An instant later those in the hall rushed in. But the Clutching Hand and Dan were gone out of the window, the criminal carrying the greater part of the precious papers.

Some ran to Elaine, others to the window. The ladder had been kicked away and the criminals were gone. Leaping into the waiting car, they had been whisked away.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" called a voice, apparently from nowhere.

"What is that?" cried Elaine, still blankly wondering.

She had risen by this time and was gazing about, wondering at the strange voice. Suddenly her eye fell on the armor scattered all over the floor. She spied the little oak box.

"Elaine!"

Apparently the voice came from that. Besides, it had a familiar ring to her ears.

"Yes--Craig!" she cried.

"This is my vocaphone--the little box that hears and talks," came back to her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes--all right,--thanks to the vocaphone."

She had understood in an instant. She seized the helmet and breastplate to which the vocaphone still was attached and was holding them close to herself.

Kennedy had been calling and listening intently over the machine, wondering whether it had been put out of business in some way.

"It works--yet!" he cried excitedly to me. "Elaine!"

"Yes, Craig," came back over the faithful little instrument.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes--all right."

"Thank heaven!" breathed Craig, pushing me aside.

Literally he kissed that vocaphone as if it had been human!

CHAPTER IX

THE DEATH RAY

Kennedy was reading a scientific treatise one morning, while I was banging on the typewriter, when a knock at the laboratory door disturbed us.

By some intuition, Craig seemed to know who it was. He sprang to open the door, and there stood Elaine Dodge and her lawyer, Perry Bennett.

Instantly, Craig read from the startled look on Elaine's face that something dreadful had happened.

"Why--what's the matter?" he asked, solicitously.

"A--another letter--from the Clutching Hand!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Mr. Bennett was calling on me, when this note was brought in. We both thought we'd better see you at once about it and he was kind enough to drive me here right away in his car."

Craig took the letter and we both read, with amazement:

"Are you an enemy of society? If not, order Craig Kennedy to leave the country by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. Otherwise, a pedestrian will drop dead outside his laboratory every hour until he leaves."

The note was signed by the now familiar sinister hand, and had, added, a postscript, which read:

"As a token of his leaving, have him place a vase of flowers on his laboratory window to-day."

"What shall we do?" queried Bennett, evidently very much alarmed at the threat.

"Do?" replied Kennedy, laughing contemptuously at the apparently futile threat, "why, nothing. Just wait."

The day proved uneventful and I paid no further attention to the warning letter. It seemed too preposterous to amount to anything.

Kennedy, however, with his characteristic foresight, as I learned afterwards, had not been entirely unprepared, though he had affected to treat the thing with contempt.

His laboratory, I may say, was at the very edge of the University buildings, with the campus back of it, but opening on the other side on a street that was ordinarily not overcrowded.

We got up as usual the next day and, quite early, went over to the laboratory. Kennedy, as was his custom, plunged straightway into his work and appeared absorbed by it, while I wrote.

"There IS something queer going on, Walter," he remarked. "This thing registers some kind of wireless rays--infra-red, I think,--something like those that they say that Italian scientist, Ulivi, claims he has discovered and called the 'F-rays.'"

"How do you know?" I asked, looking up from my work. "What's that instrument you are using?"

"A bolometer, invented by the late Professor Langley," he replied, his attention riveted on it.

Some time previously, Kennedy had had installed on the window ledge one of those mirror-like arrangements, known as a "busybody," which show those in a room what is going on on the street.

As I moved over to look at the bolometer, I happened to glance into the busybody and saw that a crowd was rapidly collecting on the sidewalk.

"Look, Craig!" I called hastily.

He hurried over to me and looked. We could both see in the busybody mirror a group of excited pa.s.sersby bending over a man lying prostrate on the sidewalk.

He had evidently been standing on the curbstone outside the laboratory and had suddenly put his hand to his forehead. Then he had literally crumpled up into a heap, as he sank to the ground.

The excited crowd lifted him up and bore him away, and I turned in surprise to Craig. He was looking at his watch.

It was now only a few moments past nine o'clock!

Not quarter of an hour later, our door was excitedly flung open and Elaine and Perry Bennett arrived.