Detective and mystery stories; Women journalists -- Fiction
“The room is sealed,” said the Director, “and nothing will be
touched until I arrive there. What is the nature of this instrument?”
“It is of a nature so deadly and destructive that, if it got into the
hands of an anarchist, he could, alone, lay the city of Vienna in
ruins.”
“Good heavens!” cried the horrified official, whose bane was the
anarchist, and Jennie, in mentioning this particular type of criminal,
had builded better than she knew. If she had told him that the
Professor’s invention might enable Austria to conquer all the
surrounding nations, there is every chance that the machine would have
been carefully preserved.
“The explosion in the Treasury vaults,” continued Jennie, “was
accidentally caused by this instrument, although the machine at the
moment was in a garret half a mile away. You saw the terrible effect of
that explosion; imagine, then, the destruction it would cause in the
hands of one of those anarchists who are so reckless of consequences.”
“I shall destroy the instrument with my own hands,” asserted the
Director fervently, mopping his pallid brow.
Jennie then went on, to the increasing astonishment of the Princess and
the Director, and related every detail of her interview with the late
professor Carl Seigfried.
“I shall go at once and annihilate that machine,” said the Director,
rising when the recital was finished. “I shall see to that myself. Then,
after the inquest, I shall give an order that everything in the attic
is to be destroyed. I wish that every scientific man on the face of the
earth could be safely placed behind prison bars.”
“I am afraid that wouldn’t do much good,” replied Jennie, “unless you
could prevent chemicals being smuggled in. The scientists would probably
reduce your prison to powder, and walk calmly out through the dust.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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