ss step through the silence of the barroom,
glancing neither to right nor to left, until it came before the table of
Mac Strann. There it halted and slunk back a little, the upper lip
lifted away from the long fangs, its eyes glittered upon the face of the
giant, and then it swung about and slipped out of the barroom as it had
come, in utter silence.

In the utter silence Mac Strann leaned across the table to Haw-Haw
Langley.

"He's come alone this time," he said, "but the next time he'll bring his
master with him. We'll wait!"

The Adam's-apple rose and fell in the throat of Haw-Haw.

"We'll wait," he nodded, and he burst into the harsh, unhuman laughter
which had given him his name.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE

This is the letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received over the
signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It was such a strange letter that
between paragraphs Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy
Park studio and stared, baffled, at the heights of the Metropolitan
Tower.

"Dear Swinnerton,

"I'll be with you in good old Manhattan about as soon as you get this
letter. I'm sending this ahead because I want you to do me a favour. If
I have to go back to those bare, blank rooms of mine with the smell of
chemicals drifting in from the laboratory, I'll--get drunk. That's all!"

Here Swinnerton Loughburne lowered the letter to his knees and grasped
his head in both hands. Next he turned to the end of the letter and made
sure that the signature was "Randall Byrne." He stared again at the
handwriting. It was not the usual script of the young doctor. It was
bolder, freer, and twice as large as usual; there was a total lack of
regard for the amount of stationery consumed.

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Swinnerton Loughburne shook his fine
grey head and read on: "What I want you to do, is to stir about and find
me a new apartment. Mind you, I don't want the loft of some infernal
Arcade building in the Sixties. Get me a place somewhere between
Thirtieth and Fifty-eighth. _Two_ bed-rooms. I want a place to put some
of the boys when they drop around my way. And at least one servant's
room. Also at least one large room where I can stir about and wave my
arms without hitting the chandelier. Are you with me?"

Here Swinnerton Loughburne seized his head between both hands again and
groaned: "Dementia! Plain and simple dementia! And at his age, poor
boy!"

He continued: "Find an int