第58章

Then--well, after that let happen what will!"She smiled once more at him--so sweetly; turned toward the figures upon the great globe; sank upon her knees before them.Quietly we crept away; still silent, made our way to the little pavilion.But as we passed we heard a tumult from the green roadway; shouts of men, now and then a woman's scream.Through a rift in the garden I glimpsed a jostling crowd on one of the bridges: green dwarfs struggling with the _ladala_--and all about droned a humming as of a giant hive disturbed!

Larry threw himself down upon one of the divans, cov-ered his face with his hands, dropped them to catch in Olaf's eyes troubled reproach, looked at me.

"_I_ couldn't help it," he said, half defiantly--half-miser-ably."God, what a woman! I COULDN'T help it!""Larry," I asked."Why didn't you tell her you didn't love her--then?"He gazed at me--the old twinkle back in his eye.

"Spoken like a scientist, Doc!" he exclaimed."I suppose if a burning angel struck you out of nowhere and threw it-self about you, you would most dignifiedly tell it you didn't want to be burned.For God's sake, don't talk nonsense, Goodwin!" he ended, almost peevishly.

"Evil! Evil!" The Norseman's voice was deep, nearly a chant."All here is of evil: Trolldom and Helvede it is, Ja!

And that she _djaevelsk_ of beauty--what is she but harlot of that shining devil they worship.I, Olaf Huldricksson, know what she meant when she held out to you power over all the world, _Ja!_--as if the world had not devils enough in it now!""What?" The cry came from both O'Keefe and myself at once.

Olaf made a gesture of caution, relapsed into sullen silence.There were footsteps on the path, and into sight came Rador--but a Rador changed.Gone was every vestige of his mockery; curiously solemn, he saluted O'Keefe and Olaf with that salute which, before this, I had seen given only to Yolara and to Lugur.There came a swift quickening of the tumult--died away.He shrugged mighty shoulders.

"The _ladala_ are awake!" he said."So much for what two brave men can do!" He paused thoughtfully."Bones and dust jostle not each other for place against the grave wall!" he added oddly."But if bones and dust have revealed to them that they still--live--"He stopped abruptly, eyes seeking the globe that bore and sent forth speech.1*1 I find that I have neglected to explain the working of these inter-esting mechanisms that were telephonic, dictaphonic, telegraphic in one.I must assume that my readers are familiar with the receiving apparatus of wireless telegraphy, which must be "tuned" by the oper-ator until its own vibratory quality is in exact harmony with the vibrations--the extremely rapid impacts--of those short electric wave-lengths we call Hertzian, and which carry the wireless messages.Imust assume also that they are familiar with the elementary fact of physics that the vibrations of light and sound are interchangeable.

The hearing-talking globes utilize both these principles, and with con-summate simplicity.The light with which they shone was produced by an atomic "motor" within their base, similar to that which activated the merely illuminating globes.The composition of the phonic spheres gave their surfaces an acute sensitivity and resonance.In conjunction with its energizing power, the metal set up what is called a "field of force," which linked it with every particle of its kind no matter how distant.When vibrations of speech impinged upon the resonant surface its rhythmic light-vibrations were broken, just as a telephone trans-mitter breaks an electric current.Simultaneously these light-vibrations were changed into sound--on the surfaces of all spheres tuned to that particular instrument.The "crawling" colours which showed them-selves at these times were literally the voice of the speaker in its spec-trum equivalent.While usually the sounds produced required consider-able familiarity with the apparatus to be understood quickly, they could, on occasion, be made startlingly loud and clear--as I was soon to realize--W.T.G.