the thing in his arms--muttering, crooning something.

Slowly he raised his face to the skies. In the glare of the
searchlights a gleaming, silvery, oblong-shaped form was turning and
twisting like an animal at bay. They heard him catch his breath; then
their blood was frozen by a choking, heart-rending cry of agony and
rage.

It was the cry of the crystal-gazer who has had his crystal dashed from
his eyes, to find himself in the presence of murder.

The crowd remained mute, helpless and frightened at the spectacle, when
they saw a young woman approach him, a woman dressed in the khaki
uniform of an ambulance-driver.

'Austin,' they heard her say, 'please give me the little girl.'

With a stupid smile he handed the child to her, and she laid it on a
stretcher. When it had been taken away, she took Selwyn's hand in hers
and led him, unresisting, to the ambulance.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ELISE.

I.

Early next morning, in a large military ward of a London hospital, Austin
Selwyn woke from a sleep that had been charged with black dreams, and
tried to recall the events leading to his present whereabouts.

By slow, tortuous process he reconstructed the previous evening as far as
the moment when he had heard the warning guns. After that the incidents
grew dim, and faded into incoherency. He seemed to remember rushing
somewhere in a motor-vehicle. He distinctly recalled seeing a policeman
in Trafalgar Square. Yes, that was very clear--quite the most vivid
impression of the whole night, indeed. He would hang on to that
policeman.

With the care of an Arctic explorer establishing his base before going
farther into _terra incognita_, he attached the threads of his wandering
mind to that limb of the law, and groped in all the directions of his
memory's compass. But it was of no avail. Tired out with the futile
efforts he had made, his bandaged head sank back in the pillows, and the
vivid policeman in Trafalgar Square was reluctantly surrendered as a
negligible means of solution.

When he next awoke, it was to the sound of many voices. There were two
that were very close--one on either side of him, in fact. Affecting
sleep, Selwyn listened carefully.

'Wot's that you say, Jock?' said a Cockney voice to his left.

'I was obsairvin',' said the other, 'that Number Twenty-sax is occupied
this mornin'.'

'Ow yus, so it is. I was 'oping as 'ow me pal the Duke of Mudturtle
would buy the plice next to mine