“That, Mr. Harley, is for you to decide when all the facts shall be in your possession. Do you wish that I proceed?” “By all means. I must confess that I am intensely interested.” “Very well, Mr. Harley. I have something to show you.” From an inside breast pocket Colonel Menendez drew out a gold-mounted case, and from the case took some flat, irregularly shaped object wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. Unfolding the paper, he strode across and laid the object which it had contained upon the blotting pad in front of my friend. Impelled by curiosity I stood up and advanced to inspect it. It was of a dirty brown colour, some five or six inches long, and appeared to consist of a kind of membrane. Harley, his elbow on the table, was staring down at it questioningly. “What is it?” I said; “some kind of leaf?” “No,” replied Harley, looking up into the dark face of the Spanish colonel; “I think I know what it is.” “I, also, know what it is.” declared Colonel Menendez, grimly. “But tell me what to you it seems like, Mr. Harley?” Paul Harley’s expression was compounded of incredulity, wonder, and something else, as, continuing to stare at the speaker, he replied: “It is the wing of a bat.” CHAPTER II THE VOODOO SWAMP Often enough my memory has recaptured that moment in Paul Harley’s office, when Harley, myself, and the tall Spaniard stood looking down at the bat wing lying upon the blotting pad. My brilliant friend at times displayed a sort of prescience, of which I may have occasion to speak later, but I, together with the rest of pur-blind humanity, am commonly immune from the prophetic instinct. Therefore I chronicle the fact for what it may be worth, that as I gazed with a sort of disgust at the exhibit lying upon the table I became possessed of a conviction, which had no logical basis, that a door had been opened through which I should step into a new avenue of being; I felt myself to stand upon the threshold of things strange and terrible, but withal alluring. Perhaps it is true that in the great crises of life the inner eye becomes momentarily opened. With intense curiosity I awaited the Colonel’s next words, but, a cigarette held nervously between his fingers, he stood staring at Harley, and it was the latter who broke that peculiar silence which had fallen upon us. “The wing of a bat,” he murmured, then touched it gingerly. “Of what kind of bat, Colonel Menendez? Surely not a British species?” “But emphatically not a British species,” replied the Spaniard. “Yet even so the matter would be strange.” “I am all anxiety to learn the remainder of your story, Colonel Menendez.” “Good. Your interest comforts me very greatly, Mr. Harley. But when first I came, you led me to suppose that you were departing from London?” “Such, at the time, was my intention, sir.” Paul Harley smiled slightly. “Accompanied by my friend, Mr. Knox, I had proposed to indulge in a fortnight’s fishing upon the Norfolk Broads.” “Fishing?” “Yes.”