inful
intensity of his.

"Isn't it?" he said shortly. "We'll see! But first, I suppose, you
want to see the thing at work. I have here cordite, gelignite,
trinitrotoluol," but his hare's eyes fell on the suit-case, "perhaps
you have brought your own stuff?"

"Yes," said the Baron; "I have brought my own stuff."

The garden of the villa was a plot of land reaching down to a parapet
lapped by the still stone-blue waters of the lake. Wooden steps led
down to it from the balcony; Herr Haase, descending them last with
the suit-case, paused an instant to shift his burden from one hand to
the other, and had time to survey the place the ruins of a lawn,
pitted like the face of a small-pox patient with small holes, where
the raw clay showed through the unkempt grass the "craters" of which
Captain von Wetten had spoken. Tall fir-trees, the weed of
Switzerland, bounded the garden on either hand, shutting it in as
effectually as a wall. Out upon the blue-and-silver floor of the lake
a male human being rowed a female of his species in a skiff; and near
the parapet something was hooded under a black cloth, such as
photographers use, beneath whose skirts there showed the feet of a
tripod.

Herr Bettermann, the young man with the scar, walked across to it. At
first glimpse, it had drawn all their eyes; each felt that here,
properly and decently screened, was the core of the affair. It was
right that it should be covered up and revealed only at the due
moment; yet Bettermann went to it and jerked the black cloth off,
raping the mystery of the thing as crudely as a Prussian in Belgium.

"Here it is," he said curtly. "Put your stuff where you like."

The cloth removed disclosed a contrivance like two roughly cubical
boxes, fitted one above the other, the upper projecting a little
beyond the lower, and mounted on the apex of the tripod. A third box,
evidently, by the terminals which projected from its cover, the
container of a storage battery, lay between the feet of the tripod,
and wires linked it with the apparatus above. Beside the tripod lay a
small black bag such as doctors are wont to carry.

Von Wetten took a key from his pocket and threw it on the ground.
"Unlock that bag," he said to Herr Haase, and turned towards the
Baron and his host.

Herr Haase picked up the key, unlocked the suitcase, and stood ready
for further orders. The Baron was standing with Bettermann by the
tripod; the latter was talking and detaching some