colored
liquids, a hundred puzzles to the inexpert eye.

The small, plump figure of Mrs. Baker was very out of place in this
setting. Her voice was poignant, reedy. A look at her made it evident
that she was a conventional, good woman. She had soft, cloudy golden
eyes and a pathetic mouth, and she seemed on the point of tears.

"Madam, madam, de doctor is busy," whispered Jared, endeavoring to shoo
her out of the laboratory with his polite hands. He was respectful, but
firm.

She refused to obey. She stopped when she was within a few feet of the
activity in the laboratory, and stared with fear and horror at the
center of the room, and at its occupant, Professor Burr, whom she had
addressed during her flurried entrance.

The professor's face, as he peered at her, seemed like a disembodied
stare, for she could see only eyes behind a mask of lavender gray glass
eyeholes, with its flapping ends of dirty, gray-white cloth.

She drew in a deep breath--and gasped, for the pungent fumes, acrid and
penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed her lungs. It was
like the breath of hell, to fit the simile, and aptly Professor Burr
seemed the devil himself, manipulating the infernal machines.

* * * * *

Acting swiftly, the tall figure stepped over and threw two switches in a
single, sweeping movement. The vermillion light which had lived in a
long row of tubes on a nearby bench abruptly ceased to writhe like so
many tongues of flame, and the embers of hell died out.

Then the professor flooded the room in harsh gray-green light, and
stopped the high-pitched, humming whine of his dynamos. A shadow picture
writhing on the wall, projected from a lead-glass barrel, disappeared
suddenly, the great color filters and other machines lost their
semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the
metal creatures as they gave up the ghost.

To the woman, it had been entering the abode of fear. She could not
restrain her shudders. But she bravely confronted the tall figure of
Professor Burr, as he came forth to greet her.

He was extremely tall and attenuated, with a red, bony mask of a face
pointed at the chin by a sharp little goatee. Feathery blond hair,
silvered and awry, covered his great head.

"Madam," said Burr in a gentle, disarmingly quiet voice, "your manner of
entrance might have cost you your life. Luckily I was able to deflect
the rays from your person, else