One o’clock passed, two o’clock passed, a quarter after two, then the bell of the wireless machine rang, the machine began to tick; Merton sat tight, listening.  All the curtains of the windows were drawn, the room was almost perfectly dark; the snorings had sometimes lulled, sometimes revived.  Merton lay behind the curtains on the window-seat, facing the door.  He knew, almost without the help of his ears, that the door was slowly, slowly opening.  Something entered, something paused, something stole silently towards the wireless machine, and paused again.  Then a glow suffused the further end of the room, a disc of electric light, clearly from a portable lamp.  A draped form, in deep shadow, was exposed to Merton’s view.  He stole forward on tiptoe with noiseless feet; he leaped on the back of the figure, threw his left arm round its neck, caught its right wrist in a grip of steel, and yelled: 

‘Mr. Eachain of the Hairy Arm, if I am not mistaken!’

At the same moment there came a click, the electric light was switched on, Logan bounced on to the figure, tore away a revolver from the right hand of which Merton held the wrist, and the two fell on the floor above a struggling Highland warrior in the tartans of the Macraes.  The figure was thrown on its face.

‘Got you now, Mr. Blake!’ said Logan, turning the head to the light.  ’D—–­ n!’ he added; ‘it is Gianesi!  I thought we had the Irish minstrel.’

The figure only snarled, and swore in Italian.

‘First thing, anyhow, to tie him up,’ said Logan, producing a serviceable cord.

Both Logan and Merton were muscular men, and presently had the intruder tightly swathed in inextricable knots and gagged in a homely but sufficient fashion.

‘Now, Merton,’ said Logan, ’this is a bitter disappointment!  From your dream, or vision, of Eachain of the Hairy Arm, it was clear to me that somebody, the poet for choice, had heard the yarn of the Highland ghost, and was masquerading in the kilt for the purpose of tampering with the electric dodge and communicating with the kidnappers.  Apparently I owe the bard an apology.  You’ll sit on this fellow’s chest while I go and bring Mr. Macrae.’

‘A message has come in on the machine,’ said Merton.

‘Well, he can read it; it is not our affair.’

Logan went off; Merton poured out a glass of Apollinaris water, added a little whisky, and lit a cigarette.  The figure on the floor wriggled; Merton put the revolver which the man had dropped and Logan’s pistol into a drawer of the writing-table, which he locked.

‘I do detest all that cheap revolver business,’ said Merton.

The row had awakened Logan’s dog, which was howling dolefully in the neighbouring room.

‘Queer situation, eh?’ said Merton to the prostrate figure.

Hurrying footsteps climbed the stairs; Mr. Macrae (with a shot-gun) and Logan entered.