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“Ah, how familiar it sounds to hear one of your dear old-fashioned sayings, Mr. Snell,” said the newcomer. “On earth indeed! When I haven’t touched earth for sixteen hours. Do give me a bite of something, for Heaven’s sake; I’m famishing,” and the young man looked longingly at the salmon cutlets.

Still bewildered, the other turned to the wall and hurriedly pressed a number of buttons.

“Steady, I say; steady,” said the young man, with a faint smile. “Roast turkey, cold salad, mushrooms, fried soles, Burgundy — a bit of a mixture, eh?”

Somewhat confused, the elder man checked himself and turned from the buttons.

“But how is it you are here?” He asked. “I thought you were in Japan, helping to develop that part of the empire.”

“I must talk and eat at the same time,” replied Arbuthnot. “Potatoes, stuffing, and green peas, if you don’t mind-thanks. Mr. Snell, I am in great trouble.”

“Hum, it hasn’t affected your appetite, at any rate,” said the other.

“Perhaps not; but I can tell you the air of the Ghauts is pretty keen, at least I found it so this morning as I came through.”

“Well, don’t hurry yourself; I’ll go on with my own luncheon,” said Snell, reseating himself.

“All right,” replied Arbuthnot, with his mouth full, “I won’t waste more time than I can help. Listen: I took to Japan with me two telepathic instruments.”

“Ah, a lady’s whim, eh?” Suggested Bowden Snell.

“Something of my own idea as well,” replied the young man, a slight flush overspreading his handsome face. “You see, one couldn’t be running home here to England every few weeks, and Ally and I thought it would be nice to sit and talk to each other sometimes, even though thousands of miles of clouds floated between us.”

Bowden Snell nodded indulgently; and Arbuthnot, leaning back with a sigh, lit a cigarette — he was a steady young man, and abstained from drugs.

“Now this morning a strange thing happened,” he continued. “You must understand I have one instrument upstairs and the other down in my sitting-room; it isn’t always so easy to hit the mark in Japan, you know, owing to the earthquakes, so that when Ally missed one with a message the chances were that she would hit the other.”

“I see.”

“Well, I was sitting down having a smoke after the day’s work — of course it was evening there — when the signal of the instrument clicked, and I instantly placed my ear to it. Then I heard my dar — Ally’s voice, I mean, seemingly in great distress, calling me, saying, ‘Help, help, Jack! I am being carried away,’ and then there was a dead silence.”

The young man paused, and passed a trembling hand across his damp brow. He went on —

“I rushed upstairs to the other instrument, thinking that possibly it might be catching what the other missed, but I heard nothing more, though I shouted continually.”

“Shouting’s never any good; only rattles the mechanism,” said Bowden Snell. “Of course you took the direction?”

“Yes, I thought of that,” replied Arbuthnot. “It was due west, and two degrees from normal.”

“Two degrees from normal, eh!” Repeated the other, musingly. Then he took a scrap of paper from his pocket and made a few rapid calculations, at the end of which he exclaimed

“Hullo, she must have been in the air then.”

“Of course,” answered the young man, “that is how I worked it out; three hundred feet from the ground, and fifty miles south of Greenwich.”

“About that,” concurred Bowden Snell. “Well, what are you going to do, and what do you want of me?”

“I thought of you immediately,” said Arbuthnot, “and, placing a few food-pellets in my pocket, I jumped on my machine and came away just as I was. Luckily my aerocar, which is, as you see, one of the old-fashioned ones — I can’t afford a new one — was charged, and I can tell you I made her rattle coming along over Thibet, Russia, and Germany. Once I caught up the daylight, yet it took me sixteen hours to do the journey,” he concluded, apologetically.

Bowden Snell smiled grimly. He thought of the old days of his boyhood, when a voyage from Japan was considered a very serious undertaking, occupying