operating table occupied the other side of the room while a gas
cylinder and other common hospital apparatus stood around ready for
use.

Seated at a table which occupied the center of the room were three
men. The sound of their voices rose from an indistinct murmur to
audibility as the flap was raised and the watchers could readily
understand their words. Two of them sat with their faces toward the
main entrance and the third man faced them. Carnes bit his lip as he
looked at the man at the head of the table. He was twisted and
misshapen in body, a grotesque dwarf with a hunched back, not over
four feet in height. His massive head, sunken between his hunched
shoulders, showed a tremendous dome of cranium and a brow wider and
even higher than Dr. Bird's. The rest of his face was lined and drawn
as though by years of acute suffering. Sharp black eyes glared
brightly from deep sunk caverns. The dwarf was entirely bald; even the
bushy eyebrows which would be expected from his face, were missing.

* * * * *

"They ought to be getting back," said the dwarf sharply.

"If they get back at all," said one of the two figures facing him.

"What do you mean?" growled the dwarf, his eyes glittering ominously.
"They'll return all right; they know they'd better."

"They'll return if they can, but I tell you again, Slavatsky, I think
it was a piece of foolishness to try to take two men in one night. We
got Bird all right, but it is getting late for a second one, and they
had to take Bird over a hundred miles and then go nearly three hundred
more for Williams. The news about Bird may have been discovered and
spread and others may be looking out for us. Carnes might have
recovered."

"Didn't he get a full dose of lethane?"

"So Frick says, and Bird certainly had a full dose, but I can't help
but feel uneasy. Our operations were going too nicely on schedule and
you had to break it up and take on an extra case in the same night as
a scheduled one. I tell you, I don't like it."

"I'm sorry that I did it, Carson, but only because the results were so
poor. We had planned on Williams for a month and I wanted him. And
Bird was so easy that I couldn't resist it."

"And what did you get? Not as much menthium as would have come from an
ordinary bookkeeper."

"I'll admit that Bird is a grossly overrated man. He must have worked
in sheer luck in his work in the past, for there was nothing in his
brain to