were keeping a close watch on him. Tony's brow was as dark as the
mahogany of his desk. He did not know just how to go about making an
honest living.

With a hand that seemed limp with discouragement, he reached into his
pocket for his cigarette-case. As he drew it out, the lackadaisical
fingers failed to hold it firmly enough, and it clattered to the floor
behind his chair. With the weary slowness of despondence, he dragged
himself to his feet and went behind his chair to pick up the
cigarette-case. But, before he bent over it, and while he was looking
fully and directly at it, his desk suddenly vanished. One moment it
was there, a huge ornament of mahogany and glass; the next moment
there was nothing.

* * * * *

Tony suddenly went rigid and stared at the empty space where his desk
had stood. He put his hand to his forehead, wondering if his financial
troubles were affecting his reason. By that time, another desk stood
in the place.

Tony ran over this strange circumstance mentally. His mental processes
were active beneath, though dazed on the surface. His desk had stood
there. While looking fully at it, all his senses intact, he had seen
it vanish, and for a moment there had been nothing in its place. While
he stared directly at the empty space from which the desk had
disappeared, another desk had materialized there, like a flash.
Perhaps, there had been a sort of jar, a tremor, of the floor and of
the air, of everything. But the point was that his own desk, at which
he had been working one moment, had suddenly vanished, and at the next
moment another desk had appeared in its place.

And what a desk! The one that now stood there was smaller than his own
palatial one, and shabbier. A raw, unpleasant golden-oak, much
scratched and scuffed. Its top was heaped and piled full of books and
papers. In the middle of it stood a photograph of a girl, framed in
red leather. Irresistibly, the sunny beauty of the face, the bright
eyes, the firm little chin, the tall forehead topped by a shining mass
of light curly hair, drew Tony's first glance. For a few moments his
eyes rested delightedly on the picture.

In a moment, however, Tony noticed that the books and papers on the
desk were of a scientific character; and such is the nature of
professional interest, that for the time he forgot his astonishment at
how the desk had got there, in his absorption in the things heaped on
top of it.

Per