She had risen by this time and was gazing about, wondering at the strange voice.  Suddenly her eye fell on the armor scattered all over the floor.  She spied the little oak box.

“Elaine!”

Apparently the voice came from that.  Besides, it had a familiar ring to her ears.

“Yes—­Craig!” she cried.

“This is my vocaphone—­the little box that hears and talks,” came back to her.  “Are you all right?”

“Yes—­all right,—­thanks to the vocaphone.”

She had understood in an instant.  She seized the helmet and breastplate to which the vocaphone still was attached and was holding them close to herself.

. . . . . . . .

Kennedy had been calling and listening intently over the machine, wondering whether it had been put out of business in some way.

“It works—­yet!” he cried excitedly to me.  “Elaine!”

“Yes, Craig,” came back over the faithful little instrument.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes—­all right.”

“Thank heaven!” breathed Craig, pushing me aside.

Literally he kissed that vocaphone as if it had been human!

CHAPTER IX

THE DEATH RAY

Kennedy was reading a scientific treatise one morning, while I was banging on the typewriter, when a knock at the laboratory door disturbed us.

By some intuition, Craig seemed to know who it was.  He sprang to open the door, and there stood Elaine Dodge and her lawyer, Perry Bennett.

Instantly, Craig read from the startled look on Elaine’s face that something dreadful had happened.

“Why—­what’s the matter?” he asked, solicitously.

“A—­another letter—­from the Clutching Hand!” she exclaimed breathlessly.  “Mr. Bennett was calling on me, when this note was brought in.  We both thought we’d better see you at once about it and he was kind enough to drive me here right away in his car.”

Craig took the letter and we both read, with amazement: 

“Are you an enemy of society?  If not, order Craig Kennedy to leave the country by nine o’clock to-morrow morning.  Otherwise, a pedestrian will drop dead outside his laboratory every hour until he leaves.”

The note was signed by the now familiar sinister hand, and had, added, a postcript, which read: 

“As a token of his leaving, have him place a vase of flowers on his laboratory window to-day.”

“What shall we do?” queried Bennett, evidently very much alarmed at the threat.

“Do?” replied Kennedy, laughing contemptuously at the apparently futile threat, “why, nothing.  Just wait.”

. . . . . . . .

The day proved uneventful and I paid no further attention to the warning letter.  It seemed too preposterous to amount to anything.

Kennedy, however, with his characteristic foresight, as I learned afterwards, had not been entirely unprepared, though he had affected to treat the thing with contempt.