“You,” she scorned, “belong to an age that is passing away.  You cannot understand these people like Miss Kendall, like Mr. Carton, who cannot be bought and controlled like your other creatures.  You do not know how the underworld can turn on the upperworld.  You would not pull us up—­you shoved us down deeper, in your greed.  But if we go down, we shall drag you, too.  What have we to lose?  You and your creatures, like Martin Ogleby, have taken everything from us.  We—­”

“Come, Ogleby,” interposed Dorgan, deliberately turning his back on her and slowly placing his hat on his half-bald head.  “We are indebted to Professor Kennedy for a pleasant entertainment.  When he has another show equally original we trust he will not forget the first-nighters who have enjoyed this farce.”

Dorgan had reached the door and had his hand on the knob.  I had expected Kennedy to reply.  But he said nothing.  Instead his hand stole along the edge of the table beside which he was standing.

“Good-night,” bowed Dorgan with mock solemnity.  “Thank you for laying the cards on the table.  We shall know how to play—­”

Dorgan cut the words short.

Kennedy had touched the button of an electric attachment which was under the table by which he could lock every door and window of the laboratory instantly and silently.

“Well?” demanded Dorgan fiercely, though there was a tremble in his voice that had never been heard before.

“Where is Betty Blackwell?” demanded Craig, turning to Sybil Seymour.  “Where did they take her?”

We hung breathlessly on the answer.  Was she being held as a white slave in some obscure den?  I knew that that did not mean that she was necessarily imprisoned behind locked doors and barred windows, although even that might be the case.  I knew that the restraint might be just as effective, even though it was not actually or wholly physical.

An ordinary girl, I reasoned, with little knowledge of her rights or of the powers which she might call to her aid if she knew how to summon them, might she not be so hemmed in by the forces into whose hands she had fallen as to be practically held in bonds which she could not break?

Here was Sybil herself!  Once she had been like Betty Blackwell.  Indeed, when she seemed to have every chance to escape she did not.  She knew how she could be pursued, hounded at every turn, forced back, and her only course was to sink deeper into the life.  The thought of what might be accomplished by drugs startled me.

Clare bent over the poor girl reassuringly.  What was it that seemed to freeze her tongue now?  Was it still some vestige of the old fear under which she had been held so long?  Clare strove, although we could not hear what she was saying, to calm her.

At last Sybil raised her head, with a wild cry, as if she were sealing her own doom.

“It was Ike.  He kept us all in terror.  Oh, if he hears he will kill me,” she blurted out.