ffet-end. Kori could not possibly see anything but the shining
mahogany, thought Thorn. And yet the man's eyes were narrowing to
ominous slits as he started in his direction.

* * * * *

Thorn held his breath. Was the shielding film changing in structure?
Were the repolarized atoms slowly losing their straight-line
arrangement, allowing light rays to penetrate through to his body
instead of diverting them to form a pocket of invisibility around him?
The film had never acted like that before--but never before had Thorn
applied it to living flesh with its disintegrating heat and moisture.

"Excellency," said Kori at last, a hard edge to his voice, "look thou at
that buffet. No, no--the end nearest my chair."

"Well?" said the elderly man. "I see nothing."

Thorn breathed a sigh of relief. But the relief was to be of short
duration.

"Come to my place, if thou wilt, and see from here," said Kori.

The leader got up and came to Kori's place. Kori pointed straight at
Thorn.

"There--seest thou anything out of the ordinary?"

"I see nothing," said the leader, after a moment. "Thine eyes, Kori, are
not good."

"They are the eyes of a hawk," said Kori stubbornly. "And they see
this--the vertical line of the end of that buffet does not continue
straightly up and down. At its middle, the line is broken, then
continues up--a fraction of an inch to the side! Like an object seen
under water, distorted by the sun-rays that strike the surface!"

Thorn fairly jumped away from the buffet and stood against bare wall.
Fool! Of course the light refraction would not be perfect! Why hadn't he
thought of that--thought to stand clear of revealing vertical lines!

"There, it is gone," said Kori, blinking. "But something, Excellency,
made that distortion of line. And something made Soyo's wolfhound act as
it did! Something--"

"Art thou attempting to say a spy listens unseen in this room?" demanded
the gray-mustachioed Arvanian.

"Something is odd--that is all I say."

* * * * *

All eyes were ranging along the wall against which Thorn leaned his
back. All eyes finally turned to Kori. "It is nonsense." "I see nothing
whatever." "Kori has drunk of champagne in place of tea!" were some of
the exclamations.

And then occurred the thing that, in Thorn's perilous position, was like
the self-signing of his own death warrant.

He sneezed.

That agony of helplessness,