"Sing, Dick!" he cried loudly; "sing! sing!--" The song stopped. There had come a thrill in the air--a puff of icy wind on Phil's face--a thin chiming like a fairy cymbal. Phil sprang up with a cry. The fluffy ball, with its metal perch, had utterly disappeared; only in the center of the desk was a pinch of reddish-brown powder like the dust of an emery-wheel, laid in feathery whorls. He stared transfixed. "What does it mean?" he asked hoarsely. The doctor's voice was no longer toneless. It leaped now with an evil exultation. "It means that I--Bersonin--have found what physicists have dreamed of for fifty years! I have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms! That box is the harness of a force beside which the engines of modern war are children's toys." He grasped Phil's arm with a force that made him wince. The amber eyes glittered. "At first I planned to sell it to the highest bidder among the powers. I was a fool to think of that! The nation that buys it, to guard the secret for itself, must wall me in a fortress! That would be the reward of Bersonin--the great Bersonin, who had wrested from nature the most subtle of her secrets! But I am too clever for that! It must be _I_--_I alone_--who holds the key! It shall bring me many things, but the first of these is money. I must have funds--unlimited funds. The money I despise, except as a stepping-stone, but the money _you love_ and must have! Well, I offer it to you!" Phil's heart was beating hard. The tension of the room had increased; a hundred suffocating atmospheres seemed pressing on it. "How--how--" he stammered. Bersonin took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the stand. It was a chart of Yokohama harbor. A red square was drawn in the margin, and from this a fine, needle-like ray pointed out across the anchorage. With his pencil the Doctor wrote two words on the red square--"The Roost." Phil shrank trembling into his chair. He seemed to see the other looking at him over clinking glasses at the Club, while voices spoke from the next room. "_What if one of those Dreadnaughts should go down in this friendly harbor!_" It came from his lips in a thin whisper, almost without his volition--the answer to the question that had haunted him that day. A gleam like the fire of unholy altars came in Bersonin's eyes.