It was pleasing to Groff, to see his terror. "I wanted to thank you," Groff said ironically. "It happened that I saw you two, one night about a year ago. You made me realize what I must do. So I thought I would tell you about it." They could only stand wordless, frightened. Groff sucked in his breath with anticipatory pleasure. In a moment now they would be more than frightened; they would be utterly terrified--and their terror would spread like a wave around the world. Groff was lashing himself into grim anger. "You are going to die," he said. At the girl's sudden little whimpering gasp he raised his hand. "That sort of think won't help you any. You and everyone on earth--this is your last night of health. Tomorrow, at dawn, you will all start swiftly to sicken. In a week, a month--you will be dead." How well they knew that his threats were never empty. They were huddled together now, with trembling arms around each other as they stared at him. He lashed himself further into anger as he told them that he realized how millions of people were conspiring to the end that Groff might suffer misfortune. A menace which he could no longer tolerate.... How those millions would squirm as they saw death coming upon them! The supreme power of Groff at last demonstrated to its ultimate. Queer that he had never thought of this logical climax to his great career--not until that little incident a year ago when this young couple had caused him to envisage it. He was telling them now what he had done.... The little depots all over the earth, compressed with caged bacteria. Little time-bombs--all to explode within thirty minutes of this present instant. The women and children, the aged, would die first. But the polluted air, the contagion spreading everywhere--in a week, a month, the swift and deadly bacteria would leave no one alive. "You--are going to do this to us?" young Jac murmured at last. "Why not? It is my destiny." Never had Groff felt so quiet and comfortable a thrill as now; and this was only the beginning. "Others before me have tried their little conquests," he said with his grim smile. "Men who wanted power, and got it, just in a small way and for a little while. There was one--I recall reading about him--one who was so foolish to disclose all his plans by writing them in a book, years before he had a chance to accomplish them. I am not like him. I tell you now, when there is a scant thirty minutes before your inevitable annihilation begins." "You hate your fellow men so much," Jac murmured impulsively, "you would kill yourself, just for the pleasure of killing the rest of us?" To die. It sent so strangely a queer little shiver over Groff. He had always felt it; but no one could ever know it, save himself. How many times his vaunted reckless bravery had awed his fellow man! He sat very straight now, and his eyes flashed. "I have never been one to fear death," he said. * * * * *