"Daddy disappeared, Jim! Right from the middle of a group. He was standing at my side; his shoulder was almost touching mine. Then all of a sudden--he was gone! Like that!" Under any other circumstances, I would have guessed that the old wind-bag had finally blown up and drifted away. But there was precedent now for his Houdini act. One with sinister overtones. Three men and an animated gumshoe detective had vanished. But I said, in a voice that I hoped wouldn't sound too much like a dish of unchilled tapioca, "Now, don't worry, Helen. Everything's going to be all right. There must be a logical explanation for this. Hank's just the man to--" And then--there it was again! A blinding flash of light. A weird vibrancy tingling my body, drawing taut the tiny hairs of my forearms and neck. Light motes dancing giddily before my eyes, coalescing to form the figure of a man. A wavering, mobile figure, from the uppermost nebulosity of which emanated a piteous, hollow voice. "_Skleeva! Skleeva_--" Then a swift, dulled paling of the light. Burning white tarnished into red-ochre, red-ochre brazened, the green palpitated to a deep blue-indigo. The figure before my eyes took on form and substance. I saw with a sense of stark disbelief it was tall and lanky as Hank himself, that it wore a uniform of some sort, that its eyes were not unfriendly but haggard and despairing. And then, "_Ombiggs!_" wailed our impossible visitor. "_Ombiggs! Skleeva?_" And vanished! I stood still. Very, very still It was not courage. It was rivets in the soles of my feet. My brain clamored, "Go, boys, go!" But my knees were clattering and banging like the fenders of a T-model Ford. * * * * * Helen wasn't much better off. Her eyes looked like a pair of sealed-beam headlights, and the most intelligent sound she could summon was a faint, plaintive, "Oooooh!" Only Hank retained an iota of self-control. And to tell the truth, his comment was far from enlightening. "Well!" he said. "So _that's_ it!" "What's what?" I asked him shakily. My paralysis was slipping away, and I prepared to do ditto. "Friends, did you see what I saw? Or has the little brown jug finally done what the Temperance Society told me it would do some day?" Hank said, "Now, Jim! It ain't like you to act so. 'Specially when we've reached what you might call a crooshul moment. Hmm! Now, lemme see. You folks seen him most plain when he was what color? Blue?" "Sort of. Bluish-green." Helen said, "Greenish-blue." "That's near enough," mused Hank. "That'd be--Hmmm!--'bout .0005 millimetres. I'll tell him that when he comes back--" "_When he comes back?_" "Why sure!" Hank stared at me amiably. "He'll be back any minute now. He done a lot better this time than the first, don't you think? Next time he'll probably get what he wants." "And," I faltered, "and I suppose you know what that is?" "Reckon I do," said Hank complacently. "He wants _me_."