To an electric light socket, Craig attached wires.  The doctor watched him in silent wonder.

“Doctor,” he asked slowly as he worked, “do you know of Professor Leduc of the Nantes Ecole de Medicin?”

“Why—­yes,” answered the doctor, “but what of him?”

“Then you know of his method of electrical resuscitation.”

“Yes—­but—­” He paused, looking apprehensively at Kennedy.

Craig paid no attention to his fears, but approaching the couch on which Elaine lay, applied the electrodes.  “You see,” he explained, with forced calmness, “I apply the anode here—­the cathode there.”

The ambulance surgeon looked on excitedly, as Craig turned on the current, applying it to the back of the neck and to the spine.

For some minutes the machine worked.

Then the young doctor’s eyes began to bulge.

“My heavens!” he cried under his breath.  “Look!”

Elaine’s chest had slowly risen and fallen.  Kennedy, his attention riveted on his work, applied himself with redoubled efforts.  The young doctor looked on with increased wonder.

“Look!  The color in her face!  See her lips!” he cried.

At last her eyes slowly fluttered open—­then closed.

Would the machine succeed?  Or was it just the galvanic effect of the current?  The doctor noticed it and quickly placed his ear to her heart.  His face was a study in astonishment.  The minutes sped fast.

To us outside, who had no idea what was transpiring in the other room, the minutes were leaden-feeted.  Aunt Josephine, weak but now herself again, was sitting nervously.

Just then the door opened.

I shall never forget the look on the young ambulance surgeon’s face, as he murmured under his breath, “Come here—­the age of miracles is not passed—­look!”

Raising his finger to indicate that we were to make no noise, he led us into the other room.

Kennedy was bending over the couch.

Elaine, her eyes open, now, was gazing up at him, and a wan smile flitted over her beautiful face.

Kennedy had taken her hand, and as he heard us enter, turned half way to us, while we stared in blank wonder from Elaine to the weird and complicated electrical apparatus.

“It is the life-current,” he said simply, patting the Leduc apparatus with his other hand.

CHAPTER XI

THE HOUR OF THREE

With the ominous forefinger of his Clutching Hand extended, the master criminal emphasized his instructions to his minions.

“Perry Bennett, her lawyer, is in favor again with Elaine Dodge,” he was saying.  “She and Kennedy are on the outs even yet.  But they may become reconciled.  Then she’ll have that fellow on our trail again.  Before that happens, we must ‘get’ her—­see?”

It was in the latest headquarters to which Craig had chased the criminal, in one of the toughest parts of the old Greenwich village, on the west side of New York, not far from the river front.