ut any bottom. The man
did not look long, for it made him dizzy. He turned and ran out of the
house to call Mr. Bryce.

Ivan Rovinski was not perhaps a lunatic, but his unprincipled ambition
had made him so disregard the principles of ordinary prudence when such
principles stood in his way that it could not be said that he was at all
times entirely sane. He understood thoroughly why he had been put in an
asylum, and it enraged him to think that by this course his enemies had
obtained a great advantage over him. No matter what he might say, it was
only necessary to point to the fact that he was in a lunatic asylum, or
that he had just come out of one, to make his utterances of no value.

But to remain in confinement did not suit him at all, and, after three
days' residence in the institution in which he had been placed, he
escaped and made his way to a piece of woods about two miles from
Sardis, where, early that year, he had built himself a rude shelter,
from which he might go forth at night and study, so far as he should be
able, the operations in the Works of Roland Clewe. Having safely reached
his retreat, he lost no time in sallying forth to spy out what was going
on at Sardis.

He was cunning and wary, and a man of infinite resource. It was not long
before he found out that the polar discovery had not been announced, but
he also discovered from listening to the conversations of some of the
workmen in the village, which he frequently visited in a guise very
unlike his ordinary appearance, that something extraordinary had taken
place in the Sardis Works, of which he had never heard. A great shaft
had been sunk, the people said, by accident; Mr. Clewe had gone down it
in a car, and it had taken him nearly three hours to get to the bottom.
Nobody yet knew what he had discovered, but it was supposed to be
something very wonderful.

The night after Rovinski heard this surprising news he was in the
building which had contained the automatic shell. As active as a cat, he
had entered by an upper window.

Rovinski spent the night in that building. He had with him a dark
lantern, and he made the most thorough examination of the machinery at
the mouth of the shaft. He was a man of great mechanical ability and an
expert in applied electricity. He understood that machinery, with all
its complicated arrangements and appliances, as well as if he had
built it himself. In fact, while examining it, he thought of some very
valua