"If only it'd been something I could of seen, no matter what, I'd of stood up against it," he recited, as he told of the event between gulps of whisky. "What the devil! A man can only die once! But this thing that you couldn't see or put hands on--Christ, I'd rather fight a herd of stampeding elephants!" The fact was, as both officers testified, that the very walls of the room shook, as if rocked by some mighty force. Dunbar's handcuffs, though O'Madden swore that he had clasped them on firmly, fell to the floor as though they had been mere bands of paper. An eerie whirring voice, proceeding as if from nowhere, gave warning, "Harm him not, earthlings, or beware the consequences!" And, at the same time, Dunbar was jerked out of the astonished officer's grip! Yes, jerked away completely, like a toy torn from a child's hands! From the expression on his face, it was evident that he was as bewildered as anyone as he went gliding toward the window and out--out into the open air, where he disappeared in the fog! While, even as he vanished, the window shade snapped down and the window slammed shut. "By glory, the place is haunted!" mumbled O'Madden, crossing himself. And as the three men, with the unconscious girl, emerged from the outer door of 4 E, their faces streamed with a sweat that did not come from the heat alone; and they knew that there was no force on earth powerful enough to induce them to set foot across that threshold again. CHAPTER X A Plunge in the Dark Beneath the great translucent milky-white envelope of the Planetoid, Gates stood in an egg-shaped jelly-like car about thirty feet tall. He was still invisible, even to himself; and could not see the gigantic companion who shared with him his curious vehicle. But through the gelatinous walls he could view the vast cloud-covered expanse of the earth as it rolled by far beneath. "Now we must wait, nignig," his unseen companion was saying, "until we whirl around on our orbit to your own part of the globe. Fortunately, it is but a minute planet, and the journey will take scarcely another hour. The instruments will tell us when we arrive. But by my tail! may my brothers not revive before then!" "What will we do, when we get to earth?" inquired Gates. "Do?" hissed Yellow-Claws. "What do you expect? Why, get vengeance, as I have told you, earthling!" "But how get vengeance?" "You shall see! May the blue lightnings blast me, if you do not see! I shall discredit the leadership of the Peerless Red One! I shall frustrate his schemes! I shall invalidate him, as we say on Saturn! Then he will go back home in disgrace, like the scum of the abyss that he is! He will commit Guhl-Guhli--which is to say, he will sting himself to death, and I will come into my own! Then, nignig, I will return and conquer this world as it should be conquered!" Gates groaned. He began to see that at heart Yellow-Claws was no better than Red-Hood; all he would give the earth would be a momentary reprieve.