"Not to more than a hundred planes, all in a half-hour."

The Frenchman shrugged indifferent shoulders and smiled.

"It does not signify, in the least," he murmured. "I am here. That suffices."

"Do you realize that I, perhaps, have forces at my command which may negative ordinary conditions and recognized laws?"

"Nothing can negative the forces of organized society. I repeat my request, _monsieur_, for your unconditional written surrender."

The Master's hand slid over the desk and rested a moment on a b.u.t.ton there. A certain slight tremor pa.s.sed through the Frenchman's body.

Into his eyes leaped an expression of wonder, of astonishment. His mouth quivered, as if he would have spoken; but he remained dumb.

The hand that held his cigarette, resting on his knee, relaxed; the cigarette fell, smoldering, to the metal plate. And on the instant the fire in it died, extinguished by some invisible force.

"Are you prepared to sign a receipt for this airship, if I deliver her over to you, sir?" demanded the Master, still speaking in French. He smiled oddly.

No answer. A certain swelling of the Frenchman's throat became visible, and his lips twitched slightly, but no sound was audible. A dull flush mounted over his bronzed cheek.

"Ah, you do not answer?" asked the other, with indulgent patronage.

"I a.s.sume, however, that you have the authority to accept my surrender and that of my crew. I a.s.sume, also, that you are willing to sign for the airship." He opened a drawer, took a paper, and on it wrote a few words. These he read over carefully, adding a comma, a period.

Leclair watched him with fixed gaze, struggling against some strange paralysis that bound him with unseen cords of steel. The Frenchman's eyes widened, but remained unblinking with a sort of glazed fixity.

The Master slid the paper toward him on the desk.

"_Voila, monsieur!_" said he. "Will you sign this?"

A shivering tremor of the Frenchman's muscles, as the ace sat there so strangely silent and motionless, betrayed the effort he was making to rise, to lift even a hand. Beads of sweat began to ooze on his forehead; veins to knot there Still he remained seated, without power to speak or move.

"What? You do not accept?" asked the Master, frowning as with puzzlement and displeasure. "But, _allons donc!_ this is strange indeed. Almost as strange as the fact that your whole air-squadron, with the sole exception of your own plane, was dropped through the clouds.

"I have no wish unnecessarily to trouble your mind. Let me state the facts. Not one of those machines was precipitated into the sea. No life was lost. Ah, that astonishes you?"

The expression in the Frenchman's face betrayed intense amazement, through his eyes alone. The rest of his features remained almost immobile. The Master smiling, continued:

"The fleet was dropped to exactly one thousand feet above the sea.

There the inhibition on the engines was released and the engines began functioning again. So no harm was done. But not one of those machines can rise again higher than one thousand feet until I so choose.

"They are all hopelessly outdistanced, far down there below the cloud-floor. Midges could catch a hawk as readily as _they_ could overhaul this Eagle of the Sky.

"Nowhere within a radius of twenty-five miles can any of those planes rise to our level. This is curious, but true. In the same way, on much the same principle, though through a very different application of it, you cannot speak or move until I so desire. All your voluntary muscles are completely, even though temporarily, paralyzed. The involuntary ones, which carry on your vital processes, are untouched.

"In one way, _monsieur_, you are as much alive as ever In another you are almost completely dead. Your fleet has enjoyed the distinction of having been the very first to serve as the object of a most important experiment. Likewise, your own person has had the honor of serving as material for another experiment, equally important--an experiment whose effect on your body is similar to that of the first one on the air-fleet.

"You can hear me, perfectly. You can see me. I ask you to watch me closely. Then consider, if you please, the matter of placing me under arrest."

His hand touched a small disk near the b.u.t.ton he had first pressed; a disk of some strange metal, iridescent, gleaming with a peculiar greenish patina that, even as one watched it, seemed to blend into other shades, as an oil-sc.u.m trans.m.u.tes its hues on water.

Now a faint, almost inaudible hum began to make itself heard. This hum was not localized. One could not have told exactly whence it came. It filled the cabin with a kind of soft murmuring that soothed the senses like the drowsy undertone of bees at swarm.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the pupils of Leclair's eyes began to dilate with astonishment. Immovable though he still remained, the most intense wonder made itself apparent in his look. Even something akin to fear was mirrored in his gaze. Again his lips twitched. Though he could form no word, a dry, choking gasp came from his throat.

And there was cause for astonishment; yes, even for fear. A thing was beginning to take place, there in the brightly lighted cabin of _Nissr_, such as man's eye never yet had beheld.

The Master was disappearing.

CHAPTER XVII

MIRACLES, SCOURGE OF FLAME

His form, sitting there at the desk--his face wearing an odd smile--had already begun to grow less distinct. It seemed as if the light surrounding him had faded, though everywhere else in the cabin it still gleamed with its accustomed brilliance. And as this light around him began to blur into a russet dimness, forming a sort of screen between him and visibility, the definition of his outlines began to melt away.

The Master still remained visible, as a whole; but the details of him were surely vanishing. And as they vanished, faintly a high-light, a shadow, a bit of metal-work showed through the s.p.a.ce where he sat.

He seemed a kind of dissolving cloud, through which now more and more clearly objects beyond him could be distinguished. Impossible though this seemed, it was indubitably true.

As he disappeared, he kept speaking. The effect of that undiminished voice, calm, slow, resonant, issuing from that disintegrating vapor, stirred the hair on the captive Frenchman's neck and scalp.

"Vibration, _mon cher monsieur_," said he, "is everything. According to the researches of the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris--no doubt you, yourself, have studied there, _n'est-ce pas?_--vibration of the first octave from 2 to 8 per second, give us no sense-impression. From the fourth to the fifteenth octave, 16 to 32,768 per second, we get sound.

The qualities of the 16th to the 24th are--or have been, until I investigated--quite unknown. The 25th to the 35th, 33, 554, 432 to 34, 859, 738, 868 vibrations per second, give us electricity. Thence to the 45th, again unknown.

"The 4th to the 48th give us heat. The 49th gives light The 50th, chemical rays, vibrating 1, 125, 899, 906, 842, 624 per second. The 51st to the 57th have never been touched by anyone save myself. The X-ray group extends from the 58th to the 61st octave. The 62d, with 4, 611, 686, 427, 889, 904 vibrations per second, is a field where only I have worked. And beyond these, no doubt, other octaves extend with infinite possibilities.

"You will note, _monsieur_," he continued, while the dun penumbra still more and more withdrew him from Leclair's sight, "that great lacunae exist in the scale of vibratory phenomena. Some of the so-called lower animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our dull ears. Ants are susceptible to lights and colors unseen to our limited eyes. The emperor-moth calls its mate--so says Fabre--by means of olfactory vibrations totally uncomprehended by us. The universe is full of hues, tones, radiant phenomena that escape us, because our senses are not attuned to them."

Steadily he spoke, and steadily the humming drone that filled the cabin kept its undertones that lulled, that soothed. The Frenchman, staring, hardly breathed. Rigid he sat and pale, with sweat now slowly guttering down his face, his jaws clamped hard and white.

"If the true nature of the universe could suddenly be revealed to our senses," went on the Master, now hardly more than a dull blur, "we could not survive. The crash of cosmic sound, the blaze of strange lights, the hurricane forces of tempestuous energies sweeping s.p.a.ce would blind, deafen, shrivel, annihilate us like so many flies swept into a furnace. Nature has been kind; she has surrounded us with natural ray-filters of protection."

His voice now seemed issuing from a kind of vacancy. Save for a slight darkening of the air, nothing was visible of him. He went on:

"With our limited senses we are, in a way, merely peeping out of little slits in an armored conning-tower of life, out at the stupendous vibratory battles of the cosmos. Other creatures, in other planets, no doubt have other sense-organs to absorb other vibratory ranges. Their life-experiences are so different from ours that we could not possibly grasp them, any more than a blind man could understand a painting.

"Nor could those creatures understand human life. We are safe in our own little corner of the universe, comfortably sheltered in our vestments of clay. And what we cannot understand, though it is all perfectly natural, we call religion, the supernatural, G.o.d."

From a great vacancy, the Master's words proceeded. Leclair, tugging in vain at the bonds that, invisible yet strong as steel, held him powerless, stared with wild eyes.

"There is no supernatural," said the now disembodied voice. "What we call spirit, psychic force, hypnosis, spiritualism, the fourth dimension, is really only life on another scale of vibration. If we could see the whole scale, we would recognize it as a vast, coherent, perfectly natural and rational whole, in which we human beings fill but a very insignificant part. That, monsieur, is absolutely true!

"I have investigated, I have ventured along the coasts of the unknown vibratory sea, and even sailed out a little way on the waters of that unknown, mysterious ocean. Yet even I know nothing. What you are beholding now is simply a slightly new form of vibratory effect. The force that is holding you paralyzed on that chair is still another. A third, sent down the air-squadron. And--there are many more.

"I am not really vanishing. That is but an illusion of your senses, unable to penetrate the screen surrounding me. I am still here, as materially as ever. Illusion, _mon cher monsieur_, yet to you very real!"

The voice seemed moving about. The Frenchman now perceived something like a kind of moving blur in the cabin. It appeared a sort of hole of darkness, in the light; and yet the light shone through it, too.

Every human eye has a blind spot in the retina. When things pa.s.s over this blind spot, they absolutely vanish; the other eye supplies the missing object. To the French ace it seemed that his eyes were all blind spots, so far as the Master was concerned. The effect of this vacancy moving about, shifting a chair, stirring a book, speaking to him like a spirit disembodied, its footfalls audible but its own self invisible, chilled the captive's blood. The Master said: