"Let me see the palms of your hands."

Poissan shot an angry glance at Kennedy, but he did not open his
hands.

"I merely wish to convince you, 'Mr. Spencer,'" said Kennedy to
me, "that it is no sleight-of-hand trick and that the professor
has not several uncut stones palmed in his hand like a
prestidigitator."

The Frenchman faced us, his face livid with rage. "You call me a
prestidigitator, a fraud--you shall suffer for that! Sacrebleu!
Ventre du Saint Gris! No man ever insults the honour of Poissan.
Francois, water on the electrodes!"

The assistant dashed a few drops of water on the electrodes. The
sickish odour increased tremendously. I felt myself almost going,
but with an effort I again roused myself. I wondered how Craig
stood the fumes, for I suffered an intense headache and nausea.

"Stop!" Craig thundered. "There's enough cyanogen in this room
already. I know your game--the water forms acetylene with the
carbon, and that uniting with the nitrogen of the air under the
terrific heat of the electric arc forms hydrocyanic acid. Would
you poison us, too? Do you think you can put me unconscious out
on the street and have a society doctor diagnose my case as
pneumonia? Or do you think we shall die quietly in some hospital
as a certain New York banker did last year after he had watched
an alchemist make silver out of apparently nothing!"