y glow.

And now eyes and face and hair, and Madame le Claire--all passed away;
and Florian Amidon became as naught, and the tigrine lady and the faded
professor played with the thing which had been he, as upon a machine.
The pillar of Hazelhurst society, the banker now five years lost, the
bewildered wretch of the sleeping-car, was now, by his own act, given
over as passively as some inert instrument, body and soul, to the
guidance and manipulation of this shady occultist, not four hours known
to him--while outside droned the muffled roar of the human cyclone
which sweeps and whirls and eddies through Manhattan. So stripped of
stability was the pillar, that he was now a mere feather of humanity,
self-abandoned to the clasp of the storm of the modern Babylon. Madame
le Claire questioned, Amidon answered (or Something answered for him),
and Professor Blatherwick wrote in his book--wrote the data, of "te
Chones blane of mentality."

"Dis iss enough," said the professor, "for vunce. Pring him to!"

Madame le Claire leaned back, gave her subject a long look, and then,
walking to him, took his head tenderly in her hands. With the left,
she held his forehead; the fingers of the right crept insinuatingly
among the curls resting on his neck, swept thence over to his brow, and
down across his eyelids, closing them; and Amidon sat, senseless as a
statue, and almost as still.

"Right!" said Madame le Claire sharply. "Wake!"

Amidon opened his eyes wearily.

"When are you going to begin?" said he.

"Ve are t'rough," said the professor. "Ve know it all."

"And Brassfield? Did I----?"

"You have done him notting," said the professor. "You are all recht.
You need not fear----"

"And the lady--Elizabeth?" suggested Amidon, as passing to the thing of
next importance.

"It is near morning," said Madame le Claire, "and you are prostrated.
We are all very tired. Aaron must take you to your hotel. You must
sleep. Never fear, no harm is coming to you. When you wake, come to
me, and I will tell you all about it--'All Mysteries Solved,' you know.
Good night. You will sleep late in the morning."

VII

ENTER THE LEGAL MIND

The need of lucre never looms so large
As when 'tis gotten in some devious way:
It mitigates the blackness of the charge
That every nether level yielded pay.

The man who dares e'en to the prison's marge
Should bring back what he went for--or should stay!
The need o