"Now I have totally disappeared from your eye or any other material
eye. I cannot even see myself! No doubt dwellers on some other planet
would perceive me by some means we cannot imagine. Yet I am materially
here. You feel my touch, now, on your shoulder. See, now I put out the
lights; now I draw aside this curtain, and admit the golden morning
radiance. You see that radiance, but you do not see me.

"A miracle? _Pas du tout!_ Nothing but an application of perfectly
natural laws. And so--well, now let us come back to the matter under
discussion. You have come hither to arrest me, _monsieur_. What do
you think of arresting me, now? I am going to leave that to your own
judgment."

His voice approached the desk. The chair moved slightly, and gave
under his weight. Something touched the button on the desk. Something
pressed the iridescent metal disk. The humming note sank, faded, died
away.

Gradually a faint haze gathered in the chair. Dim, brownish fog
congealed there. The chair became clouded with it; and behind that
chair objects grew troubled, turbid, vague.

The ace felt inhibitions leaving him. His eyes began to blink; his
half-opened mouth closed with a snap; a long, choking groan escaped
his lips.

"_Nom de Dieu_" he gulped, and fell weakly to rubbing his arms and
legs that still prickled with a numb tingling. "_Mais, nom de Dieu!_"

The Master, now swiftly becoming visible, stood up again, smiled,