ord of
warning?" I demanded.

"How were you persuaded into this place?" he retorted.

"You mean you gagged and bound him?"

He smiled again.

"Your friend was weak from having so nearly been drowned; nevertheless,
you overestimate my powers!"

"When I first met you, you gripped my hand," I answered. "I am reckoned
a strong man, yet I could not shift your hand a fraction of an inch. Now
you suggest that you are weaker than a half-drowned man. I don't
understand you."

"Of course you don't. That is because you don't understand the form of
energy that I used on the first occasion. Unfortunately I can only use
it when arrangements have been made in advance. It is as mechanical as
your watch, only a different kind of mechanics--something, in fact, that
some of your Western scientists would say has not yet been invented."

"Well, where's King?" I asked him.

"Upstairs. He asked me to bring you. Now how can I?"

He smiled again with that peculiar whimsical helplessness that
contrasted so strangely with his former arrogance. He who had looked
like a lion when we first encountered him seemed now to be a meek and
rather weak old man--much weaker in fact than could be accounted for by
the red ring that my noose had made on his neck.

"Is King at liberty?" I demanded.

"And what do you call liberty?" he asked me blandly, as if he were
really curious to know my opinion on that subject.

"Can he come and go without molestation?"

"If he cares to run that risk, and is not caught. Try not to become
impatient with me! Anger is impotence! Explanations that do not explain
are part and parcel of all religions and most sciences; therefore why
lose your temper? Your friend is free to come and go, but must take his
chance of being caught. He pursues investigations."

"Where?"

"Where else than in this palace? Listen!"

Among all the phenomena of nature there is none more difficult to
explain than sound. Hitherto in that teak-lined room we had seemed shut
off from the rest of the world completely, for the door and walls were
so thick and the floor so solid that sound-waves seemed unable to
penetrate. Yet now a noise rather like sandpaper being chafed together
began to assert itself so distinctly as to seem almost to have its
origin in the room. In a way it resembled the forest noise when a breeze
stirs the tree-tops at night--irregular enough, and yet with a kind of
pulse in it, increasing and decreasing.

"You recognize