“Quick—­quick!” he cried to the officer, “An ambulance!”

“But the prisoner,” the policeman indicated.

“Hurry—­hurry—­I’ll take care of him,” urged Craig, seizing the policeman’s pistol and thrusting it into his pocket.  “Walter—­help me.”

He was trying the ordinary methods of resuscitation.  Meanwhile the officer had hurried out, seeking the nearest telephone, while we worked madly to bring Elaine back.

Again and again Kennedy bent and outstretched her arms, trying to induce respiration.  So busy was I that for the moment I forgot our prisoner.

But Dan had seen his chance.  Noiselessly he picked up the old chair in the room and with it raised was approaching Kennedy to knock him out.

Before I knew it myself, Kennedy had heard him.  With a half instinctive motion, he drew the revolver from his pocket and, almost before I could see it, had shot the man.  Without a word he returned the gun to his pocket and again bent over Elaine, without so much as a look at the crook who sank to the floor, dropping the chair from his nerveless hands.

Already the policeman had got an ambulance which was now tearing along to us.

Frantically Kennedy was working.

A moment he paused and looked at me—­hopeless.

Just then, outside, we could hear the ambulance, and a doctor and two attendants hurried up to the door.  Without a word the doctor seemed to appreciate the gravity of the case.

He finished his examination and shook his head.

“There is no hope—­no hope,” he said slowly.

Kennedy merely stared at him.  But the rest of us instinctively removed our hats.

Kennedy gazed at Elaine, overcome.  Was this the end?

It was not many minutes later that Kennedy had Elaine in the little sitting room off the laboratory, having taken her there in the ambulance, with the doctor and two attendants.

Elaine’s body had been placed on a couch, covered by a blanket, and the shades were drawn.  The light fell on her pale face.

There was something incongruous about death and the vast collection of scientific apparatus, a ghastly mocking of humanity.  How futile was it all in the presence of the great destroyer?

Aunt Josephine had arrived, stunned, and a moment later, Perry Bennett.  As I looked at the sorrowful party, Aunt Josephine rose slowly from her position on her knees where she had been weeping silently beside Elaine, and pressed her hands over her eyes, with every indication of faintness.

Before any of us could do anything, she had staggered into the laboratory itself, Bennett and I following quickly.  There I was busy for some time getting restoratives.

Meanwhile Kennedy, beside the couch, with an air of desperate determination, turned away and opened a cabinet.  From it he took a large coil and attached it to a storage battery, dragging the peculiar apparatus near Elaine’s couch.