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Whether that battering would accomplish his purpose, he could not tell. But that he had only these few seconds torn out of time to try, he knew, and determined to use them as best he could. One of the Baldies had slithered down to the floor and another was aiming strangely ineffectual blows at him. But the third had wriggled free to bring up a paralyzer.
One of the detectives helped him on with his metal and plastic armor; before sealing his gauntlets, he reciprocated the assistance, then checked the needler and blaster and the long batonlike ultrasonic paralyzer on his belt and made sure that the radio and sound-phones in his helmet were working.
For seven years of his young life he had been assistant to Pericles Priam, and had traveled over America selling Priam's Peerless Pain Paralyzer; they had ridden in an automobile, and wherever there was a fair or a convention or an excursion or a picnic, they were on hand, and Pericles Priam would stop at a place where the crowds were thickest, and ring a dinner bell, and deliver his super-eloquent message to humanity the elixir of life revealed, suffering banished from the earth, and all inconveniences of this mortal state brought to an end for one dollar per bottle of fifteen per cent opium.
"My last appearance on any stage," he muttered, as his hands were soon busied with the familiar phials around him. "I'll have a few doses of this 'Sinner's Friend' with me," he muttered. "Who knows where I may not need it. It is the only paralyzer." Seizing a three-ounce flask, he cast aside his blue goggles for a moment as he measured his ingredients.
He arranged in the cellar what he called his 'rat paralyzer, a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery. They were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit and the rat departed this life, electrocuted."
He told how he had been starved and driven about and beaten by "Old Man" Drubb, and the tears glistened in Jennie's grey eyes and stole down her cheeks. He told about loneliness and heartsickness and misery in the orphan asylum. And how could he, poor lad, realize that it was wrong to help Pericles Priam sell his Peerless Pain Paralyzer?
The sigma-ray needler, which he carried, was the only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. It had no effect whatever on any material structure and could be used inside an activated conveyer without deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, a bullet or the vibration of an ultrasonic paralyzer would do, and it was instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system.
But if it is too great, or if there is lacking a certain fortitude, it may act as a paralyzer of energy thenceforth. In the prize ring this is often noted; the spirit of a man goes with a defeat and he never again has self-confidence; thereafter his energy is constantly inhibited. Emotions have long been studied in their effects on energy.
Three murders, perpetrated in my presence under identical conditions, represent the fruits of my experiment pursued, on two occasions, from eight o'clock in the morning until twelve midday. I had seen enough. The quick insect-killer had taught me her trade as had the paralyzer before her: she had shown me that she is thoroughly versed in the art of the butcher of the Pampas.
A messenger showed him the way, and he was there informed that the house of Jenvie & Hamlin had been drawing so heavily upon his order that only some £12,000 remained to his credit. The news was a paralyzer, but Jack was a game man and said: "That is all right," talked pleasantly for a few minutes, then withdrew, and going directly to his step-father's office, demanded an explanation.
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