e trembling shoulders.

"You have seen enough," he said. As the three cars raced from the scene
of the holocaust, faint streamers in the east told of the rising orb of
day.

"Good-by, Keegan, forever," murmured Norma.

"Amen," O'Hara devoutedly agreed.

From the Ocean's Depths

_By Sewell Peaslee Wright_

Man came from the sea. Mercer, by his thought-telegraph, learns
from the weirdly beautiful ocean-maiden of a branch that
returned there.

[Illustration: _Her head was a little to one side, in the attitude of one
who listens intently._]

From somewhere out on the black, heaving Atlantic, the rapid, muffled
popping of a speed-boat's exhaust drifted clearly through the night.

I dropped my book and stretched, leaning back more comfortably in my
chair. There was real romance and adventure! Rum-runners, seeking out
their hidden port with their cargo of contraband from Cuba. Heading
fearlessly through the darkness, fighting the high seas, still running
after the storm of a day or so before, daring a thousand dangers for the
sake of the straw-packed bottles they carried. Sea-bronzed men, with
hard, flat muscles and fearless eyes; ready guns slapping their thighs
as they--

Absorbed in my mental picture of these modern free-booters, the sudden
alarm of the telephone startled me like an unexpected shot fired beside
my ear. Brushing the cigarette ashes from my smoking-jacket, I crossed
the room and snatched up the receiver.

"Hello!" I snapped ungraciously into the mouthpiece. It was after eleven
by the ship's clock on the mantel, and if--

"Taylor?" The voice--Warren Mercer's familiar voice--rattled on without
waiting for a reply. "Get in your car and come down here as fast as
possible. Come just as you are, and--"

* * * * *

"What's the matter?" I managed to interrupt him. "Burglars?" I had never
heard Mercer speak in that high-pitched, excited voice before; his usual
speech was slow and thoughtful, almost didactic.

"Please, Taylor, don't waste time questioning me. If it weren't urgent,
I wouldn't be calling you, you know. Will you come?"

"You bet!" I said quickly, feeling rather a fool for ragging him when he
was in such deadly earnest. "Have--"

The receiver snapped and crackled; Mercer had hung up the instant he had
my assurance that I would come. Usually the very soul of courtesy and
consideration, that act alone would have convinced me that there