Chapter XII: Strange Wealth

“Want to come down with me?”

It happened as simply as that. Johnny Thompson caught his breath, breathed hard twice, then said, “Y—yes. Sure I would.”

The boy who had asked this surprising question was none other than Donald Day, grandson of the wizard of Stone Mountain who in a mysterious manner managed to make something of great value out of air and water alone. It was the next day. Jensie and Ballard were away in the hills with dog and guns but Johnny and Donald were standing at the door leading to the mystery room beneath the mill. The key was in Donald’s hand and he was saying quietly, “Want to come down—”

“Wonder if he does not know that his grandfather kept the whole thing a secret?” Johnny thought to himself. “Wonder if I should tell him. I—”

At that moment little Bexter Brice burst through the outer door. “The worst things do happen,” he exclaimed. “Poor old Uncle Mose Short!” He dropped down upon a rustic seat.

“What’s happened?” Johnny asked, for the moment allowing his interest to be drawn from the enthralling mystery below.

“Well, you know,” Bex was speaking slowly now, “Mr. MacQueen always took a great deal of interest in Mose. Mose is old, really old, no one knows just how old, but he’s been game. He’s worked. Times have been hard but all he’s asked is a chance to earn a poor sort of living and now—” he sighed. “Now it looks as if that chance would be cut off.

“You see,” he turned to the city boy, Donald, “your grandfather was trying to save Mose’s mule when he had that terrible fall.”

“So,” Donald flashed him a friendly smile, “it’s sort of up to me to take on the burden Grandfather has been forced to lay down?”

“Something like that,” Bex agreed.

“But you know,” he went on, “Uncle Mose has earned money mining coal beneath his little patch of land and selling it to people down in the settlement. It’s a terrible sort of mine. The coal doesn’t lay flat down. It stands half on edge. Mose has managed somehow. But now—” he sprang to his feet. “Now Blinkey Billy Blevens, the meanest old skunk out of jail claims that his father bought the coal rights on all the land up on Mose’s creek, and he says he can stop Mose from mining it.”

“Why he can’t do that can he?” Johnny stared.

“Of course he can if he wants to. What we’ll have to do is to make him not want to. But how? That’s the question.” Bex stared at the floor.

“Appeal to his better nature,” Johnny suggested.

“He hasn’t any that anyone has ever discovered. People have tried to find some good side to him many times,” Bex answered gloomily. “They’ve never found it.”

“Some people can be frightened into doing what is right. It’s not very nice but sometimes it’s the only way. What’s he likely to be afraid of?” Donald asked.

“Lightning,” Bex replied promptly. “Lightning out of a clear sky. He claims he was once knocked over and nearly killed by what he calls a ‘bolt from the blue.’”

“H’m,” Johnny mused. “That’s a large contract.”

Then the new boy, Donald Day, said something very strange. What he said was, “I shouldn’t be surprised if we should be able to arrange it.”

“You mean—” Johnny stared.

But just then someone called to Bex from outside the mill and Donald said once more to Johnny:

“You want to go down?”

At once Johnny’s mind was all awhirl with thoughts of mysterious whispers and wheezes from those lower regions of the mill, and with the strange wealth that came from those depths. “Sure,” he said once again. “Sure I would.” So the other boy turned the key in the lock and they went down.

“I’ve helped my grandfather at this sort of thing quite a lot,” Donald said as he switched on a light—the place below had no windows. “He used to have a shop just outside of the city. That was where I worked with him most. But the air there was too impure, too much dust. Lot of smoke from chimneys and factories.

“So he came down here.” The boy seemed to be talking to himself quite as much as to Johnny. “Air down here in the mountains is about as pure as you can hope to find anywhere. No cars shooting along kicking up dust and coughing out gas. If any smoke passes over, it crosses at the mountain tops, not down here.

“Another thing,” he pushed a lever. There came the sound of rushing water and slowly revolving wheels. “Another thing,” he repeated, “this power down here is cheap. Don’t cost you anything. All you have to do is to keep up the dam and see that the mill is in good repair. You’ve really got to have cheap power. Costs only about half as much down here.”

“What costs half as much?” Johnny thought this question but did not ask it. Johnny could wait.

From one corner came a sucking sound. This increased until the room seemed full of the sucking and hissing of a steam engine, yet there was no steam. It was strange.

Donald dragged a canvas-covered something from a corner. This proved to be a large jug. It was not made of clay however, nor of glass.

“Porcelain,” Donald explained as he saw Johnny eyeing it. “Better than metal because it is a slow conductor of heat. Shrinkage in this business is terrible. A gallon may last a week—then it’s gone. And you can’t confine it. Oh my, no! That is, I don’t think you can, at least not in any small way. There’s a great manufacturer somewhere up north, I’ve heard it said, who does confine it in large quantities. But it’s dangerous. Some secret process. No one allowed near it. Blows the end out of a building now and then. You can imagine what this place would look like after an explosion,” he laughed. After that he slid the big jug in a corner to connect it with a pipe. From the pipe there came a sort of white smoke.

“White smoke,” Johnny recalled Ballard’s words of some time back. “But what’s it all about?”

During the moments that followed, his curiosity grew and grew and grew. Then of a sudden, the other boy said:

“Look!”

Dragging the big jug free, he tipped it over to pour some white, steaming liquid over the palm of his hand, then quickly shook it into the air.

“You can do that—” he slid the jug back into its place. “You can even take some in your mouth. But you better spurt it out quick. Just imagine, 216 degrees below.”

“Wha—what is it?” Johnny managed to gasp.

“What?” The other boy stared. “You don’t know? Why I—” He stared afresh. Then he pronounced two magic words: “Liquid Air!” If Johnny did not think there was any magic in them at that moment, he was soon enough to know.

“Air isn’t a liquid,” he protested. “It’s a gas.”

“Water’s not a liquid either,” Donald smiled. “Not always. When you get it hot enough it becomes steam, a gas. When you get it cold enough it is ice, a solid. Air is just the same, only difference is you have to get it terribly cold before it becomes a liquid. That’s just what I’m doing now.

“Watch those pumps. They’re putting air under great pressure. That makes it cold. When it’s just so cold, I run it over pipes full of more air. That makes air number two pretty cold. I put air number two under great pressure. Then it is cold enough to turn into a liquid, part of it. It drips off just as condensed steam does.”

“And so-o,” Johnny drawled, “you get liquid air. How much is it worth?”

“From fifty cents to one dollar a quart.”

“Whew!” Johnny whistled. “High priced air I’d say.”

He dropped into a chair. “So that’s how your grandfather got something valuable out of nothing but the sky! Gold from the sky!” Johnny chuckled.

“But say!” he was on his feet again. “Who wants the stuff? What’s it good for?”

“Well,” replied Donald after turning a valve and setting one more pump hissing, “men go about the country lecturing on liquid air, freezing up tennis balls so hard they crack on the floor like an egg shell, making tuning forks out of lead by freezing it up, all that. They buy liquid air.

“Big mills that manufacture locomotives use liquid air. They freeze up whole engine wheels with liquid air, then put on the tires, which are not frozen. When the wheel thaws out it expands and there you have your tire on tight as a drum. Funny business isn’t it?

“But mostly,” he slid another jug into position, “liquid air is split up before it’s used.”

“Split up?” Johnny stared.

“Sure,” Donald grinned. “Air contains six gases. The principal ones are oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen is used a great deal, nitrogen very little, except in time of war.

“But the other gases are used a great deal too. Ever walk down the streets of a big city at night and notice all the gleaming, flashing signs?” he asked.

“Sure have!”

“Remember the inches of glass tubing all full of something that glowed red, blue, green, yellow?”

“Sure.”

“Well, those tubes each contain gas, krypton, argon, or neon. That’s why they are called neon signs. A great deal of that gas comes from liquid air or is separated by the aid of it. So you see, if we can supply manufacturers with clean, cheap liquid air we have—”

“A fortune!” Johnny drew in a long breath. “How wonderful!”

“Well,” Donald said slowly, “perhaps not a fortune but a chance to live and to help others a little, and that is something these days.

“Liquid air,” he went on after a moment, “makes a wonderful explosive. You see the oxygen in liquid air is free to join with carbon. All you have to do is to soak charcoal in liquid air, attach a fuse to it, scratch a match then run. The result is a glorious explosion.”

“Swell for Fourth of July!” Johnny enthused.

“Wouldn’t it be though—”

“But say!” Johnny exclaimed. “Why not use it for mining coal?”

“It has been done in Europe.”

“Look!” Johnny stood up. His eyes gleamed. “Bex says that old Uncle Mose’s mine contains the toughest vein of coal he ever saw. He picks away at it for hours and only gets a small load. Suppose you could spare a little of that liquid air?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“I’ve got some charcoal,” Johnny was growing enthusiastic. “Whole lot of it. I got it from a charcoal burner. Got some fuse too.” He was fairly dancing about. “We’ll make up some of that carbon-liquid air explosive and loosen up ten tons of coal for old Uncle Mose. What a lift that will give him!”

“All right,” Donald agreed. “I’ve always wanted to try that thing out. We’ll do it this very afternoon. What do you say? Around four o’clock?”

“Suits me fine.” Johnny grabbed his hat. “Got a thing or two that must be done. I’ll be back later for my next lecture on liquid air. It sure is great!” He was away.