"What do you--want me to do?" He almost gasped the words.
The expert looked him in the eye a full moment in silence, his fingers crawling and twitching. Then, with a quick, leopard-like movement, he went to the wall-safe, opened it and took out what seemed a square metal box. In its top was set an indicator, like the range-finder of a camera. Its very touch seemed to melt his icy control. His paleness flushed; his hand trembled as he set it upon the desk.
He looked swiftly about the room. His eye rested on the bamboo cage and a quick gleam shot across his face. He opened the wire door and the little bird hopped to his finger. He moved a metal pen-rack to the very center of the desk and perched the tiny creature on it. It burst into song, warbling full-throated, packed with melody. Bersonin set the metal case a little distance away and adjusted it with minutest care.
"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!"