Show see 0 0 so 0 96 a a DID r r rr 0 carr 1 TO TH da P A PE IL by VICTOR victon ROUSSEAU 0 copyright by W G 0 chapman 0 0 THE VILLAIN MAG MAC BEARD POSSESSED OF THE DEAD MAS SECRET GOES TO FIND THE ABODE OF THE WEIRD THINGS NEAR SHETLAND ISLANDS HAS DEADLY PURPOSE naval lieutenant donald paget just given command of a submarine meets at washington an old friend and distinguished though somewhat eccentric scientist captain masterman masterman Master raan has just returned from an exploring expedition bringing with him a member of the strange race the existence of whose species he be asserts menaces the human family at the club tho the march hares Master masterman nian explains hla his theory to paget the recital Is interrupted by the arrival of a lifelong enemy of masterman ira Mac Beard and the former la is seized with a fatal paralytic stroke from Master mans body paget secures documents bearing upon the discovery and proceeds to the home of the scientist paget proceeds to sea on his submarine the and encounters a german cruiser ile he sinks the enemy which had destroyed the beitia on which ida kennedy his fiancee was a passenger the girl escapes in a small boat ile he rescues her but finds himself unable to take the skiff to the submarine because of invisible forces arces paget ida midshipman davies and seaman sam clouts clonts barely escape death clouts clonts plays the mou thorgan CHAPTER VI continued 8 donald heard him leap into the torpedo room below A moment later his voice came up the funn funnel ea im ready for the lady sir sart I 1 he called donald raised ida in his arras arms and lowered her through the tube after you sir said davies dadles 1 I have assumed command davies donald replied very well sir said the middy quietly and descended donald followed him As he jumped for the floor of the torpedo room he be heard board the scraping sound of nippers flippers on the floor above but the creaking of the conning tower door had ceased were saved I 1 cried donald davies they cant force the conning tower of course not that sound Is one or two of the beasts who have come down the hatches you closed them no sir there time then they tried to get through the conning tower and rea reason son enough to know that they could get through the hat hatches chesl 1 cried donald joyfully their reason wont get them down the tube sir unless got bodies as slim as ours said clouts clonts and they feel like like ilke barrels sir he be added Oyer overhead bead the scraping continued sometimes approaching the tube and then receding presently there came the sound of a commotion donald inferred that the sea devils had found the one that he had injured and that they were sat satiating lating their horrible cannibalistic niba listic instincts he beard a body dragged this way and that and a dreadful rending reading after a while the swishing began again and a faint tapping of flippers against the walls as if the creatures were endeavoring to explore the interior of the ship occasionally a 1 faint phosphorescent luminosity was visible at the top of the tube but the monsters made no attempt to descend into the torpedo room an idea came to donald Dav lesl listen to mel me he said they dont know were here no sir I 1 was thinking P that they have no sense ot of smell yes sir and little hearing at least that they distinguish sounds only as vibrations 1 yes sir and of course their sense of sight must be extremely limited and so roughly that leaves them only the use of taste and touch but probably developed far above our own well beat them davies it if true as they cant bear much I 1 think if I 1 might sir ril ill play a bit ork on my mouth organ said clouts clonts 11 just a low humming sir right clouts clonts answered donald but simultaneously with the first notes there came from above a singular sound it seemed to be very far away it was a single mellow note the G of a violin and exquisitely true it might have been a distant warning buoy anchored amid the tides that davies Da asked donald 1 I dont know sir the lighthouse stopped operating when the war broke 0 out ut and the buoys were taken up more and suddenly donald knew that he had heard it before the same note though infinitely less powerful it was the sound of the finger on the bowl of water within the house in baltimore the scraping in the passage ended in a scurry und did not recur all through the night they crouched in the torpedo room watching and sleeping by turns and the silence was broken only by a passing word and the oe occasional cas ional lonal tunefulness of 0 clouts clonts mouth organ as he be played sally in our alley CHAPTER VII 4 q q I 1 ira in Unc Beard ira m Mac Beard was 0 no of those rare men imen who are recognized by their contemporaries an ad master minds to the I 1 public lie he was unknown but among the learned he was mentioned in the same breath with faraday sir isaac newton and lavoisier 11 alfield of the march hares cub club had once honored lio nored him by publicly comparing him with james L I 1 lie ile had discovered the secret of cold light and had bad received a fortune from one of the largest electrical companies for destroying his papers this enabled him to free himself from the poverty in which he had bad lived ue ile had bisected an ton ion upon a blackboard a thing considered theoretically cally impossible he had bad solved the problem of utilizing solar energy although lie ho had not succeeded in making his process valuable commercially unfortunately like many men of gen genius us blackbeard Mac blac Beard had one disastrous falling failing ue ile had trained himself intellectually ly at the expense of his moral faculties lie he had never learned to control his primal gutter drebin propensities lie ile was a thief ile he did not stal big things but little ones on and everyone knows that this is more damning socially they called it kleptomania and let him film resign but it was not kleptomania it was theft Mac Beards career was finished the only club that would admit him to membership was the inventors and that only because the furious bicke rings of its 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 Mac Beard embittered brooded blooded over his wrongs they assumed monstrous proportions in his mind he was already approaching fifty he believed that at death the soul perishes with the body and the thought of his gigantic brain being obliterated filled 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 eruptions of the volcanoes in italy and iceland japan nad and Cali forilla jn in an unprecedented scale A lava desert should cover all the tilled fiel fields ds and cities burying man a thousand feet under its surface and obliterating civilization liza tion the science and art of nineteen of the world would disappear Mac Beard not only hated bated the world which had bad made him an outcast but he desp despised ased ll it intellectuality Intellectual lly ily as beyond redemption he wanted to bestride ae stride its ruins as a superman a god however his scheme had several drawbacks it was utterly beyond his bis financial means he could not foresee exactly the results of it IL there were disturbing possibilities and he was not the man to act without mathematical exactitude his vengeance must take tahe other forms he wanted a less academic plan one which reeked less of the midnight lamp he wanted a more concrete personal triumph ile he wanted to lead an army to victory not to sit back and watch the working out of blind forces corces that he be had set in motion besides destruction must be fol owed lowed by construction to satisfy his scientific mind I 1 was a race of men somewhere in the ace icebound wastes of greenland that should grow to maturity in a few years a 11 race organized for war a primal blend of men man and tiger it had bad been done with the plants but he was too old he would be seventy before this plan could be carried to perfection and then it was improbable that the details would work out as he hb anticipated his final idea came through masterman masterman was one of the many tea men whom he had broken in his days of power but masterman was of a different caliber from the rest MRS terman had bad tried to come back and had almost succeeded Mac Beard at first contemptuous of the old dreamer came atlant at last to toj watch vatch masterman uneasily he knew gnei that abe lie oil captain was crazed upon tb the G subject ot of deep sea life but he knew too the facts that underlay his letters lettera to th the e newspapers ire he had sent a paper embodying tins this subject to the magazine of the inventors club unfortunately had won tie the ballot for the editorship that month Master mans scholarly coi contribution trib ution had been consigned to tho waste basket and tho the articles in too the magazine had been as follows A king lu in blasque masquerade rade king james I 1 cis as universal man shakespeare and the JIM cipher bacon and the cipher what civilization owes to james 1 I 11 when Master Alaster mans proxy ballot won the editorship editor mil during ills his absence the tha printers instead of inserting his latest paper as lie he had requested used a quantity of his old unpublished material secretly Alac Beard had known that the carapace which 31 asterman had brought back from the north was not that of a stegosaurus ills his attack attach upon masterman asterman Al had been inspired by envy nud and hatred lie ile had examined the relic and admitted to himself that it was that of an unk unknown deepwater deep water ant antnay an nal his respect for abilities lu increased creased tenfold ile he had bad begun spying upon the captain lie he broke into its his house while he was away and read his papers without however learning anything of use to him incidentally lie he stole a gold presentation watch a chinese vase of 0 the ming dynasty di nasty and a pair of lapis cazull earrings which bad belou belonged ged to Aluster mans wife when Ma Mac Beard elleard heard the first rumors to the effect that Master mans ship phlp mid been wrecked and that all on board had perished he lie planned to fit out a secret expedition to go to the of the disaster and are see what w hat was to be discovered then he had seen the captain in the dining room of tho the club ue ile lind had been thrown off his guard by Muster mans unexpected return had bad followed him and donald to the door of the card room and hail had heard the file greater part of the story lie ile had been unable to restrain ills his eagerness and had been detected spying balked in his scheme to get posses poses po ses slon of Master mans hatter lie had bad followed donald to the house in baltimore there he had assaulted him and taken the papers from him he had had bad no intention of killing donald whom he despised heartily once the secret in which he be now firmly bo be ildved was in his possession there would come coine no reckoning for the assault lie he saw his way vay to immediate over the world to do Mac Beard justice lie he had been seared scared away not by fear of the monster but by the realization that mas alas fermai s terrific story ii was as tru true e after donald had bad left the house Mac Alac Beard crept back ile he discovered the monster upon the floor where it had precipitated itself in its death deahl agony it had been disrupted by the internal arc pressure assure under a normal atmo pher e ile he made a quick examination of it sat down in the litchen kitchen and spent the remainder of the night poring over Master mans papers in these lie he learned much that was essential to his success ile he read that the he creature in the tank was a young one which had not yet acquired the power of resistance to an ordinary atmosphere nature was still in process of modifying her creation and as is always the case the young retained the atavistic disabilities just as the young of flatfish swin swim like other fishes and have one eye on either side of the head the modifications in the physiological structure come coine with maturity the adult monsters Mac Ma Beard elleard learned had already acquired the ability to exist for on an indefinite period upon the surface of the sea while the young had gills these became modified into a species of lung capable of breathing both above and under this was a new adaptation of nature Mac Beard hurried back to the lead dead monster and found the lung already partly formed that satisfied that Al masterman asterman was an accurate ib server the submarine sinks party take to the water in diving suits suite they male make some amazing discoveries TO BE CONTINUED |