ttle murmuring voices of
the crowd grew louder.

Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly
shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear
view of the strange scene now directly before us.

And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, barge-like open sailboat
was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng
of people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd
milled almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery.

Across the road by the dock. Polter stood with the crowd down around
his knees. In height he seemed the old familiar Polter. Bareheaded,
with his shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth
fashion: narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar
with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed--the
change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now
forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an abnormality. A man old
before his time; or younger than he should have been for the years he
had lived. An indescribable mingling of something. The mingling, of
the two worlds, perhaps. It marked him with a look at once unnatural
and sinister.

These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the
white chest of his shirt, something is there."

* * * * *

Polter was coatless, with snowy white shirt and cuffs to his thick
wrists. He was no more than fifty feet from us. On his shirt bosom
something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an
ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there with a band about
his chest, a cord like a necklace chain up to his thick hunched neck,
and other chains down to his belt.

I stared at it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his
shirt-front--a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars.

I heard Alan murmuring, "A cage! Why George, it's--"

And then, simultaneously, realization struck me. It was a golden cage
strapped there. And I seemed to see that there was something in it. A
tiny figure? Babs!

"I think he has her there," Glora murmured. "You see the little box
with bars? The girl Babs, a prisoner in there." She spoke swiftly,
vehemently. "He will take the boat to the island."

She suddenly gripped us. "You think really it best to go? I do what
you say. I had the wish to get to my father with these drugs."

"No!" exclaimed Alan. "We must keep close to Polter!"