"Well, nobody wouldn't ever believe it, but before I could get to the guy, the handcuffs was knocked right outer my hands," went on Halloran. "Not by that fellow Dunbar, neither, curse him! He was over on the other side of the room. Somebody hit me right through the air, with something I couldn't see. May I be boiled in tar if I lie!" "You sure oughter be boiled in tar, if you expect me to believe that tommy-rot!" growled the Captain. "Well, b'lieve it or not, that ain't nothing to what happened to me," Jensen took up the story. "I felt something grabbing me by the hair. Yes, so help me God! I reached up my hand, and felt something cold and hard, like a lobster's claw. But you still couldn't see a damned thing!" "Ought of heard what a yell Jensen let out," Halloran continued. "Sure was fit to wake the dead!" "Oh, gwan!" countered Jensen. "'Twasn't nothing to the way you hollered when you was pitched plumb across the room!" "Well, who wouldn't holler if they was batted hard against the wall by some invisible devil? I ain't boasting when I say I'm a tough nut to crack, but when that thing, whatever it was, began tweaking my ears and nose and saying, 'This is the way we'll twist your necks, earthlings, if the likes of you ever come back here'--well then, what in thunder do you think I'd do? Stay to get my neck twisted?" The Captain meanwhile was smiling cynically. "You boys sure must think I like fish stories!" he remarked. It may not be that any one took Jensen and Halloran quite seriously. Yet was it not hard to believe that four trusty old members of the force had all gone crazy? The fact is, in any case, that when the Captain considered sending two more men to the mysterious apartment, he could find no one who did not threaten to resign from the force sooner than accept the assignment. * * * * * Eleanor meanwhile, as Dunbar had predicted, had regained consciousness. Yet she could give only a confused account of what had happened. "When the bell began ringing so furiously," she testified, "I thought I heard Dunbar stealing behind me, but paid no attention till suddenly I felt a sharp jab in one arm. By then it was too late even to cry out. Everything went black around me before I'd even had time to realize he'd stabbed me again with the hypodermic." Thanks to her entreaties and the testimony of the officers, she was granted a bodyguard of two detectives; for, as she asserted, "The minute I walk out by myself, that fiend will re-capture me. And I have work to do--very important work, if the world is to be saved!" Every one smiled in half-veiled amusement. Yet no one could deny the deadly seriousness of the girl's manner.