ver, to reach a section of the floor near the footboard. Kirk
climbed to his feet and attempted to shove that end to one side.

The bed failed to move. He blinked in mild surprise and tried again. It
was only by exerting almost his entire strength that he was able to
shift the thing at all, and then no more than a few inches.

He felt his pulse stir with the thrill of incipient discovery. Once he
made sure nothing was anchoring the bed to the floor, he began to tap
lightly against the wood in an effort to detect a possible false panel.

Within two minutes he located an almost microscopic crack in the
headboard cleverly concealed by a decorative design running along the
base. He ran his fingers lightly along the carvings until they
encountered a small projection which gave slightly under pressure.

Kirk pressed down harder on the knob. A tiny _click_ sounded against the
silence and a section of wood some three feet square swung out. Lifting
it aside, the detective found himself staring at an instrument board of
some kind with a series of buttons and dials countersunk into it. The
board itself formed a part of what was obviously a machine of some sort
which evidently contained its own power, for there seemed to be no
lead-in cord for plugging into a wall socket.

It could, Kirk thought, be a short wave radio transmitter. If it was, it
looked like none he had ever come across before. On the other hand it
could be some sort of infernal machine, ready to blow half the city to
bits at the turn of a dial.

* * * * *

Even as his mind was weighing the advisability of tampering with the
thing, his fingers were reaching for the various controls. Gingerly he
moved one or two of the dials but nothing happened. A little more boldly
now, he began to depress the buttons. As the third sank in, a low
humming sound began to fill the room. Before Kirk could find a cut-off
switch of some kind, the faint light of day streaming through the room's
one window winked out, plunging him into a blackness so infinitely deep
that it was like being buried alive.

Nothing can plunge a man into the sheerest panic like the absence of
light. Even a man like Martin Kirk, who had walked almost daily with
danger for the past fifteen years. And since the form panic takes varies
with the individual, the Lieutenant's reaction was an utter inability to
move so much as a finger.

Abruptly the low humming note ceased entire