d slipped from his hands to the rug, striking the edge of
his shoe, and broke to fragments. A single streak of fire shot from
it, blasting a black streak across the Oriental rug.

Dick leaped toward the throne, and the assemblage, as if paralyzed by
his sudden maneuver, remained watching him without moving. Then a
woman screamed, and instantly the picturesque gathering had dissolved
into a mob placing itself about the person of the Emperor, who sprang
from his throne in agitation.

Dick was almost at the steps. But it was not at the Emperor that he
leaped. He sprang to Hargreaves's side. "Mr. President, I'm an
American," he babbled. "We've located this gang, we'll blow them off
the face of the earth. In chains--God, in chains, sir--"

Dick stumbled over the length of his own chain that he had been
dragging behind him--stumbled and fell prone upon the floor. Before he
could regain his feet they were upon him.

* * * * *

A dozen men were holding him, despite his mad, frenzied struggles, and
as, at length, he paused, exhausted, one of them, covering his head
with a glass rod, looked up at the Emperor, who had resumed his seat.

Dick calmed himself. Still gripped, he straightened his body, and gave
the mad monarch back look for look. For a moment the two men regarded
each other. Then a peal of laughter broke from the Invisible Emperor's
lips. And any one who heard that peal--any one save those accustomed
to him--might have known that it was a madman's laughter.

He flung back his head and laughed, and the whole crowd laughed too.
All those sycophants roared and chuckled--all except Fredegonde. It
was not till afterward that Dick remembered that.

He stood up. "Dog of an American," he roared, "do you know why you
were brought here? It was because I wanted one Yankee to live and see
the irresistible powers that I exercise, so that he can go back and
report on them to those fools in Washington who still think they can
defy me, the messenger of the All-Highest.

"I tell you that the things I have done are nothing in comparison with
the things that I have yet to do, if your insane government of
pig-headed fools persists in its defiance. It is my plan to send you
back to tell them that their President lies bound in gold chains as my
footstool. That the hurricane which spread the gas through southern
America was a mere summer zephyr in comparison with the storm that I
shall send next.