He smiled brightly upon them.
"But though in tiny quantities it has but little effect, in larger quantities—when fresh it makes the functioning of the gray cells of the human brain as far superior to the unmedicated gray cells, as those human gray cells are to the white cells of the ape! That is what I have to offer to the human race! Intelligence for every man, which shall be as the genius of the past!"
He laughed softly.
"Think, Senores! Compare the estate of men with the estate of apes! Compare the civilization which will arise upon the earth when men's brains are as far above their present level as the present level is above the anthropoid! The upward steps of the human race under my rule will parallel, will surpass the advance from the brutish caveman to intellectual genius. But I have seen, Senores, the one danger in my offering."
There was silence. Jamison shook his head despairingly. The Master could not see him. He formed the word with his lips.
"Crazy!"
But Bell said coldly:
"Go on."
"I must rule," said The Master soberly. "It is essential. If my little secret were known, intelligences would be magnified, but under many flags and with many aims. Scientists, with genius beside which Newton's pales, would seek out deadly weapons for war. The world would destroy itself of its own genius. But under my rule—"
"Men go mad," said Bell coldly.
The Master smiled reproachfully.
"Ah, you are trying to make me angry, so that I will betray something! You are clever, Senor Bell. With my little medicine, in such quantities as I would administer it to you...."
"You describe it," said Bell harshly and dogmatically, "as a brain stimulant. But it drives men mad."
"To be sure," said The Master mildly. "It does. It is not excreted from the body save very, very slowly. But it changes in the blood stream. As—let us say—sugar changes into alcohol in digestion. The end-product of my little medicine is a poison which attacks the brain. But the slightest bit of unchanged medicine is an antidote. It is"—he smiled amiably—"it is as if sugar in the body changed to alcohol, and alcohol was a poison, but sugar—unchanged—was an antidote. That is it exactly. You see that I have taken my little medicine for years, and it has not harmed me."
"Which," said Bell—and somehow his manner made utter silence fall so that each word fell separately into a vast stillness—"which, thank God, is the one thing that wins finally, for me!"
He stood up and laughed. Quite a genuine laugh.
"Paula," he said comfortably, "get on the plane. In the cabin. Jamison and I are going to strip The Master."
Paula stared. The Master looked at him blankly. Jamison frowned bewilderedly, but stood up grimly to obey.
"But Senor," said The Master in gentle dignity, "merely to humiliate me—"
"Not for that," said Bell. He laughed again. "But all the time I've been hearing about the stuff, I've noticed that nobody thought of it as a drug. It was a poison. People were poisoned. They did not become addicts. But you—you are the only addict to your drug."
He turned to Jamison, his eyes gleaming.
"Jamison," he said softly, "did you ever know of a drug addict who could bear to think of ever being without a supply of his drug—right on his person?"
Jamison literally jumped.
"By God! No!"
The Master was quick. He was swarming up the plane-wing tip before Jamison reached him, and he kicked frenziedly when Jamison plucked him off. But then it was wholly, entirely, utterly horrible that the little white haired man, whose face and manner had seemed so cherubic and so bland, should shriek in so complete a blind panic as they forced his fingers open and took a fountain pen away from him.
"This is it," said Bell in a deep satisfaction. "This is his point of weakness."
The Master was ghastly to look at, now. Jamison held him gently enough, considering everything, but The Master looked at that fountain pen as one might look at Paradise.
"I—I swear," he gasped. "I—swear I will give you the formula!"
"You might lie," said Jamison grimly.
"I swear it!" panted The Master in agony. "It—If the formula is known it—can be duplicated! It—the excretion can be hastened! It can all be forced from the body! Simply! So simply! If only you know! I will tell you how it is done! The medicine is the cacodylate of—"
Bell was leaning forward, now, like a runner breasting the tape at the end of a long and exhausting race.
"I'll trade," he said softly. "Half the contents of the pen for the formula. The other half we'll need for analysis. Half the stuff in the pen for the formula for freeing your slaves!"
The Master sobbed.
"A—a pencil!" he gasped. "I swear—"
Jamison gave him a pencil and a notebook. He wrote, his hands shaking. Jamison read inscrutably.
"It doesn't mean anything to me," he said soberly, "but you can read it. It's legible."
Bell smiled faintly. With steady finger he took his own fountain pen from his pocket. He emptied it of ink, and put a scrupulous half of a milky liquid from The Master's pen into it. He passed it over.
"Your medicine," said Bell quietly, "may taste somewhat of ink, but it will not be poisonous. Now, what do we do with you? I give you your choice. If we take you with us, you will be held very secretly as a prisoner until the truth of the information you have given us can be proven. And if your slaves have all been freed, then I suppose you will be tried...."
The Master was drawn and haggard. He looked very, very old and beaten.
"I—I would prefer," he said dully, "that you did not tell where I am, and that you go away and leave me here. I—I may have some subjects who will search for me, and—they may discover me here.... But I am beaten, Senor. You know that you have won."
Bell swung up on the wing of the plane. He explored about in the cabin. He came back.
"There are emergency supplies," he said coldly. "We will leave them with you, with such things as may be useful to allow you to hope as long as possible. I do not think you will ever be found here."
"I—prefer it, Senor," said The Master dully. "I—I will catch fish...."
Jamison helped put the packages ashore. The Master shivered. Bell stripped off his coat and put it on top of the heap of packages. The Master did not stir. Bell laid a revolver on top of his coat. He went out to the plane and started the motors. The Master watched apathetically as the big seaplane pulled clumsily out of the little cove. The rumble of the engines became a mighty roar. It started forward with a rush, skimmed the water for two hundred yards or so, and suddenly lifted clear to go floating away through the air toward the north.
Paula was the only one who looked back.
"He's crying," she said uncomfortably.
"It isn't fear," said Bell quietly. "It's grief at the loss of his ambition. It may not seem so to you two, but I believe he meant all that stuff he told me. He was probably really aiming, in his own way, for an improved world for men to live in."