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Toward the end of March the special service battleship squadron of the North Atlantic fleet commenced testing Chaosite in the vicinity of the Southern rendezvous. Both main and secondary batteries were employed. Selwyn had been aboard the flag-ship for nearly a month. In April the armoured ships left the Southern drill ground and began to move northward.
The matter of business arrangements apparently ended then and there; Lawn's company sent several men to Selwyn and wrote him a great many letters unlike the Government, which had not replied to his briefly tentative suggestion that Chaosite be conditionally examined, tested, and considered.
"No, old fellow; and thank you with all my heart. I've half made up my mind to live on my income for a while and take up that Chaosite matter again " "And blow yourself to smithereens! Why spatter Nature thus?" "No fear," said Selwyn, laughing. "And, if it promises anything, I may come to you for advice on how to start it commercially."
Then why have I not written? I couldn't, off-hand. And every day and evening except to-day and this evening I have been in conference with Edgerton Lawn and other representatives of the Lawn Nitro-Powder Company; and have come to a sort of semi-agreement with them concerning a high explosive called Chaosite, which they desire to control the sale of as soon as I can control its tendency to misbehave.
The guests stepped gratefully outside; Selwyn, using a light fowling-piece, made pattern after pattern for them; and then they all trooped solemnly indoors again; and Selwyn froze Chaosite and boiled it and baked it and melted it and took all sorts of hair-raising liberties with it; and after that he ground it to powder, placed a few generous pinches in a small hand-grenade, and affixed a primer, the secret composition of which he alone knew.
But Gerald remained utterly unresponsive stolidly so and the other instantly relinquished the hope of any confidence at that time shifting the conversation at once to the object and reason of Gerald's coming, and gaily expressing his belief that the time was very near at hand when Chaosite would figure heavily in the world's list of commercially valuable explosives.
"Now what in the name of common sense is he doing in Washington!" exclaimed Austin wrathfully. "Probably breaking his heart because nobody cares to examine his Chaosite. I told him, as long as he insisted on bothering the Government with it instead of making a deal with the Lawn people, that I'd furnish him with a key to the lobby.
It was early in August that Selwyn had come to the conclusion that his Chaosite was likely to prove a commercial success.
The younger Craig maiden also appeared to be bent upon self-destruction; and Boots's eyes opened wider and wider in sheer amazement at the capacity of woman in embryo for rations sufficient to maintain a small garrison. "There'll be a couple of reports," he said to himself with a shudder, "like Selwyn's Chaosite.
And one day in September he wrote Gerald, asking him to bring Edgerton Lawn and come down to Silverside for the purpose of witnessing some experiments with the new smokeless explosive, Chaosite. Young Lawn came by the first train; Gerald wired that he would arrive the following morning.
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