“Yes,” answered Tom. “I leave the machine adjusted for them every day, but I’ve only heard from him twice. I always keep two or three uncharged reflectoscopes on hand, as well. Some day he may go to experimenting where I can get hold of something.” I stood looking lazily out of the window. A large yacht lay just offshore, her white sides glistening in the morning sun. There was a touch of spring in the winter air. Suddenly, before my horror-stricken eyes, the yacht changed to a confused mass of boards which rose and fell on the tide. I heard a cry from Tom and Dorothy. “The man!” I turned. The golden ribbons of the reflectoscopes once more stood stiffly separate and the moving belt stood still. The beam of light was just fluttering to rest almost on the zero. “Out there! Right out there!” I shouted. “Come!” and throwing open the door, I rushed towards the beach, followed by the others. I pointed to the mass of wreckage rising and falling on the tide. “There! there!” I shouted. “He just destroyed that yacht.” “There’s a survivor,” cried Tom, as we ran stumbling on over the rocks and sand towards a plank which bore a living man towards shore. Just as we came to him, he struck bottom and groped forward on his hands and knees through the waves. He reached the dry sand, rose and walked towards us. I looked at the man in amazement. I knew those features, yet they were so strangely drawn and fixed, so dominated by the dread-compelling power of the eyes that I paused. Then it came to me. “John King,” I cried in amazement. King came steadily onward. A lightning flash illumined my brain. “Are you the man who stopped all war?” I cried eagerly. Dorothy reached my side and clung to me as John King advanced with hesitating steps. “I am,” he answered slowly. “Then why--then why did you destroy the yacht?” shouted Tom, stammering in his excitement. “How--how have you lived when the others perished?” “The time to end had come,” said John, in muffled, solemn tones. “I alone am immune; I did not think I was.” As he spoke a still more awful change began to pass over his features. He staggered, stopped, and put his hand to his brow. “I--am--the--last--victim,” he went on falteringly. “I--pay--the--final--price.” The last words came in a thick gasp, “My secret is safe.” As he said that, he fell, and when we reached him he lay dead. The expression of his face had changed again. The sombre, awful majesty which had illumined it was gone. He looked once more like the young lad I had known and loved in years gone by, whose face so well expressed his noble spirit, ever impatient of injustice and wrong. After the weary struggle, his soul was once more poised and at rest. The world and the man who stopped all war were both at peace. THE END. * * * * * “_Mr. Oppenheim’s sixteenth novel--and his best_” +-------------+ | THE AVENGER | +-------------+ _By_ E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM Fully Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50