Chapter 18—The Kernel of the Nut
The top of the steel ladder was fixed close to the wall of a vast circular chamber, there being no communication with the exterior. It would have been in complete darkness had it not been for a dazzling white light which streamed through the thick glass of a bull’s-eye, fixed in the center of the oak floor. For purity and brilliancy it might be compared to the moon, when she is in her full beauty.
Perfect silence reigned within these mute and eyeless walls. The two young men imagined themselves in the antechamber of a tomb.
But before bending over the glass, Max hesitated for a moment. He had attained his object! The secret, to penetrate which he had come to Steeltown, was about to be revealed to him!
This feeling, however, soon passed off. Together he
