Darrow bowed with a suggestion of reverence in the slow movement of his head.  “And that night—­or was it two nights later?—­you saw the last appearance of the portent.  Well, I shall come to that....  Slade has told you how they lived on the beach.  With us in the valley it was different.  Almost from the first I was alone.  The doctor ceased to be a companion.  He ceased to be human, almost.  A machine, that’s what he was.  His one human instinct was—­well, distrust.  His whole force of being was centred on his discovery.  It was to make him the foremost scientist of the world; the foremost individual entity of his time—­of all time, possibly.  Even to outline it to you would take too much time.  Light, heat, motive power in incredible degrees and under such control as has never been known:  these were to be the agencies at his call.  The push of a button, the turn of a screw—­oh, he was to be master of such power as no monarch ever wielded!  Riches—­pshaw!  Riches were the least of it.  He could create them, practically.  But they would be superfluous.  Power:  unlimited, absolute power was his goal.  With his end achieved he could establish an autocracy, a dynasty of science:  whatever he chose.  Oh, it was a rich-hued, golden, glowing dream; a dream such as men’s souls don’t formulate in these stale days—­not our kind of men.  The Teutonic mysticism—­you understand.  And it was all true.  Oh, quite.”

“Do you mean us to understand that he had this power you describe?” asked Captain Parkinson.

“In his grasp.  Then comes a practical gentleman with a steel hook.  A follower of dreams, too, in his way.  Conflicting interests—­you know how it is.  One well-aimed blow from the more practical dreamer, and the greater vision passes....  I’m getting ahead of myself.  Just a moment.”

His cigarette glowed fiercely in the dimness before he took up his tale again.

“You all know who Dr. Schermerhorn was.  None of you know—­I don’t know myself, though I’ve been his factotum for ten years—­along how many varied lines of activity that mind played.  One of them was the secret of energy:  concentrated, resistless energy.  Man’s contrivances were too puny for him.  The most powerful engines he regarded as toys.  For a time high explosives claimed his attention.  He wanted to harness them.  Once he got to the point of practical experiment.  You can see the ruins yet:  a hole in southern New Jersey.  Nobody ever understood how he escaped.  But there he was on his feet across a ten-foot fence in a ploughed field—­yes, he flew the fence—­ and running, running furiously in the opposite direction, when the dust cleared away.  Someone stopped him finally.  Told him the danger was over.  ‘Yet, I will not return,’ he said firmly, and fainted away.  That disgusted him with high explosives.  What secrets he discovered he gave to the government.  They were not without value, I believe.”

“They were not, indeed,” corroborated Barnett.