ut amusing."

But it wasn't exactly amusing.

Arcot again donned the headpiece. "I think," he continued, "that a
manifestation of the super-natural will be most interesting. Remember
that all you see is real, and all effects are produced by artificial
matter generated by the cosmic energy, as I have explained, and are
controlled by my mind."

Arcot had chosen to give this demonstration with definite reason.
Apparently a bit of scientific playfulness, yet he knew that nothing is
so impressive, nor so lastingly remembered as a theatrical demonstration
of science. The greatest scientist likes to play with his science.

But Arcot's experiment now--it was on a level of its own!

From behind the table, apparently crawling up the leg came a thing! It
was a hand. A horrible, disjointed hand. It was withered and incarmined
with blood, for it was severed from its wrist, and as it hunched itself
along, moving by a ghastly twitching of fingers and thumb, it left a
trail of red behind it. The papers to be distributed rustled as it
passed, scurrying suddenly across the table, down the leg, and racing
toward the light switch! By some process of writhing jerks it reached
it, and suddenly the room was plunged into half-light as the lights
winked out. Light filtering over the transom of the door from the hall
alone illuminated the hall, but the hand glowed! It glowed, and scurried
away with an awful rustling, scuttling into some unseen hole in the
wall. The quiet of the hall was the quiet of tenseness.

From the wall, coming through it, came a mistiness that solidified as it
flowed across. It was far to the right, a bent stooped figure, a figure
half glimpsed, but fully known, for it carried in its bony, glowing hand
a great, nicked scythe. Its rattling tread echoed hollowly on the floor.
Stooping walk, shuffling gait, the great metal scythe scraping on the
floor, half seen as the gray, luminous cloak blew open in some unfelt
breeze of its ephemeral world, revealing bone; dry, gray bone. Only the
scythe seemed to know Life, and it was red with that Life. Slow running,
sticky lifestuff.

Death paused, and raised his awful head. The hood fell back from the
cavernous eyesockets, and they flamed with a greenish radiance that made
every strained face in the room assume the same deathly pallor.

"The Scythe, the Scythe of Death," grated the rusty Voice. "The Scythe
is slow, too slow. I bring new things," it cackled in its cracked voice