death and destruction within them!"

* * * * *

Then the inner door of the Secret Room opened and two people entered.
One of them, a dazzling beauty with glorious black hair and the tread of
a princess, a picture of perfection from jeweled sandals to coiffured
hair, was Charmion Kane. Behind her came her brother, whose face was
chalky white. But Charmion, as she crossed to Kleig and kissed him,
while her eyes were luminous with love, held her head proudly high,
imperious.

"I know," she said softly to Kleig, "and I am not afraid! I know you
will prevent it!"

Kleig waved the two to chairs and turned again to Professor Maniel.

On a piece of paper he wrote swiftly, using a mode of shorthand known
only to the Secret Agents.

"Professor," he wrote feverishly, "can you reverse the process used in
your Vibration-Retarder? Tell me with your eyes, for Moyen may even know
this writing, and I am sure he hears what we say here, may even be able
to see us?"

Professor Maniel started and stared deeply into the eyes of Prester
Kleig. His face grew thoughtful. He brushed his slender hand over the
massive dome of his brow. Hope burned high in the heart of Prester
Kleig.

* * * * *

Then, despite Kleig's instructions to answer merely by the expression in
his eyes, Professor Maniel leaned forward and wrote quickly on the piece
of paper Kleig had used.

"Two hours!"

Nothing else, no explanations; but Prester Kleig knew. Maniel believed
he could do it, but he needed two hours in which to perfect his theory
and make it workable. Kleig knew that had he been able to do it in two
years, or two decades, it still would have been in the nature of a
miracle.

But two hours....

And Moyen had said that he was preparing to attack at once.

In two hours Moyen, unless the Americas fought against him with every
resource at their command, could depopulate half the Western World.
Kleig looked back to the screen.

There was not a single American plane in the sky above the graveyard of
those vanished warships. And the aero-subs, swift flying as the wind,
were racing back to the mother ship, scores of miles away.

Munson worked with the Vibration-Retarder, the Sound-and-Vision devices,
ranging the sea off the coast to either side of that huge, suspended
fortress which was the mother submarine of the aero-subs.

Gasps of terror, though the sight was not unexpected, broke f