emed hours to the suffering sleuth, the force diminished,
and soon Phillips was able to rise. Trembling, the detective cursed
and yelled for help in a high-pitched voice.

Lambert had thrown back his hood, and was rocking to and fro in agony.

"Madge, Madge," he cried, "what have I done! Come back to me, come
back!"

Doherty and the others came running in at their chief's shouts.
"Arrest him," ordered Phillips shakily. "I've stood enough of this
nonsense."

The detectives started for Lambert. He saw them coming, and swiftly
threw off the protective garments he wore.

"Stand back!" he cried, and threw the switch all the way over. The
verditer green light smashed through the air, and the queer sound
sensations smacked and tore them; Doherty, who had drawn a revolver
when he was answering Phillips' cries, fired the gun into the air, and
the report seemed to battle with the vibrating ether.

Lambert, as he threw the switch, leaped forward and landed on the
metal plate under the ceiling studs, in the very center of the awful
disturbance and unprotected from its force.

For a few moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were
tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the
wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange position, but his
impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed
to and fro, and, finally, he thought he fell down, or rather, that he
had melted, as a lump of sugar dissolves in water.

"He's gone--gone--"

In the heart of nothingness was Lambert, his body torn and racked in a
shrieking chaos of sound and a blinding glare of iridescent light
which seemed too much to bear.

His last conscious thought was a prayer, that, having failed to bring
back his sweetheart, Madge Crawford, he was undergoing a step toward
the same destination to which he had sent her.

* * * * *

John Lambert came to with a shudder. But it was not a mortal shudder.
He could sense no body; had no sense of being confined by matter. He
was in a strange, chilly place--a twilight region, limitless, without
dimensions.

Yet he could feel something, in an impersonal way, vaguely
indifferent. He had no pain now.

He was moving, somehow. He had one impelling desire, and that was to
discover Madge Crawford. Perhaps it was this thought which directed
his movements.

Intent upon finding the girl, if she was indeed in this same strange