dream, he now turned with profound intentness to establish radio communication with Mars. He began talking in a familiar and chatty way about the people on Mars, and to hear him talk one would think that he was going there for a week-end of golf.

In this project, he had enlisted the able assistance of Serge Olinski, assistant research engineer of the National Radio Corporation, whose unexceptional qualifications included an honor degree in cosmic ray research, with distinction in astronomy. Their experimental activities, in trying to pick up and decode the galactic radio waves, which both believed constituted some kind of interstellar signaling, were carried on behind locked doors, either at Henry's observatory in the country, or in Olinski's laboratory in the NRC Building, in the new Radio Center Annex.

Olinski was a queer shrinking soul, and any sort of publicity to Henry was equally distasteful. They were two of a kind, in this respect. Notwithstanding all the praise and attention given to Henry by the press during the comet furore, he treated reporters with the utmost contempt, and accused them of being dishonest rogues. One reporter in particular he hated and feared. Just mention to him the name of Robert McGinity of the New York Daily Recorder, and his correctly chiselled and aristocratic features would crinkle up in rage and horrible chuckles would issue from his thin lips like unnamable profanities.

He had never forgotten his first encounter with McGinity on the telephone, nor had he ever forgiven the reporter for what he called an utterly disreputable transaction in news. But the business of reporting is at least an honorable one, and reporters have to get their stories, somehow.

This fellow, McGinity, published the first report of Henry's discovery of the comet, and scored a beat by calling him up and giving the impression that he was one of the assistant astronomers at Harvard University. I had no suspicions then how the information had trickled into the office of the Daily Recorder, but I believe now that our solemn-visaged butler, Orkins, who afterwards turned out to be so mercenary and treacherous, tipped off this morning paper, which paid liberally for exclusive stories.

It was the night following Henry's detection of the comet when he was aroused out of a sound sleep to answer an important telephone call. If I hadn't been up and overheard the conversation, I wouldn't have believed it possible for any man to be so easily deceived. But gullibility is one of Henry's weaknesses. I switched into 

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