Professor Maniel strangely mouse-like save for the ponderous dome of his forehead, stepped away from the circular table without a word. He had invented the machine in question, and he was inordinately proud of it. Through its use he could pick up the sounds, and the pictures, of events which had transpired down the past centuries, from the tinkling of the cymbals of Miriam to all the horror of the conflict men had called the Great War, simply by drawing back from the ether, as the sounds fled outward through space, those sounds and vibrations which he needed. His science was an exact one, more carefully exact even than the measurement of the speed of light, taking into consideration the dispersion of sound and movement, and the element of time. The interior of the Secret Room became dark as Maniel labored with his minute machinery. Only behind the screen on the wall in rear of the table was there light. * * * * * The voice of Maniel began to drone as he thought aloud. "There is a matter of but a few minutes difference in time between Washington and the last recorded location of the _Stellar_. The sinking occurred at ten-thirty last evening you say, Kleig? Ah, yes, I have it! Watch carefully, gentlemen!" So silent were the Secret Agents one could not even have heard the breathing of one of them, for on the screen, misty at first, but becoming moment by moment bolder of outline, was the face of a storm-tossed sea. The liner was slower in forming, and was slightly out of focus for a second or two. "Ah," said Professor Maniel. "There it is!" Through the sound apparatus came the roaring and moaning of a storm at sea. On the screen the _Stellar_ rose high on the waves, dropped into the trough, while spumes of black smoke spread rearward on the waters from her spouting funnels. Figures were visible on her decks, figures which seemed carved in bronze. In the prow, every expression on his face plainly visible, stood Prester Kleig himself, and as his picture appeared he was in the act of turning. "Now," said Kleig himself, there in the Secret Room, "look off to the left, gentlemen, a mile from the _Stellar_!" A rustling sound as the scientists shifted in their places. * * * * * They all saw it, and a gasp burst from their lips as though at a signal. For, as the _Stellar_ seemed about to plunge off the shadowed screen into the Secret Room, a flying thing had risen out of the sea--an airplane with a bulbous body and queerly slanting wings. At the same time, out of the mouth of the pictured figure of Prester Kleig, clear and agonized as the tones of a bell struck in frenzy, the words: "Great God! Lower the boats! Lower the boats! For God's sake lower the boats!" In the Secret Room the real Prester Kleig spoke again.