shed with
blood which ran from a wound in the side of his head.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated. "Let me help you."

"There's not much use," replied the man rather faintly. "I am about done
in. This face wound doesn't amount to much, but I am shot through the
body and am bleeding internally. If you try to move me, it may easily
kill me. Leave me alone until your partners come."

The doctor drew a flask of brandy from his pocket and advanced toward
the corner.

"Take a few drops of this," he advised.

With an effort the man lifted the flask to his lips and gulped down a
little of the fiery spirit. A sound of tramping feet came from the
outside and then a thud as though a body had been dropped. Carnes and
Walter entered the cabin.

"He's dead as a mackerel," said Carnes in answer to the doctor's look.
"Walter got him through the neck and broke his spinal cord. He never
knew what hit him."

"The plans?" came in a gasping voice from the man in the corner.

"We got them, too," replied Carnes. "He had both packets inside his
coat. They have been opened, but I guess they are all here. Who the
devil are you?"

"Since Koskoff is dead, and I am dying, there is no reason why I
shouldn't tell you," was the answer. "Leave that brandy handy to keep up
my strength. I have only a short time and I can't repeat.

* * * * *

"As to who I am or what I was, it doesn't really matter. Koskoff knew me
as John Smith, and it will pass as well as any other name. Let my past
stay buried. I am, or was, a scientist of some ability; but fortune
frowned on me, and I was driven out of the world. Money would
rehabilitate me--money will do anything nowadays--so I set out to get
it. In the course of my experimental work, I had discovered that cold
was negative heat and reacted to the laws which governed heat."

"I knew that," cried Dr. Bird; "but I never could prove it."

"Who are you?" demanded John Smith.

"Dr. Bird, of the Bureau of Standards."

"Oh, Bird. I've heard of you. You can understand me when I say that as
heat, positive heat is a concomitant of ordinary light. I have found
that cold, negative heat, is a concomitant of cold light. Is my
apparatus in good shape outside?"

"The reflector is smashed."

"I'm sorry. You would have enjoyed studying it. I presume that you saw
that it was a catenary curve?"

"I rather thought so."

"It was, and it was also adjustable. I could vary the focal point fro