Madame le Claire led Mr. Amidon to the next room, turned him over to Aaron (now wonderfully healed of his dumbness) with a gesture of dismissal; and he was ushered by the negro into a most modern-looking chamber, in which was a brass bedstead with a snowy counterpane. "Dinner will be suhved in ten minutes, suh," said Aaron. They were waiting for him in the little dining-room, when he was wafted through the door by Aaron's obsequious bow. The tigrine Le Claire advanced from a bay-window, bringing a slender man with stooped shoulders. "Papa," she said, "this is Mr. Amidon, whom I have induced to dine with us; Mr. Amidon, Professor Blatherwick." Professor Blatherwick was bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip--a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the air as if for Amidon's hand, though quite ten feet from him, he murmured: "I am bleaced to meet you, sir." "Evidently German," thought Amidon. "I understandt," said the professor, opening the conversation, as Madame le Claire poured the tea, "that you haf hadt some interesding experiences in te realm of te supliminal." Amidon's tension of mind, which had left him under the compulsion of the woman's mastery of him, returned at the professor's remark. "I have been dead," said he, "since the twenty-seventh of June, 1896!" Madame le Claire stared at him in unconcealed amazement. The professor calmly dipped toast in his tea. "So!" said he. "Fife years. Goot! Dis case vill estaplish some important brinciples. Vill you be so kindt as to dell us te saircumstances?" "Oh, papa!" broke in the lady. "You must wait until after dinner. I saw Mr. Amidon was weak and disturbed, and, I thought--hungry. So I asked him to stay." "I have eaten nothing but this," said Mr. Amidon, "since June twenty-seventh, 1896----" "So," said the professor calmly. "Dis vill brofe an important case." "I saw the sign," said Amidon, "'All Mysteries Solved,' and I came here----" "De sign," said the professor, "iss our goncession to te spirit of gommercialism, and te gompetitife system. It vas Clara's itea. But some mysteries ve do not attempt. In te realm of te supliminal, howefer, ve go up against almost any broposition. I am Cheneral Superintendent of Supliminal Enchineering; Clara is te executant. I make blance, and Clara does as she bleaces aboudt following dem. You vill, at your gonfenience, dell us all you can of your case. I vill analyze, glassify, and tiagnose; she vill unrafel."