Then their faces came slowly together in their first kiss.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HIDDEN VOICE

“Jameson—­wake up!”

The strain of the Dodge case was beginning to tell on me, for it was keeping us at work at all kinds of hours to circumvent the Clutching Hand, by far the cleverest criminal with whom Kennedy had ever had anything to do.

I had slept later than usual that morning and, in a half doze, I heard a voice calling me, strangely like Kennedy’s and yet unlike it.

I leaped out of bed, still in my pajamas, and stood for a moment staring about.  Then I ran into the living room.  I looked about, rubbing my eyes, startled.  No one was there.

“Hey—­Jameson—­wake up!”

It was spooky.

I ran back into Craig’s room.  He was gone.  There was no one in any of our rooms.  The surprise had now thoroughly awakened me.

“Where—­the deuce—­are you?” I demanded.

Suddenly I heard the voice again—­no doubt about it, either.

“Here I am—­over on the couch!”

I scratched my head, puzzled.  There was certainly no one on that couch.

A laugh greeted me.  Plainly, though, it came from the couch.  I went over to it and, ridiculous as it seemed, began to throw aside the pillows.

There lay nothing but a little oblong oaken box, perhaps eight or ten inches long and three or four inches square at the ends.  In the face were two peculiar square holes and from the top projected a black disc, about the size of a watch, fastened on a swinging metal arm.  In the face of the disc were several perforated holes.

I picked up the strange looking thing in wonder and from that magic oak box actually came a burst of laughter.

“Come over to the laboratory, right away,” pealed forth a merry voice.  “I’ve something to show you.”

“Well,” I gasped, “what do you know about that?”

Very early that morning Craig had got up, leaving me snoring.  Cases never wearied him.  He thrived on excitement.

He had gone over to the laboratory and set to work in a corner over another of those peculiar boxes, exactly like that which he had already left in our rooms.

In the face of each of these boxes, as I have said, were two square holes.  The sides of these holes converged inward into the box, in the manner of a four sided pyramid, ending at the apex in a little circle of black, perhaps half an inch across.

Satisfied at last with his work, Craig had stood back from the weird apparatus and shouted my name.  He had enjoyed my surprise to the fullest extent, then had asked me to join him.

Half an hour afterward I walked into the laboratory, feeling a little sheepish over the practical joke, but none the less curious to find out all about it.

“What is it?” I asked indicating the apparatus.