International Congress of Science in
Edinburgh, and you will begin to see what I mean. The Marchese Giovanni,
who was a delegate to that congress, and Pastreaux, said that the
something in the way of an actual practical realization of what Rodman
outlined was the formulae. If Rodman could work out the formulae,
jewel-stuff could be produced as cheaply as glass, and in any
quantity--by the carload. Imagine it; sheet ruby, sheet emerald, all the
beauty and luster of jewels in the windows of the corner drugstore!

And there is another thing that I want you to think about. Think about
the immense destruction of value--not to us, so greatly, for our stocks
of precious stones are not large; but the thing meant, practically,
wiping out all the assembled wealth of Asia except the actual earth and
its structures.

The destruction of value was incredible.

Put the thing some other way and consider it. Suppose we should suddenly
discover that pure gold could be produced by treating common yellow clay
with sulphuric acid, or that some genius should set up a machine on the
border of the Sahara that received sand at one end and turned out sacked
wheat at the other! What, then, would our hoarded gold be worth, or the
wheat-lands of Australia, Canada or our Northwest?

The illustrations are fantastic. But the thing Rodman was after was a
practical fact. He had it on the way. Giovanni and Lord Bayless Truxley
were convinced that the man would work out the formulae. They tried,
over their signatures, to prepare the world for it.

The whole of Asia was appalled. The rajahs of the native states in India
prepared a memorial and sent it to the British Government.

The thing came out after the mysterious, incredible tragedy. I should
not have written that final sentence. I want you to think, just now,
about the great hulk of a man that sat in his big chair beyond me at the
window.

It was like Rodman to turn up with an outlandish human creature
attending him hand and foot. How the thing came about reads like a lie;
it reads like a lie; the wildest lie that anybody ever put forward to
explain a big yellow Oriental following one about.

But it was no lie. You could not think up a lie to equal the actual
things that happened to Rodman. Take the way he died!....

The thing began in India. Rodman had gone there to consult with the
Marchese Giovanni concerning some molecular theory that was involved in
his formulas. Giovanni was digging u