but it was destroyed, and though religious antiquarians believed there was another church below it, and below that a crypt, the lost crypt of Saint Dennis, it was not proved to be a fact until yesterday. We've been in contact with the archeologists who have been excavating for several years on the site—in contact by telephone. They have found the crypt, thanks to questions I asked you while you were away, Hale. Now take a look at this."

He showed me a sketch, of which "Father Wulstan" must have made hundreds, of Father Wulstan's "metal bird." His excitement was greater than ever it had been.

"We have made photostats of it, basing details on your sketch, made right here while you were away, and flown them to Washington, to the Bureau of Aeronautics. Jan Rober took them. This is a jet plane, far in advance of anything aviation has had to date. It is faster than sound. It will pass easily through the wall of compressibility and will not go out of control. The design has been given to the nation, and shortly there will be a practical, full sized jet plane, as here specified."

I began to sink into myself, to feel a horrible depression.

"Then this is all folderol," I said. "I make sketches of priests who have the faces of Doctors A, D, F and perhaps L, only because those faces impressed themselves on me at the moment I went away. And the fact that I have designed, on paper, a jet plane that promises to be faster than any yet made, what does that prove? That I, perhaps, this nameless one whom the police called Dean Hale, whom I called Father Wulstan in my unconsciousness—or whatever the state was which that cyclotron induced—was an architect or a plane designer. All that I need to find out now, is what plane designer has been missing for how long!"

"Not so fast, Hale," said Doctor A, not one iota of his excitement dissipating under the words of my disappointment. "For there is something else you must know."

"Yes, what?"

"In the crypt of Saint Dennis a red painted cross was found on a rectangle of stone set into the solid rock. The stone was removed, and what do you suppose was found behind it?"

I grinned wryly as I answered, excitement mounting in me in spite of myself:

"A tiny hangar, just big enough for a clay model of a metal bird."

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