very closely about him. Then the
beast's master intervened.

"Grego! Here, sir! A council room is no place, for thee, anyway. Here, I
say! So, then--"

He hastened to the dog and caught its collar. Twisting the leather
cruelly, he dragged the protesting, snarling brute to the doors and slid
them shut with the wolfhound barking and growling on the outside.
"Someone put him in his kennel," he said through the panels. A scuffling
in the hall told of the execution of the order. The council room became
quiet again, and Thorn leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for
an instant.

"We were saying, Soyo," the leader addressed the dog's owner, "that the
Ziegler plans start for Arvania to-morrow night. All is arranged. These
innocent looking bits of paper"--he thumped a small packet of documents
lying before him--"shall deliver mighty America to us!"

* * * * *

A subdued cheer answered the man's words--while Thorn stared at the
packet of papers with unbelieving eyes. It had never occurred to him
that the Ziegler plans might be in that very room, on the table with the
rest of the welter of letters, thumbed documents, and cups and saucers.
And there they were--the vital projector plans--not in a safe or hidden
in some fantastic place, but right before his eyes!

Involuntarily his hand extended eagerly toward the packet, then was
withdrawn. Not now. _He_ was invisible--but the papers, if he grasped
them, would not be. Clenched in his unseen hand, they would be perfectly
visible, moving in jerks and starts as he raced for the door.

Like lightning his mind turned over one plan after another for making
away with that precious packet. Each scheme seemed impossible of
fulfilment.

"The biggest difficulty is in getting them out of the country," the
spare, elderly man was saying. "But we have solved that. Solved it
simply. I myself shall bear them, sewn in my clothes, to our native
land. The American authorities could search, on some pretext, any other
of our number who tried to smuggle them out. But _me_ they dare not lay
a finger on. That would be an overt act."

Thorn's thoughts whirled desperately on. Wait till later and follow
whoever left the room with the plans? But he hated to let them get out
of his sight.

And at this point he became suddenly aware that the man named Kori was
gazing fixedly at him.

Thorn was between the section of the table where Kori sat, and the
angular bu