oyd asked, wringing my hand. "I slapped
a couple of coats of absolute black on the outside yesterday afternoon
to see how it worked. How's your head? you bumped it pretty solidly, I
imagine."

"Never mind that," he interrupted my congratulations. "I've something
better for you to do."

While he talked he began to strip, and when he stood naked before me he
thrust a pot and brush into my hand and said, "Here, give me a coat of
this."

It was an oily, shellac-like stuff, which spread quickly and easily over
the skin and dried immediately.

"Merely preliminary and precautionary," he explained when I had
finished; "but now for the real stuff."

I picked up another pot he indicated, and glanced inside, but could see
nothing.

"It's empty," I said.

"Stick your finger in it."

I obeyed, and was aware of a sensation of cool moistness. On withdrawing
my hand I glanced at the forefinger, the one I had immersed, but it had
disappeared. I moved and knew from the alternate tension and relaxation
of the muscles that I moved it, but it defied my sense of sight. To all
appearances I had been shorn of a finger; nor could I get any visual
impression of it till I extended it under the skylight and saw its
shadow plainly blotted on the floor.

Lloyd chuckled. "Now spread it on, and keep your eyes open."

I dipped the brush into the seemingly empty pot, and gave him a long
stroke across his chest. With the passage of the brush the living
flesh disappeared from beneath. I covered his right leg, and he was
a one-legged man defying all laws of gravitation. And so, stroke by
stroke, member by member, I painted Lloyd Inwood into nothingness. It
was a creepy experience, and I was glad when naught remained in sight
but his burning black eyes, poised apparently unsupported in mid-air.

"I have a refined and harmless solution for them," he said. "A fine
spray with an air-brush, and presto! I am not."

This deftly accomplished, he said, "Now I shall move about, and do you
tell me what sensations you experience."

"In the first place, I cannot see you," I said, and I could hear his
gleeful laugh from the midst of the emptiness. "Of course," I continued,
"you cannot escape your shadow, but that was to be expected. When you
pass between my eye and an object, the object disappears, but so unusual
and incomprehensible is its disappearance that it seems to me as though
my eyes had blurred. When you move rapidly, I experience a bewildering