ome portent, the
professor stood rooted to the spot for a moment, and then was about to
leap to the door, when the simulacrums before him sprang to their feet
and with a tremendous stamping, smote their wooden legs upon the
floor, "stamp, stamp--stamp, stamp, stamp--stamp."

The professor stared at the twelve mutes. There were their immobile
faces, as wooden as their wooden legs, wearing their perpetual grin,
but the westering sun shone on their eyes and there he saw an abject,
grovelling fear, dreadful to behold, the master passion of twelve
souls, slaves to some mysterious will which had just made itself
manifest out of the unseen. By what means the will had gained this
ascendancy, the terrible disfigurements of their remnants of bodies
told only too well, and he who ran could read the utter prostration
before the power which in their lives had been the greatest and most
terrible in the universe. Again, far off in a distant corridor of the
building, slowly rumbled to them: "knock, knock--knock; knock,
knock--knock," and the twelve unfortunates, like so many automatons,
gave token of their obedience. They had been warned to keep the
secret.

And so was foiled the attempts of the learned anthropologists to hold
converse with these rudimentary beings. The alphabet of such elaborate
devisings went for naught. Never did the twelve persons in the state
of primitive culture get further than the letter C: "knock,
knock--knock; knock, knock--knock."

_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Fifth Gift of the Emir._

"I am at a loss to understand," said Mr. Middleton, "why you have
entitled the narration you have just related, 'The Pleasant Adventures
of Dr. McDill.' For to my mind, they seemed anything but pleasant
adventures."

"How so?" asked the emir. "Is it not pleasant to thwart the
machinations and defeat the evil intentions of the villains such as
composed the confederacy that sought the doctor's life? Does there not
reside in mankind a sense of justice which rejoices at seeing meted
out to wrong-doers the deserts of their crimes?"

To which Mr. Middleton replying with a nod of thoughtful assent, after
a proper period of rumination upon the words of the emir, that
accomplished ruler continued:

"Despite the boasted protection of the law, how often is a man
compelled to rely for his protection upon his own prowess, skill or
address. There are many occasions when right under the nose of the
police, one