yes were riveted on the burnished copper
railing, on which, only a moment before, her careless fingers had
rested. There was no sign, no alteration in the shining surface of
that polished metal. But she knew that a change, terrible and
malignant, had taken place. It was no longer a mild and innocent
guard-rail. It was now an instrument of destruction, an unbuoyed
channel of death. She stood staring at it, with fixed and horrified
eyes, until it wavered before her, a glimmering and meandering rivulet
of refracted light.

"Are you on?" reiterated the watching man.

The wave of pallor that swept over her face seemed to change her eyes
from violet to black, although, for a moment, their gaze remained as
veiled and abstracted as a sleep-walker's. Then a movement from her
companion lashed and restored her to lucidity of thought. For, from
where it leaned against the wall, MacNutt had caught up a heavy
door-sheathing of pressed steel. It was painted a Burgundy red, to
match the upholstery of the upper room where it had once done service,
and on the higher of the two panels was embossed the Penfield triple
crescent.

This great sheet of painted steel MacNutt held above his head, as a
hesitating waiter might hold a gigantic tray. Then he stepped toward
the shimmering guard-rail, and stood in front of it.

"Now, this luxurious-lookin' rear-admiral's rail-fence is at present
connected with a tapped power circuit, or a light circuit, I don't know
which. All I know is that it's carryin' about a twenty-eight-hundred
alternatin' current. And just to show that it's good and ready to eat
up anything that tries monkeyin' round it, watch this!"

He raised the Burgundy-red door-sheathing vertically above his head,
and stepping quickly back, let it descend, so that as it fell it would
strike the metal of the sunken vault-top and the copper guardrail as
well.

The very sound of that blow, as it descended, was swallowed up in the
sudden, blinding, lightning-like flash, in the hiss and roar of the
pale-green flame, as the sheet of steel, tortured into sudden
incandescence, bridged and writhed and twisted, warping and collapsing
like a leaf of writing-paper on the coals of an open fire. A sickening
smell of burning paint, mingling with the subtler gaseous odors of the
corroding metal, filled the little dungeon.

"Don't! That's enough!" gasped the woman, groping back toward the
support of the wall.

MacNutt shut off the c