"Harry, old boy; Harry! Don't you know us? It's Hobart and Charlotte."

It was terrible. He didn't seem to know. He looked right at us. But he spoke in abstractions.

"Two," he said. And he listened. "Two! Don't you hear it?" He caught Hobart by the arm. "Now, listen. Two! No, it's three. Did I say three?

Can't you hear? It's the old lady. She speaks out of the shadows. There!

There! Now, listen. She has been counting to me. Always she says three!

Soon it will be four."

What did he mean? What was it about? Who was the old lady? I looked round. I saw no one. Hobart stooped over. Harry began slowly to recognise us. It was as if his mind had wandered and was coming back from a far place. He spoke slowly; his words were incoherent and rambling.

"Hobart," he said; "you know her. She is the maiden out of the moonbeams. The Rhamda, he is our enemy. Hobart, Charlotte. I know so much. I cannot tell you. You are two hours late. It's a strange thing. I have found it and I think I know. It came suddenly. The discovery of the great professor. Why didn't you come two hours earlier? We might have conquered."

He dropped his head upon his arms; then as suddenly he looked up. He drew the ring from his finger.

"Give it to Charlotte," he said. "It won't hurt her. Don't touch it yourself. Had I only known. Watson didn't know--"

He straightened; he was tense, rigid, listening.

"Do you hear anything? Listen! Can you hear? It's the old lady. There--"

But there was not a sound; only the rumble of the streets, the ticking of the clock, and our heart-beats. Again he went through the counting.

"Hobart!"

"Yes, Harry."

"And Charlotte! The ring--ah, yet it was there, Keep it. Give it to no one. Two hours ago we might have conquered. But I had to keep the ring.

It was too much, too powerful; a man may not wear it. Charlotte"--he took my hand and ran the ring upon my finger. "Poor Charlotte. Here is the ring. The most wonderful--"

Again he dropped over. He was weak--there was something going from him minute by minute.

"Water," he asked. "Hobart, some water."

It was too pitiful. Harry, our Harry--come to a strait like this! Hobart rushed to another room with the tumbler. I could hear him fumbling. I stooped over Harry. But he held up his hand.

"No, Charlotte, no. You must not. If--"

He stopped. Again the strange attention, as if he was listening to something far off in the distance; the pupils of his hollow, worn, lustreless eyes were pin-points. He stood on his feet rigid, quivering; then he held up his hand. "Listen!"

But there was nothing. It was just as before; merely the murmuring of the city night, and the clock ticking.

"It's the dog! D'you hear her? And the old lady. Now listen, 'Two!

Now there are two! Three! Three! Now there are three!' There--now." He turned to me. "Can you hear it, Charlotte? No? How strange. Perhaps--"

He pointed to the corner of the room. "That paper. Will you--"

I shall always go over that moment. I have thought over it many times and have wondered at the sequence. Had I not stepped across the library, what would have happened?

What was it.

I had stooped to pick up the piece of paper. There came a queer, cracking, snapping sound, almost audible, I have a strange recollection of Harry standing up by the side of the desk--a flitting vision. An intuition of some terrible force. It was out of nothing--nowhere--approaching. I turned about. And I saw it--the dot of blue.

Blue! That is what it was at first. Blue and burning, like the flame of a million jewels centred into a needlepoint. On the ceiling directly above Harry's head. It was scintillating, coruscating, opalescent; but it was blue most of all. It was the colour of life and of death; it was burning, throbbing, concentrated. I tried to scream. But I was frozen with horror. The dot changed colour and went to a dead-blue. It seemed to grow larger and to open. Then it turned to white and dropped like a string of incandescence, touching Harry on the head.

What was it? It was all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! The Nervina! It was she!

Never have I seen anyone like her. She was so beautiful. In her face all the compassion a woman is heir to. For scarcely a second she stopped.

"Charlotte," she called. "Charlotte--oh, why didn't you save him! He loves you!" Then she turned to Harry. "It shall not be. He shall not go alone. I shall save him, even beyond--"

With that she rushed upon Harry. It was all done in an instant. Her arms were outstretched to the dimming form of Harry and the incandescence.

The splendid impassioned girl. Their forms intermingled. A blur of her beautiful body and Harry's wan, weary face. A flash of light, a thread of incandescence, a quiver--and they were gone.

The next I knew was the strong arms of my brother Hobart. He gave me the water he had fetched for Harry. He was terribly upset, but very calm. He held the glass up to my lips. He was speaking.

"Don't worry. Don't worry. I know now. I think I know. I was just in time to see them go. I heard the bell. Harry is safe. It is the Nervina.

I shall get Harry. We'll solve the Blind Spot."

XIX

HOBART FENTON TAKES UP THE TALE

Right here at the outset, I had better make a clean breast of something which the reader will very soon suspect, anyhow: I am a plain, unpoetic, blunt-speaking man, trained as a civil engineer, and in most respects totally dissimilar from the man who wrote the first account of the Blind Spot.

Harry had already touched upon this. He came of an artistic family. I think he must have taken up law in the hope that the old saying would prove true: "The only certain thing about law is its uncertainty." For he dearly loved the mysterious, the unknowable; he liked uncertainty for its excitement: and it is a mighty good thing that he was honest, for he would have made a highly dangerous crook.

Observe that I use the past tense in referring to my old friend. I do this in the interests of strict, scientific accuracy, to satisfy those who would contend that, having utterly vanished from sight and sound of man, Harry Wendel is no more.

But in my own heart is the firm conviction that he is still very much alive.

Within an hour of his astounding disappearance, my sister, Charlotte, and I made our way to an hotel; and despite the terrible nature of what had happened, we managed to get a few hours rest. The following morning Charlotte declared herself quite strong enough to discuss the situation.

We lost no time.

It will be remembered that I had spent nearly the whole of the preceding year in South America, putting through an irrigation scheme. Thus, I knew little of what had occurred in that interval. On the other hand, Harry and I had never seen fit to take Charlotte into our confidence as, I now see, we should have done.

So we fairly pounced upon the manuscript which Harry had left behind.

And by the time we had finished reading it, I for one, had reached one solid conclusion.

"I'm convinced," I said, "that the stranger--Rhamda Avec--is an out-and-out villain. Despite his agreeable ways, I think he was solely and deliberately to blame for Professor Holcomb's disappearance.

Consequently, this Rhamda is, in himself, a very valuable clue as to Harry's present predicament."

Referring to Harry's notes, I pointed out the fact that, although Avec had often been seen on the streets of San Francisco, yet the police had never been able to lay hands on him. This seemed to indicate that the man might possess the power of actually making himself visible or invisible, at will.

"Only"--I was careful to add--"understand, I don't rank him as a magician, or sorcerer; nothing like that. I'd rather think that he's merely in possession of a scientific secret, no more wonderful in itself than, say, wireless. He's merely got hold of it in advance of the others; that's all."