Johannesburg, harassed by the ever -growing mountains of quartz dust sweeping over the city sent for him and his investigations resulted in a formula for the after treatment of quartz waste which cut three Shillings a ton off the overhead costs of the Rand and stemmed the rising tide of dust.

 And they were only a few of Dain's achievements. sitting back among his retorts and tubes, coldly exact in all he put his mind to, he invented a new bleach which was whiter than white dye. plumbers knew him as the man who had hardened iridium to such a degree that it could cut glass. aviators mentally blessed him as the man whose automatic stabilisers made flight almost fool proof and robbed night flying of ninety percent of its terrors.

  That made the tally of Dain's attainments, a solid, brilliant roll of honourable work done. Not bad for a man still standing on the threshold if the thirties.

 And yet there was one invention, the greatest achievement of all, which never came to the light of the day. Dain conceived it, produced it, and perfected it to its last extraordinary detail and then shut it around with a vast and omnipotent silence. Locked away in his great laboratory high up among the roofs of kings way, he brought his Invention to its last ultimate degree of perfection

 he tried it , tested it , and proved it out to the last degree. then he sat back quietly to think things out.

 it's possibilities were amazing, it's potentialities colossal, frightening. it held out opportunities that were enough to make even the most avaricious master criminal on earth tremble. 

 for that amazing invention of his had given to Valmon Dain the mastery of a million secrets. it held out to him the keys of all knowledge. it put him in possession of information by which in twelve short months he could have well-nigh wrecked the social system. he could, without the shadow of a doubt, have created a corner in money; he could have forestalled every enterprises worth while; he could draw on the very well-springs of secret information, and using it with only a smattering of skill could have shaken the whole social fabric to its very roots.

 And Dain, after a desperate month of mental stress, called up his reserves of courage, took his destiny in both hands and began to pick the luscious fruits of his Invention.

 That laboratory became the nerve centre of the most extraordinary cross-web of tangled intrigues, the nightmarish conversations that ever existed outside the demented brain of a madman. He built his own apparatus. no other living soul had ever looked inside that room. He himself had taken the place under an assumed name. so far as the landlord knew that particular office was let to a Mr. Landring Dent, export merchant a highly respectable and worthy gentleman who paid his rent with fastidious regularity and conducted the greater part of his business by telephone.