Francois, water on the electrodes!"
The assistant dashed a few drops of water on the electrodes. The
sickish odour increased tremendously. I felt myself almost going,
but with an effort I again roused myself. I wondered how Craig
stood the fumes, for I suffered an intense headache and nausea.
"Stop!" Craig thundered. "There's enough cyanogen in this room
already. I know your game--the water forms acetylene with the
carbon, and that uniting with the nitrogen of the air under the
terrific heat of the electric arc forms hydrocyanic acid. Would
you poison us, too? Do you think you can put me unconscious out
on the street and have a society doctor diagnose my case as
pneumonia? Or do you think we shall die quietly in some hospital
as a certain New York banker did last year after he had watched
an alchemist make silver out of apparently nothing!"
The effect on Poissan was terrible. He advanced toward Kennedy,
the veins in his face fairly standing out. Shaking his
forefinger, he shouted: "You know that, do you? You are no
professor, and this is no banker. You are spies, spies. You come
from the friends of Morowitch, do you? You have gone too far with
me."
Kennedy said nothing, but retreated and took his coat and hat off
the window ledge. The hideous penetrating light of the tongues of
flame from the furnace played on the ground-glass window.
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