he matter if you wouldn't mind
releasing my arm?"

"My dear fellow," I cried, sitting up suddenly, as I realised that he
was still propping up my head, "I'm most awfully sorry."

"Now then," he said, as he lighted his pipe and made himself
comfortable, "we'll go into the latest development. You remember what
made me rush off and leave you there?"

"I remember saying something about the sunlight, and you suddenly
dashed off."

"To tell you the truth, I had very little faith in the theory that at
this hour, above all, the spook of the Chemist's Rock was active,
until you pointed out that only about that time is the whole of the
river course up to the rock, and the whole of the rock itself, flooded
with sunlight. Then, when you made that remark, I suddenly felt that I
ought to be on the cliff on the look out for this unknown yacht. We
connect the two together in some way which we don't yet understand, so
I meant to go and have a look for the ship. I saw nothing of any
importance until I shouted to you. Just then I was looking through the
glasses at the shore. I turned them on the landing-stage and along the
beach, and I had just lighted on the bay where we explored this
morning when suddenly, for half a second or so, all the shadows of the
rocks turned a vivid green, and then as suddenly resumed their natural
colour again."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "Green again! Can you make anything of it
at all, Garnesk? I'm sorry I'm such a duffer as to faint at the
critical moment, when I might have been of some assistance to you.
What in God's name can it all mean?"

"I'm no further on," he replied bitterly; "in fact, I'm further back."

"Further back!" I cried. "How? I don't see how you can be."

"I'll tell you what my theory was about all this affair, and it struck
me as a good one--strange, of course, but then, this is a strange
business."

"It is, indeed," I agreed ruefully. "Well, go on."

"I had an idea, Ewart, that we should find some sort of wireless
telegraphy at the bottom of this business. I had almost made up my
mind that we had stumbled across the path of some inventor who was
working with a new form of wireless transmission. I felt that in that
way we might account for Miss McLeod's blindness and the blindness of
the dog. It also seemed to hold good as to the disappearance of
Sholto. The inventor hears of the extraordinary effect of his
invention, and is afraid he will get into a mess if it is found out