and disentangle the dark and runic
Code. Yes, he told himself, as he stood there, thoughtfully, as though
bound to the spot by some Power not himself,--yes, consciousness was
like that little glass tube which electricians called a coherer, and
all his vague impressions and mental-gropings were those disorderly,
minute fragments of nickel and silver which only leaped into continuity
and order under the shock and impact of those fleet and foreign
electric waves, which floated from some sister consciousness aching
with its undelivered messages. And the woman who had so often called
to him across space and silence, in the past, was now sounding the
mystic key across those ghostly wires. But what the messages was, or
from what quarter it came, he could not tell.

He stood there tortured and puzzled, torn by fear, thrilled and stirred
through every fiber of his anxious body. This was followed by a sense
of terror, sub-conscious and wordless and irrational, the kind of
terror that comes to a child in unknown places, in the dead of some
unknown night.

"_For the love of God, what is it_?" his dry lips demanded, speaking
aloud into the emptiness about him.

He waited, almost as if expecting some answering voice, as distinct and
tangible as his own. But nothing broke the black silence that
blanketed him in from the rest of all the world and all its living
things. The sweat of agony came out on his face; his body hung
forward, relaxed and expectant.

"_What is it you want to say_?" he repeated, in a hoarse and muffled
scream, no longer able to endure that silent and nameless Something
which surrounded him. "_What is it you want to say_?"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE GHOSTS OF THOUGHT

In the ensuing silence, as the unbroken seconds dragged themselves on,
Durkin called himself a fool, and, struggling bitterly with that
indeterminate uneasiness which possessed him, pulled himself together
for some immediate and decisive action.

He could waste no more time, he told himself, in foolish spiritualistic
seances with his own shadow. He had too much before him, and too short
a time in which to do it. His troubles, when he came to face them,
would be realities, and not a train of vapid and morbid self-vaporings.

He advanced further into the darkness of the room, slowly, with his
hands outstretched before him. He would feel for the friendly support
and guidance of the metal railing, and then grope his way onward. For
as