* *

The garment taken from the slain soldier had been examined by a
half-dozen of the leading chemists of the East. Pending the arrival
from New York of the celebrated Professor Hosmeyer, it was deposited
under military guard in a dark closet. The result was unfortunate. The
garment exhibited to the assembled scientists was a mere bifurcated
silken bag.

The gas with which it had been impregnated, though it had been heavy
enough to adhere to the fabric for hours, had also been volatile
enough to have disappeared completely, leaving a residue which was
identified as a magnesium isotope.

Equally spectacular had been the disappearance of Mademoiselle
Fredegonde Valmy. A cable from the Slovakian Ambassador had arrived a
few hours later, denying her authenticity. And with her disappearance
came the discovery that she had been at the head of an espionage
system with ramifications in every state department, and in every
statesman's home.

Three days passed with no sign from the enemy. The Council sat all
day. In the executive offices of the White House Dick toiled
ceaselessly, planning, receiving reports, organizing the flights of
airplanes at strategic points throughout his district. From time to
time he would be summoned to the Council. At night he threw himself
upon a cot in his office and slept a sleep broken by the constant
arrival of messengers. And still there was no clue to the location of
the headquarters of the marauders.

But in those three days there had been no sign of them. Hope had
succeeded despair; in the rebound of confidence the populace was
beginning to ridicule the nation-wide precautions against what were
coming to be considered merely a gang of super-criminals. It was even
whispered that President Hargreaves had not been kidnapped at all. The
Freemen's Party accused the Government of a plot to subvert popular
liberties.

* * * * *

Dick received a summons on the third evening. Utterly worn out with
his work, he pulled himself together and made his way into the Blue
Room, where the Council was assembled. Vice-president Tomlinson, an
elderly man, was in the chair. A non-entity, pushed into a post it had
been thought he would adorn innocuously, he had been overwhelmed by
his succession to the chief office of State.

Tomlinson did not like Dick, or any of the hustling younger officers
who, unlike himself, realized the real significance of the danger that
o