would interrupt Ed
Morrell's and my metaphysical discussions, "and tell us more about the
_ki-sang_ and the cunies. And, say, while you're about it, tell us what
happened to the Lady Om when that rough-neck husband of hers choked the
old geezer and croaked."

How often have I said that form perishes. Let me repeat. Form perishes.
Matter has no memory. Spirit only remembers, as here, in prison cells,
after the centuries, knowledge of the Lady Om and Chong Mong-ju persisted
in my mind, was conveyed by me into Jake Oppenheimer's mind, and by him
was reconveyed into my mind in the argot and jargon of the West. And now
I have conveyed it into your mind, my reader. Try to eliminate it from
your mind. You cannot. As long as you live what I have told will tenant
your mind. Mind? There is nothing permanent but mind. Matter fluxes,
crystallizes, and fluxes again, and forms are never repeated. Forms
disintegrate into the eternal nothingness from which there is no return.
Form is apparitional and passes, as passed the physical forms of the Lady
Om and Chong Mong-ju. But the memory of them remains, shall always
remain as long as spirit endures, and spirit is indestructible.

"One thing sticks out as big as a house," was Oppenheimer's final
criticism of my Adam Strang adventure. "And that is that you've done
more hanging around Chinatown dumps and hop-joints than was good for a
respectable college professor. Evil communications, you know. I guess
that's what brought you here."

Before I return to my adventures I am compelled to tell one remarkable
incident that occurred in solitary. It is remarkable in two ways. It
shows the astounding mental power of that child of the gutters, Jake
Oppenheimer; and it is in itself convincing proof of the verity of my
experiences when in the jacket coma.

"Say, professor," Oppenheimer tapped to me one day. "When you was
spieling that Adam Strang yarn, I remember you mentioned playing chess
with that royal souse of an emperor's brother. Now is that chess like
our kind of chess?"

Of course I had to reply that I did not know, that I did not remember the
details after I returned to my normal state. And of course he laughed
good-naturedly at what he called my foolery. Yet I could distinctly
remember that in my Adam Strang adventure I had frequently played chess.
The trouble was that whenever I came back to consciousness in solitary,
unessential and intricate details faded from