lot of argument."

"Right!"

* * * * *

He held up his wrist.

"See this? Now watch!"

Whereupon he pressed the button. But to their dismay, nothing
happened.

"Wa-al. I'm still watchin'!" drawled the officer. "Who's loony now?"

Kendrick examined the mechanism in impatience, pressed that little
button repeatedly: but still nothing happened.

"Try yours!" he told Marjorie finally.

She did so, with similar results--or lack of them, rather.

"Something's wrong," he said at length. "The ray isn't working."

"Wrong is right!" declared the officer with a contemptuous flood of
tobacco juice. "Yuh folks better go catch yuhr train 'fore yuh ferget
where it is."

Chagrined, embarrassed, they took their leave, headed back toward the
railroad station.

"Of all the utterly silly things!" declared Marjorie, as they walked
along. "Why do you suppose it didn't work?"

Kendrick didn't reply at once. When he did, his voice was grave.

"Because the disc has gone!" he said. "We are outside its zone of
influence. That's my hunch, at least, and I think we'd better act on
it."

"You mean...?"

"I mean our escape has probably caused them to hurry their plans.
They're probably over New York right now. I think we'd better get
there the quickest possible way."

* * * * *

The result was that when the train came, they remained on it only to
Tucson. There they chartered a fast plane and started east at once.

At sunset the following day the plane swooped out of the sky and slid
to rest on the broad grounds of the Blake estate at Great Neck.

As Kendrick stepped from the cabin and helped Marjorie down, a tall,
distinguished-looking man with graying hair and close-cropped mustache
came hurrying toward them.

"Daddy!" she cried, rushing into his arms. "Oh, Daddy--Daddy!"

Even without this demonstration. Kendrick would have recognized
Henderson Blake from pictures he had seen recently in the papers.

Now he was introduced, and Blake was gripping his hand warmly.

"I don't quite know what this is all about, Professor," he heard the
great financier say. "Marjorie's telegram last night was as cryptic as
it was over-joying. But I do know that I owe you a deep debt of
gratitude."

"Yes, and you owe our pilot about a thousand dollars, too!" put in the
daughter of the house, clinging to her father's arm. "Please give him
a check--then we'll go inside and I'll