Now and then the Master's little searchlight--his own wonderful invention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using no batteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolute vacuum--glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bit of going. For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleam was allowed to show. Silence, darkness, precision, speed were now all-requisite.

Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among a confused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavy timbers on the brow of the Palisades. Off to the north, the faint, ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees. Far below, the jetty river trembled here, there, with starlight.

They paused a moment to breathe, to shift straps that bound shoulders not now hardened to such burdens. The Master glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch.

"Almost to the dot," he whispered. "Seventeen minutes to midnight. At midnight, sharp, we take possession. Come!"

They trailed through a hard, rocky path among thick oak, pine, and silver-birch. Now and then the little greenish-white light will-o'-the-wisped ahead, flickering hither, yon. No one spoke a word.

Every footstep had to be laid down with care. After three minutes'

progress, the Master stopped, turned, held up his hand.

"Absolute silence, now," he breathed. "The outer guards are now within an eighth of a mile."

They moved forward again. The light was no longer shown, but the Master confidently knew the way. Bohannan felt a certain familiarity with the terrain, which he had carefully studied on the large-scale map he and the Master had used in planning the attack; but the Master's intimate knowledge was not his. After two and one-half minutes, the leader stopped again, and gestured at heavy fern-brakes that could just be distinguished as black blotches in the dark of the woods.

"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorized orders!"

He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise.

Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. A vagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which a few stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from any others. And yet--

_Were_ there any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, no sound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distant laugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps the same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came the faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.

"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a few minutes it'll be too late, _if_ we don't strike now!" He felt a great temptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility of any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other _faux pas_, he bridled his impatience and held still.

Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal--if you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the _coup_ should be put through--realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a profound excitement.

His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up like a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages of war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. He desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.

It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.

The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained motionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign of it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication of them could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woods encircling the stockade. Was each man really there and ready for the predetermined role he was to play?

It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all these adventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, with any other, should all have taken their a.s.signed posts. That each, with luminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second, before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony with all the rest, the finished composition. Such an a.s.sumption partook more of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality in this Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world's greatest city.

The Master, crouching, whispered:

"Two minutes more! Keep your eyes on your watches, now. Get your lethal guns ready! In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsule burst. Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours. Ten later, yours, Bohannan. Ten later, yours, Rrisa. Listen hard! Hold steady!"

The silence drew at them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something in which the words: "_La Illaha ilia Allah_" transpired in a wraith of sound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly hold his poise.

All three now had their capsule pistols ready. The self-luminous compa.s.s and level attached to each gun gave them their exact direction and elevation. Glimmering watches marked the time, the dragging of the last few seconds.

The Master drew no weapon. His mind, directing all, observing all, was not to be distracted by even so small a detail as any personal hand in the discharge of the lethal gas.

If he felt the strain of the final moment, on which hung vaster issues than mere life or death, he gave no indication of it. His eyes remained fixed on the watch-dial at his wrist. They were confident, those eyes. The vague shimmer of the watch-glow showed them dark and grave; his face, faintly revealed, was impa.s.sive, emotionless.

It seemed the face of a scientist, a chemist who--having worked out his formula to its ultimate minutiae--now felt utter trust in its reactions, now was only waiting to observe what he well knew must inevitably happen.

"Thirty seconds more," he whispered, and fell silent. Presently, after what seemed half an hour: "Fifteen!"

Another long wait. The Master breathed:

"In just five seconds the first capsule will burst there!" He pointed with a.s.surance. "In two--in one--"

CHAPTER VI

THE SILENT ATTACK

At the exact instant when the second hand notched to the minute's edge, and in precisely the spot indicated, a slight, luminous spot became dimly visible above the trees. The spot took uncertain form high above the ghost-glow rising from the unseen stockade. For an instant it hung suspended, pale-greenish, evanescent.

Then, as a faint plop! drifted to the watchers--a sound no louder than a feeble clack of the tongue--this indefinite luminosity began to sink, to fade, falling slowly, gradually dissipating itself in the dim light over the stockade.

The Master nodded, smiling, with never any hint of praise or approbation. The fulfilment of his order was to him no other than it is to you, when you drop a pebble into water, to hear the splash of it. That his plan should be working out, seemed to him a perfectly obvious, inevitable thing. The only factor that could possibly have astonished him, just now, would have been the nonappearance of that slight, luminous cloudlet at the precise spot and moment designated.

Neither Bohannan, Alden, nor Rrisa was watching the slow descent of the lethal gas. All three had their eyes fixed on their own lethal-gas pistols and on their watches. At mathematically the correct second, Bohannan discharged his piece, correctly sighting direction and elevation.

As he pressed trigger, a light sighing eased itself from the slim barrel. Something flicked through the leaves; and, almost on the instant, the phenomenon of the little phosph.o.r.escent spot repeated itself, though in a different place from the first one. Captain Alden's and Rrisa's shots produced still other blurs of virescence.

Then, as they all waited, crouching, came another and another tiny explosion, high aloft, at precisely ten-second intervals. Here, there, they developed, until twenty-nine of these strange, bubble-like things had burst above and all about the huge enclosure. Then darkness and silence once more settled down.

Nothing seemed to have happened. Night still reigned, starry with glimpses of sky through wind-swayed trees. One would have said everything still remained precisely as it had been before.

Yet presently, within the stockade or near it, a certain uneasy _melange_ of sounds began to develop. Here a cry became audible, there a command. A startled voice called an order, but suddenly fell silent, half-way through it. The worrying of the dog ceased with eloquent suddenness. A curse died, unfinished.

And silence, as perfect as the silence of the unseen watchers strung all about the periphery of the stockade, once more dominated the night.

For precisely ten minutes, nothing broke that silence--minutes during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike.

So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other planet attack and conquer the world, noiselessly, gently, irrevocably.

This a.s.sault was different from any other ever made since man and man first began battling together in the dim twilights of the primeval.

Not with shout and cheer did it rush forward, nor yet with venomous gases that gave the alarm, that choked, that strangled, that tortured.

Silence and concealment, and the invisible blight of sleep, like the greater numbing that once fell on the hosts of Sennacherib, enfolded all opposition. All who would have stood against the Legion, simply sighed once, perhaps spoke a few disjointed words, then sank into oblivion.

So far as anyone could see, save for the bursting of twenty-nine insignificant little light-bubbles, in mid-air, nothing at all had happened. And yet tremendously much had happened, inside the huge stockade.

Ten minutes to a dot had drifted by, seeming at least six times as long, when all at once the Master stood up.

"The gas has dissipated enough now," said he, "so that we can advance in safety. Come!"

The three also arose, half at his command, half from the independent impulses given them by their watches as these came to the designated second for the forward movement. The Master blew no whistle, gave no signal to the many others scattered all through those darkly silent woods; but right and left, and over beyond the stockade, he knew with the precision of a mathematical equation every man was at that exact moment also arising, also obeying orders, also preparing to close in on the precious thing whereof they meant to make themselves the owners.

Forward the Master made his way, with the three others of his immediate escort. Though there no longer existed any need of silence, hardly a word was spoken. Something vast, imminent, overpowering, seemed to have laid its finger on the lips of all, to have muted them of speech.

The vacuum-lights, however, were now freely flashing in the little party, as it advanced directly toward the stockade. The men clambered over rocks, through bushes, across fallen logs. Rrisa stopped, suddenly, played his light on a little bundle of gray fur, and touched it with a curious finger. It was a squirrel, curled into a tiny ball of oblivion.