direction. Have Dimmock go down to the village. And ransack every public
house round about. If you can't find any trace of him--" his lips
tightened for a moment, "then I'll fetch in the police. I'll get the
finest detective in the land on this thing, I'll get Cleek himself if it
costs me every penny I possess, but I'll have him traced somehow. Those
devilish flames are taking too heavy a toll. I've reached the end of my
tether!"

He waved Borkins out with an imperious hand, and went on with his
dressing, his heart sick. What if Collins had met with the same fate
as Dacre Wynne? What were those fiendish flames, anyhow, that men
disappeared completely, leaving neither sight nor sound? Surely there
was some brain clever enough to probe the mystery of them.

"If Collins doesn't turn up this morning," he told himself as he shaved
with a very unsteady hand, "I'll go straight up to London by the twelve
o'clock train and straight to Scotland Yard. But I'll find him--damn
it, I'll find him."

But no trace of James Collins could be found. He was gone--completely. No
one had seen him, no one but Borkins had known of his probable journey
across the Fens at night-time, and Borkins excused himself upon the plea
that Collins hadn't actually _said_ he was going that way. He had simply
vanished as Dacre Wynne had vanished, as Will Myers and all that long
list of others had vanished. Eaten up by the flames--and in Twentieth
Century England! But the fact remained. Dacre Wynne had disappeared, and
now James Collins had followed him. And a new flame shone among the
others, a newer, brighter flame than any before. Merriton saw it himself,
that was the devilish part of it. His own eyes had seen the thing appear,
just as he had seen it upon the night when Dacre Wynne had vanished. But