The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack, Volume 1, page 114
In his excitement, Flint had permitted his voice to rise, a little. Not far from him, leaning on the rail, a stockily built young fellow in overalls, a cap pulled down firmly over his well-shaped head, was apparently watching the gulls and the passing boats, with eyes no less blue than the bay itself; eyes no less glinting than the sunlight on the waves. He seemed to be paying no heed to anything but what lay before him. But “Tiger” Waldron, possessed of something of the instinct of the beast whose name he bore, subconsciously sensed a peril in his nearness. The man’s ear—if unusually quick—might, just might possibly have caught a word or two meant for no interloper. And at that thought, Waldron once more nudged his partner.
“Shhh!” he repeated, “Enough. We can finish this, in the limousine.”
Flint looked at him a moment, in silence, then nodded.
“Right you are,” said he. And both men climbed back into the closed car.
“You never can tell what ears are primed for news,” said Waldron. “Better take no chances.”
“Before long, we can throw away all subterfuge,” the Billionaire replied as he shut the door. “But for now, well, you’re correct. Once our grasp tightens on the windpipe of the world, we’re safe. From our office in Wall Street you and I can play the keys of the world-machine as an organist would finger his instrument. But there must be no leak; no publicity; no suspicion aroused. We’ll play our music pianissimo, Wally, with rare accompaniments to the tune of ‘great public utility, benefit to the public health,’ and all that—the same old game, only on a vastly larger scale.
“Every modern composer in the field of Big Business knows that score and has played it many times. We will play it on a monstrous pipe organ, with the world’s lungs for bellows and the world’s breath to vibrate our reeds—and all paying tribute, night and day, year after year, all over the world, Wally, all over the world!
“God! What power shall be ours! What infinite power, such as, since time began, never yet lay in mortal hands! We shall be as gods, Waldron, you and I—and between us, we shall bring the human race wallowing to our feet in helpless bondage, in supreme abandon!”
The ferry boat, nearing the Staten Island landing, slowed its ponderous screws. The chauffeur flung away his cigarette, drew on his gauntlets and accelerated his engine. Forward the human drove began to press, under the long slave-driven habit of haste, of eagerness to do the masters’ bidding.
The young mechanic by the rail—he of the overalls and keen blue eyes—turned toward the bows, picked up a canvas bag of tools and stood there waiting with the rest.
For a moment his glance rested on the limousine and the two half-seen figures within. As it did so, a wanton breeze from off the Island flapped back the lapel of his jumper. In that brief instant one might have seen a button pinned upon his blue flannel shirt—clasped hands, surrounded by the legend: “Workers of the World, Unite!”
But neither of the plutocrats observed this; nor, had they seen, would they have understood.
And whether the sturdy toiler had overheard aught of their infernal conspiring—or, having heard it, grasped its dire and criminal significance—who, who in all this weary and toil-burdened world, could say?
CHAPTER V.
IN THE LABORATORY.
Half an hour’s run down Staten Island, along smooth roads lined with sleepy little towns and through sparse woods beyond which sparkled the shining waters of the harbor, brought the two plutocrats to the quiet settlement of Oakwood Heights.
Now the blasé chauffeur swung the car sharply to the left, past the aviation field, and so came to the wide-scattered settlement—almost a colony—which, hidden behind high, barb-wire-topped fences, carried on the many and complex activities of the partners’ experiment station. Here were the several laboratories where new products were evolved and old ones refined, for Flint’s and Waldron’s greater profit. Here stood a complete electric power plant, for lighting and heating the works, as well as for current to use in the retorts and many powerful machines of the testing works.
Here, again, were broad proving grounds, for fuel and explosives; and, at one side, stood a low, skylighted group of brick buildings, known as the electro-chemical station. Dormitories and boarding-houses for the small army of employees occupied the eastern end of the enclosure, nearest the sea. Over all, high chimney stacks and the aerials of a mighty wireless plant dominated the entire works. A private railroad spur pierced the western side of the enclosure, for food and coal supplies, as well as for the handling of the numerous imports and exports of this wonderfully complete feudal domain. As the colony lay there basking in the sunshine of early spring, under its drifting streamers of smoke, it seemed an ideal picture of peaceful activities. Here a locomotive puffed, shunting cars; there, a steam-jet flung its plumes of snowy vapor into air; yonder, a steam hammer thundered on a massive anvil. And forges rang, and through open windows hummed sounds of industry.
And yet, not one of all those sounds but echoed more bitter slavery for men. Not one of all those many activities but boded ill to humanity. For the whole plan and purpose of the place was the devising of still wider forms of human exploitation and enslavement. Its every motive was to serve the greed of Flint and Waldron. Outwardly honest and industrious, it inwardly loomed sinister and terrible, a type and symbol of its masters’ swiftly growing power. Such, in its essence, was the great experiment station of these two men who lusted for dominion over the whole world.
As the long, glittering car drew up at the main gate of the enclosure, a sharp-eyed watchman peered through a sliding wicket therein. Satisfied by his inspection, he withdrew; and at once the big gate rolled back, smoothly actuated by electricity. The car purred onward, into the enclosure. When the gate had closed noiselessly behind it, the chauffeur ran it down a splendidly paved roadway, swung to the right, past the machine shops, and drew it to a stand in front of the administration building.
Flint and his partner alighted, and stood for a moment surveying the scene with satisfaction. Then Flint turned to the chauffeur.
“Put the car in the garage,” he directed. “We may not want it till afternoon.”
The blasé one touched his cap and nodded, in obedience. Then, as the car withdrew, the partners ascended the broad steps.
“Good chap, that Herrick,” commented Waldron, casting a glance at the retreating chauffeur. “Quick-witted, and mum. Give me a man who knows how to mind and keep still about it, every time!”
“Right,” assented Flint. “Obedience is the first of all virtues, and the second is silence. Well, it looks to me as though we had the whole world coming our way, now, along that very same path of virtue. Once we get this air proposition really to working, the world will obey. It will have to! And as for silence, we can manage that, too. The mere turn of a valve, and—!”
Waldron smiled grimly, as though in derision of what he seemed to think his partner’s chimerical hopes, but made no answer. Together they entered the administration building. Five minutes later, Herzog, their servile experimenter, stood bowing and cringing before them.
“Got it, Herzog?” demanded Flint, while Waldron lighted still another of those costly cigars—each one worth a good mechanic’s daily wage.
“Yes, sir, I believe so, sir,” the scientist replied, depreciatingly. “That is, at least, on a small scale. Two weeks was the time you allowed me, sir, but—”
“I know. You’ve done it in eleven days,” interrupted, the Billionaire. “Very well. I knew you could. You’ll lose nothing by it. So no more of that. Show us what you’ve done. Everything all ready?”
“Quite ready, sir,” the other answered. “If you’ll be so good as to step into the electro-chemical building?”
Flint very graciously signified his willingness thus to condescend; and without delay, accompanied by the still incredulous Waldron, and followed by Herzog, he passed out of the administration building, through a covered passage and into the electro-chemical works.
A variety of strange odors and stranger sounds filled this large brick structure, windowless on every side and lighted only by broad skylights of milky wire-glass—this arrangement being due to the extreme secrecy of many processes here going forward. The partners had no intention that any spying eyes should ever so much as glimpse the work in this department; work involving foods, fuels, power, lighting, almost the entire range of the vast network of exploiting media they had already flung over a tired world.
“This way, gentlemen,” ventured Herzog, pointing toward a metal door at the left of the main room. He unlocked this, which was guarded by a combination lock, like that of a bank vault, and waited for them to enter; then closed it after them, and made quite sure the metal door was fast.
A peculiar, pungent smell greeted the partners’ nostrils as they glanced about the inner laboratory. At one side an electric furnace was glowing with graphite crucibles subjected to terrific heat. On the other a dynamo was humming. Before them a broad, tiled bench held a strange assortment of test tubes, retorts and complex apparatus of glass and gleaming metal. The whole was lighted by a strong white light from above, through the milk-hued glass—one of Herzog’s own inventions, by the way; a wonderful, light-intensifying glass, which would bend but not break; an invention which, had he himself profited by it, would have brought him millions, but which the partners had exploited without ever having given him a single penny above his very moderate salary.
“Is that it?” demanded Flint, a glitter lighting up his morphia-contracted pupils. He jerked his thumb at a complicated nexus of tubes, brass cylinders, coiled wires and glistening retorts which stood at one end of the broad work-bench.
“That is it, sir,” answered Herzog, apologetically, while “Tiger” Waldron’s hard face hardened even more. “Only an experimental model, you understand, sir, but—”
“It gets results?” queried Flint sharply. “It produces oxygen and nitrogen on a scale that indicates success, with adequate apparatus?”
“Yes, sir. I believe so, sir. No doubt about it; none whatever.”
“Good!” exclaimed the Billionaire. “Now show us!”
“With pleasure, sir. But first, let me explain, a little.”
“Well, what?” demanded Flint. His partner, meanwhile, had drawn near the apparatus, and was studying it with a most intense concentration. Plain to see, beneath this man’s foppish exterior and affected cynicism, dwelt powerful purposes and keen intelligence.
“Explain what?” repeated the Billionaire. “As far as details go, I’m not interested. All I want is results. Go ahead, Herzog; start your machine and let me see what it can do.”
“I will, sir,” acceded the scientist. “But first, with your permission, I’ll point out a few of its main features, and—”
“Damn the main features!” cried Flint. “Get busy with the demonstration!”
“Hold on, hold on,” now interrupted Waldron. “Let him discourse, if he wants to. Ever know a scientist who wasn’t primed to the muzzle with expositions? Here, Herzog,” he added, turning to the inventor, “I’ll listen, if nobody else will.”
Undecided, Herzog smiled nervously. Even Flint had to laugh at his indecision.
“All right, go on,” said the Billionaire. “Only for God’s sake, make it brief!”
Herzog, thus adjured, cleared his throat and blinked uneasily.
“Oxygen,” he said. “Yes, I can produce it quickly, easily and in large quantities. As a gas, or as a liquid, which can be shipped to any desired point and there transformed into gaseous form. Liquid air can also be produced by this same machine, for refrigerating purposes. You understand, of course, that when liquid air evaporates, it is only the nitrogen that goes back into the atmosphere at 313 degrees below zero. The residue is pure liquid oxygen. In other words, this apparatus will make money as a liquid air plant, and furnish you oxygen as a by-product.
“It will also turn out nitrogen, for fertilizing purposes. The income from a full-sized machine, on this pattern, from all three sources, should be very large indeed.”
“Good,” put in Waldron. “And liquid air, for example, would cost how much to produce?”
“With power-cost at half a cent per H.P. hour, about $2.50 a ton. The oxygen by-product alone will more than pay for that, in purifying and cooling buildings, or used to promote combustion in locomotives and other steam engines. The liquid air itself can be used as a motive power for a certain type of expansion engine, or—”
“There, there, that’s enough!” interposed Flint, brusquely. “We don’t need any of your advice or suggestions, Herzog. As far as the disposal of the product is concerned, we can take care of that. All we want from you is the assurance that that product can be obtained, easily and cheaply, and in unlimited quantities. Is that the case?”
“It is, sir.”
“All right. And can liquid oxygen be easily transported any considerable distance?”
“Yes, sir. In what is known as Place’s Vacuum-jacketed Insulated Container, it can be kept for weeks at a time without any appreciable loss.”
Flint pondered a moment, then asked, again:
“Could large tanks, holding say, a million gallons, be built on that principle, for wholesale storage? And could vacuum-jacketed pipes be laid, for conveying liquid oxygen or its gas?”
“No reason why not, sir. Yes, I may say all that is quite feasible.”
“Very well, then,” snapped Flint. “That’s enough for the present. Now, show us your machine at work! Start it Herzog. Let’s see what you can do!”
The Billionaire’s eyes glittered as Herzog laid a hand on a gleaming switch. Even Waldron forgot to smoke.
“Gentlemen, observe,” said Herzog, as he threw the lever.
CHAPTER VI.
OXYGEN, KING OF INTOXICATORS.
A soft humming note began to vibrate through the inner laboratory—a note which rose in pitch, steadily, as Herzog shoved the lever from one copper post to another, round the half-circle.
“I am now heating the little firebrick furnace,” said the scientist. “In Norway, they use an alternating current of only 5,000 volts, between water-cooled copper electrodes, as I have already told you. I am using 30,000 volts, and my electrodes, my own invention, are—”
“Never mind,” growled Flint. “Just let’s see some of the product—some liquid oxygen, that’s all. The why and wherefore is your job, not ours!”
Herzog, with a pained smile, bent and peered through a red glass bull’s-eye that now had begun to glow in the side of his apparatus.
“The arc is good,” he muttered, as to himself. “Now I will throw in the electro-magnets and spread it; then switch in my intensifying condenser, and finally set the turbine fans to work, to throw air through the field. Then we shall see, we shall see!”
Suiting the action to the words, he deftly touched here a button, there a lever; and all at once a shrill buzzing rose above the lower drone of the induction coils.
“Gentlemen,” said Herzog, straightening up and facing his employers, “the process is now already at work. In five minutes—yes, in three—I shall have results to show you!”
“Good!” grunted Waldron. “That’s all we’re after, results. That’s the only way you hold your job, Herzog, just getting results!”
He relighted his cigar, which had gone out during Herzog’s explanation—for “Tiger” Waldron, though he could drop thousands at roulette without turning a hair, never yet had been known to throw away a cigar less than half smoked. Flint, meanwhile, took out a little morocco-covered note book and made a few notes. In this book he had kept an outline of his plan from the very first; and now with pleasure he added some memoranda, based on what Herzog had just told him, as well as observations on the machine itself.
Thus two minutes passed, then three.
“Time’s up, Herzog!” exclaimed Waldron, glancing at the electric clock on the wall. “Where’s the juice?”
“One second, sir,” answered the scientist. Again he peeked through the glowing bull’s-eye. Then, his face slightly pale, his bulging eyes blinking nervously, he took two small flint glass bottles, set them under a couple of pipettes, and deftly made connections.
“Oxygen cocktail for mine,” laughed Waldron, to cover a certain emotion he could not help feeling at sight of the actual operation of a process which might, after all, open out ways and means for the utter subjugation of the world.
Neither Flint nor the inventor vouchsafed even a smile. The Billionaire drew near, adjusted a pair of pince-nez on his hawk-like nose, and peered curiously at the apparatus. Herzog, with a quick gesture, turned a small silver faucet.
“Oxygen! Unlimited oxygen!” he exclaimed. “I have found the process, gentlemen, commercially practicable. Oxygen!”
Even as he spoke, a lambent, sparkling liquid began to flow through the pipette, into the flask. At sight of it, the Billionaire’s eyes lighted up with triumph. Waldron, despite his assumed nonchalance, felt the hunting thrill of Wall street, the quick stab of exultation when victory seemed well in hand.
“These bottles,” said Herzog, “are double, constructed on the principle of the Thermos bottle. They will keep the liquid gases I shall show you, for days. Huge tanks could be built on the same principle. In a short time, gentlemen, you can handle tons of these gases, if you like—thousands of tons, unlimited tons.
“The Siemens and Halske people, and the Great Falls, S.C., plant, will be mere puttering experimenters beside you. For neither they nor any other manufacturers have any knowledge of the vital process—my secret, polarizing transformer, which does the work in one-tenth the time and at one-hundredth the cost of any other known process. For example, see here?”
He turned the faucet, disconnected the flask and handed it to Flint.
“There, sir,” he remarked, “is a half-pint of pure liquid oxygen, drawn from the air in less than eight minutes, at a cost of perhaps two-tenths of a cent. On a large scale the cost can be vastly reduced. Are you satisfied, sir?”
Flint nodded, curtly.
