"American, yes; but amateur, no," said Beale gently. "As to the authority, why I guess I can arrest you first and get the authority after." "On what charge?" demanded Milsom, "there is nothing secret about this place, except Doctor van Heerden's association with it--a professional man is debarred from mixing in commercial affairs. Is it a crime to run a----" He looked to van Heerden. "A germicide factory," said van Heerden promptly. "Suppose I know the character of this laboratory?" asked Beale quietly. "Carry that kind of story to the police and see what steps they will take," said van Heerden scornfully. "My dear Mr. Beale, as I have told you once before, you have been reading too much exciting detective fiction." "Very likely," he said, "but anyhow the little story that enthralls me just now is called the Green Terror, and I'm looking to you to supply a few of the missing pages. And I think you'll do it." The doctor was lighting a cigarette, and he looked at the other over the flaring match with a gleam of malicious amusement in his eyes. "Your romantic fancies would exasperate me, but for your evident sincerity. Having stolen my bride you seem anxious to steal my reputation," he said mockingly. "That," said Beale, slipping off the bench and standing, hands on hips, before the doctor, "would take a bit of finding. I tell you, van Heerden, that I'm going to call your bluff. I shall place this factory in the hands of the police, and I am going to call in the greatest scientists in England, France and America, to prove the charge I shall make against you on the strength of this!" He held up between his forefinger and thumb a crystal tube, filled to its seal with something that looked like green sawdust. "The world, the sceptical world, shall know the hell you are preparing for them." Stanford Beale's voice trembled with passion and his face was dark with the thought of a crime so monstrous that even the outrageous treatment of a woman who was more to him than all the world was for the moment obliterated from his mind in the contemplation of the danger which threatened humanity. "You say that the police and even the government of this country will dismiss my charge as being too fantastic for belief. You shall have the satisfaction of knowing that you are right. They think I am mad--but I will convince them! In this tube lies the destruction of all your fondest dreams, van Heerden. To realize those dreams you have murdered two men. For these you killed John Millinborn and the man Predeaux. But you shall not----" "_Bang!_" The explosion roared thunderously in the confined space of the vault. Beale felt the wind of the bullet and turned, pistol upraised. CHAPTER XXVI THE SECRET OF THE GREEN RUST A dishevelled figure stood by the boxes, revolver in hand--it was Bridgers, the man he had left strapped and bound in the "ambulance-room," and Beale cursed the folly which had induced him to leave the revolver behind.