“Stenewisc, he never had any sense,” he went on to me. “He had the gas during the war. But would he sell it to the army or to the English or the French or, if he didn’t like that side, would he sell to the other? He would not. He wouldn’t help any government anywhere; he wouldn’t help a government even to wipe out the rest. He was set to do the wiping himself, personally. He had his big idea.” I kept quiet; and he stood close. This was like Jerry himself, this impulse to talk on. “He figured he could croak everybody--give him a little more time and plenty of gas. Everybody in New York, anyway.” Keeban laughed. “Lot of good that would do. Get up!” he told me. I got up. “Get up!” he said to Doris; and she arose. The normals formed before us and behind; and so we started to march to the glass room. There was an ordinary wood and plaster partition first which set off another large room at the end of this floor. The usual employment of this place was plain enough, even to me with only college course knowledge of chemical matters. Here were the laboratories for experimentation and research where a commercial firm, such as Stamby-Temke, would keep a covey of chemists testing their products, analyzing the goods of competitors and making experiments to improve their own formulæ for colors, caustics, preservatives, antiseptics, poisons, solvents, reagents and what not. Most of these tests would be simple enough and involve no danger to any one; but some would generate gases, poisonous or otherwise noxious, which should not be allowed in an open room; therefore the firm had installed, at the end of this laboratory, a special compartment which was, beyond any doubt, “the glass room.” Its outer wall was not of glass; rather, it was not all glass, though there were two windows in it. No blinds were drawn before them but they were black from the steel shutters outside. The other three walls were of glass from floor to ceiling and, as the normals brought us nearer, I could see that the glass was heavy, clear plate such as is used in show windows and that it was carefully and evenly joined in steel framing. Where the glass met the frame, and about the single, glass door, the joints were caulked and sealed, making the place air-tight and gas-tight, undoubtedly. There was a way of ventilating it without using the windows, I saw; for cords communicated with ceiling traps. The traps were open now; the blackness above was the darkness of the sky. One set of cords hung inside the room, another hung just outside the glass. I guessed that, when Stamby-Temke had the building, the chemists who worked in the glass room used the inner set when they wished to clear the air of their cabinet; the outer cords must be for emergencies, in case the chemists in the outer laboratory saw the experimenters in the cabinet overcome; then the rescuers could open the ceiling before going into the glass room.