was an
urgent need for my presence at The Monstrosity. That was Mercer's own
name for the impressive pile that was at once his residence and his
laboratory.

I threw off the smoking-jacket and pulled on a woolen golfing sweater,
for the wind was brisk and sharpish. In two minutes I was backing the
car out of the garage; a moment later I was off the gravelled drive and
tearing down the concrete with the accelerator all the way down, and the
black wind shrieking around the windshield of my little roadster.

My own shack was out of the city limits--a little place I keep to live
in when the urge to go fishing seizes me, which is generally about twice
a year. Mercer picked the place up for me at a song.

The Monstrosity was some four miles further out from town, and off the
highway perhaps a half-mile more.

I made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes, and
clamped on the brakes as I saw the entrance to the little drive that led
toward the sea, and Mercer's estate.

* * * * *

With gravel rattling on my fenders, I turned off the concrete and swept
between the two massive, stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive. Both
of them bore corroded bronze plates, "The Billows," the name given The
Monstrosity by the original owner, a newly-rich munitions manufacturer.

The structure itself loomed up before me in a few seconds, a rambling
affair with square-shouldered balconies and a great deal of wrought-iron
work, after the most flamboyant Spanish pattern. It was ablaze with
light. Apparently every bulb in the place was burning.

Just a few yards beyond the surf boomed hollowly on the smooth, shady
shore, littered now, I knew, by the pitiful spoils of the storm.

As I clamped on my brakes, a swift shadow passed two of the lower
windows. Before I could leap from the car, the broad front door, with
its rounded top and circular, grilled window, was flung wide, and Mercer
came running to meet me.

He was wearing a bathrobe, hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit,
his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers.

"Fine, Taylor!" he greeted me. "I suppose you're wondering what it's all
about. I don't blame you. But come in, come in! Just wait till you see
her!"

"Her?" I asked, startled. "You're not in love, by any chance, and
bringing me down here like this merely to back up your own opinion of
them eyes and them lips, Mercer?"

* * * *