me the charge, and, in the moment I glanced at my taxi-meter,
he disappeared. Yes, sir. Vanished, owing me four dollars, six bits. It
was almost ghostlike, mister."

Northwood laughed nervously and dismissed him. He found his number and
knocked at the dilapidated door. He heard a sudden movement in the
lighted room beyond, and the door opened quickly.

Dr. Mundson faced him.

"I knew you'd come!" he said with a slight Teutonic accent. "Often I'm
not wrong in sizing up my man. Come in."

Northwood cleared his throat awkwardly. "You dropped your wallet at my
feet, Dr. Mundson. I tried to stop you before you got away, but I guess
you did not hear me."

He offered the wallet, but the hunchback waved it aside.

"A ruse, of course," he confessed. "It just was my way of testing what
your Professor Michael told about you--that you are extraordinarily
intelligent, virile, and imaginative. Had you sent the wallet to me, I
should have sought elsewhere for my man. Come in."

* * * * *

Northwood followed him into a living room evidently recently furnished
in a somewhat hurried manner. The furniture, although rich, was not
placed to best advantage. The new rug was a trifle crooked on the floor,
and the lamp shades clashed in color with the other furnishings.

Dr. Mundson's intense eyes swept over Northwood's tall, slim body.

"Ah, you're a man!" he said softly. "You are what all men would be if we
followed Nature's plan that only the fit shall survive. But modern
science is permitting the unfit to live and to mix their defective
beings with the developing race!" His huge fist gesticulated madly.
"Fools! Fools! They need me and perfect men like you."

"Why?"

"Because you can help me in my plan to populate the earth with a new
race of godlike people. But don't question me too closely now. Even if I
should explain, you would call me insane. But watch; gradually I shall
unfold the mystery before you, so that you will believe."

He reached for the wallet that Northwood still held, opened it with a
monstrous hand, and reached for the photograph. "She shall bring you
love. She's more beautiful than a poet's dream."

A warm flush crept over the young man's face.

"I can easily understand," he said, "how a man could love her, but for
me she comes too late."

"Pooh! Fiddlesticks!" The scientist snapped his fingers. "This girl was
created for you. That other--you will forget her the moment you