He thrust Neinsoul’s formula before the astonished lawyer. The man looked at the chemical hieroglyphics and the text below it, written in a fine, accurate, thin hand. “Where did you get this?” he said. “Where did I get it!” cried the distiller. “You know where I got it. I got it from your firm of chemists, Lang and Neinsoul.” The lawyer stepped back from his table. “I didn’t see Lang,” he said, “he was not at Keator’s.” Arnbush went on shouting in his excitement. “Anyhow, I got it of Neinsoul! An’ you see what I’m goin’ to do with it!” He flourished the paper a moment, wildly, before the lawyer’s strange, contracted face, and then he tore it into bits, scattering the fragments about the room. And, oblivious to the amazement in Stetman, he went on shouting. The very act of tearing the formula seemed to increase the fury of his manner. “You think I’m crazy, eh! Well, I ain’t crazy! What for do I want to stop a young feller from falling in love with his sweetheart?... What for do I want to break up the companionship of old people?... What for do I want to keep all the little children out of the world?... You hear what I say, Stetman?” The lawyer thought his client was insane. He came around the table, his face drawn. “Who have you seen?” he said. Arnbush was now in a fury of declamation. “Neinsoul!” he shouted. “Ain’t I told you! ... Neinsoul! He called me up on the telephone after you left. An’ I went over to their laboratory on Park Avenue.” “And Neinsoul was there?” The lawyer’s voice was low, tense, amazed. “Sure, he was there,” Arnbush roared. “Ain’t I told you!” The lawyer made a single exclamation. “Good God!” he said. Arnbush turned on him, swinging heavily on his big feet, as on some ponderous hinges. “What for do you say, ‘Good God’?” “Because,” replied the lawyer, “if Neinsoul was there, he got out of hell to come.... He died three years ago in Essen, poisoned by a blinding gas that he had invented for the German army.” CHAPTER XIII The Symbol To Marion Dillard there was mockery in the symbolism of the night. She was alone. On the table before her was an open telegram—the grating fitted into the last opening of the trap. She was a dark-haired, slender girl with that aspect of capacity and independence with which the great war endowed our women: the high courage that no assault of evil fortune could bludgeon into servility. She sat in her chair before the table, to the eye, unconquered. But it was to the eye only. In the magnificence about her the wreckage impending was incredible; the great house fitted with every luxury, the library in which she sat, its rug the treasure of a temple, its walls paneled!