r something very similar--hung over the table, about on a
level with my eyes, had I been sitting in the chair. Beyond that I saw
nothing, until Strange had moved forward and drawn aside a curtain that
hung beside the table.

"I made you come here to-night, Dale," he murmured, "because I was a bit
afraid of you. Your comrade, Hartnett, was an ignorant police officer.
He has not the intellect to connect the series of events of the past day
or two, and so I did not trouble myself with him. But you are an
educated man. You have made no demonstrations of your ability in the
field of science, but--"

He stopped speaking abruptly. From the room behind us came the sound of
a warning bell. Strange turned quickly and went to the door.

"You will wait here, Doctor," he said. "I have another caller to-night.
Another one who came the same way as you!"

He vanished. For a short interlude I was alone, with that peculiar
radio-like apparatus before me. It was, for all the world, like a
miniature control room in some small broadcasting station. Except for
the odd shape of the microphone, if it was such I could detect no
radical difference in equipment.

* * * * *

However, I had little time for conjecture. A patter of footsteps
interrupted me from the next room, and a frightened, feminine voice
broke the stillness of the outer study. Even before the owner of that
voice stepped in to my presence, I knew her.

And when she came, with white, fearful face and trembling body, I could
not withhold a shudder of apprehension. It was the young woman who had
come to my office--Margot Vernee. Evidently, at last, she had yielded to
the horrible impulse that had drawn her back to Michael Strange, an
impulse which, I now understood, had originated from the man himself.

He pressed her forward. There was nothing tender in his touch: it was
cruel and triumphant.

"So you have succeeded--at last," I said bitterly.

He turned to me with a sneer.

"I have brought her here, yes," he replied. "And now that she has come,
she shall hear what I have to tell you. It will perhaps give her a
respect for me, and this time she will not have the power to turn me
away."

He pointed to the table, to the apparatus that lay there.

"I'm telling you this, Dale," he said, "because it gives me pleasure to
do so. You are enough of a scientist to appreciate and understand it.
And if, when I have finished, I have told you too muc