“‘Presently,’ he replied.  ’There yet remains the guardianship to be perfected.  Then to-a-world-astonished-and-respectful we return.  To-night we celebrate.  I play you a rubber of pinochle.’

“We played.  With the greatest secret of science resting at our elbows, we played.  The doctor won; my mind was not strictly on the game.  In the morning the doctor sang once more....  I shall never hear its like again.  Was it a week, or a month, after that?...  I cannot remember.  I fancy I was excited.  Then, too, there was something in the atmosphere about the laboratory ...  I don’t know; imagination, possibly.  Once we had a little manifestation:  the night that the Nigger and Slade were terrified by the rock fires.  Days of excitement and pleasant work, with the little volcano grumbling more sulkily all the time ...  I have spent worse days.

“Such indifference as the doctor displayed toward the volcano I have never known.  If I ventured to warn him he would assure me that there was no cause for alarm.  I think he regarded that little hell’s kitchen as merely a feed-spout for his vast enterprise.  He felt a sort of affection toward it; he was tolerant of its petty fits of temper.  That he completed his work before the destruction came was sheer luck.  Nothing else.  The day before the outburst he came to me with a tiny phial of complicated design.

“‘Percy, I will at-a-reasonable-price sell this to you,’ he said.

“‘How much?’ I inquired, responding to his playfulness.

“‘A bargain,’ he cried gaily.  ’Five millions dollars.  No!  Shall I upon-a-needy-friend hard-press?  Never.  One million.  One little million dollars.’

“‘I haven’t that amount with me,’ I began.

“‘Of no account,’ he declared airily.  ’Soon we shall haf many more times as that.  Gif me your C.O.  D.’

“‘My I. O. U.?’ I inquired.

“‘It makes no matter.  See.  I will gif it to you gratis.’

“He handed me the metal contrivance.  It was closed.

“’Inside iss a little, such a very little.  Not yet iss it arranged the motive-power to give-forth.  One more change-to-be-made that shall require.  But the other phenomena are all in this little half-grain comprised.  Later I shall tell you more.  Take it.  It iss without price.’  He laid his hand on my shoulder.  ‘Like the love of friends,’ he said gently.”

Feeling in his upper waistcoat pocket, Darrow brought out a phial, so tiny that it rolled in the palm of his hand.  He contemplated it, lost in thought.

“Radium?” queried Barnett, with the keen interest of the scientist.