microscopic crack in the headboard cleverly concealed by a decorative design running along the base. He ran his fingers lightly along the carvings until they encountered a small projection which gave slightly under pressure.

Kirk pressed down harder on the knob. A tiny click sounded against the silence and a section of wood some three feet square swung out. Lifting it aside, the detective found himself staring at an instrument board of some kind with a series of buttons and dials countersunk into it. The board itself formed a part of what was obviously a machine of some sort which evidently contained its own power, for there seemed to be no lead-in cord for plugging into a wall socket.

It could, Kirk thought, be a short wave radio transmitter. If it was, it looked like none he had ever come across before. On the other hand it could be some sort of infernal machine, ready to blow half the city to bits at the turn of a dial.

Even as his mind was weighing the advisability of tampering with the thing, his fingers were reaching for the various controls. Gingerly he moved one or two of the dials but nothing happened. A little more boldly now, he began to depress the buttons. As the third sank in, a low humming sound began to fill the room. Before Kirk could find a cut-off switch of some kind, the faint light of day streaming through the room's one window winked out, plunging him into a blackness so infinitely deep that it was like being buried alive.

Nothing can plunge a man into the sheerest panic like the absence of light. Even a man like Martin Kirk, who had walked almost daily with danger for the past fifteen years. And since the form panic takes varies with the individual, the Lieutenant's reaction was an utter inability to move so much as a finger.

Abruptly the low humming note ceased entirely, replaced immediately by the sound of a human voice. "Mythox. Contact established. Proceed."

Almost as though the words had tripped a lever in his brain, Kirk's paralysis ended. Both his hands seemed to swoop of their own volition to the invisible control panel and their fingers danced across the dials and buttons.

"Mythox," said the voice again. It seemed to swell and recede, like a direct radio newscast from half around the world. "Contact estab—"

The word ended as though it had run into a wall. The humming note came back, then ceased—and without warning daylight from the window 

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