![]() Tell me your case, and then I'll tell you whether I'll go or not. "You know better than to try to pull that on me. "Sit down, confound you!" cried the doctor. "Then I won't bother you with the details," replied Carnes as he rose. "I am in the midst of some work of the utmost importance and it hasn't reached the stage where I can turn it over to an assistant." "I really don't see how I can spare the time, Carnes," he said. "I didn't know that regulars had been sent there. Whenever the regulars get into trouble, the federal government is rather apt to take a hand." It was a state matter until the Governor asked for federal troops. "Apparently you haven't followed the papers. "It seems to me that it is a state matter. ![]() "How does the secret service cut in on it?" asked the doctor. He made out a request for your services and I have it in my pocket now. Bolton suggested that I ask you: he said that the whole thing sounded to him like magic and that magic was more in your line than in ours. At least there is enough to it that I am leaving for Kentucky this evening, and I came here for the express purpose of asking you whether you wanted to come along. " THERE was, and what is more to the point, there still is. ![]() "Was there really something to those wild yarns?" "Mammoth Cave has been closed to visitors for the season," said Carnes quietly. I suppose that those yarns will bring flocks of the curious to Kentucky though: the public always responds well to sea serpent yarns." What else could they be? Things like that don't happen fortuitously just as the tourist season is about to open. "So you dismissed them as mere press agent work? To pore over the lucubrations of an inspired press agent." It didn't exactly impress me with its veracity, and, from a viewpoint of literature, the thing was impossible. "I read the first one of them part way through on the strength of its being an Associated Press dispatch," he replied, "but that was enough. "Have you been reading those stories that the papers have been carrying about Mammoth Gave?" he asked. Is there another counterfeit on the market?" The doctor finished his task of weighing a porcelain crucible, set it carefully into a desictator, and turned to his friend. Bird was, albeit his artistry expressed itself in the most delicate and complicated experiments in the realms of pure and applied science that the world has ever seen, rather than in the commoner forms of art. Acid stains and scars could not hide the beauty of those mobile hands, the hands of an artist and a dreamer. ![]() Bird stood well over six feet and weighed two hundred and six pounds stripped: his massive shoulders and heavy shock of unruly black hair combined to give him the appearance of a prize-fighter-until one looked at his hands. I'll be with you as soon as I finish getting this weight."Ĭarnes sat on the edge of a bench and watched with admiration the long nervous hands and the slim tapering fingers of the famous scientist. "Take a seat and make yourself at home for a few minutes. BIRD looked up impatiently as the door of his private laboratory in the Bureau of Standards swung open, but the frown on his face changed to a smile as he saw the form of Operative Carnes of the United States Secret Service framed in the doorway. The unseen horror of Mammoth Cave had struck again.ĭR. An unearthly screech rang through the cavern. Meek Screaming, the guardsman was jerked through the air.
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