I was with him when he died," said Jennie simply, which statement drew forth an exclamation of surprise from both the Princess and the Director. "My next request is that you destroy utterly a machine which stands on a table near the centre of the Professor's room. Perhaps the instrument is already disabled—I believe it is—but, nevertheless, I shall not rest content until you have seen that every vestige of it is made away with, because the study of what is left of it may enable some other scientist to put it in working order again. I entreat you to attend to this matter yourself. I will go with you, if you wish me to, and point out the instrument in case it has been moved from its position."
"The room is sealed," said the Director, "and nothing will be touched until I arrive there. What is the nature of this instrument?"
"It is of a nature so deadly and destructive that, if it got into the hands of an anarchist, he could, alone, lay the city of Vienna in ruins."
"Good heavens!" cried the horrified official, whose bane was the anarchist, and Jennie, in mentioning this particular type of criminal, had builded better than she knew. If she had told him that the Professor's invention might enable Austria to conquer all the surrounding nations, there is every chance that the machine would have been carefully preserved.
"The explosion in the Treasury vaults," continued Jennie, "was accidentally caused by this instrument, although the machine at the moment was in a garret half a mile away. You saw the terrible effect of that explosion; imagine, then, the destruction it would cause in the hands of one of those anarchists who are so reckless of consequences."
"I shall destroy the instrument with my own hands," asserted the Director fervently, mopping his pallid brow.
Jennie then went on, to the