“In one way, monsieur, you are as much alive as ever In another you are almost completely dead.  Your fleet has enjoyed the distinction of having been the very first to serve as the object of a most important experiment.  Likewise, your own person has had the honor of serving as material for another experiment, equally important—­an experiment whose effect on your body is similar to that of the first one on the air-fleet.

“You can hear me, perfectly.  You can see me.  I ask you to watch me closely.  Then consider, if you please, the matter of placing me under arrest.”

His hand touched a small disk near the button he had first pressed; a disk of some strange metal, iridescent, gleaming with a peculiar greenish patina that, even as one watched it, seemed to blend into other shades, as an oil-scum transmutes its hues on water.

Now a faint, almost inaudible hum began to make itself heard.  This hum was not localized.  One could not have told exactly whence it came.  It filled the cabin with a kind of soft murmuring that soothed the senses like the drowsy undertone of bees at swarm.

For a moment nothing happened.  Then the pupils of Leclair’s eyes began to dilate with astonishment.  Immovable though he still remained, the most intense wonder made itself apparent in his look.  Even something akin to fear was mirrored in his gaze.  Again his lips twitched.  Though he could form no word, a dry, choking gasp came from his throat.

And there was cause for astonishment; yes, even for fear.  A thing was beginning to take place, there in the brightly lighted cabin of Nissr, such as man’s eye never yet had beheld.

The Master was disappearing.

CHAPTER XVII

MIRACLES, SCOURGE OF FLAME

His form, sitting there at the desk—­his face wearing an odd smile—­had already begun to grow less distinct.  It seemed as if the light surrounding him had faded, though everywhere else in the cabin it still gleamed with its accustomed brilliance.  And as this light around him began to blur into a russet dimness, forming a sort of screen between him and visibility, the definition of his outlines began to melt away.

The Master still remained visible, as a whole; but the details of him were surely vanishing.  And as they vanished, faintly a high-light, a shadow, a bit of metal-work showed through the space where he sat.  He seemed a kind of dissolving cloud, through which now more and more clearly objects beyond him could be distinguished.  Impossible though this seemed, it was indubitably true.

As he disappeared, he kept speaking.  The effect of that undiminished voice, calm, slow, resonant, issuing from that disintegrating vapor, stirred the hair on the captive Frenchman’s neck and scalp.