Rivarol laughed softly. “I will tell you. You shall see what becomes of any poor devil who goes to demand money of me--of a man of science. Ha! ha! It pleases me. I was seven weeks perfecting my Dun-Suppressor. Did you know,” he whispered exultingly--“did you know that there is a hole through the earth’s center? Physicists have long suspected it; I was the first to find it. You have read how Rhuyghens, the Dutch navigator, discovered in Kerguellen’s Land an abysmal pit which fourteen hundred fathoms of plumb-line failed to sound. Herr Tom, that hole has no bottom! It runs from one surface of the earth to the antipodal surface. It is diametric. But where is the antipodal spot? You stand upon it. I learned this by the merest chance. I was deep-digging in Mrs. Grimler’s cellar to bury a poor cat I had sacrificed in a galvanic experiment, when the earth under my spade crumbled, caved in, and, wonder-stricken, I stood upon the brink of a yawning shaft. I dropped a coal-hod in. It went down, down, down, bounding and rebounding. In two hours and a quarter that coal-hod came up again. I caught it, and restored it to the angry Grimler. Just think a minute. The coal-hod went down faster and faster, till it reached the center of the earth. There it would stop were it not for acquired momentum. Beyond the center its journey was relatively upward, toward the opposite surface of the globe. So, losing the velocity, it went slower and slower till it reached that surface. Here it came to rest for a second, and then fell back again, eight thousand odd miles, into my hands. Had I not interfered with it, it would have repeated its journey time after time, each trip of shorter extent, like the diminishing oscillations of a pendulum, till it finally came to eternal rest at the center of the sphere. I am not slow to give a practical application to any such grand discovery. My Dun-Suppressor was born of it. A trap just outside my chamber door, a spring in here, a creditor on the trap--need I say more?” “But isn’t it a trifle inhuman,” I mildly suggested, “plunging an unhappy being into a perpetual journey to and from Kerguellen’s Land without a moment’s warning?” “I give them a chance. When they come up the first time I wait at the mouth of the shaft with a rope in hand. If they are reasonable and will come to terms, I fling them the line. If they perish, ’tis their own fault. Only,” he added, with a melancholy smile, “the center is getting so plugged up with creditors that I am afraid there soon will be no choice whatever for ’em.” By this time I had conceived a high opinion of my tutor’s ability. If anybody could send me waltzing through space at an infinite speed, Rivarol could do it. I filled my pipe and told him the story. He heard with grave and patient attention. Then for full half an hour he whiffed away in silence. Finally he spoke.