nd the tears streaming down his face.

At that moment Professor Sylvanus Conti entered the court, smiling and
alert. He looked quickly towards the dock to see if his case had come
on, and was relieved to find that his last night's visitor was not
there. He had feared being late.

The magistrate cleared his throat and addressed the prisoner:

"You are harming your case by this exhibition. If a mistake has been
made you have nothing to fear; but if you continue these interruptions
I shall have to send you back to the cells whilst your case is heard."

Turning to the officer in charge of the case, he enquired:

"Is the prosecutor present?"

The sergeant looked round, and, seeing Professor Conti, replied that he
was.

"Let him be sworn," ordered the magistrate.

To his astonishment, Professor Conti heard his name called. Thoroughly
bewildered, he walked in the direction in which people seemed to expect
him to walk. He took the oath, with his eyes fixed, as if he were
fascinated, upon the pathetic figure in the dock. Suddenly he became
aware that the man was addressing him.

"Did I do it?--did I?" he asked brokenly.

"Silence in the court!" called the clerk.

Suddenly the full horror of the situation dawned upon the Professor.
He broke out into a cold sweat as he stood petrified in the
witness-box. Somehow or other his plan had miscarried. He looked
round him. Instinctively he thought of flight. He felt that he was
the culprit, the passionate, eager creature in the dock his accuser.

"Am I the man?" he heard the prisoner persisting. "Am I?"

"N-no," he faltered in a voice he could have sworn was not his own.

"You say that the prisoner is not the man who entered your flat during
the early hours of this morning?" questioned the magistrate.

"No, sir, he's not," replied Conti wearily, miserably. What had
happened? Was he a failure?

"Please explain what happened," ordered the magistrate.

Conti did so. He told how he had been awakened, and how he conceived
the idea of hypnotising the burglar and making him give himself up to
the police.

The prisoner was then sworn and related how he had been commanded in
the name of the law to deliver the note at the police-station; how he
had done so, and had been promptly arrested; how he had protested his
innocence, but without result.

The Professor listened to the story in amazement, and to the subsequent
remarks of the magistrate upon quack practices