“Hmm,” Taylor stroked his chin, “you’re right there. But I’ll tell you what we can do. Before Staples comes, let’s plate something—a spoon, suppose—for our own satisfaction.”
“It’s really very annoying,” Sills complained fretfully. “If it weren’t for these troublesome hooligans, we wouldn’t have to proceed in this slipshod and unscientific manner.”
“Well, let’s eat dinner first.”
After the midday meal, they began. The apparatus was set up in feverish haste. In a cubic vat, a foot each way, a saturated solution of Ammonaline was poured. An old, battered spoon was the cathode and a mass of ammonium amalgam (separated from the rest of the solution by a perforated glass partition) was the anode. Three batteries in series provided the current.
Sills explained animatedly, “It works on the same principle as ordinary copper plating. The ammonium ion, once the electric current is run through, is attracted to the cathode, which is the spoon. Ordinarily it would break up, being unstable, but this is not the case when it is dissolved in Ammonaline. This Ammonaline is itself very slightly ionized and oxygen is given off at the anode.
“This much I know from theory. Let us see what happens in practice.”
He closed the key while Taylor watched with breathless interest. For a moment, no effect was visible. Taylor looked disappointed.
Then Sills grasped his sleeve. “See!” he hissed. “Watch the anode!”
Sure enough, bubbles of gas were slowly forming upon the spongy ammonium amalgam. They shifted their attention to the spoon.
Gradually, they noticed a change. The metallic appearance became dulled, the silver color slowly losing its whiteness. A layer of distinct, if dull, yellow was being built up. For fifteen minutes, the current ran and then Sills broke the circuit with a contented sigh.
“It plates perfectly,” he said.
“Good! Take it out! Let’s see it!”
“What?” Sills was aghast. “Take it out! Why, that’s pure ammonium. If I were to expose it to ordinary air, the water vapor would dissolve it to NH4OH in no time. We can’t do that.”
He dragged a rather bulky piece of apparatus to the table. “This,” he said, “is a compressed-air container. I run it through calcium chloride dryers and then bubble the perfectly dry oxygen (safely diluted with four times its own volume of nitrogen) directly into the solvent.”
He introduced the nozzle into the solution just beneath the spoon and turned on a slow stream of air. It worked like magic. With almost lightning speed, the yellow coating began to glitter and gleam, to shine with almost ethereal beauty.
The two men watched it with beating heart and panting breath. Sills shut the air off, and for a while they watched the wonderful spoon and said nothing.
Then Taylor whispered hoarsely, “Take it out. Let me feel it! My God!—it’s beautiful!”
With reverent awe, Sills approached the spoon, grasped it with forceps, and withdrew it from the surrounding liquid.
What followed immediately after that can never be fully described. Later on, when excited newspaper reporters pressed them unmercifully, neither Taylor nor Sills had the least recollection of the happenings of the next few minutes.
What happened was that the moment the ammonium-plated spoon was exposed to open air, the most horrible odor ever conceived assailed their nostrils!—an odor that cannot be described, a terrible broth of Hell that plunged the room into sheer, horrible nightmare.
With one strangled gasp, Sills dropped the spoon. Both were coughing and retching, tearing wildly at their throats and mouths, yelling, weeping, sneezing!
Taylor pounced upon the spoon and looked about wildly. The odor grew steadily more powerful and their wild exertions to escape it had already succeeded in wrecking the laboratory and had upset the vat of Ammonaline. There was only one thing to do, and Sills did it. The spoon went flying out the open window into the middle of Twelfth Avenue. It hit the sidewalk right at the feet of one of the policemen, but Taylor didn’t care.
“Take off your clothes. We’ll have to burn them,” Sills was gasping. “Then spray something over the laboratory—anything with a strong smell. Burn sulphur. Get some liquid bromine.”
Both were tearing at their clothes in distraction when they realized that someone had walked in through the unlocked door. The bell had rung, but neither had heard it. It was Staples, six-foot, lion-maned Steel King.
One step into the hall ruined his dignity utterly. He collapsed in one tearing sob and Twelfth Avenue was treated to the spectacle of an elderly, richly-dressed gentleman tearing uptown as fast as his feet would carry him, shedding as much of his clothes as he dared while doing so.
The spoon continued its deadly work. The three policemen had long since retired in abject rout, and now to the numbed and tortured senses of the two innocent and suffering causes of the entire mess came a roaring and confused shouting from the street.
Men and women were pouring out of the neighboring houses, horses were bolting. Fire engines clanged down the street, only to be abandoned by their riders. Squadrons of police came—and left.
Sills and Taylor finally gave up, and clad only in trousers, ran pell-mell for the Hudson. They did not stop until they found themselves neck-deep in water, with blessed, pure air above them.
Taylor turned bewildered eyes to Sills. “But how could it emit that horrible odor? You said it was stable and stable solids have no odors. It takes vapor for that, doesn’t it?”
“Have you ever smelled musk?” groaned Sills. “It will give off an aroma for an indefinite period without losing any appreciable weight. We’ve come up against something like that.”
The two ruminated in silence for a while, wincing whenever the wind brought a vagrant waft of ammonium vapor to them, and then Taylor said in a low voice, “When they finally trace the trouble to the spoon, and find out who made it, I’m afraid we’ll be sued—or maybe thrown in jail.”
Sills’ face lengthened.
