many things one had to do before one began living—you know, picking the proper friends and all that."

The girl nodded understandingly. "I know what you mean. My mother would throw a fit if she knew I were here talking to you right now. If I met you at a dance in Westchester it would be perfectly all right for me to stay out with you half the night and drink gin together, but meeting you in daylight on the street—oh, boy!"

"Well," Murray sighed, "that tripe is all through with now. What do you say we get back and see how the rest are getting along?"

They found them still in the midst of their argument.

"—evidently some substance so volatile that the mere contact with animal tissue causes a reaction that leaves nothing of either the element or the tissue," Ben was saying. "You note that these metal bands reproduce the muscles almost perfectly."

"Yes," the lawyer replied, "but they are too flexible to be any metal I know. I'm willing to grant your wider knowledge of chemistry, but it doesn't seem reasonable. All I can think of is that some outside agency has interfered. These joints, for instance—," he touched Ben's elbow, "—and what about the little rubber pads on your fingers and toes and the end of your nose?"

There was a universal motion on the part of the others to feel of their noses. It was as the lawyer had said—they were, like the fingers and toes, certainly very much like rubber—and movable!

"Don't know," said Ben. "Who did it, though? That's what boggles your scheme. Everybody's changed to metal and nobody left to make the changes you mention. However, let's go get the rest of your folks. I wonder if we ought to have weapons. You two wait here."

He clanked off with the lawyer to the taxi. A moment later, the tooting of the horn announced their return. The party consisted, beside Roberts himself, of his daughter, Ola Mae, a girl of sixteen, petulant over the fact that her high-heeled shoes were already breaking down under her weight; a Japanese servant named Yoshio; and Mrs. Roberts, one of those tall and billowy women of the earlier life who, to the irritation of the men, turned out to be the strongest of any of them. Fat, apparently, had no metallic equivalent, and her ample proportions now consisted of bands of metal that made her extraordinarily powerful.

With these additions the little group adjourned to Times 

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