commenced to descend. On it stood a man whom Dick instantlyrecognised as Gronvold. And he was accompanied by the sailor whom Dickhad left safely tied up in their camp. Evidently Gronvold had found andreleased him.
Their position was now indeed one of terrible gravity.
As soon as the lift reached the bottom the two men stepped off and thelift reascended, moving upward with an ease which showed the tremendouspower developed by the tiny machine. Here, indeed, was something ofwhich Dick had had no previous experience.
The three men crossed the cave to the shelter occupied by the man whoworked the big machine, who was evidently the captain, and Dick knewthere was no time to be lost.
Directly the men entered the shelter, Dick dashed across the cave tojoin the others, snatching out his revolver as he ran.
He had nearly reached them, when a whistle blew and instantly half adozen men rushed from different caves. They were discovered!
"Take care of Yvette, Jules!" Dick yelled as, with Scott at his side,he faced round to the men who were rushing at them from three sides.
Instantly Yvette and Jules plunged into the tunnel. Dick and Scottbacked after them with drawn revolvers threatening the men in the cave.
For a moment the leaders hesitated; apparently they were not aimed.Then Gronvold rushed to the front, followed by the captain, bothcarrying curious weapons which looked like heavy pistols.
All four men fired simultaneously. Dick saw the captain drop, evidentlyshot dead, and heard a bullet whiz past him and strike the rock behind.A burst of flame singed his hair, and he felt the hot breath of it onhis face.
Then Gronvold fired at Scott. The effect as the bullet struck him wasstrange and awful. His body actually disappeared in a mass of flameunder the impact of some projectile of unimaginable power and energy.At the same instant Dick slipped on a projecting bit of rock and fellheavily on his head. As he lost consciousness he heard the crack of arevolver behind him. Yvette and Jules, hearing the shots, had returnedin the nick of time. Jules snatched up Dick and carried him down thetunnel, while Yvette very coolly shot down Gronvold just as he wasreloading his terrible weapon.
When Dick recovered his senses he found himself lying on the ground atthe entrance to the tunnel, his head pillowed on Yvette's arm as shetried to pour some brandy between his lips. He could feel the sobswhich shook her, and even felt a tear on his face. Jules stood on guardat the entrance to the tunnel, his revolver ready for instant action incase of pursuit.
As Dick opened his eyes, Yvette gave a gasp of relief.
"Oh, dearest, I thought you were dead!" she sobbed and burst into tears.A moment later she turned away blushing scarlet. She had betrayed hersecret at last. And even in his confused state Dick felt a thrill oftriumphant joy.
His head spinning he staggered to his feet. But he would have fallen ifYvette had not caught him.
"Sit down, Dick," she said peremptorily. "Jules can look after thisplace."
Dick obeyed, perforce; he was so sick and giddy that he could have donenothing even if the expected attack had come.
But it never came. Suddenly as they stood there, tense and waiting, aterrific convulsion shook the earth. With a terrible roar the greatcavern collapsed and a vast burst of smoke and flame vomited to the sky,and a deep crater was left by the subsidence. Sick and dizzy, withshowers of stones falling all around them, they stood aghast whileexplosion after explosion rent the air, rendering the crater deeper. Itwas some minutes before quiet reigned again and, white and shaken, aftertheir nerve-racking experience, they were able to collect their shakenfaculties and make an examination of the scene.
The hill beneath which the cavern was located had practicallydisappeared; in its place was left nothing but a heap of torn andtumbled earth and rock. Its dreadful secret was safe, for the cave andits contents, and the men who had wielded such titanic forces, wereburied deep under tens of thousands of tons of debris.
Perhaps it was as well, Dick thought. There are some forms of knowledgewhich mortals ought not to possess; there are some powers which they arenot fit to handle.
Whatever secret Gronvold had discovered, it rested with him for ever onthe very scene of his ill-omened labours. What had gone wrong in thedepths of the cavern they could not even imagine, but it was evidentthat the mysterious force which Gronvold had called into existence,whatever it was, had destroyed him and his companions. And it wasalmost by a miracle that Dick, Yvette, and Jules had escaped.
Slowly and painfully they made their way back to their camp, and for thefirst time Dick became conscious of the great weight of the doublehandful of shot which he had taken from the tank. He drew some of itout and examined it by the light of the fire. As he did so he gave acry of surprise. For the "shot" was nothing more or less than tinynuggets of virgin gold.
Here was an addition to the mystery. As Dick knew perfectly well, therewas not an atom of gold-bearing rock within hundreds of miles of wherethey stood.
It was evident that one of the secrets of Gronvold's invention was thatit gave him the power of actually bringing about the transmutation ofsubstances. There was some element in the rock which was susceptible ofbeing changed into gold by a process at which they could not even guess.But if this were so, Gronvold had indeed, as they suspected, been ableto solve the problem of loosing the incredible force contained in theatom. His discovery was, as Dick at once realised, on the lines of thelatest development of scientific thought.
Dick was to see the problem solved in later years by more reputableinvestigators.
But he could never forget his strange encounter with the wonderful butmisguided genius whose career had been so terribly brought to an end bythe dread power he had himself evoked.
CHAPTER SIX.
THE HORROR OF LOCKIE.
Many readers will recall the tragedy of Renstoke Castle and the terribledeath of young Lord Renstoke. The case aroused much sensation at thetime. It would have aroused far more had the real facts been allowed totranspire.
They were known, however, to only a few people, and, for reasons whichwere at the time sufficient, they were kept secret. I am now able tolift the veil which shrouded one of the most perplexing mysteries whichhas ever puzzled the scientific world. Even now, the story is notcomplete; the great secret died with the amazing but perverted geniuswho discovered it.
Lord Renstoke, a young man only thirty, was one of those favouredindividuals on whom Fortune seemed to have showered all her gifts. Bornand brought up in Canada, he was connected only very remotely with theancient family of Renstoke, and no one ever dreamed that he could by anypossibility succeed to the title, which carried with it Renstoke Castleand a rent-roll of something like a hundred thousand pounds a year.
James Mitchell, as Lord Renstoke was before he succeeded to the title,had left a lumber camp in Upper Canada when the call of the Great Warbrought Britishers from all the wild places of the world to join thecolours. He served as a private in one of the Canadian Regiments,rapidly winning his way upward, and finally being awarded the VictoriaCross for a piece of dare-devil folly--so his comrades declared--thathad led to the capture of an important German position and had helpedvery materially to bring about one of the most brilliant of the manysuccesses scored by the Canadians in the closing stages of the fighting.
That episode seemed to mark the turning-point in the fortunes of JamesMitchell. From then onward it seemed as though Fate had no gifts thatwere too good to be showered upon him. It was only a few weeks laterthat the obscure Canadian private was summoned to headquarters toreceive the astounding intelligence that through a series of deaths thatin fiction would have been deemed fantastic, he was a peer of the UnitedKingdom with a vast fortune at his disposal.
Then James Mitchell, Baron Renstoke, went back to his trenches and thecomrades he had learned to love to finish the work on hand.
It was during the latter half of the war that James Mitchell foundhimself swept by chance into the strange web of mystery and adventur
ethat surrounded the doings of Yvette Pasquet and Dick Manton. He hadbeen detailed, quite privately and "unofficially," to help Yvette in oneof her achievements, and the clever French girl had been quick torecognise in him an assistant of more than ordinary ability. Yvette wasone of those rare people who never forget, and so there came about agradual friendship which included Dick Manton and Jules Pasquet. Yvetterejoiced unfeignedly when, after the Armistice, she learned ofMitchell's good fortune. The friendship continued and ripened, andYvette, Jules, and Dick Manton were staying at Renstoke Castle when aterrible stroke of malign fate cut short a career of brilliant promiseand brought an ancient lineage to an end.
Renstoke Castle was a wonderful old house in Argyllshire, and JamesMitchell, now Lord Renstoke, was surely one of the favoured of the gods!Over six feet in height, strikingly handsome and of superb physique,wealthy and with great charm of manner, there seemed to be nothing towhich he could not aspire. Despite the surroundings of his early yearshe had been well educated for his