"There! There!" repeated Flint, plucking at the dazed Waldron's sleeve.
"Tool-steel and concrete, twenty-five feet thick--and vacuum chambers
all about--_there_ we can hide! There's safety! Come, come quick!"
Staring, white-faced (he who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron
yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two
world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire
was crashing down in smoke, and flame, and blood!
They had almost reached it when a smash of glass at the far end of the
laboratory whipped them round, in keener terror.
Staring, wild-eyed, they beheld the crouching figure of Herzog. Running,
even as he cringed, he had upset a glass retort, which had shattered on
the concrete floor. And as he ran, he screamed:
"_They're in! They're coming! Quick--the steel vaults! Let me in, there!
Let me in!_"
The coward was now a maniac with terror, his face perfectly white,
writhen with panic, and with staring eyes that gleamed horribly under
the greenish vacuum-lights.
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