QUESTION

XVII. THE BEARDED LION

XVIII. WINNOWED CHAFF

XIX. THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

XX. THE RIVER GIVES UP ITS PREY

XXI. THE SWORD THAT TURNS

XXII. GOOD INTENTIONS

XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED RECRUIT

XXIV. THE GATHERING TO ITS OWN

XXV. A DIVIDED HOUSE

XXVI. THE DAY OF RECKONING

XXVII. PASSING CLOUDS

THE BLUE GOOSE

CHAPTER I

_The Blue Goose_

"_Mais oui!_ I tell you one ting. One big ting. Ze big man wiz ze glass
eyes, he is vat you call one slik stoff. Ze big man wiz ze glass eyes."

"The old man?"

"Zat's him! One slik stoff! _Ecoutez!_ Listen! One day, you mek ze gran'
trip. Look hout!" Pierre made a gesture as of a dog shaking a rat.

The utter darkness of the underground laboratory was parted in solid
masses, by bars of light that spurted from the cracks of a fiercely
glowing furnace. One shaft fell on a row of large, unstoppered bottles.
From these bottles fumes arose, mingled, and fell in stifling clouds of
fleecy white. From another bottle in Pierre's hands a dense red smoke
welled from a colourless liquid, crowded through the neck, wriggled
through the bar of light, and sank in the darkness beneath. The darkness
was uncanny, the fumes suffocating, the low hum of the furnace forcing
out the shafts of light from the cracks of the imprisoning walls
infernally suggestive.

Luna shivered. He was ignorant, therefore superstitious, and
superstition strongly suggested the unnatural. He knew that furnaces and
retorts and acids and alkalies were necessary to the refinement of gold.
He feared them, yet he had used them, but he had used them where the
full light of day robbed them of half their terrors. In open air acids
might smoke, but drifting winds would brush away the fumes. Furnaces
might glow, but their glow would be as naught in sunlight. There was no
darkness in which devils could hide to pounce on him unawares, no walls
to imprison him. The gold he retorted on his shovel was his, and he had
no fear of the law. In the underground laboratory of Pierre the element
of fear was ever present. The gold that the furnace retorted was stolen,
and Luna was the thief. There were other thieves, but that did not
matter to him. He stole gold from the mill. Others stole gold from the
mine. It all came to Pierre and to Pierre's underground furnace. He
stood in terror of the supernatural, of the law, and, most of all, of
Pierre. In the dark