phoning to have his meals
brought in?"

"But I've questioned them at the restaurant and they say--"

"Good Lord!--is there only one restaurant in Manhattan?"

Yet Justus Miles himself could not help feeling there was something
mysterious about Solino, but just how mysterious he did not
realize--until, one evening, he stood with a half dozen of his fellow
adventurers in a lonely spot on the Long Island coast and watched the
darkness deepen around them. "We shall wait," said Solino presently,
"until the moon comes up."

The moon rose at about nine o'clock, flooding the beach and the
heaving expanse of water with a ghostly light. From the folds of
Solino's cloak, close about his muffled throat, a peculiar ray of
green light flashed out over the water. In answer, a green light
flashed back, and presently, something low and black, like the body of
a whale half submerged, stole towards the beach. Scarcely a ripple
marked its progress, and the nose of it slid up on the sand. "Good
Lord!" whispered Miles, grasping Ward by the arm: "it's a submarine!"

But the craft on which the surprised soldiers of fortune gazed was not
an ordinary submarine. In the first place, there was no conning tower;
and, in the second, from the blunt nose projected a narrow gangway
bridging the few feet of water between the mysterious craft and the
dry beach. But the men had little time to indulge in amazement.
"Quick," said Solino; "load those boxes onto the gangway. No need to
carry them further." He himself wheeled his chair into the interior of
the submarine, calling back, "Hurry, hurry!"

* * * * *

The adventurers accomplished the loading in a few minutes. "Now," came
the voice of their employer, "stand on the gangway yourselves. Steady;
don't move."

Under their feet they felt the gangway vibrate and withdraw from the
land. For a moment they were in utter darkness; then a light flashed
up and revealed a long, box-like room. The opening through which they
had come had closed, leaving no sign of its existence.

In the center of the room stood a mechanism like a huge gyroscope, and
a plunging piston, smooth and black, went up and down with
frictionless ease. In front of what was evidently a control board sat
a swarthy man with a large hairless head and peculiarly colored eyes.
The adventurers stared in surprise, for this man, too, sat in a
wheelchair, seemingly a cripple; but unlike Mr. Solino he wore no
c