efore I retire, of course."

"Ah well," sighed Mrs. M'Gregor, preparing to depart. "Good-night,
Mr. Keppel."

"Good-night, Mrs. M'Gregor."

She retired, and Stuart sat staring out into the darkness. He was
not prone to superstition, but it seemed like tempting providence to
remain there with the windows open any longer. Yet paradoxically, he
lacked the moral courage to close them--to admit to himself that he
was afraid!

The telephone bell rang, and he started back in his chair as though
to avoid a blow.

By doing so he avoided destruction.

At the very instant that the bell rang out sharply in the silence--so
exact is the time-table of Kismet--a needle-like ray of blue light
shot across the lawn from beyond and above the hedge and--but for
that nervous start--must have struck fully upon the back of Stuart's
skull. Instead, it shone past his head, which it missed only by
inches, and he experienced a sensation as though some one had
buffeted him upon the cheek furiously. He pitched out of his chair
and on to the carpet.

The first object which the ray touched was the telephone; and next,
beyond it, a medical dictionary; beyond that again, the grate, in
which a fire was laid.

"My God!" groaned Stuart--"what is it!"

An intense crackling sound deafened him, and the air of the room
seemed to have become hot as that of an oven. There came a series of
dull reports--an uncanny wailing ... and the needle-ray vanished.
A monstrous shadow, moon-cast, which had lain across the carpet of
the lawn--the shadow of a cowled man--vanished also.

Clutching the side of his head, which throbbed and tingled as though
from the blow of an open hand, Stuart struggled to his feet. There
was smoke in the room, a smell of burning and of fusing metal. He
glared at the table madly.

The mouthpiece of the telephone had vanished!

"My God!" he groaned again, and clutched at the back of the chair.

His dictionary was smouldering slowly. It had a neat round hole some
three inches in diameter, bored completely through, cover to cover!
The fire in the grate was flaring up the chimney!

He heard the purr of a motor in the lane beside the house. The room
was laden with suffocating fumes. Stuart stood clutching the chair and
striving to retain composure--sanity. The car moved out of the lane.

Someone was running towards the back gate of the house ... was
scrambling over the hedge ... was racing across the lawn!

A man burst into the