“Excuse me, sir,” said the Inspector, getting up from his seat and showing me the door, “it strikes me that it’s a lunatic asylum you want and not a Police Station.  I haven’t any time to waste with people who come here with stories like that.  Good-evening!” And he shut the door, leaving me outside on the step.

I went to several other stations, and finally to Scotland Yard, but I could get no one to believe my extraordinary story; and at last I went to bed quite bewildered and in a terribly anxious frame of mind, leaving the lights burning and the windows wide open in case the wanderers returned during the night.

The next day, not hearing any news, I was obliged to telegraph for Lionel’s father and mother; and I had a terrible scene with them, for they reproached me over and over again for letting their son venture out upon the Magic Carpet.

“You must have known,” said my aunt tearfully, “that it was dangerous to trust to such heathenish and out-of-date methods of travelling, and now the poor dear boy is probably transformed or bewitched, or done something terrible to by this wretched Yellow Dwarf friend of yours, with the awful name.  It’s really disgraceful of you to have let him go at all!”

And so, amid the most bitter reproaches, although I left no stone unturned in my hopeless search for Lionel and Shin Shira, several days flew by, till one morning I nearly leaped from my chair in surprise and delight, at seeing the following report in the paper—­

     “EXTRAORDINARY RESCUE AT SEA

“By Marconigram comes a message from mid-ocean that two days ago the S.S. Ruby, from Liverpool to New York, picked up at sea, under extraordinary circumstances, an English school-boy who states that he was travelling by means of a Magic Carpet, which he was unable to manage.  He was found to be in a state of complete exhaustion, but has since recovered, and appears to be a lively, intelligent lad.  He will be landed at New York.”

It is needless to say that my uncle and myself lost no time in putting ourselves in communication with the steamship people, and of course found that the rescued lad was no other than Lionel.

His father and I crossed over by the next boat, and found him happy and well and being made a tremendous fuss of by everybody at the hotel where we had arranged for him to stay till our arrival.

“Of course,” he explained in telling us all about it, “everything went all right at first, and we went to Gammage’s house in no time, but he was out.  We landed in the garden, and nobody saw us, and I went up to the front door and knocked, and when I found Gammage wasn’t at home I just went back to Shin Shira and asked where else we could go, because I didn’t want to go home so soon.

“‘How would you like to go over to France?’ he said; ’we could do it in about twenty minutes.’

“So of course I said yes, and we were crossing the Channel all right when he suddenly began to disappear.