THE WORLD MASTERS

BY

GEORGE GRIFFITH

AUTHOR OF
"The Angel of the Revolution," "Brothers of the Chain,"
"The Justice of Revenge," "A Honeymoon in Space,"
"Captain Johnnie," etc. etc.

London
John Long
13 and 14 Norris Street, Haymarket
1903
[All Rights Reserved]

THE WORLD MASTERS

PROLOGUE

THE MOMENT OF TRIUMPH

High above the night-shrouded street, whose silence was only broken bythe occasional tramp of the military patrol or the gruff challenges ofthe sentries on the fortifications, a man was walking, with jerky,uneven strides, up and down a vast attic in an ancient houseoverlooking the old Fisher's Gate, close by where the River Ill leavesthe famous city of Strassburg.

The room, practically destitute of ordinary furniture, was fitted upas a chemical and physical laboratory, and the man was Doctor EmilFargeau, the most distinguished scientific investigator that the lostprovince of Alsace had produced—a tall, spare man of about sixty,with sloping, stooping shoulders and forward-thrown head, thinlycovered with straggling iron-grey hair. It was plain that he was inthe habit of shaving clean, but just now there was a short whitestubble both on his upper lip and on the lean wrinkled cheeks whichshowed the nervous workings of the muscles so plainly. In fact, hiswhole appearance was that of a man too completely absorbed by anover-mastering idea to pay any attention to the small details of life.

And such was the exact truth—for these few mid-night minutes whichwere being ticked off by an ancient wooden clock in the corner werethe most anxious of his life. In fact, a few more of them would decidewhether the Great Experiment, for which he had sacrificed everything,even to his home and his great professional position, was to be asuccess or a failure.

On the long, bare, pine table, beside which he was pacing up and down,stood a strange fabric about three feet high. It was round, and aboutthe size of a four-gallon ale jar. It was covered completely by aclosed glass cylinder, and rested on four strong glass supports.From the floor on either side of the table a number of twisted,silk-covered wires rose from two sets of storage batteries. Within thefour supports was a wooden dish, and on this lay a piece of brightsteel some four inches square and about an inch thick, just under acircle of needles which hung down in a circle from the bottom of themachine.

A very faint humming sound filled the room, and made a somewhatuncanny accompaniment to the leisurely tick of the clock and theirregular shuffling of the doctor's slippered feet.

Every now and then he stopped, and put his ear near to the machine,and then looked at the piece of steel with a gleam of longinganticipation in his keen, deep-set, grey eyes. Then he began his walkagain, and his lips went on working, as though he were holding aninaudible conversation with hims

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