managed to get access to him and offered him a billion francs for his invention wherewith he was able to direct and closely to confine electric discharges.  “What!” was Gluck’s reply—­“to sell to you that which would enable you to enslave and maltreat suffering Humanity?” And though the war departments of the nations have continued to experiment in their secret laboratories, they have so far failed to light upon the slightest trace of the secret.  Emil Gluck was executed on December 4, 1941, and so died, at the age of forty-six, one of the world’s most unfortunate geniuses, a man of tremendous intellect, but whose mighty powers, instead of making toward good, were so twisted and warped that he became the most amazing of criminals.

—­Culled from Mr. A. G. Burnside’s “Eccentricitics of Crime,” by kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Holiday and Whitsund.

THE DREAM OF DEBS

I awoke fully an hour before my customary time.  This in itself was remarkable, and I lay very wide awake, pondering over it.  Something was the matter, something was wrong—­I knew not what.  I was oppressed by a premonition of something terrible that had happened or was about to happen.  But what was it?  I strove to orient myself.  I remembered that at the time of the Great Earthquake of 1906 many claimed they awakened some moments before the first shock and that during these moments they experienced strange feelings of dread.  Was San Francisco again to be visited by earthquake?

I lay for a full minute, numbly expectant, but there occurred no reeling of walls nor shock and grind of falling masonry.  All was quiet.  That was it!  The silence!  No wonder I had been perturbed.  The hum of the great live city was strangely absent.  The surface cars passed along my street, at that time of day, on an average of one every three minutes; but in the ten succeeding minutes not a car passed.  Perhaps it was a street-railway strike, was my thought; or perhaps there had been an accident and the power was shut off.  But no, the silence was too profound.  I heard no jar and rattle of waggon wheels, nor stamp of iron-shod hoofs straining up the steep cobble-stones.

Pressing the push-button beside my bed, I strove to hear the sound of the bell, though I well knew it was impossible for the sound to rise three stories to me even if the bell did ring.  It rang all right, for a few minutes later Brown entered with the tray and morning paper.  Though his features were impassive as ever, I noted a startled, apprehensive light in his eyes.  I noted, also, that there was no cream on the tray.

“The Creamery did not deliver this morning,” he explained; “nor did the bakery.”

I glanced again at the tray.  There were no fresh French rolls—­ only slices of stale graham bread from yesterday, the most detestable of bread so far as I was concerned.

“Nothing was delivered this morning, sir,” Brown started to explain apologetically; but I interrupted him.